To Love a Lord (The Heart of a Duke #5)(3)

She arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it true?”

He glanced over her shoulder at the wood door panel. Yes, he certainly saw how, on the surface, it appeared that way. After all, hadn’t his own father gleefully pointed out that Gabriel possessed the same vices as his sire? He’d proudly noted Gabriel’s ability to put his own comforts before all others. “It isn’t,” he said quietly. Instead, he’d spent his life fighting those addictive personalities he’d learned at his father’s knee and secretly striving to put his siblings first. “I very much enjoy your company, Chloe.” His lips pulled in a grimace.

A burst of laughter escaped his sister. “That is hardly convincing,” she said between gasping breaths. “You don’t enjoy anyone’s company, Gabriel.”

He’d built a fortress about his heart when his father had taken him under his wing, a boy of ten. It had been a mechanism to protect himself from hurt. To show emotion had wrought more pain at his father’s hands. Yet, in so many years he’d spent proving he didn’t feel, he’d done a damned convincing job of making his siblings believe that lie. In truth, he wanted her safely wed and at which point all those he loved would be properly cared for. Their security and happiness represented an absolution of sorts. Perhaps then, with Chloe wed, there would be a sense of having proved his father wrong. “That isn’t true,” he said defensively. “There is you and Alex and…” He slashed the air with his hand. “I’ll not continue this discussion.”

Chloe hopped to her feet. “Of course you won’t.” She leaned over the desk and patted his hand. “Because I daresay, but for your equally stodgy Lord Waterson, there isn’t a single soul you’d add.” Lord Waterson—a man who’d known Gabriel since he’d been a sniveling, afraid-of-everything coward at Eton. Any person who could set himself up as a devoted supporter of the miserable, cowering, weak fool he’d been was deserving of an eternal friendship.

Not wanting to traverse the path of his rotted youth, he cleared his throat. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve matters of business to attend.”

His sister pointed her gaze to the ceiling. “My, how you do enjoy my company.” A chuckle escaped her as she started for the door. She paused at the threshold. “Oh, and Gabriel?”

He inclined his head.

“If you’ve brought one of Mrs. Belden’s Beasts to transform me into a marriage-minded miss, I warn you, their efforts proved futile at finishing school and they will be just so here.” With a jaunty wave, she slipped from the room, and then pulled the door closed behind her.

Silence remained in her wake, punctuated by the tick-tocking of the long-case clock. His sister’s charges from their exchange rattled around his mind. He studied the lingering droplets that still clung to the edge of his glass.

Gabriel enjoyed people’s company. He just enjoyed his own more. Solitariness represented safety. The less people one was responsible for, the less a person could hurt. He’d little interest in expanding the number of individuals dependent on him—by doing something as foolhardy as adding a wife, as his sister suggested. With a wife came that heir and a spare she’d spoken of, which merely compounded the people reliant upon him. A family merely represented more opportunity for failure and disappointment. He’d had enough of such sentiments to last the course of his life and into the hereafter.

Once Chloe was wedded, nay happily wedded, then his obligations would be fulfilled.

Yes, the line would pass to Alex and his heirs, and Gabriel?

An ugly laugh rumbled up from his chest and split the quiet. His lips twisted in a bitterly triumphant smile. And he would have the ultimate revenge against his dead father who, even now, burned in hell.





Chapter 2





Southampton, England

Spring 1817

Since she’d been a child, Jane Munroe had been told her quick tongue would land her in all manner of trouble. In fact, her nursemaid had said as much with such a staggering frequency it had become the same as a morning greeting. The nursemaid was ignorant, unkind, and horribly stern. Jane had never placed much stock in anything the rail-thin, lanky woman, Mrs. Crouch, who’d been tasked with caring for her, told her.

Which is why, seated now before her employer, Mrs. Belden, she found great irony in learning Mrs. Crouch had been correct—about something.

Why did it have to be that particular point?

Mrs. Belden removed her wire spectacles, folded them with an annoying slowness and set them down on the immaculate desk before her. And then, she uttered those words Jane knew were coming.

“I am afraid you are not working out in your current post, Mrs. Munroe.” She steepled her fingers together. “Lady Clarisse has brought it to my attention that you have been filling the heads of her and the other young ladies with thoughts of independence and,” she wrinkled her nose, “remaining unwed.”

Lady Clarisse. The Duke of Ravenscourt’s legitimate daughter. Golden blonde and icy as a January freeze, she epitomized all a duke’s daughter should be. And unfortunately for Jane, the young woman was astute to have heard the whispers and knew her instructor was really none other than her half-sister. “I did not advise them to maintain an unmarried state.” Wise though they’d be. “But rather encouraged them to exercise their own opinions and beliefs and—”