Page 9 of The Duchess Debt

Gabe rolled his eyes. Sometimes honesty was damnably annoying. “I see no reason for affection or feelings to enter into the arrangement.”

“And I think you’d have better luck building that bridge to Ireland.”

With an answering scowl, Gabe tossed back the rest of the cognac.

CHAPTER FOUR

Apprehension licked at the backs of Helena’s knees as she took another glance around the bedroom.Hernew bedroom. Her stomach pinched, and she swallowed down a rising panic in her belly. She couldn’t stay here at Grangely Park. She absolutelycould notstay.

“And these, miss?” The young house maid, assigned to assist her until a more experienced maid could be found, held up Helena’s favorite pair of bedroom slippers, the ones Larissa had hand-embroidered in silver thread for her as a birthday gift.

Her shoulders sagged. Larissa and all her sisters were depending upon her to save them. She knew the truth…

She absolutely could notleave.

“Put them by the end of the bed,” Gabe’s aunt, Lady Verity Cavanaugh, answered for her.

The maid nodded and hurried to do as ordered.

Helena pursed her lips. If she wasn’t still so angry about what happened in the solicitor’s office that morning, she would have enjoyed watching Lady Verity attack the task of unpacking with all the well-organized command of an army general striking camp. Gabriel’s aunt waved untiringly in all directions to indicate the armoire and the dressing room where acceptable articles of clothing were to be placed, gestured toward the laundry in the servants’ wing of the grand Jacobean country house for those articles that needed to be tended to, and pointed to various places around the room where the rest of Helena’s personal items should go.

Goodness.Wellington’s last campaign surely hadn’t been this regimented. But then, Wellington had only been facing down Napoleon while Helena was moving into a duchess’s private rooms. And Lady Verity wasn’t letting anyone forget that. Certainly not Helena.

For her part, Helena stood well out of the way. The packing was disconcerting, not the least of which was that she didn’t feel as if she belonged in these rooms in the first place, and not only because she wasn’t yet Duchess of Thurston. The cream-colored room was the grandest bedroom she’d ever seen, with its tall canopied bed bedecked in velvets and silks and its mattresses piled high with down coverlets and pillows. A huge bouquet of fresh roses decorated the white marble mantelpiece, whose intricate carvings resembled a bower of wisteria vines curving away toward the ceiling, while in the adjoining sitting room, a second flower vase topped a small tea table between two high-back Chippendale chairs in yellow damask. Matching damask drapes framed the curving bay window overlooking the wide expanse of lawn and the deer park extending beyond to the horizon.

No, it was the door on the other side of the sitting room that made Helena most uneasy.Thatdoor connected to the duke’s bedchambers.

Seeing Gabe again that morning had brought back all kinds of memories and emotions, but she was smart enough to not allow him to creep into her heart. Not again. She might have no choice but to marry him, but this time, she would protect herself. Emotion would play no part in their marriage.Absolutelyno part.

So why did she feel like throwing herself onto the bed and crying her eyes out?

“We will have you settled in time for afternoon tea,” Lady Verity assured Helena with an affectionate squeeze to her elbow.

Helena forced a smile at the thoughtful gesture, although she certainly had no appetite.

“You have already met Mrs. Brimley, the housekeeper, and Larkin, the butler,” Verity continued, “the senior footmen and maids, and you will meet the rest of the household staff in themorning after we see off Lady Peggleston.” She added beneath her breath, “Bright and early.”

Helena choked down a laugh. The older woman had graciously come to Henry Sinfell’s aide in offering to escort Helena to Grangely Park, to make certain no new rumors of impropriety surfaced over his daughter’s unusual engagement. But the old dowager’s stiff joints had felt every bump and jostle between London and Chatham, and her sensitive stomach disagreed with the inn food along the way. Yet none of that had kept her from drinking several tankards of ale in the village inn while Helena and Gabe met with Mr. Putnam or entering into a card game in which she successfully fleeced three travelers and the local cooper. At that very moment, Lady Peggleston was in the room across the hall, sleeping off the effects of all that ale and snoring her way into what would surely be a fierce headache come dawn.

Apparently, the chaperone needed a chaperone.

But Lady Peggleston was no longer of use now that Helena had been safely delivered into the hands of Lady Verity, Gabe’s unmarried aunt on his father’s side. When the previous duke and duchess passed away within weeks of each other, Gabe and his younger brother, Adam, had been barely older than children. Although she had no children of her own, Verity possessed a true mother’s heart and stepped in to successfully guide them into adulthood…Well, to successfully guide Gabe into the responsibility that had settled upon his young shoulders, that is, because Adam had always seemed destined for a scapegrace’s life. The last Helena had heard word of Adam, he had left for India to seek out a living for himself. That had been right around the time when her wedding to Gabe had been called off, and she hadn’t had the heart—then or since—to inquire after any of the Cavanaugh family.

“Put the rest of the clothing into the dressing room,” Verity ordered the two maids, “and fetch extra beeswax candles from Larkin’s office.”

Helena’s lips twitched. A true mother’s heart, all right. One wrapped within the commanding persona of a field marshal.

“It’s a shame that all the staff weren’t present to formally greet you when you arrived this afternoon,” Verity commented as she kept a close eye on the last of the unpacking.

Without Gabe.Verity might as well have said it because the implication hung in the air as if she had. “It’s all right. No fuss was necessary.”

Verity threw her a startled glance as if Helena had just admitted to attempting to kill the king. “Of course a fuss was necessary! My dear, you are to be the new Duchess of Thurston and mistress of Grangely Park, one of the stateliest houses in England.”

As if Helena didn’t already knowthat. Yet Verity’s words sent her stomach roiling with fresh apprehension.

“The staff”—Verity paused, and Helena mentally inserted into the gapand my nephew—“should give you the deference you deserve.”

“I’m sure they will.” However much that would be, though, was still up to debate. Already, Helena felt like an imposter. Clarissa Wentworth had been the daughter of an earl and a woman of proper rank and breeding. Helena was nothing of the sort. Certainly tongues were already wagging throughout the estate about her, into the village, and through the neighboring estates and villages beyond. All were most likely wondering the same—was Helena good enough to be a duchess? God knew she was certainly wondering herself.