Page 74

She heard the connecting door open behind her and wondered for a moment if fairies and magic were real, just as Isabella said. There was her wish, familiar now but still so fresh.

She heard his boots cross the floor, slow and steady. She heard the balcony doors swing open and then felt his arms slide around her from behind. His chin rested atop her head as his solid warmth settled against her back, and she leaned back into him.

“You went somewhere else this evening,” he murmured against her ear, pressing a kiss to the shell.

“What do you mean? I was here the whole day. At dinner, at⁠—”

“In the west tower. I saw it on your face.”

Laura turned in his arms, tipping her head back to meet his eyes. He had shed his coat somewhere between his chamber and hers, his shirt open at the collar. His hair was still disheveled from when Iris had sweetly run her fingers through it while they sat together on the floor.

He looked younger like this. Not the guarded, careful beast of a duke London whispered about, nor the grim, watchful man who’d stood across from her at the altar.

“I was thinking…” She trailed off, unsure what to say, or how to say it.

“Thinking of what?” he prompted.

“About how much has changed,” she said. “About how frightened I was the first time I stood in this room, certain I’d made a terrible bargain I couldn’t get out of. I remember counting the days that first week as though I were serving a sentence.”

“Was it that bad?” he asked, tilting her chin up to meet her gaze. “I suppose so much has happened that I forget how hard it must have been for you. I try not to think of the auction, of the beginning. What do you remember?”

“I remember not being able to look at you without my whole chest going tight, and telling myself it was only fear, because fear was a safer thing to call it than anything else it might have been.”

“I remember it too.” Something rueful moved behind his eyes. “I remember standing exactly where I stood the night I set those three rules, thinking I was doing you a kindness by keeping my distance. I thought if I kept the walls high enough, neither of us would have to survive whatever came of pulling them down.”

“And now?”

“Now I can’t imagine having made any other choice. I will spend the rest of my life keeping us safe. I believe that together we can weather any storm.”

She reached up, tracing the line of his jaw and savoring his warmth beneath her palm.

“I used to think emotion was the thing that would ruin me if I let it in,” he said gruffly. “My father wore his charm like a coat whenever he left this castle. The whole of London thought him the most amiable man in Mayfair. He was impossibly witty, very generous, the sort of man other fathers held up as an example,” he scoffed. “At home, he was something else entirely… He hit my mother more times than I could ever count, and when I was old enough to draw his notice, he turned the same cruelty on me, then on Isabella. I spent half my childhood learning the sound of his boots on the stairs, working out whether I’d have time to get between him and whichever of them he meant to go after that night.”

Laura’s hand tightened on his.

“What happened to your mother, Nathaniel?” she asked softly.

“My mother died of a fever when I was eleven. She made me promise, in the end, that I’d look after Isabella. Back then, I wasn’t fully sure of what I was promising to protect her from, of what would happen, how it would all turn out.”

His jaw tightened. “By fifteen, I’d grown taller than him. Broader. I watched him realize it, too. I liked that satisfaction, and I decided that same year I would never be the smaller one in any room he occupied. I trained obsessively after that. Boxing, fencing, riding—anything that built strength into something I could rely on. I never served, but I drilled myself like a man who meant to. I told myself strength was simply safety, and I made certain of it so thoroughly that he never raised his hand to either of us again.”

“And the charm,” Laura said quietly. “You never learned that part.”

“I refused to be so… false. Two-faced.” Something bleak moved behind his eyes, and he blinked it away. “I watched him smile at dinner parties with the same mouth that had sworn at my mother an hour before. I promised myself I would rather be thought cold and gruff for the whole of my life than wear that mask for a bloody minute, Laura. The ton was scandalized by how little I resembled him, once I came into the title. I never once regretted it. I would rather be the beast they whisper about than be my father in a better coat.”

“You are braver than you know,” she murmured.

“He died when I was five-and-twenty. I felt nothing at his funeral. Not even relief, just emptiness. And I have never forgiven myself for that, either.”

Laura felt the words settle into her as she realized just how hard his life had been.

Something in his face broke open. “I’m sorry if it’s too much, but I wanted you… I wanted you to know.”

“You don’t have to say anything more,” she said quickly. “I am glad that you wanted me to know.”

He pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “It has gotten chilly out here. Let’s go inside.”

“I think that is a good idea,” she said, lacing her fingers through his.