Page 18 of Duke of Iron (Unyielding Dukes #2)

Sixteen

W hat in God’s name?

May stared at the doorjamb as though it might sprout fangs and bite her for daring to enter. The noise was otherworldly—a scream worthy of a shipwreck. Somewhere in the fray, the wet nurse whimpered, “It’s not my fault, Your Grace, I only turned my back for a moment?—”

The rest of her confession was lost to the howling that shook the walls.

May’s first instinct was to retreat, to run for the sanctuary of her room and pull the covers over her head. But that was precisely what the Duchess of Irondale could not do.

She stepped into the nursery, the sound physically hitting her chest. Rydal was crimson, his fists drawn in tight as a miser’s, his mouth a pit of woe. The nurse hovered nearby, arms flailing almost as much as the baby’s.

May looked at the woman, who, to her horror, appeared on the verge of tears. “What happened?”

“I—he—he will not stop!” the nurse stammered. “I tried rocking, I tried the bottle, I changed him—twice! And the more I do, the worse he gets, and then he threw up on my apron—see?”

May did not see, and she did not care. She crossed to the crib, ignoring the way her hands shook. “Give him to me,” she said.

The nurse relinquished the child with the desperation of one handing over a lit grenade.

May cradled Rydal in her arms, surprised at how light and fiercely alive he was.

She patted his back as she had seen her mother do for August on the rare occasions he had allowed it.

“There, there. You can’t possibly have that much air in you,” she said, hoping he would appreciate the attempt at reason.

He did not, but after a few moments, the cry lessened from a shriek to a miserable wail, which was an improvement.

May moved to the rocking chair and began to sway. “There now. See? You’re not so different from the rest of us. You are upset, and you want the world to know.”

The nurse dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I’ve never had a baby so willful?—”

“Nonsense,” May said, rocking more firmly. “If you wish to be of use, fetch a cool cloth. For his head, not mine,” she added, as the nurse made to blot her own brow.

Rydal hiccuped, burped with authority, and then fell into a wet, shuddering silence.

May stared at him. “Is that it? Have you made your point?” she bounced her knee gently. “Yes, I thought so.”

The nurse returned with a cloth. “Should I… take him back, Your Grace?”

May considered. “No. I think he prefers to be contrary.”

She ran the cloth over the baby’s forehead. For a moment, he regarded her with suspicious blue eyes, as if weighing whether she was worthy of further outrage.

The silence was both relief and accusation. The wet nurse hovered, and May could sense a question forming—a question she did not want to answer, not with her own heart still drumming in her ears.

“Thank you. I can manage for now,” May said.

The woman curtsied, gathered her dignity, and made her retreat.

May was left alone with the infant. The quiet was so sudden it rang in her head. She regarded Rydal, and he regarded her, two parties in an uneasy truce.

She rocked, humming, her mind wandering to the words of Lady Christie, “Is it true there is an infant at Irondale House?” Oh, if only the ton knew. The entire city would melt into a puddle of gossip and speculation.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” May said to the baby. “To be the topic of conversation at every breakfast table from Mayfair to Margate.” He made a face as if to say, not at all , but she doubted his sincerity.

For a few breaths, it was easy. Almost pleasant. But then Rydal’s face scrunched, his body tensed, and a shriek started up again, only worse this time.

May’s jaw clenched. “You are not the only one with a talent for dramatics,” she said, and picked up the tempo of the rocking. “If you wish to duel, I shall not yield.”

The baby wailed in answer.

The door opened with a force that rattled its hinges, and Logan strode in. He did not knock; he did not even pause at the threshold. He stood in the center of the room, a dark and stormy figure, the air about him practically crackling.

“What happened?” he demanded. His eyes moved over May and the child, assessing damage, searching for culprits.

May did not rise. She did not even stop rocking.

“The baby is having a day,” she said, keeping her tone even. “That is all.”

Logan’s jaw worked. “That is not all, unless you are the sort to measure thunder by a single bolt.”

