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He took another mouthful of brandy and sat down in the chair where a moment ago he’d brought Appleby’s mistress to a spectacular climax. Had Appleby ever achieved that? Simply by caressing her breasts? From her reaction he didn’t think so.
Gabriel closed his eyes. Appleby. His thoughts began to slip backward to when he’d first learned the truth, a
nd he found himself reliving probably the worst night of his life.
Gabriel’s world came crashing down on the evening he visited his father in the Albion Hotel in Bond Street. Sir Adam Langley had arrived from the country and sent for his son, and Gabriel, expecting a fatherly chat and the usual warnings about changing his carefree bachelor ways, turned up without the slightest inkling that this was the point when life as he knew it as a wealthy young gentleman was about to come to an abrupt end.
“But Wexmoor Manor is mine! You know it was always meant to be mine. My grandfather…your father promised it to me. I spent most of my childhood there. I grew up there. He only left it to you because when he died I was not yet twenty-one, but it was always meant to be held in trust for me.”
“You’re not the only one to be disappointed,” Sir Adam spoke in a sharp voice, sounding unlike himself. An invalid for many years, he looked even frailer than usual, and his hands were shaking as he reached for the glass of peppermint tonic, placed at his side.
“Disappointed!” Gabriel repeated furiously. “Surely that’s an understatement? Wexmoor Manor is mine. I refuse to give it up to anyone, especially a man I don’t even know!”
Sir Adam drank slowly, as if he was biding his time. Some of the tonic spilled onto his fashionable waistcoat, but he didn’t seem to notice as he finally set the glass down. Gabriel and his father had never been close; he’d been far closer to his grandfather, Sir John, and it was from him that Gabriel had learned his love of the manor. Sir Adam preferred his Somerset property, inherited from his maternal side.
Occasionally Gabriel had wondered why his father and he were near-strangers, but many of his peers had similar lives, and he’d put it down to being sent away to school at eight years old. But now here was his father looking at him not with indifference but with actual distaste and dislike.
It struck him to the heart.
“This isn’t just about you. I have lost my share of Aphrodite’s Club as well,” Sir Adam said irritably.
“Aphrodite’s Club?” Gabriel frowned. “But what about Marietta? You promised her your share of the club, you and Aphrodite.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“I’m trying to understand. I’m certain I can—”
“What? Fix everything?” Adam’s eyes were blazing, his fingers white on the arms of his chair. “You’re as arrogant as Appleby, but then that’s hardly surprising.”
He stopped, his chest swiftly rising and falling, and suddenly he appeared guilty, as if he’d said too much. He looked away, fiddling with the signet ring on his little finger.
“I need to rest. We will speak tomorrow.”
“No, Father, we will speak now.” Gabriel refused to leave. “Explain to me how such a thing could happen? How you could lose Wexmoor Manor and Aphrodite’s Club as if they were mere buttons from your waistcoat? This man who now owns them—Lord Appleby? Does he have some hold over you?”
Sir Adam managed a humorless laugh. “If only you knew.”
“Father—”
“Frankly I’m surprised you’re acting like this. Since you reached your majority you’ve shown no signs of settling down at Wexmoor Manor. The house and grounds are in a mess, and I can’t manage them and the Somerset house. My father expected you to take up the reins when you turned twenty-one, and that was four years ago. He saw you as the bright hope, said you’d go far. Farther than me, anyway.”
There was something in his voice. Gabriel recognized it, could hardly believe it. “You were jealous. Because my grandfather was closer to me than you.”
The truth made for an uncomfortable silence. “It was my own fault,” Adam admitted dully. “I pushed you away. I was never able to put the doubts from my mind.”
“Doubts? What doubts?”
“Gabriel, enough.”
“No, I want to know. If you’re doubting my attachment for Wexmoor Manor, then you’re wrong. I have plans to restore the manor to its glory days. Grandfather left me some shares in the Great Northern Railway, and I’ve been busy reinvesting the profits, building up enough money to do what I promised him I would before he died. I’m just about ready to start; if I’d known there was a time limit…In God’s name, don’t tell me you’ve taken away my future before I’ve even had a chance to live it!”
“I’m sorry,” his father said, uncomfortable, “but I can’t. Appleby gets what he wants. Just leave it, Gabriel, for God’s sake. You will have the baronetcy when I die. You will be Sir Gabriel Langley, isn’t that enough?”
But it wasn’t enough, not nearly. Gabriel wanted to shout it out, but he didn’t trust himself. He was furious. He wanted to shake the truth out of his father, but he knew it would do no good. Adam had a stubborn streak a mile wide, and for some reason, he’d decided not to explain his actions to his only son.
Gabriel turned and strode from the room. Outside, his mother waited, her face sickly white. “I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” she whispered, tears in her eyes.
“This man, this Appleby…?”
