CHAPTER FIVE #2
So he hadn’t bothered to convince her to stay when she packed her trunks and left for London, leaving him behind with the baby, who was less than one year old at the time.
Instead, Gabe had been relieved to be rid of her.
Only later would he learn exactly how big of a mistake he’d made in allowing her to leave without him.
Having her at Grangely had made his life insufferable. But letting her go to London alone had made it sheer hell.
“So you’re building a bridge,” Helena said in a preoccupied mumble, “but there are far more drawings here than just that. What all are you planning?”
Genuine curiosity tinged her voice. Spurred on by it—if cautiously—he picked up the master list of projects. He held it out toward her. Instead of taking it from him, she simply leaned toward him to read it, close enough that he could smell the sweet scent of honeysuckle wafting from her skin.
“Here’s the list,” he told her as he fought against the urge to close his eyes and simply drink in her presence. “New bridge, footpaths, market building with a solid roof…”
He picked up each corresponding sketch with its scrawled margin notes and handed them to her.
But she didn’t step away as he’d assumed she would when faced with the enormity of it all—as he’d hoped she do, in fact.
Instead, in her curiosity and concentration, she leaned closer until their shoulders nearly brushed. He pulled in a sharp breath.
“That’s quite ambitious,” she murmured.
“All of it done in its turn,” he assured her, his voice suddenly rough, “with the needs of the village and estate workers at its heart.”
She nodded, but a distracted frown furrowed her brow.
Her expression struck him with worry. “Is there a problem?”
“No. The plans all seem well thought out, very smartly designed. But…”
“But?”
“Where are the improvements to the school?” She shuffled through the sheets of papers, searching. “I don’t see any plans for that here.”
“That’s because the village doesn’t have one.”
The sheets slipped from her stunned fingers and fell onto the table. She gazed incredulously at him, as if he had just sprung a second head, and repeated, “You don’t have a school?”
“We haven’t had a need for a dedicated space for one. The church serves as the school, and the tavern doubles as the village meeting hall and assembly room when necessary.”
She blinked. “Who teaches the children?”
“Reverend Barlow, primarily, and women in the village, if needed.”
“Oh no,” she murmured and shuffled through the plans again, as if looking at them a second time could change what was on them and miraculously produce a school. “That isn’t good at all.”
“Pardon?” His pride would have been pricked if he wasn’t so surprised at her interest. “The vicar has done quite well. We’ve been able to place several boys into apprenticeships and the military and several girls into household service.
” And every position paid for by Gabe. It was the least he could do for his tenants, to put their minds at ease that all their children would have solid futures.
“What we do works well for the villagers.”
“Yet it could be better and provide even more opportunities. The children need a properly trained, dedicated teacher, and I’m certain Reverend Barlow would prefer having more time to focus on his church work instead of teaching maths.
” Before Gabe could interrupt and argue, she offered, “I’ll help with the school.
I’ll take it on as my own special project, my way of giving to the village and letting them know how grateful I am to be welcomed here.
” She looked up at him hopefully. “That is, if you don’t mind. ”
He hesitated. Helena’s interest in improving the village was a pleasant surprise, and no real damage would be done if she grew bored with the project and gave it up, exactly as Clarissa would have done.
Yet he hedged his bets. “I’ll have to discuss it first with my engineer.
He might have concerns about how it would fit into the overall timeline and budget. I can’t make any promises.”
Ignoring his non-committal answer, she lifted her glass to her mouth and murmured against the rim, “Just think of it, though. Schoolroom by day, meeting hall and assembly room by night, all overseen by a qualified teacher…one who’s able to keep the children out of trouble by day and the refreshments in stock for the villagers at night.
” Her eyes gleamed at the idea. “It will be more popular than Beau Brummel’s trousers.
Every fashionable village will want one. ”
He chuckled at her quip. Dear God, how much he’d missed her. Even this little bit of teasing felt like old times.
But this wasn’t those times. Those days were long over. Her next utterance proved it—
“Tell me about Alice.”
Her soft words jarred down his spine, targeting the heart of the tension between them.
She lowered the glass to stare thoughtfully into the liquid.