She glared at him over the rim of her glasses. “And what, pray, would you suggest? He has been fed, changed, walked, rocked, and argued with. If you have a strategy beyond these, I am eager to hear it.”

He approached, looming over the chair with his hands on his hips. “Perhaps you are holding him wrong.”

She gritted her teeth. “Is there a right way to hold a screaming child? If so, please demonstrate.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “That is not what I meant.”

“Of course it is. You meant that, as usual, you know better.”

Logan opened his mouth, then closed it, and stared at the ceiling as if it might rescue him from the room. May felt a perverse satisfaction in having ruffled his composure.

“Would you like to try?” she asked, holding out the child.

He stepped back, as though she had offered him a snake. “No. Clearly, you have matters well in hand.”

She stood. “Fine.”

May pressed Rydal to her shoulder, turned on her heel, and strode past Logan, careful not to touch him, though she wanted dearly to knock him off balance.

She reached the hallway and kept going.

Down the stairs, past the shocked expressions of two maids who nearly dropped a tray, out the front door, and into the garden.

The moment the air touched her face, May’s heart slowed. She paced along the path, murmuring to the child and to herself.

“It’s not so bad,” she told him. “Not really. You have a roof, a warm bed, and a full belly. The world is not so cruel.” He hiccuped, and she realized she was not talking to him at all.

She reached the end of the garden, where the first tulips had begun to raise their heads. She kneeled, shifting the baby to her lap. “Look,” she whispered. “There are things that persist. Even when all you want to do is scream.”

He stared at the flowers, silent.

May’s arms ached, but she did not mind it. She let her back rest against the cold stone of the bench and closed her eyes.

You cannot go back , her thoughts told her. You cannot undo it. All you can do is move forward and hope you do not fail too spectacularly.

She opened her eyes and gazed at the baby, who had at last drifted off, a line of drool tracking his chin.

She laughed quietly. “We are a pair, you and I.”

For a long while, she just sat, watching the wind in the flowers, the clouds shifting above. It was peaceful, in the way a battlefield is peaceful after the smoke clears.

May knew she would have to go back inside soon. Back to the expectations, the tasks, the people who waited for her to prove herself worthy.

But for now, she let herself be nothing more than a woman with a baby and the sun on her face.

And as she breathed in the scent of tulips and earth, she made a vow, “Tomorrow will be better. I will be better. For both of us.”

The baby slept on, oblivious.

Logan took the reins from the groom with enough force to make the lad wince. The horse tossed its head but did not rear; it knew the Duke of Irondale well enough to sense when it was time to behave.

He swung into the saddle and, with a squeeze of his knees, shot out of the mews behind Irondale House. He did not look back, though he was acutely aware of every window that might be watching him leave.

The city was bright and brittle that morning, the sun burning off the mist and exposing every crack in the world.

Logan rode at a punishing pace, the sound of hooves on cobbles drowning out everything else, but even that could not silence the echo of May’s stare as she’d swept past him in the nursery, the child cradled to her chest as though it were a shield.

He should not have confronted her like that. He should not have entered the nursery at all.

But she did not have to glare at me as though I had thrown the child into the Thames.

He pressed his heels into the horse, as if the beast could run fast enough to outride the memory.

The truth was, Irondale House had never felt so small.

May’s quiet rebellion was everywhere—the arrangement of the breakfast table, the impossible profusion of flowers, the way the servants now paused at the top of the stairs to make room for her, as if she were a queen and he a visiting dignitary.

Even Rydal, the smallest, loudest usurper of all, had a claim on the place.

He should have purchased a larger townhouse. He would, the moment Parliament adjourned.

But that was a problem for the future. Today, he had to move, or he would go mad.

He had just reached the north edge of the square, where the trees thinned and the air sharpened, when a voice called, “Outrunning your responsibilities, or just the law, Blackmore?”

Calenham was riding a bay gelding at an angle that suggested he’d been waiting in ambush.

