“I could not in good conscience trap your brother. Not when I should never have joined his employ in the first place.”
“Yes,” Chloe said with a nod. “Yes, you should have.”
“Why?” She turned a question on the young woman. “To preserve a name that doesn’t require protection?” Gabriel’s sister did not know the circumstances of her birth. But it was only a matter of time before the ugly truths were whispered about drawing rooms, spread by Montclair and anyone else who would hear the tale of the Duke of Ravenscourt’s high-handed bastard. A question shone in Chloe’s eyes. “I am not a lady,” she settled for.
Chloe pursed her lips. “By whose standards?” She slapped her fingers upon her open palm. The sharp noise reverberated in the office. “And so you will not wed him, for them?”
A niggling at the back of her mind took root. The outing to the modiste. The pink gown. “I will not wed him for me,” she said. “There is my school,” she put in, interrupting Chloe before she could speak.
“But what of Gabriel?”
“Gabriel?”
“My brother.” Chloe clarified unnecessarily.
All the times Chloe had left Jane alone with her brother to see to her friend, or some other such business. The young lady had been matchmaking for her brother. Oh, Chloe. Sweet, loving Chloe, who swore off marriage and yet would try to arrange that same blissful state for her eldest sibling. Surely, she’d had greater expectations for her brother’s eternal partner than a liar such as Jane? “I daresay your brother will wed,” a woman of his station and rank. “It just will not be to me.” With that truth, an ugly, green emotion slipped inside and twisted like a snake, spreading its venom. An emotion that felt a good deal like jealousy. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, in a desperate need to be free of Gabriel’s office, his sister, and anything and everything connected to the Edgerton family.
She reached the entrance of the door when Chloe spoke softly, staying Jane’s retreat.
“I wanted it to be you.”
Jane turned slowly about.
A sad smile wreathed Chloe’s cheeks. “What will you say? I knew you but a week?”
Yes, there was that.
“You have spirit, Jane. You are not afraid to go toe to toe with my brother. And you don’t think he is stuffy or stodgy.”
Her lips twitched. “No, no I do not.”
“You see, he’s been very stuffy and stodgy for so long, I’d ceased to believe he could feel anything. With you, he smiles and laughs, and is…alive.” At the passion in the young woman’s eyes and response, Jane’s throat moved. “Those things matter, Jane. He hasn’t smiled in the twenty-one years I’ve known him and he is smiling now, and that is why one week matters so very much.”
And without any suitable reply, Jane turned once more and left with Chloe’s haunting words trailing after her.
Chapter 20
Seated in the dark office finished in Chippendale furnishings, with the ormolu clock ticking away the moments, Gabriel stared at the Duke of Ravenscourt. He had her eyes. The crystalline blue depths with silver flecks. They were the eyes of a man who’d not even the courage to claim his daughter and protect her. Gabriel tightened his grip upon the arms of the seat he now occupied.
The duke, of advancing years, sat back in his desk chair. “Waverly,” he said in clipped tones. “There was a matter of business with which you’d wished to speak with me.”
A matter of business.
Even as he’d penned those words last evening, it had felt like a betrayal of sorts. Seeing Jane with her hope for a finishing school and her wide, blue eyes as a matter of business. And yet, that is what she was. “I am here about your daughter,” he said without preamble. He’d never been one to prevaricate or waste time with pleasantries and niceties. He’d not begin now for this man. This was a matter of business.
The duke arched a blonde eyebrow. “My daughter?” His tone dripped the frozen austerity reserved for the handful of dukes in the realm.
Gabriel gritted his teeth. He’d read the gossip columns that morning and well knew he and Jane’s names were being bandied about. The other man did not necessarily yet know of the gossip and, if he did, that the young woman in question was, in fact, his daughter. “Jane Munroe. I am referring to Jane Munroe,” he said with the same cold, emotionless tone he’d adopted early on. The duke was not the only one who’d perfected icy rigidity. Eager to have this matter discussed, addressed, and, at last, done, he continued. “You are likely unaware of,” Shame twisted in his stomach and he resisted the urge to tug at his cravat. “Of a scandal,” he settled for. “Last evening.” For the other man’s disregard for Jane through the years, he was still her father and Gabriel had compromised her beyond redemption. “Between myself and Jane…Miss Munroe. Your daughter,” he finished lamely.