CHAPTER SEVEN
Gabe snatched a sugared orange slice from the plate of fruit the cook had prepared for their picnic and popped it into his mouth as he stretched out across the blanket, resting lazily on his side.
“Isn’t this lovely?” Helena asked from her corner of the blanket as she removed her bonnet and turned her face toward the warm sun.
Gabe gave a noncommittal grunt. He knew better than to answer. Helena would drag him out every day until the winter snows came if he did, although why she’d been so insistent about such an outing he had no idea.
He narrowed a sideways glance at her. What the devil did she have up her sleeve?
He didn’t believe for one moment that her agreement to spend more time with Alice was so they could all come to know each other better before the wedding, to smooth out Alice’s transition to having a new mother.
But he did have to admit that they had to agree on what Alice would call her…
mother, stepmother, Mama, Helena. How could one single word create so much tension?
But what role Helena would play in her life was still uncertain.
Even with all that, though, Gabe had to agree that Alice was relaxed around Helena, smiling more than he remembered her ever doing and being much more willing to play.
Always before, Alice had reminded him of a small adult whenever she came to speak to him in his study or interrupted his work in the library, always straight-spined, eyes downcast, and unnaturally quiet.
She certainly wasn’t that around Helena.
As if to prove him correct, Alice gave a soft giggle from the nearby river’s edge and dropped another leaf into the water.
With a long stick, she pushed it into the slow moving current as if she were a goddess launching ships on command.
Her little armada of leaf boats had grown now to over two dozen, with no signs of stopping anytime soon based on the large pile of leaves at her feet.
Helena reached to pluck a grape from the fruit plate.
Cook had certainly outdone herself with the food, Gabe had to admit.
In addition to the fruit, piles of cold chicken and ham sat next to a loaf of bread, a plate of orange biscuits, a jug of wine for them and a bottle of apple juice for Alice.
Even more bundles of food sat untouched in the wicker basket. It was enough to feed an army.
Perhaps that was the point, he considered.
Knowing Helena, she’d asked for three times as much food as necessary just so they would have leftovers to share with the laborers at the bridge site.
Clarissa certainly wouldn’t have given the men a second thought, let alone a second plate.
He only wished he knew if Helena had done it because she wanted to give the men a treat, or if she wanted to curry favor with him before their wedding.
That was exactly the kind of thing Clarissa would have done—increase her own selfishness by pretending to be selfless.
“There she is,” Helena called out to Alice with a grand wave of her arm. “The face that launched a thousand leaf ships!”
The little girl burst into happy laughter, and a flushed glow of self-consciousness colored her cheeks. But that didn’t stop her from continuing to add to her burgeoning fleet spilling out across the wide river.
“She’s a beautiful little girl, Gabe,” Helena murmured.
He looked away and squinted into the sun. “I had nothing to do with that, remember?”
“Do you really think beauty is created simply by breeding? Or that true beauty has anything to do with physical appearance at all?” To gain back his attention, she plucked another grape and brought it to his lips to feed it to him.
“You know better. How many society women do you know who are breathtaking on the surface but so cold-hearted beneath as to be barely tolerable? Are they beautiful? Just as we both know women who certainly aren’t Helen of Troy on the outside but are so full of joy and life that they light up a room as soon as they enter it. ”
“Like you?” He punctuated that by taking the grape from her fingers with his lips. “But you are also beautiful on the outside.” He chewed and swallowed. “Helena of Troy.”
She gave that bit of nonsense the response it deserved by slapping him gently on the shoulder. But then she tempered her scolding by feeding him another grape.
“You might not have sired her, but you have raised her,” she persisted. “She’s turning into a beautiful woman—inside and out—because of you.”
He grimaced. “I had nothing to do with that, either.” He sat up and positioned himself out of her reach so she couldn’t tempt him with another grape.
“You should be complimenting Verity for that.” He turned his attention to surveying the spread of food as if he were still hungry, even though he had lost whatever appetite the picnic hadn’t yet taken from him.
“God knows I should. I couldn’t have survived the past four years without her.
