Page 15 of The Duchess Debt

“Where are the improvements to the school?” She shuffled through the sheets of papers, searching. “I don’t see any plans for that here.”

“That’s because the village doesn’t have one.”

The sheets slipped from her stunned fingers and fell onto the table. She gazed incredulously at him, as if he had just sprung a second head, and repeated, “You don’t have a school?”

“We haven’t had a need for a dedicated space for one. The church serves as the school, and the tavern doubles as the village meeting hall and assembly room when necessary.”

She blinked. “Who teaches the children?”

“Reverend Barlow, primarily, and women in the village, if needed.”

“Oh no,” she murmured and shuffled through the plans again, as if looking at them a second time could change what was on them and miraculously produce a school. “That isn’t good at all.”

“Pardon?” His pride would have been pricked if he wasn’t so surprised at her interest. “The vicar has done quite well. We’ve been able to place several boys into apprenticeships andthe military and several girls into household service.” And every position paid for by Gabe. It was the least he could do for his tenants, to put their minds at ease that all their children would have solid futures. “What we do works well for the villagers.”

“Yet it could be better and provide even more opportunities. The children need a properly trained, dedicated teacher, and I’m certain Reverend Barlow would prefer having more time to focus on his church work instead of teaching maths.” Before Gabe could interrupt and argue, she offered, “I’ll help with the school. I’ll take it on as my own special project, my way of giving to the village and letting them know how grateful I am to be welcomed here.” She looked up at him hopefully. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

He hesitated. Helena’s interest in improving the village was a pleasant surprise, and no real damage would be done if she grew bored with the project and gave it up, exactly as Clarissa would have done. Yet he hedged his bets. “I’ll have to discuss it first with my engineer. He might have concerns about how it would fit into the overall timeline and budget. I can’t make any promises.”

Ignoring his non-committal answer, she lifted her glass to her mouth and murmured against the rim, “Just think of it, though. Schoolroom by day, meeting hall and assembly room by night, all overseen by a qualified teacher…one who’s able to keep the children out of trouble by day and the refreshments in stock for the villagers at night.” Her eyes gleamed at the idea. “It will be more popular than Beau Brummel’s trousers. Every fashionable village will want one.”

He chuckled at her quip. Dear God, how much he’d missed her. Even this little bit of teasing felt like old times.

But this wasn’t those times. Those days were long over. Her next utterance proved it—

“Tell me about Alice.”

Her soft words jarred down his spine, targeting the heart of the tension between them.

She lowered the glass to stare thoughtfully into the liquid. “I’ve been doing the math all evening. Every way I add it up, Clarissa would have had to have gotten with child three months before you married her, right around the time when we became engaged.” Her voice emerged soft and low, but the pain lacing through it was unmistakable. “Even if Clarissa lied to you about Alice’s paternity, you would have had to have suspected the child was yours or you wouldn’t have married her. Which means you would have had to…”

Her whisper trailed off into silence, unable to put that final pain into words.

“To have bedded her at the same time I asked you to marry me,” he finished grimly.

She nodded tightly.

For Helena to believe he’d done something like that—Christ.But then again, hehadabandoned her on her wedding day. In her eyes, he was a monster capable of anything.

“I never bedded Clarissa before we wed,” he admitted.

Her lips parted, stunned.

“I knew the child she carried wasn’t mine from the very beginning.” He managed to suppress his anger and bitterness toward his late wife the same way he had for the past five years by letting his heart be hardened. He was surprised the damnable thing beat at all given how it was nothing more now than a cold stone. “She never attempted to lie about that, and I didn’t enter our marriage ignorant of the truth.”

No, but he’d sure as hell been a damned fool to think he could have a normal marriage with Clarissa. But he was a duke, she was the daughter of an earl, and their two families had bumped along well for generations. Most society marriages were based on far less. It could have worked. Itwouldhave worked,he still suspected, if he hadn’t already been in love with someone else.

“Then…” Her voice emerged as a breathless rasp of betrayal. “Why?”

His eyes never leaving hers, Gabe took the glass from her hand and finished off its contents in one gasping swallow. “Because I had no choice.”

He carried the empty glass to the fireplace and set it down on the mantel, feeling the weight of her bewildered gaze on his back. He reached for one of the cigars he kept in the small box on the mantel and a spill from the vase to light it.

“Do you remember our engagement party?” he asked as he bent down to stick the splinter into the fire. “That night at Thurston House in London?”

“Of course.”

He frowned at the flames as they bit into the thin wood. “That was when it all started to unravel.”