Page 39 of An Offer By the Beastly Duke

The dog looked at Malcolm. He looked at Nicholas. Then, with a deliberate lack of respect, he sat down on Nicholas’s left shoe and closed his eyes.

Malcolm wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He had been out here since five, trying to work his body until the thinking stopped. He used the weights and the drills to keep the memory of a certain garden kiss manageable. Work the muscles until they burned, and the mind would follow.

It had been working tolerably well until three minutes ago.

He crossed his arms, the sweat-dampened linen of his shirt clinging to his shoulders. “Go home, Nicholas.”

Nicholas’s face set. “I only want to stay for a little while! I won’t bother you at all, and I will stay right here in this corner and keep Hector company, and you shall not even know that I am here.” He paused, his gaze flickering to the weighted bar. “But I will be quiet.”

“And yet you are not being quiet now.”

“After this.” He grinned toothily. “Twenty minutes. Then I shall go without any argument, I promise.”

Malcolm looked at the boy. Nicholas looked back. Hector opened one eye, looking entirely too pleased with the situation.

“Your mother does not know that you are here,” Malcolm said, his voice dropping an octave.

Nicholas’s expression shifted, a tiny flinch of the jaw. “She is at the Athena Society discussing poetry.”

“That is not what I asked, Nicholas.” Malcolm sighed, worried and weary.

“No,” Nicholas said quietly. “She does not know.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t offer a lie about a forgotten book or a stray ball. He just stood his ground and waited.

Malcolm uncrossed his arms. He looked at the long stretch of the garden, at the morning light caught in the dew, and at the boy who seemed to have more iron in his spine than half the men he’d served with in the Navy. He looked at Hector, who was now lying completely across Nicholas’s feet.

“Twenty minutes,” Malcolm affirmed. “In that corner. You do not follow me. You do not interrupt me, and when I say that it is time to go, then you will leave. Do you understand?”

Nicholas’ face transformed, a beam of pure radiance breaking through. “Yes, Your Grace.”

After a quick pause to assess if Nicholas truly would listen to him, Malcolm nodded curtly and turned back to his weights. He settled into his stance and gripped the bar. The familiar pull, the resistance of the iron, the burn in his deltoids. He focused on it all, trying to drown out the presence behind him.

Thud.

A small leather ball hit the garden wall. Hector scrambled after it, his claws skittering on the stone path. Nicholas’ voice followed, low and instructional, telling the dog to stay.

“Do you like exercising?”

Malcolm lifted the bar, his muscles straining. “Yes.”

“Did they make you do it in the Navy?”

“Yes.”

“All the men? Even the ones who did not want to?”

“Especially those.”

A beat of silence passed. The ball hit the wall again.

“Were you good at it? Or did you have to practice?”

Malcolm lowered the bar. Raised it. “I had to practice.”

“At everything?”

“At most things. Strength is not a gift but a habit.”