Page 75 of The Duchess Debt

With a soft cry, she ran to him and buried herself in his embrace. He pulled her against him and held her tightly until she calmed her breath and eased away her shaking. Her hands loosened their grip on his waistcoat, and she eased out a long breath, her stiff body relaxing against him.

“I’m so sorry,” he rasped out. “I should never have trusted him.”

“He didn’t hurt me.” Her voice emerged muffled and vulnerable against his shoulder. “All he wanted was to make it look like…” Then his heart broke when she finished, “Like I was no better than Clarissa.”

“I know.” He nuzzled his cheek apologetically against her hair. “When you told me he approached you for money, I should have known he’d try something like this. Christ! I should have tossed him out on his arse the moment you told me— No, the day he arrived when he first attempted to extort money from us. But I didn’t.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder. Gazing up at him with understanding, she rested her hand against his cheek. “Because you’d hoped Adam might redeem himself and be a true bother again.”

“Yes.” Grief sat heavy on his chest like a lead ball. He turned his head to place a kiss in her palm and claim whatever small solace he could. “I’d hoped we could start again, be as close as we were when we were boys.”

He’d been so very wrong.

She lifted up on tiptoes to kiss him. On her lips, he tasted an absolution he didn’t deserve. He dropped his arms to his sides and stepped back.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she frowned, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head and gestured at her dress. “What Adam did to you—”

“He did nothing but muss my appearance,” she assured him. She stepped to the mirror over the little side table and let out a frustrated sigh at her appearance. “I look a fright, though, don’t I? I can’t let any of the guests see me like this.”

“You look fine,” he assured her quietly and leaned against the back of the settee for support. He felt beaten and overwhelmingly guilty that he had let the situation come to this.

She smoothed down her skirts and straightened her bodice. “If Adam tore my dress, I swear I will let Mrs. Swenson have at him with whips and—”

“Adam was right,” Gabe said quietly.

She froze, then looked hard at his reflection in the mirror. “Those are words that never go together.”

“Maybe they do this time.” He crossed his legs at his ankles and stared at his boots, not daring to look at her. The guilt gnawing at his gut was from more than just tossing his brother out of the house.

“And what, exactly, is he right about?”

A knot formed between his shoulder blades, but rolling them didn’t relieve the tension. “Perhaps Alice would be better off with the Wentworths.”

“No.”

“Clarissa’s sister has three children who—”

“No.”Helena crossed to him and kicked his boot with her slipper to gain his attention. When he slowly lifted his gaze to meet hers, she gestured her hand rapidly between the two of them. “Weare her family—you and me, Maggie and Caleb, their boys, the villagers—our own children someday who will be her brothers and sisters.”

“The Wentworths are her blood family,” he said quietly. “She deserves to know them.”

“The Cavanaughs are her blood family, too. In time, she will come to know the Wentworths, but she is meant to live here.” She shook her head. “Where is this sudden doubt coming from?”

“It’s not a new doubt or sudden.” He shoved himself away from the settee. “I’ve been wondering ever since Clarissa’s death if Alice wouldn’t have a better life with her Wentworth relatives than with me.” He gestured an angry hand in the direction of the upstairs bedrooms where Adam was packing. “For God’s sake!If I can’t even maintain a relationship with my brother, what chance do I have of being a good father to Alice when she isn’t even mine?”

Grief for him darkened her face. The sight hit him like a punch.

“But sheisyours, Gabe. Right here, in your heart where it matters.” She placed her palm on his chest. “That’s what I’ve been trying to make you realize over these past few weeks during all the riding lessons and picnics, all the miles we’ve walked together, the hours of story time before bed… It doesn’t matter who her biological father is. You are hertruefather.”

No, he wasn’t, and a few weeks of picnics and riding lessons could never make up for that. He shook his head. “She’d be better off with the Wentworths.”

Helena gave a determined lift of her chin, despite the glistening tears in her eyes. “We had a deal, remember? You agreed to spend time with Alice, to come to really know her and accept her, to…”To love her.She didn’t say it, yet the unspoken words hung in the air between them as surely as if she’d actually uttered them. She swallowed hard, then continued in a thick voice, “You can’t do that if she’s living somewhere else.”

“The deal we made was only for our engagement period,” he countered quietly. “Once we’re married, your rules no longer apply.”

Her lips parted, stunned. Then her face darkened, and her eyes gleamed knowingly…and accusingly. “And then your rules in the marriage contract take over,” she whispered. “The ones giving you, alone, complete authority over Alice’s upbringing, and I no longer have any say. Including sending her to live with the Wentworths.”