Page 46 of The Duchess Debt

Adam slouched back in the chair and muttered disbelievingly as the truth began to sink in, “Clarissa…with child—mychild… Are you certain?Absolutelycertain?”

“Very.” Alice had Adam’s eyes and nose, after all. “You bedded her.” Not a question.

“Well, yes—but she was willing and eager. I didn’t attack her, for God’s sake.”

“You weren’t careful.”

A fierce curse left Adam’s lips, and he hung his head in his hand.

“I was left to clean up your mess.” He slowly swirled the cognac in his glass to let that statement sink in. “You didn’t hearof my first marriage anywhere along your route back home?” Gabe found that difficult to believe. “Nothing from friends in London about how I broke off with Helena to marry Clarissa? Nothing about her death?”

“Not one word.” Guilt darkened his face. “But I didn’t speak to anyone. I came straight to Grangely Park after arriving at Portsmouth.”

“Why do that?” Gabe knew how much Adam loved London’s gambling hells and stews. “After five years away, surely you wanted to spend some time enjoying yourself.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got more important things to do than play.” Then a self-pleased smile curled his lips. “The owner of a sugar plantation in the Caribbean is looking for a partner and invited me to buy in. I only came back to say hello, collect the last of my things—and my allowance—and travel on.”

Thatwas a damnable lie. Adam might have needed his allowance, but it sure as hell wasn’t to purchase a sugar plantation. Gabe knew his brother well, and he would never have passed up the opportunity to spend a few weeks enjoying himself during the heart of the London season unless his life was on the line or he was penniless. Or both. Which meant the partnership offer was a lie. No business owner or land agent in his right mind would give Adam the opportunity to buy into a stake without significant funds being placed down to hold it while he waited for the rest. Then again, no business owner or land agent in his right mind would have made Adam any serious business offer in the first place. Most likely, his brother had gotten on the wrong side of gamblers, toughs, fathers, or husbands and was fleeing for his life to the Caribbean, avoiding London only to stay one step ahead of the men who were after him.

Gabe couldn’t find enough compassion in his stony heart to care if his brother were truly in trouble or not.

When Gabe’s hard gaze never lightened, Adam’s smile eased away, his expression returning to an appropriate solemnity. “But now to learn…” He scrubbed his face with his hand. “Clarissa’s dead. I can’t believe it. She was so alive, so lovely and fresh…”

“So willing to be ruined by you.”

Adam’s cold gaze darted to Gabe. “She wasn’t innocent, or I never would have taken her to bed. Nothing about that night made me think she was untouched. I thought she knew what she was doing and how to prevent…”

“Getting with child,” Gabe finished for him. How on God’s earth could his brother have been so stupid?

Perhaps, though, Clarissa knew exactly what she was doing. If she found herself with child and knew that Adam was leaving for India while Gabe would do anything to protect his family and a wronged lady, it wouldn’t have been difficult for her to perfectly time a scheme to use the situation to her advantage and marry a duke. It would be exactly like her to do just that.

“That was a stand-up thing you did, Gabriel, in marrying her like that,” Adam admitted with a firm nod for emphasis. “I’ll never be able to repay you for that.”

Neverwas right. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Adam had enough decency to drop his gaze shamefully to his cognac. “And no one except us, Aunt Verity, and James Wentworth knows the truth?”

“And Helena.”

“Of course—Helena.” He uttered her name as if she were a mere afterthought. “Everyone else thinks the child is—”

“Alice,” Gabe bit out. “Her name is Alice Elizabeth Jane Cavanaugh.”

He pulled in a hard breath and tried again, “Everyone thinksAliceis truly yours, including the little girl?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He set his glass down on the round side table. The shock that had been on his face cleared into determination as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, “I’ll keep the secret then, too.”

Gabe drawled, “How gracious of you to—”

“Ifyou triple my allowance.” The quiet threat hung in the air like smoke over a house fire. “After all, why settle for a partnership in a thousand-acre plantation when I can own one all by myself?”

Gabe’s blood turned to ice, despite the red-hot fury that pulsed through him. Yet he didn’t move, didn’t change his expression. Except for a faint tick in his neck from clenching his jaw so tightly his teeth hurt, he didn’t let his emotions show. Instead, he slowly circled around behind his desk, less to make a business transaction between them than to make it harder to kill Adam with his bare hands.

“To be clear,” Gabe said with chilling calm, “I am not under any legal obligation to give you an allowance at all.” He sank into the leather desk chair, rested his forearms across the granite desktop, and laced his fingers together. It was the same granite-hard pose he took with opponents in Parliament and those businessmen who attempted to best him. None of them won against him. Neither would Adam. “Theonlyreason I will give you your allowance is because Father wanted you to have it. I will honor his wishes and give you that much, but not one ha’penny more.”

With hard-won restraint tamping down his anger, he opened the center desk drawer and withdrew his bank cheques.