Page 17 of The Duchess Debt

“That was never my intention.” His shoulders slumped. “As I said, I had no choice.”

Desperately needing a drink, he crossed to the side table and helped himself to a generous pour of whiskey. He took a long swallow before turning to face her.

The expression of pure anguish on her face would have undone him if he hadn’t already stopped caring what women thought of him.Anywoman, including Helena.

Still, he took another sip of whiskey and welcomed the burn down his throat. “Clarissa and I didn’t love each other, but I thought we could at least rub along well enough to have the same kind of marriage as the rest of theton. After all, most society marriages aren’t based on affection, and most go along amicably enough.” He frowned into his glass, the golden liquid turned blood-red by the glow of the firelight and the dark shadows edging the room. “But we were oil and water, and our marriage never worked.”

That description was too kind. In truth, his marriage had been an utter disaster.

“What happened?”

“Surely, you’ve heard the rumors.” He leaned back against the side table and crossed his legs at his ankles. His posture was one of a man at leisure, but every muscle throbbed with knotting tension. “Some gossips asserted I hired prostitutes by the dozens to assuage my depraved carnal urges and engaged in open affairs with married women just to spite their husbands and my wife. Others claimed I was keeping an Italian opera singer in a Piccadilly townhouse—keepingher there, literally, by tying her to the bed.”

“Absurd,” she scoffed. “Anyone who knows you would never credit any of that.”

“Unfortunately, not everyone in London knew me as well as you did.” He smiled grimly and took another sip of whiskey. “It made no difference that I wasn’t even in town then, that I was here at Grangely. But rumors of Clarissa’s unchecked spendingweretrue, and she racked up huge debts on clothes and on furnishings for the London house when she redecorated it from parlor to pantry because she said my mother’s tastes belonged to Dr. Johnson’s generation.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So was I.” And about a hell of a lot more than the color of the new drapes. He’d sacrificed his own happiness to save her, and she’d hated him for it. “Clarissa began openly cheating on our marriage nearly as soon as Alice was born. When I demanded she stop, she retaliated by telling everyone I beat her.”

Helena gasped. “Gabe…”

He continued to stare into his nearly empty glass and shrugged. “I don’t know if she had been truly desperate for the kind of companionship I couldn’t provide or if she did it just to spite me. But by then, we were living in separate houses, and our marriage was over.”Before it had even begun.“She diedthe following year in a carriage accident while riding down to Brighton to meet her latest lover.”

She crossed the room slowly to him and hesitated before placing her hand on his arm.

He looked down at her fingers resting on his shirtsleeve. If her touch was meant to comfort him, she was wasting her time. He was beyond such gestures of consolation.

“Does Adam know?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I haven’t been able to find him. He left the Company only a few weeks after arriving in Calcutta. He told friends he was headed north to the Punjab, but he vanished. I hired several men to hunt him down, but they couldn’t find any of trace of him.” Gabe shrugged. “He might not even be in India any longer. He could be in Arabia, Siam— Hell, he could hiding in a Somerset village for all I know.”

“Perhaps…he’s dead.”

She had no idea how many times in the past five years Gabe had wished for exactly that. But he knew the truth— “I’m not that lucky.”

To keep from seeing her shocked expression, he lifted the glass to his lips and tossed back the last swallow.

He set the empty glass onto the side table with a dull thud. Then he pushed himself away and flopped onto the chair in front of the fire, his back facing her, not caring that he’d just broken half a dozen rules of propriety.

“So imagine my surprise, after all of that,” he said into the fire, “to receive a letter from Sir Henry Sinfell, asking if I would be interested in marrying his eldest daughter.”

She circled around his chair to stand between him and the fire. The light came through her thin dressing robe and night rail, silhouetting her legs beneath, as if she wore nothing. Memories flooded back of how warm her body, how silky smooth her bare skin… He trembled.

“And you said yes because you wanted a second chance at the life we should have had together?” Her voice was oddly flat, as if she were purposefully stripping the emotion from it so he wouldn’t know what she thought of the situation…or reveal any more of the pain he’d inflected.

“Because I wanted to make amends, that’s all.” He forced his voice to be as emotionless as hers. “I know what you’re implying, Helena, and trust me when I tell you that love never entered into my decision.”

She crossed her arms in a no-nonsense stance that would have done a governess proud and leveled a biting accusation. “Just as it hasn’t with raising Alice.”

“I will raise her with the Cavanaugh name and as the daughter of a duke, giving her the best education possible and ensuring an allowance large enough to keep her comfortably for the rest of her life,” he repeated the practiced mantra he’d given to Verity since the girl was born. “She will never want for anything.”

“Except the love of a father.”

He coolly arched a brow. “Then she’ll be raised exactly like most society daughters.”

She shook her head. “If I’m to be her mother, then—”