Page 29 of An Offer By the Beastly Duke

He glanced once more at Nicholas, smiled and turned away.

Nicholas watched him go without blinking. “He did not get any shots, Mama,” he said quietly.

“No, I do not think he did.”

“He was not even in the woods.” Nicholas frowned at the middle distance. “Why does he bother lying? Nobody believes him.”

“He does not do it to be believed,” Penelope said, watching her brother-in-law’s retreating back. “He does it to see what happens when he is not challenged.”

Nicholas considered this, then moved closer to her side. She put her arm around his shoulders, her heart still unsettled by Charles’ eyes.

Then, the air around her changed.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a particular quality of stillness that arrived before the person it belonged to. She felt it, a prickle of heat on her skin, a half-second before she saw him.

The Duke of Brigrock stood ten feet away.

He had not announced himself. He was simply there. His jacket was gone, his white shirt sleeves rolled to the forearm, exposing skin corded with muscle and a fine coat of woodland dust across his shoulders. He stood with his boots planted firmly in the grass, his chest still rising and falling in the deep, rhythmic swell of the hunt. He made no move to wipe the streak of earth from his jaw or to smooth his wind-blown hair.

Penelope’s arm drew Nicholas closer. Her body reacted before her mind could weigh in.

“Your Grace,” she said.

His eyes moved to Nicholas first, then to her. They were a piercing, unforgiving blue. “He strayed,” he said, his voice a low rasp that seemed to vibrate in the space between them.

“I am aware.”

“He had the sense to go still when I asked him to. And quiet.” A pause, his gaze resting briefly on Nicholas. “That is not common at any age.”

Nicholas’s chin lifted. He said nothing, but his posture had shifted; he stood like a soldier.

“I’m grateful you found him and returned him to the group. Truly,” Penelope said earnestly.

The Duke looked at her. Not long, not pointedly, but fully. It was a look that had no social performance in it whatsoever, and it was somehow harder to meet for exactly that reason. She felt the heat in her cheeks rise, unbidden.

“Your son has potential,” the Duke said. He took a half-step closer, the scent of cedar and gunpowder clinging to him. “It is not being trained, though.”

Penelope opened her mouth, a retort sharp on her tongue.

He was already turning. Not sharply, but with a finality that garnered no argument. He moved through the thinning crowd, people parting before him like water before a ship’s prow. By the time she had found the first word, he was through the doorway and gone.

She stood frozen.

It is not being trained.

The words stung. She should be angry. He had walked into her life and suggested that she was leaving something in Nicholas untended, that the life she had carefully built for her son was not enough.

She should be angry.

Her hands were perfectly still at her sides. That was the part she couldn’t account for. The air felt colder now that he was gone.

“Mama.” Nicholas looked up at her. “He meant it well.”

Penelope looked at the door where Malcolm had vanished.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Nicholas watched her watch the door. “Are you going to do something about it?”