He leaned in to kiss her and then stood, drawing her with him. “Come, let’s get this over with, and then we can do nothing but celebrate.”
He could see her lingering hesitation, but she nodded nonetheless and allowed him to lead her to the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Helena wasn’t certain how it was possible to feel so happy and so terrified all at once. But it was. Inside she was a riot of emotion, such that she could scarcely breathe. She knew how badly this announcement to her family could go. There were a hundred terrible outcomes and so few positive ones, at least in this conversation.
But above all the fear, all the anticipation about how bad it could be, was something else. When she turned to look at Baldwin in this quiet moment they were sharing before Uncle Peter and Charity arrived in the parlor, her heart swelled with joy and happiness she’d never believed she’d experience again.
Baldwin loved her. That had felt like an impossibility since the first moment she met him and he made her heart skip a beat. She hadn’t let herself hope for more than whatever stolen time they were allowed. Resigning herself to the fact that she couldn’t have anything beyond that had been her only way to survive when her love for this man grew with each passing day.
And now…he was hers. He looked at her and she saw in his eyes that the fantasy, the fairytale, was true. And she knew that they could be happy together for the rest of their lives.
He slid his fingers through hers, lacing them together as he lifted her hand to kiss it. “I will always protect you, Helena.”
It was a powerful statement, made even more so by the years she’d spent having only herself to depend upon. She nodded slowly. “I believe you, Your Grace.”
He smiled as the door opened and her uncle and her cousin entered. All her good feelings fled, and she immediately went on alert. Out of habit, she shook away from Baldwin and took a step from his side. It was foolish, considering what he was about to declare, but judging from her uncle’s angry expression as he saw them standing together, she feared the consequences that her newly minted fiancé didn’t seem to fully grasp.
Uncle Peter was fully capable of mean and ugly pettiness. He would see her engagement as a betrayal, and if he could strike out at her…it was very likely he would do just that.
Baldwin frowned as she bent her head, but then he shifted his attention to the new additions to the room. “Mr. Shephard,” he said, his tone icy cold. “And Miss Shephard. Welcome—I’m glad you were up and could join us for a moment before the rest of the party begins the merrymaking for the day.”
“Have we interrupted something?” her uncle asked, spearing Helena with yet another glare. She felt it burning through her, accusatory.
“No,” Baldwin answered for her. “Helena and I simply wished to share our happy news with you before we make our announcements to the party at large.”
Helena held her breath as she watched for her family’s reaction. Charity went pale, but her uncle lifted both eyebrows in question. He didn’t look upset, although it was obvious what Baldwin was going to say.
“Announcement?” Charity repeated slowly.
“Yes,” Baldwin said, and reached out to retake Helena’s hand. He drew her closer, forcing her from the retreated position she had taken. Her breath shook and she almost screamed out at him not to say it. But the words fell from his mouth regardless. “I will marry Helena. As soon as possible.”
For a moment the room was utterly silent. Then, without warning, her uncle tipped back his head and began to laugh. Helena flinched at the cruel sound of it and the twisted expression on his lips that could in no way be called a smile.
She knew then that he would find some way to make sure this never happened. He would do everything in his power and tear down anyone in his way.
Including Helena herself.
But Baldwin didn’t know that. He didn’t know Peter and his cruel, spoiled bent. While she shrank down a fraction, trying to make herself a smaller target, Baldwin straightened and his expression grew hard.
“And just what is so funny, Mr. Shephard?” he asked. “I do not appreciate your mockery.”
“Oh, but there is so much to mock.” Uncle Peter shook his head and said, “Do you think you can just…have her? No, no, Your Grace. I don’t think so.”
Baldwin released Helena’s hand and took a long step toward her uncle. They stood chest-to-chest as Baldwin hissed, “I wasn’t asking. You can support our union and your niece, or you and your daughter can leave.”
Peter tilted his head, his expression empty and cold. He turned and walked around Baldwin to take a seat on the settee, where he folded his arms and looked up at the duke in defiance.
Helena’s stomach turned. Whatever was about to happen, she knew it was not good. It would be ruinous, and her heart broke.
“You are missing some debts, I think, Your Grace,” her uncle said softly.
Helena’s ears began to ring and she jerked her gaze toward Baldwin. He was standing still, staring at Peter, his eyes wide with shock and his hands clenched at his sides. She could see he understood the same horrible thing she did in that moment.
“I own them,” her uncle continued with a smug smile.
Baldwin didn’t want to give this arrogant bastard the satisfaction of his reaction, but it was impossible not to have one. The world was spinning, spinning out of control around him. There was no place to go to purchase, nothing that could make what Peter Shephard had said, or what he implied he would do, go away.
He fought for restraint and calm before he said, “I see.”
“That brings you up short, doesn’t it, Sheffield?” Shephard snorted out a laugh. “Not so superior anymore, are we?”
Baldwin had never been one to scrap. That was more James’s style, or Robert’s. But right now he wanted to smash a fist though this man’s face more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
“Why?” Helena asked, her voice shaking as she moved to stand beside him. She didn’t touch him, but he felt her presence nonetheless and it calmed him a little. “Why did you buy his debts?”