“Neither,” Logan called back. “I am outrunning you.”

Calenham caught up, falling into pace with Logan’s mount. “That’s a lie. I’ve been on your trail since breakfast, and I can assure you, you are easier to catch than a cold in the lower galleries.”

“Is there a reason you’re following me?” Logan asked, not bothering to slow down.

“I have news. And you are impossible to pin down inside your own house. Besides, this is more fun.” Calenham grinned. “You look like hell, by the way. Sleep poorly?”

“I sleep very well,” Logan lied.

“Then your wife must not,” Calenham said. “She passed me in the park this morning, looking like she’d just stared down Wellington and lived to tell about it.”

Logan bit back a response and focused on the road. “What news, then?”

“You remember the runner I hired to look into the… situation?” Calenham asked, his tone dropping.

“I recall.”

“Well, he’s found something. More precisely, someone. And I thought you’d want to see for yourself.”

Logan slowed the horse. “Who?”

“The man who left the infant at your door.”

He barely kept the horse from rearing. “Where is he?”

“Bow Street. He reached out through an anonymous note. Said he was paid to deliver a package—his word, not mine—and that he’d only speak to you.”

Logan did not pause to wonder why. He wheeled the horse and set off in the direction of Bow Street, Calenham, keeping pace with the unflappable good cheer of a man who lived for drama and duels.

They cut through a quarter of the city in record time, drawing more than a few angry shouts from vendors and cabbies alike.

At Bow Street, they dismounted and left the horses with an idling stableboy, then strode past the constables into the dim, cluttered back room where a runner with a battered top hat waited.

He nodded to Calenham, then turned his narrow eyes on Logan. “Your Grace. The man’s in the next room. Says he won’t talk until he sees you.”

Logan stepped through the doorway. The room was bare except for a battered desk, a single chair, and a man in it.

The man was smaller than expected. Middle-aged, with thinning hair and the kind of face one never remembered—neither handsome nor ugly, just… ordinary. His hands were folded on the table, fingers twitching in a nervous rhythm.

He looked up as Logan entered and gave a half-smile. “Your Grace,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

Logan stood over him. “Who are you?”

“My name is Abel Forge.”

Calenham joined them, leaning against the wall with the studied boredom of a man who had once been ejected from three clubs in a single night.

“Why did you leave a baby on my doorstep?” Logan asked.

Forge swallowed. “I was paid. Two guineas and a bottle of port.”

“By whom?”

“I never saw his face. Always wore a scarf, always waited until the bell rang the hour, and the street was empty.”

Logan’s hands clenched at his sides. “You expect me to believe you have no idea whose child it is?”

Forge gave a little laugh, barely more than a cough. “I never said that. I know whose baby it is. It’s just not mine to tell.”

Logan leaned over the table, bringing his eyes level with the man’s. “It is very much your job to tell me. Start now.”

Forge shrugged. “You are the Duke of Irondale, yes? That’s what the boy is to be told when he’s old enough. That he’s heir to a fortune. That he’s noble by blood and birth. That’s all I know.”

Logan’s brain stalled for a moment. “Heir to Irondale? Are you mad?”

Forge shook his head. “Only repeating what I was told.”

“And the mother?” Logan pressed. “You must have seen her.”

Forge shook his head. “Never. Always the man. Always the instructions, written down. I was to make sure the child was well-fed, then bring him to your door and leave him there. If I were caught, I was to say nothing.”

Calenham said, “But you’re saying something now.”

“Because the runner offered me five guineas and a promise to keep me out of Newgate.”

Logan’s blood ran cold. “What else do you know?”

Forge looked at his hands. “Only the child’s name. That was in the final note, before the delivery.”

Logan drew himself up, certain he would not like the answer. “What is it?”

Forge said, in a quiet voice, “William Blackmore.”

The words hit the room like a blow.

Logan took a step back. “That is not possible.”

Forge met his eyes. “It’s what I was told. William Blackmore, born to inherit everything you have.”