She’d never seen him look quite so slovenly before. But she supposed that an overabundance of grief might do that to a man. His hair was a mass of tangles, falling haphazardly over his forehead and shading his eyes. His cravat clung loosely to his neck, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned, revealing the wrinkled linen of his shirt beneath. He’d left his boots in the library, of course.
When he reached the top of the stairs and she was reasonably certain that a fall wouldn’t cause him to break his neck, she preceded him to his door and opened it.
She thought about summoning Culpepper to help him undress, but decided against it—it was doubtful that Gabriel was in any mood to put up with the man’s efforts, and she wouldn’t put it past him to disregard her order and sling something at the poor man.
Gabriel slipped past her and collapsed onto his bed with a groan, and the fractious expression on his face had her slipping into the bathing room for a chamber pot, which she placed beside his bed.
A moment later, Alice appeared at the door, a teapot and a cup resting on a tray she carried in hands that trembled. Mr. Bradshaw arrived at her side, for which Claire was grateful.
“Help me lift him, or else the tea will spill everywhere,” Claire said to Mr. Bradshaw, who rose to the occasion and rounded the other side of the bed to grasp Gabriel beneath his arms to help her tug him into what approximated a sitting position. Alice poured a cup of tea and offered it to Claire.
“Thank you,” Claire said. “You may go, both of you.” To Alice she cast an approving smile, grateful for the girl’s bravery.
“I don’t want it,” Gabriel said, turning his nose up at the cup once Alice and Mr. Bradshaw had left.
“Nevertheless, you will drink it,” she said firmly. “You’re bound to be sick as a dog in the morning otherwise.”
“It doesn’t matter.” But he grasped the teacup anyway, and downed its contents. “Nothing ever will again.”
There was no possible response to that. Anything she could say would only sound stale, inadequate. His emotional state was none of her concern anyway. She had done what she could for him, and it would have to be enough.
She bobbed a curtsey and turned to go.
He snatched at her wrist, catching it with an accuracy and firmness that surprised her, given his condition.
“Your name,” he said.
She hesitated a moment, conflicted. At last she murmured, “Claire.”
“Claire.” He repeated it with slowly, as if savoring the sound of it. “Claire,” he said again. And he released her wrist and slumped back against the pillows, his eyes closing.
And as she walked out the door, she thought she heard him mumble, “Thank you.”
Chapter Ten
“She’s dead.”
Gabriel had at least the satisfaction of seeing his father blanch. Although the duke’s features were arranged into perfect, frigid stoicism, that rapid leeching of color suggested a level of disquiet he’d not seen from his father in years. Seven, to be exact. Since he’d hovered over Gabriel’s bed, not in fatherly concern, but bearing the weight of the knowledge that his only son and heir might very well pass from the earth and leave his vaunted family line to die out. An unthinkable tragedy, to a man like the duke.
“I beg your pardon?” the duke inquired, his voice trembling through the syllables.
“She’sdead,” Gabriel repeated brutally, and cast the letter from Mr. John Bascomb upon the desk between them like a gauntlet. “She’s dead, and you killed her. You might as well have plunged a knife into her heart.” He felt his face twist into a sneer. “Probably it would have been kinder.”
With shaking hands the duke collected the missive, adjusting his spectacles on the bridge of his nose in the service of skimming the document. “My God,” he said at last, and what might have passed for horror in a lesser man colored his voice. “My God,” he said again. “She said she could be carrying my grandchild, but I—” His voice faded into an awkward silence, and his fingers curled upon the edge of the paper, crinkling the letter in his tight grip.
“Youwhat, Father?” Gabriel inquired icily.
“I told her”—the duke took a gasping breath, fumbling for a handkerchief tucked away in his pocket to pat his brow—“I told her the child would be a bastard.”
Gabriel tensed as a queer shock went through him. “Why?” he asked. “Why would you tell her such a thing?”
“For God’s sake, son,” the duke blustered. “I thought she was an opportunist, an adventuress. You’d shown no interest in marriage, and you were still young—you wouldn’t have been the first gentleman trapped into taking an unsuitable woman to wife. I thought I was protecting you from a scheming social-climber, a woman who would use you and insert herself into our family through nefarious means.”
And in the name of preserving his sanctified, blue-blooded lineage, he’d driven a young woman in desperate straits toward an untimely end.
“If you had only told me,” the duke rasped. “If I had had any suspicion that she was anything other than an adventuress—”
“You’d have done the same bloody thing,” Gabriel said, flatly, bitterly. “You need not pretend at an excess of emotion, Father. We both know that the milk of human kindness has never flowed through your veins. Frankly, I would find myself surprised if it had ever come within a league of you.”
