Page 43 of An Offer By the Beastly Duke

He thought of her in his garden, demanding he stay away, her voice a shield.

He had thought her guarded. He had thought her cold.

What she was, was exhausted. She was carrying the weight of two lives on her shoulders and making sure the boy thought it was light as a feather.

“She sounds like someone who cares very much about getting things right,” Malcolm said finally.

Nicholas looked at him, his expression fierce. “She is,” he said. “She is the best person I know.”

They turned the horses back toward the Brigrock Hall. Hector looped around them, falling in beside Calder.

“Does she still not know that you have been coming here?” Malcolm asked as they approached the yard.

“No.” Nicholas kept his face forward. “I think she suspects. She looks at my boots too much. But she has not asked directly.”

“Would you admit it if she asked?”

“Yes.” There was no pause. “I do not lie to her. I just wait for the question, but she does not ask. I do feel bad, sometimes, though, because I promised not to disobey her again. I just… I cannot help it. This is fun, and now it is safer!”

The stable yard came back into view. Malcolm checked his watch as he pulled Calder to a walk.

It had already been an hour. He dismounted and handed the reins to a groom. Nicholas was down on the other side, talking to the stable hands with an easy, unpretentious familiarity. Malcolm walked around the horse.

“It is safer,” he agreed. “Because I now know that you are here and I can keep an eye on you, but you ought to return home before your mother comes looking for you again.”

Nicholas turned. “I will, Your Grace.” He paused with a hand on Hector’s coat. “Thank you… for allowing me back here, and for… for letting me have not just Hector as a friend.”

Then the boy straightened. Without warning, he walked up to Malcolm and threw both arms around his waist.

Malcolm went completely, utterly still.

His hands started to move in some instinctive gesture of defense or comfort, but they didn’t complete the motion. They stayed at his sides.

Nicholas’s arms were thin but surprisingly strong, and the top of his head was level with Malcolm’s sternum. The boy smelled of horses and fresh air and soap.

He let go as quickly as he had arrived. He touched Hector’s head one last time, turned, and ran toward the hedge.

Malcolm stood in the empty stable yard. His hands were still at his sides. The groom had led the horses away, and the yard was silent. Hector sat at his master’s feet, looking up with a patient, knowing expression.

Malcolm looked at the gap in the hedge where the boy had vanished. He stood there for a very long time before he finally moved.

Chapter Fourteen

“Come in.” Penelope didn’t look up at who had knocked as she spoke.

The gray paint she’d mixed was sitting wrong on the porcelain palette. Too much Prussian blue, a cold, bruising color that felt like a winter shadow rather than the soft, filtered light of the orchard.

It was a stubborn, difficult hue, and the struggle to correct it felt important enough to hold her entire attention through the sharp rap at the door.

Mr. Ashton opened the door, but he didn’t step through. He stood with his formal announcement posture. Chin lifted, chest expanded, breath already drawn for a dignified introduction.

Then, the space behind him shifted. A heavy silhouette eclipsed the light of the hallway.

The Duke of Brigrock walked right past the butler and into Penelope’s studio.

Penelope’s hand jerked. The fine sable brush slipped from her slick fingers, clattered against the edge of the wooden stool, and hit the floor with a wet thud. It left a long, jagged smear of that bruised gray-blue across the polished floorboards.

Mr. Ashton instinctively bent to retrieve it, but Penelope waved him away.