Page 10 of The Duchess Debt

As if reading her mind, Verity leaned in to whisper, “Iwill make certain of it.”

The gleam in Verity’s eyes proved her determination as she dismissed the maids with orders to tell Larkin to set afternoon tea in the garden room.

“Will His Grace be joining us?” Helena asked as casually as possible as she reached into her satchel to unpack the last of her belongings. After the way they’d parted at the solicitor’s office, she and Gabe needed to talk,seriouslytalk, to establish all the limits and mutual expectations for their marriage and life together, ones not involving a solicitor. But she wasn’t at all looking forward to it.

Gabe had changed. After their earlier encounter, she had put aside all notions of rekindling the affections they’d once held, knowing theirs would be nothing more than a marriage of convenience—and she was completely fine with that. She hadn’t lied to him. Her ability to love had died the day he left her at the altar. Yet she wasn’t certain if enough of the man she’d once known still lingered inside him to have any kind of amicable marriage at all.

“Most likely not,” Verity sighed out.

“Pardon?”Helena’s head jerked up. Good Lord, had she uttered her thoughts aloud?

“Gabriel is meeting with Mr. Parker in the library,” his aunt explained.

“Oh.” Helena let out a breath of relief. Verity meant the tea and nothing more.

“I’m certain he will use the meeting as an excuse to avoid joining us. You know how men can be.”

No. Apparently not. And especially not Gabe.

Her heart sank at the irony because she’d once thought she knew him better than anyone, thought she knew his dreams and ambitions as well as she’d known her own. They’d become best friends and then would-be lovers, and through it all, she’d never once doubted his character or his declarations of affection. Untilthe morning of their wedding, when he didn’t appear for the ceremony.

She’d never been more humiliated in her life. The confusion and worry, the reassurances from her sisters and father as each minute ticked past when he didn’t arrive, the growing restlessness from friends and family in the pews as the minutes stretched into an hour, the irritation of the parish priest who remained standing at the front of the church for any sign that the ceremony could begin… Through it all, Helena had waited in the back of the church, worrying herself sick that something terrible had happened to Gabe. Because that was the only reason she could fathom for why he hadn’t arrived as promised. He was honorable to a fault, always a gentleman. He would never have left her at the altar like that.

Except that he had.

Eventually, James Wentworth arrived with a note from Gabe. Short, direct…I dearly regret that I cannot marry you. For the family and the dukedom, I have no choice but to…

She had been unable to read the rest of it. Her tear-filled eyes had blurred the words too much.

Later, when the guests had been informed that the ceremony would not take place, the breakfast foods given to the poor, and the house closed up as if in mourning, she’d sat on the floor in her bedroom and rocked back and forth as she read the note again, this time making it through to the end before breaking down in sobs…For the family and the dukedom, I have no choice but to break off our engagement. I accept full responsibility.She fell to the rug, wailing with pain as if her soul had shattered, and still wearing her wedding dress.

Two days later, Gabe married Clarissa Wentworth in a private ceremony by special license.

Blinking back the stinging in her eyes at that terrible memory, Helena pulled her favorite shawl out of the little bagand hugged it tightly to her bosom for just a moment before setting it aside on the bed.

“He will join us for dinner,” Verity added quietly, sensing Helena’s distress.

“Because he can’t avoid it.” Helena didn’t try to hide her grimace as she placed her sketchbook and pencil set on the bedside table next to a short vase of tea roses. “It’s his house. He has to be there.”

“He is a duke, my dear. He doesn’thaveto do anything.” Verity scooped up the shawl and shook it out. “What heneedsto do, however, is a completely different matter.” She draped the shawl over Helena’s shoulders and wrapped it securely around her in a warm, woolen hug, then looked straight into her eyes. “And my nephew needs you.”

Her shoulders sagged beneath the knit cashmere. “He didn’t need me five years ago.”

“You’re wrong.”

With a scoffing laugh, Helena shook her head and stepped away. Even the size of this grand room wasn’t enough space to keep her from feeling trapped, and she began to pace, like one of those caged lions in the Tower menagerie.

“He left me standing in the church.” At this rate, she suspected she’d wear a path through the cream and gold Aubusson rug by the time the first banns were read on Sunday. “Only to marry someone else two days later.”

“It was an unfortunate situation, I will admit.”

She choked back a bitter laugh.Unfortunatedidn’t begin to describe what Helena had suffered. “All kinds of scandal, vicious rumors, endless gossip…”

All of it flowing through London in the days following the canceled wedding faster than the Thames at high tide—that Gabe didn’t want her because he had finally realized she wasn’t good enough to be Duchess of Thurston, and worse,the horrible lie that he had learned she wasn’t innocent and didn’t want to marry a tarnished woman. Whispers rose like fog around her everywhere she went, which became fewer and fewer places as old invitations were rescinded and new ones dried up completely.

“And everyone believed the talk because the blame surely lay with me and not a man as honorable as Thurston, even though he was the one who broke off the engagement.” Helena busied her shaking hands with refolding the shawl and didn’t dare look at Verity for fear of seeing pity on his aunt’s face. Or worse, acceptance of what her nephew had done. “It started that morning.” Whispers and laughter began to rise even as she stood in the back of the church, gripping her bouquet so tightly her fingers ached. “Over the next few weeks, it grew worse.”

By then Gabe had already left London, to bring Clarissa home to Grangely Park.