As a spinster auntie, she might not know very much about the act that creates a baby, but there are few people better suited to caring for them once they’re born. ”
“And she came to Grangely to help with Alice when Clarissa went into confinement?”
“Four months after that.” He pretended interest in a piece of cold ham. “When Clarissa abandoned Alice for London.”
When he glanced up and saw the shocked expression on Helena’s face, he gave up all pretense of nonchalance and sat back on the blanket.
“Verity made certain Alice had the best wet nurse in the county and brought the woman to Grangely to live in the nursery with her,” he explained.
“You didn’t send Alice to live with the nurse?”
“No.” He knew most families of means did just that, sending their children away to live with nurses for the first two or so years of their lives until they were weened, and some longer than that.
So Helena’s question wasn’t a surprise. What struck him, though, was that she cared so much about a child she barely knew.
“I kept hoping Clarissa would miss her baby and come home.” She never did…
until she needed money or had to flee scandal.
Then she would come scurrying back, until the debts had been settled or the gossip had died down, then leave again without so much as a parting wave.
“Eventually, Nanny Potts was hired. But Verity raised Alice the same that she had my brother and me when we were boys, after we lost our parents.” His lips curled faintly.
“After all that Adam and I put her through, I think she was relieved to have a girl.”
“Girls aren’t always less trouble than boys,” Helena commented with the wisdom of being one of four sisters.
As if on cue, Alice lost her balance and nearly fell into the river, at the last moment landing on the grass with a thump, square on her bottom. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers, her little mouth forming a surprised O.
“I’m beginning to realize that,” Gabe mumbled as he watched Alice climb to her feet and go right back to pushing out leaves into the current as if nothing had happened. The girl was resilient, he had to admit.
“And what plans do you have for her future?”
The quiet question jolted him. Helena had asked it innocuously enough, as if it were just another natural digress in their conversation, yet he knew the true meaning behind it. In other words… What role am I to have in raising my stepchild?
“I have none,” he admitted, resting back on his elbow. “I’ve never considered it before.” When he saw surprise grip her face, he added with a pointed brow, “She’s only four, you realize. We have a goodly while before we can move her out of the nursery, let alone plan out the rest of her life.”
That answer did little to mollify her, he could tell. He knew this woman better than anyone else in the world, and he knew exactly what she thought of that convenient shirking of his parental duties.
To her credit, though, she didn’t challenge him directly and instead asked, “Well, then, what does Verity think we should consider for her?”
With a soft chuckle, he reached out for the plate of biscuits and offered them to her. “You mean beyond what every aunt wants for her great-niece—the best governesses and tutors, the finest schools…eventually becoming head of King’s College and marrying a foreign prince?”
She selected a biscuit and said, deadpan, “Beyond those basic expectations, yes.”
Yet he saw the shine in her eyes at his exaggeration and knew from her reaction that his list most likely wasn’t all that different from what Helena herself dreamed for Alice.
He set down the plate. “And if Alice somehow doesn’t become the first lady president of the Royal Society or Her Most Serene Highness of Monaco, I suppose Verity hopes she will simply find a kind and loving husband from a well-respected aristocratic family and will use her position to help the less fortunate. ”
“That sounds like a very fine life to me,” Helena said quietly.
“Hmm.”
She cocked her head. “It is, Gabe.” Yet the resolve in her voice couldn’t prevent a furrow of doubt from forming between her brows. “What’s bothering you? She’s going to have a wonderful life. You and I will make certain of it.”
He sat up, placing his weight on his hip and resting his forearm over his bent knee. He kept his gaze firmly on Alice. “What if her life could be better?” he murmured.
“Better than being a duke’s daughter married to the love of her life, with her own home, family, and purpose? I’m not her certain life could be better than that even if she did marry a prince.”
Not smiling at that teasing, he squinted grimly into the sun. “She has a whole other family she’s never seen. Perhaps it’s time she got to know them.”
“What do you mean?” Gabe knew without having to look that Helena’s frowning brows would have been drawn together so deeply they were most likely touching.