“I’ve been doing the math all evening. Every way I add it up, Clarissa would have had to have gotten with child three months before you married her, right around the time when we became engaged.
” Her voice emerged soft and low, but the pain lacing through it was unmistakable.
“Even if Clarissa lied to you about Alice’s paternity, you would have had to have suspected the child was yours or you wouldn’t have married her. Which means you would have had to…”
Her whisper trailed off into silence, unable to put that final pain into words.
“To have bedded her at the same time I asked you to marry me,” he finished grimly.
She nodded tightly.
For Helena to believe he’d done something like that—Christ. But then again, he had abandoned her on her wedding day. In her eyes, he was a monster capable of anything.
“I never bedded Clarissa before we wed,” he admitted.
Her lips parted, stunned.
“I knew the child she carried wasn’t mine from the very beginning.
” He managed to suppress his anger and bitterness toward his late wife the same way he had for the past five years by letting his heart be hardened.
He was surprised the damnable thing beat at all given how it was nothing more now than a cold stone.
“She never attempted to lie about that, and I didn’t enter our marriage ignorant of the truth. ”
No, but he’d sure as hell been a damned fool to think he could have a normal marriage with Clarissa.
But he was a duke, she was the daughter of an earl, and their two families had bumped along well for generations.
Most society marriages were based on far less.
It could have worked. It would have worked, he still suspected, if he hadn’t already been in love with someone else.
“Then…” Her voice emerged as a breathless rasp of betrayal. “Why?”
His eyes never leaving hers, Gabe took the glass from her hand and finished off its contents in one gasping swallow. “Because I had no choice.”
He carried the empty glass to the fireplace and set it down on the mantel, feeling the weight of her bewildered gaze on his back. He reached for one of the cigars he kept in the small box on the mantel and a spill from the vase to light it.
“Do you remember our engagement party?” he asked as he bent down to stick the splinter into the fire. “That night at Thurston House in London?”
“Of course.”
He frowned at the flames as they bit into the thin wood. “That was when it all started to unravel.”
“It?”
My life. Ignoring her question, he rose to his full height. “While we were in the ballroom celebrating our future, Clarissa Wentworth was upstairs, making use of one of the guestrooms.” He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it into the fire. “With my brother.”
To fill the stunned silence, he clenched the cigar between his teeth and brought the small flame to its tip.
He waved the splinter back and forth and pulled in large mouthfuls of air through the cigar to light the dry tobacco.
When the tip finally glowed deep red in the shadows, he tossed the splinter into the flames.
“Adam bedded her without any intention of marrying her. Perhaps he knew her father would never have condoned a marriage to a second son with limited prospects, so he took what he could of her. Adam was nothing if not a mercenary bastard.” Gabe turned the cigar over in his fingers and watched as the thin trail of smoke drifted toward the ceiling.
“By the time Clarissa discovered she was with child, my cowardly scapegrace of a brother had already departed for India, leaving Clarissa ruined and our family’s honor in tatters. ”
He shoved the cheroot into his mouth and viciously puffed at it. He didn’t care that it was vulgar to smoke in front of a lady. It was either smoke to keep his hands busy or punch his fist into the wall.
“When did you find out?” The soft voice behind him was barely more than a whisper.
“The morning of our wedding.” When he was fully dressed in his wedding finery, in fact, right down to the red rose boutonniere on his lapel.
When his town coach was waiting at the front steps, gleaming in black ebony and polished brass, to bring Helena to her new home in style.
When every servant in the household—and then some—were in a flurry of activity to prepare for the grand breakfast to follow the ceremony.
“James Wentworth and Clarissa arrived just as I was leaving for the church. She came to tell me that she was with child, and her brother insisted I make good on Adam’s irresponsibility or be called out for it.
” He angrily flicked the ash from his cigar into the flames at his feet.
“One way or another, a Cavanaugh had to marry her or both our families would be ruined, and I was the only Cavanaugh left.”
The silence behind him was as damning as if she’d screamed at him.
“I had no choice. I had to break off our engagement and marry Clarissa as soon as possible.”
“No,” she challenged, her voice raw. “You did have a choice. You could have chosen me.”