Page 83 of The Duchess Debt

Gabe stood where he was, making no new move to comfort her.Smart man.The wound in her chest throbbed as if it were raw. If he’d touched her then, she might have screamed.

“Helena,” he said quietly. “We need to talk.”

“Not now.”Dear God, no! Not here.She had to focus on Alice,onlyon saving Alice. That was the only way she’d be able to survive this day. At that very moment, she knew, she should have been at her wedding breakfast in the orangery with the toasts going round the table and her wedding band shining on her left hand. But if she focused on Alice, she could somehow find the strength to delay the complete shattering of her heart.

The distant rumble of carriage wheels reached them from across the field east of the inn, followed by the sharp blow ofa mail coach driver’s trumpet horn to announce their arrival. The noise sent the inn into a flurry of new activity, with grooms jogging out of the barns to be ready for the fast team change when it arrived and others carrying large sacks and boxes full of mail to replace the ones the coachmen would toss to the ground. Even two bar maids scurried out of the inn, one balancing a tray of ale tankards and the other a basket filled with wrapped bundles of food to sell to the women passengers who would be scrambling to find the necessary and the men to relieve themselves behind the barns before they had to return to the mail coach or be left behind. The change would be quick, most likely only a few minutes’ duration while the coach was here before launching off to complete its high-speed route to London.

Helena’s heart pounded so hard that the rush of blood through her ears nearly drowned out the noise as the coach rolled between the gate posts and into the cobblestone inn yard.

“Come on.” Gabe took her arm and hurried her across the courtyard to the coach.

They reached it just as one of the grooms lowered the step and opened the door. An older man and woman disembarked, blinking against the bright sunlight, followed by an elderly man and a university-aged lad whom Helena guessed was his son.

Then out bounced a young boy dressed in rough clothes and worn boots with a large tweed cap pulled down over his head. When his jacket flapped open, Helena saw pink and white ribbons smuggled beneath the coarse waistcoat.

Alice.

Without thinking, Helena rushed forward to sweep the girl up into her arms and raced with her several feet away, heedless of the little girl’s surprised cry. If Nanny Potts had gone mad enough to carry a pistol with her, Helena wanted the little girl out of the fray.

Gabe stepped in front of the carriage door as a plump woman in worsted brown wool stepped to the ground. “Mrs. Potts.”

The nanny looked up and gasped. When she recognized Gabe, she attempted to shove past him and bolt, but he was too big and strong for her to escape, and far too quick. He grabbed her arm and yanked her aside, then pulled her away from the coach and toward the tall stone wall encircling the yard.

“Don’t have me arrested! Please don’t, Your Grace.” She cowered against the wall and raised her arm, as if afraid Gabe might hit her. “I only did it to protect the wee one.”

“You kidnapped my daughter,” he ground out. “How is that protecting her? I swear to God, woman, if you’ve harmed one hair on her head—”

“I haven’t!” Then her round face pinched with anger. “But I certainly wouldn’t leave her at Grangely soyoucould.”

He jerked up straight. “What do you mean by that?”

“I heard you last night—you and your brother. I heard Lord Adam say he wanted to take away my little Alice, and even if he didn’t, what he said about you was true.Youwould send her away to relatives she doesn’t know just because you’ll have a new little wife to spoil, whelps of your own soon filling the nursery.” Her face grew red, and anger engulfed her to the point that she shook from it. “You think I haven’t been watching you closely these past few years, seen with my own eyes how much you hate that child and want nothing to do with her?”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. Untilshearrived,” she sneered out, glancing past his shoulder at Helena who still held Alice safely in her arms, “you didn’t care what my little Alice did or didn’t, as long as she left you alone. You never visited her in the nursery or listened to her lessons, never so much as paid one whit of attention to her except to chastise her. But then Miss Sinfell came to Grangely,and you put on such a grand show of being a doting father just to worm your way into her good graces. Last night proved it was all nothing but a lie.”

He ground out between clenched teeth, “I think you’ve said enough.”

“I love that little girl like she was my own,” she continued, ignoring Gabe’s ire and jabbing her knobby chin into the air. “That’s why I took her. We were going to my sister’s in London, where my little Alice would be loved and never sent away. I couldn’t stand by and let her be tossed away like a piece of garbage!”

His back remained as ramrod straight as before, but Helena saw the faint lowering of his shoulders at that rebuke. No one else would have seen that small change in him, but Helena did—no, shefeltit, just as she felt his own self-recrimination.

Nanny Potts scolded in a seething hiss of anger, “You don’t deserve her!”

Gabe let the nanny’s harsh words fade, for a long moment saying nothing. Then, quietly, “You’re right. I don’t deserve her.”

Helena caught her breath. A world of meaning filled his quiet sentence. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Alice, and the tension visibly melted from him, the anger and worry evaporating like a morning fog.

He pulled in a deep breath and admitted, “I don’t deserve to have a daughter as wonderful as she is, and Ihavetreated her badly. The least I can do now is spend the rest of my life attempting to make it up to her, at home at Grangely where she belongs, now and always.”

A tear slid down Helena’s cheek, and hope flooded through her. Gabe had changed. It had taken the terrible fear of nearly losing Alice to prove it to both of them, but at that moment, she saw in him the man he had once been and all the love he was capable of giving.

Alice broke free from Helena’s hold and ran forward. “Papa!” She flung her arms around his legs and clung to him. “Papa, you came for me!”

“Of course, I did, poppet. I will always protect you.” He scooped her into his embrace, and she wrapped her slender arms tightly around his neck. “And I am never letting you go.” He whispered as he placed a kiss to the top of her head, “I’ll never part with you.Never.I promise.”

“I love you, Papa,” she told him, resting her cheek against his.