“Because I’m a businessman, my dear,” her uncle said. “And business is all about leverage. Now I have it.”
“I will pay you,” Baldwin said softly, never happier that he had accepted Ewan’s offer to repay the missing money in full if it were ever called back. That had felt like a humiliating sacrifice at the time, but now it didn’t hold a candle to this current exchange. “I can have it to you as soon as we return to London.”
“You don’t have it,” Shephard snorted. “Please. Don’t think I haven’t done my due diligence when it comes to your situation.”
Baldwin clenched his fists at his side. “I have friends, damn you. You’ll have your money.”
Shephard shook his head. “No, no, no. I know all about your friends. They are far more successful than you are. Does that sting?”
“No.” Baldwin clenched his teeth.
Shephard shrugged. “I don’t know how it can’t. But it doesn’t really matter. Their money isn’t what I want. Your money is what I want.”
Helena covered her mouth. “Don’t,” she whispered through her fingers. “Oh, please don’t do this.”
Baldwin shot her a side glance and then looked at her uncle again. Shephard smiled as he pointed at her. “She knows me. She understands.”
Baldwin folded his arms. “Then enlighten me, sir. Why would you give a damn where your money comes from? Especially given that you’re such a businessman.”
Shephard leaned back in his seat, utterly comfortable, like he owned the world and the room. “I want you to pay, Sheffield. Or else I will make certain that every man, woman and child in this country and abroad knows your true standing. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
Baldwin swallowed. Oh yes, he did. It was the very worst-case scenario he had pictured. If his true financial situation was not revealed, he could continue on, frugally, carefully, but there
was survival in that path. It was the only way he’d known he could offer for Helena and not destroy them both.
But if his other creditors realized his coffers were empty, there could be panic amongst them. Debts could be called back in full. Payments doubled out of fear that he would default. He and his family, including Helena if they were wed, wouldn’t be welcomed in a shop in London. His mother would suffer the same fate potentially, despite her own inheritance being separate from the entail and the empty coffers. Even Charlotte would not be immune to the questions and whispers, despite her solid standing as Duchess of Donburrow.
It was his every nightmare brought to life.
“You understand,” Shephard said. “I see you playing it all out in your mind. I can make it even worse depending on how I let it be known.”
Baldwin swallowed past the bile that had gathered high in his throat and glared at Shephard. “Then why didn’t you do it already? The debts were bought over a week ago. Before we even came here, though I only just found out about when the party began. Why play this game?”
“Because the game is what matters. There are many outcomes we still have to discuss. Your utter destruction is just one. There is another.”
“What is that?” Baldwin asked, uncertain if he wanted to know. But the man held power over him. There was only one way to come through this and that was to understand his adversary.
“You could have this debt forgiven in its entirety without one farthing exchanging hands.”
Baldwin wrinkled his brow in utter confusion. He certainly didn’t believe Shephard was offering him this out of the kindness of his heart. “What? How?”
Shephard motioned toward Charity. “It’s very simple, Your Grace. It’s the option that has always been on the table. You marry my daughter.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Baldwin’s stomach heaved as he stared first at Shephard, then at Helena, whose face was pale as she staggered beneath the weight of her uncle’s cruel manipulation. That was the worst part in all this. Baldwin had promised to protect her. Now, no matter what he did, he couldn’t.
“Marry Charity,” he said, the words no more palatable coming from his own lips than they had been coming from Shephard’s.
His gaze slipped to Charity, and he was surprised to see her expression as shocked as he felt. Certainly she was not crowing about this turn of events, though he wasn’t certain he trusted that she wasn’t a party in her father’s twisted scheme.
“You bastard,” Helena whispered, her voice trembling.
Shephard spun on her, one finger extended in accusation. “You watch yourself, girl. I’ve kindly offered to pay your passage back home, but I can rescind that and just have you put on the street. You wouldn’t much like how a lady survives when she has no relatives to pity her. And if you interfere with me too much, I may just take back the extravagant offer I’m about to make your love and destroy him for the fun of it. You don’t want to carry the guilt of that, do you?”
She flinched and turned toward him. “Baldwin,” she whispered.
He recoiled at her expression and her tone. She was about to tell him that this offer was one he should consider. “No!” he snapped. “I won’t marry her, Helena.”
“No?” Shephard chuckled, continuing to insert himself between them. “Well, I need a title. I want it. I want to throw it in the faces of all those who have questioned me over the years due to my allegiances during the first war. I want the doors it will open, doors others have found closed thanks to renewed tensions between our two countries. Yours is the best of the lot, the highest of the eligible gentlemen.”
“The rank of it means nothing,” Baldwin insisted. “Great God, you can see it means nothing.”
“It means a great deal on paper. It means a great deal to tell those you contract with that your daughter is less than thirty deaths away from being queen.”
Baldwin stared at him, shocked by the depths of this man’s ambition. “Twenty-seven places from the throne might as well be twenty-seven hundred.”
