When Gabriel’s father died, Gabriel had inherited everything. He was the only living son, he had no immediate family, and as expected, his father’s will named him sole heir. All lands, deeds, titles, and inherited wealth went directly to Gabriel. No questions asked.
However, as Gabriel found out shortly after the funeral, there was a clause added to his father’s will at the last minute. A clause that had sat with Gabriel now for three years, and in that time, had become no less untenable.
The clause dictated that by Gabriel’s twenty-ninth birthday, three months from now, if he was not married, then everything his father had left him would transfer to a distant cousin. One whom Gabriel hardly knew. One who had no right to take what was his away from him.
It infuriated Gabriel when he found out. It incensed him! What was the point of being a duke if he could not marry who he wished when he wished it? What was the point of living if his life was not his to do with whatever he wanted?
“Even from the grave…” Gabriel chuckled bitterly. “My father still finds ways to ruin my life.”
“It does not have to be that way, Your Grace,” Mr. Allen said. “You speak as if this is a death sentence, when in many ways, it is as natural as breathing. As a duke, you are expected to –”
“I don’t give a shit what I am expected to do.”
“But your father did,” Mr. Allen continued. “And while I know you think he is doing this out of spite, I believe he has done it out of love.”
“Love?” Gabriel scoffed. “My father does not know the meaning of the word. He is as likely to have done this for love as a fish is to flop itself on land because it thinks it might grow legs and walk. No…” Gabriel squirmed where he sat, the walls of the office closing in. “This isn’t about love, Mr. Allen. It’s about hurting me.”
“I don’t think –”
“You knew my father,” he spoke over the solicitor. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you believe this has anything to do with my father’s desire to see me happy. Look at me and tell me that my father wasn’t the most repugnant, repulsive man you ever met. Do that, Mr. Allen, and I’ll marry today and give you half my fortune.”
In response, Mr. Allen cleared his throat again and looked away.
“As I thought,” Gabriel sneered.
Gabriel was right to feel this way about his father, and as Mr. Allen had just demonstrated, anyone who knew the man would see such feelings as justified.
As a boy, Gabriel had grown up in a house of torment. His father was a cold, dispassionate individual who treated his wife, Gabriel’s mother, as little more than a tool to be used when it suited him. He had not loved her. He had not even liked her. And for reasons that Gabriel had never been able to figure out, he had seemingly resented her very existence.
His father was cruel to his mother. He was mean. He took what might have been a companionable marriage and ground it into the dirt so that when Gabriel was still just a boy, his mother had died. But not from a sickness, or from a tragic accident. She had died because, in Gabriel’s mind, she had seen not point in living.
Her life was literally sucked out of her, and all Gabriel had been able to do was stand by and watch.
To Gabriel, marriage was not something to be sought after or praised. It was a trick, a trap, a fallacy that was presented as a necessary part of life, but from it came only pain and misery. For this reason, he had shunned the very concept for as long as he could remember, adopting his current state of bachelorhood and rakishness, not because he enjoyed it, but because he wanted to prove to all he knew that he was better off alone.
And he was happy to do it… until now.
“I won’t do it,” Gabriel said. “I will not marry.”
“Then you will lose everything,” Mr. Allen said. “It is that simple.”
Gabriel shuddered and his insides twisted. “And who will I marry? Who could I possibly… how can I be expected to do such a thing? When my entire life I have aspired to do the opposite. Tell me that.”
“I cannot,” Mr. Allen said. “The simple fact is that you have a choice to make, Your Grace. Your bachelorhood or your wealth. Pick one or suffer the consequences. Sadly, this is on you and you alone.”
Gabriel left Mr. Allen’s office shortly after. He needed to walk, to think, to plan! To find a way out of this trap before he lost everything.
All the while, he knew… deep down in the pit of his soul… that specter that haunted him daily… there was no way out. Like it or not, he had to marry. Like it or not, he had to find himself a bride. And quickly.
CHAPTER 5
“How was last evening, dear?” Sophia’s mother asked as she walked into the breakfast room.
Sophia was not paying her mother any attention. Nor was she paying her plate of food any attention. It sat in front of her, waiting to be eaten, but for how long she had stared at it, there was a good chance that the eggs and toast on offer would turn cold before she had so much as a taste.
Her mind was elsewhere, and there was no need to guess the reason why.
What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking, which is the only explanation. Not that this excuses it. Not that this justifies it! I can’t even begin to… there are no words… what on earth happened?
