Page 15 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
Gideon watched them go. Then he looked around the room. Half the club had risen out of their seats. They were settling back down now, by degrees, the murmur of conversation resuming.
“Well,” James said, as Gideon righted his chair and lowered himself back into it. “That was rather eventful. Pray, how did defending her honour end in a fist fight?”
“I do not appreciate the way men speak about her,” Gideon said. “She all but accused me of ill intentions when I first appeared at her door. Now I understand why.”
“I must say,” Nathaniel remarked, settling back into his own chair and reaching for his glass, “you were bang up to the nines with that right hook. I did not know you had it in you.”
“One picks things up,” Gideon said.
James and Nathaniel exchanged a look. Then Nathaniel shrugged. “These matchmaking schemes are a dicey business atthe best of times. And if you are already coming to blows this early in the venture, I cannot say with confidence that it is wise to continue.”
“It is necessary,” Gideon said. “Whether it is wise or not.”
He sat back. As he did, he looked down at his fist. He had put it square into Henry’s chest and felt no hesitation whatsoever. What he did feel, sitting here now, was a faint unease at how quickly the rage had come. Not at the insult to himself — that he could bear easily enough. Henry’s remark about Cassandra had landed somewhere, he would not deny that, but it was not what had moved his arm. It was the rest of it. The casual, contemptible way they had spoken about her, as though she were a hedge bird they might amuse themselves with rather than a woman of intelligence and dignity who deserved a great deal better than any of this.
Nathaniel had a point. It probably was not wise.
Still, what was done was done. And he resolved, quietly and with considerable firmness, to find Lady Helena a husband sooner rather than later — before he found himself sending any more young lords to grass on her behalf.
CHAPTER 7
HELENA
Clara closed the door behind the housekeeper and slipped into her seat across from Helena.
“So tell me,” she said. “What was so urgent? Mrs. Mavis said you stopped by while I was away, and your note read most intriguingly. Who is this gentleman who has come calling and wishes to help you find a new husband? You did not give his name.”
Helena had purposely omitted the Duke’s name from the letter. She did not always trust that correspondence reached its intended recipient without curious eyes having perused it along the way.
She lowered her voice. “It is the Duke of Blackthorne.”
“Gideon?” Clara exclaimed. “Gideon has come calling on you? How very peculiar. Tell me everything.”
Helena shrugged. “He arrived at my doorstep a few days ago and told me that he owes my father a great debt. He said my father saved his life once, years ago in the militia, and that when he heard of my circumstances he felt obliged to help. I questioned where he had been this entire past year, but he did not have a satisfactory answer.”
“Gideon,” Clara said again, in a rather dreamy tone that gave Helena pause.
“How well do you know him?”
Clara smiled in a way that suggested she knew him rather well indeed, which Helena found immediately uncomfortable. Her friend sensed this at once.
“Not in any intimate fashion,” Clara said quickly. “He was not in any state for that sort of acquaintance.”
“What do you mean?” Helena asked, her curiosity piqued further.
“What do you know of him already?” Clara countered. “Tell me what he told you.”
Helena relayed the essentials — the debt to her father, the offer to act as matchmaker, the peculiar meeting with Sir Franklin.
“Well,” Clara said, settling back. “I have not spent a great deal of time with him this past year, but the year before, when I wentup to Edinburgh — you remember — he and I spent several days together. Entirely platonic, I assure you. I was rather in low spirits, as you know, having had my heart broken.” Helena nodded. She had nursed Clara through more than one broken heart, though at that particular time she herself had just lost Huxley. Not that she had grieved him in any true fashion, but still. “Gideon was somewhat out of sorts himself at the time,” Clara continued, “on account of the annulment of his marriage.”
Helena sat up straight. “His marriage? Gideon was married?”
“Yes, briefly. To a woman called Cassandra — Miss Cassandra Stallworth. I never cared for her. She was always putting on airs, that one — as though the world owed her something rather grander than it had provided. They courted for about six months and then he proposed. They were married for a time, then parted ways, quarreled, attempted a reconciliation, and eventually she ran off with some Italian — a count, or so I was told. Perhaps not a count at all.. The marriage was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation, of all things.” Clara paused and then added, with a slight raise of her eyebrow, “I confess I find that rather difficult to believe, given the man in question.”
“I do not need to know the intimate details,” Helena said, her cheeks warming considerably. “I do have to sit across from him, after all.”
“Very well,” Clara said, with a small smile. “He and I spent several days together in Edinburgh in an respectable fashion, and I found him to be perfectly charming and genuinely honourable. He is a knowing one, I will say that — verylittle escapes his notice. Though I would never have marked him down as a potential matchmaker.” She scratched her chin thoughtfully. “Still, I suppose he does know a great many people. Even if all of his closest friends appear to be married.”