Shephard shrugged. “Either way, I will have it. And I’ve told you, it’s a generous demand, really. You will have a great treasure in trade.”
“Your daughter?” Baldwin said.
“No!” Shephard glanced at Charity and sniffed. “She’s fine enough, though a disappointment, as a boy would have brought far more to my life.”
Charity turned her head, and Baldwin almost felt sorry for her. It seemed Helena wasn’t this man’s only target.
“No, I’m not trying to make a romantic argument about how happy you could be with Charity,” Shepard snorted. “I’m talking about the debts that will just go away. I’m talking about the fifty thousand pounds that will magically appear in your coffers. In my judgment, that will take a great deal of pressure off of you. And it will free you up to invest…or gamble, as I’ve heard you were once happy to do.”
Baldwin tensed. The man had done his research very well, it seemed. And he was now stabbing him with it and taking pleasure in finding every soft spot.
“In short, I will save you,” Shephard continued. “Or destroy you. It’s your choice. So what’s your pleasure?”
Helena could hardly breathe as she looked from her uncle’s cold and horrible countenance and back to Baldwin’s. She saw the pain there. The devastation as he realized that all he had planned for could not come to be. One way or another, there was no future as they’d hoped for. Either he would give up her, or give up everything else in his universe.
She couldn’t let him make that sacrifice.
“Baldwin,” she said, moving on him. When she caught his hand, he jumped, almost like he’d forgotten she was there. When he looked at her, the pain doubled. “You must consider what he’s suggesting.”
His face twisted in horror even more. “No!”
“I know,” she said, touching his face and trying desperately not to cry at the idea that it might be the very last time she would do that. “I know. But you must. He is not bluffing. He’ll ruin you and he’ll never feel an ounce of remorse about it.” She turned to her uncle. “Give us a moment.”
Uncle Peter smirked and then shrugged. “Certainly. I can be generous in that. But time is ticking, Helena. Come along, Charity.”
For a moment, her cousin just stood there, staring at Helena and Baldwin. Then she shook her head and followed her father from the room, leaving them alone again.
The moment they were, Baldwin turned to her. “I can see what you want to say to me. How you want to tell me I should sacrifice you. I will not do it, Helena. I can’t do it.”
She caught his hands. “My love, listen to me. We never intended for a future together. That was…” Her voice broke and she sucked in a breath. “That was a fantasy.”
“It was reality,” he insisted. “I asked you to be my wife. You told me you would. We were ready to tell the world and move forward. And have you considered that when we made love today, we could have created a child? Our child.”
Her hand stole to her belly as that concept slashed through her. Baldwin’s baby, growing inside of her even now.
“If we had known what he held over you,” she whispered, “we wouldn’t have done any of those things.”
He ran a hand over his face and let out an angry sound of frustration. As he did so, the door to the parlor opened and the room was suddenly filled as Charlotte and Ewan, the Duchess of Sheffield, Simon, Meg, James, Emma, Graham, Adelaide and Matthew all entered, filling the parlor almost to capacity. Helena turned away, wiping at the tears that were starting to fall.
“We were told that Shephard and his daughter left and thought we might have something to celebrate,” the Duchess of Sheffield said as she moved farther into the room. “But from your faces, it seems that is not true.”
Helena reached for Baldwin’s hand. He held it so tightly. Like if he refused to let it go, he would not have to let her go. She knew better.
“Some of you know the truth,” he said softly
. “Others…well, I’ll explain later. All you need know is that Peter Shephard holds certain debts of mine that I am unable to pay. He is demanding I marry Charity or he will ruin me.”
The room was silent for a moment as looks of shock crossed the faces of all who were there. Then Ewan stepped forward and began to sign.
“I know what you’re saying without Charlotte even having to translate,” Baldwin said with a heavy sigh. “He refuses to accept any kind of payment from an outside source. The marriage is the only way he’ll clear the debts and keep his knowledge of my situation a secret.”
Helena swallowed hard. “I’ve told Baldwin that I believe he should accept the offer. I’ve told him that saving himself and his family should be his priority.”
Emma stepped forward, her dark eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Helena. Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“I have not agreed,” Baldwin snapped. “I love Helena. I asked her to marry me and she said yes.”
“Before we knew,” Helena whispered, turning back to him to continue the argument they’d been having before the others came into the room. “I love you,” she said, not caring in that moment that those words were said before all their friends and family. “Don’t throw away your future for me.”
He caught her shoulders gently. “You are my future,” he insisted. “If I’m destroyed, I’ll still have you. So let him take what he wants.”
“He isn’t going to take anything.”
Helena and Baldwin turned toward the door. Charity stood there, hands on her hips. The others parted, allowing her entrance, though Helena saw how they glared at her. The glares turned more heated when Peter Shephard slid into the room behind her.
“What are you on about, girl?” he asked. “You aren’t going to make an idiot of yourself in front of all these powerful people, are you?”
Simon fisted his hands at his sides and started for the door. “You fucking—”
The Duke of Nothing (The 1797 Club Book 5) Page 19