Page 26 of Duke of Iron (Unyielding Dukes #2)

Twenty-Two

He would never have believed that this was the den from which his entire life had been upended. It did not look like the sort of house that left infants on ducal doorsteps. It did not even look like the sort of house that had secrets. But then, neither did Irondale.

He dismounted, tossed the reins to a waiting groom who materialized as if he’d been stationed there for centuries, and strode up the walk. The brass knocker struck with a sound that reverberated up Logan’s arm.

The butler who answered had the jowls and carriage of a minor clergyman and, like all the best butlers, betrayed no sign that he recognized the Duke of Irondale. “May I assist you, sir?”

“I am here to see Mr. Beamond,” Logan said.

The man’s brow quirked. “Mr. Beamond is not expecting callers at this hour.”

“Inform him that the Duke of Irondale requires a word.” Logan did not raise his voice, but the air thickened just the same.

The butler blinked, recalibrated, and stepped aside. “If Your Grace will wait in the receiving room, I shall inquire at once.”

Logan entered the house. It was suffocatingly warm and redolent of orange blossom, the sort of scent that suggested recent grief. He had seen enough mourning houses to know the signs—heavy drapery, lilies in vases, a hush deeper than that of mere good breeding.

He waited, hands steepled behind his back, and stared into the fire. It was so meticulously laid that even the flames obeyed a code of conduct.

A minute later, he was ushered into a drawing room. The curtains were half-drawn against the day, and two people rose from the settee as the butler announced, “The Duke of Irondale.”

Mr. and Mrs. Beamond had the look of people perpetually startled by life.

He was tall, spare, with thinning silver hair and eyes that darted from the carpet to Logan and back again.

She was short, with hands clasped so tightly they shook, and the black of her dress suggested that her heart would be in mourning for the rest of her life, regardless of fashion.

Logan bowed. He did not sit, nor did he wait for an invitation. “I will not waste your time. Several weeks ago, a child was left at my door with instructions that he was to be raised as the Duke of Irondale’s heir. The claim was made that he is mine.”

Mr. Beamond drew in a long, juddering breath. “I had heard something of it, but I confess I did not believe it until you appeared in person.”

Logan’s jaw set. “I have never met your daughter, nor have I ever—” He stopped, measured his words. “I have no knowledge of a Rebecca Beamond or her son.”

Mrs. Beamond’s lips tightened to near invisibility, but it was the man who spoke.

“Rebecca is… was… our only child. We received word, a fortnight past, that she died in Italy. She had gone there to recover her health. She wrote, near the end, that the child would be sent ‘home to his family.’ We did not think she meant yours.”

Logan felt a chill start at the nape of his neck and spread, quickly and efficiently, down his spine. “You are saying the boy is not mine?”

Mr. Beamond’s gaze met Logan’s for the first time. “She never once claimed that you were the father, Your Grace. The letters…” He fumbled in his coat, then produced a folded page with trembling hands. “I will show you, if you wish.”

Logan waved this away. “If not mine, then whose?”

Mr. Beamond hesitated, as if the answer itself were a kind of betrayal. “The previous Duke of Irondale.”

It was a minute before Logan spoke. When he did, his voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else. “My father.”

The word hung in the room. Not even the fire dared to pop.

He wanted to laugh, but the machinery of his face would not cooperate. “The previous Duke was a married man. He would not have…” But then, of course, he would. Michael Blackmore had believed himself above every law of man and nature. He had made a career of flouting decency.

Mr. Beamond’s voice shook. “Rebecca was very young. We did not know until she was nearly gone. It was all arranged, out of our hands.”

“And you did not think to keep the child?” Logan asked, surprised by the coldness of his own question.

The woman spoke at last, voice a thin silver wire. “My daughter was ruined. Our name…” She choked, wiped her eyes with a handkerchief already sodden. “We could not.”

Logan’s vision narrowed. He saw, in dizzying succession, the child’s face—the eyes, the chin, the line of the brow that matched his own in the family portrait above Irondale’s hearth. “William is my half-brother,” he said.

Mr. Beamond nodded once and said nothing more.

Logan pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “How old was she?”

“Seventeen. They said she was beautiful, but it was not enough to save her,” he said this with the air of a man who had already spoken these words many times, and found them wanting each time.

Logan stood there, watching the slow spiral of dust motes in the parlor air, and realized he had no words for this kind of disaster.

Mr. Beamond cleared his throat. “We received a letter, not three days ago, from the lawyers in Florence. They included documents—certificates. The child is legitimate, by their law, though I do not know if?—”

“That is all I require,” Logan said.

He did not remember leaving the house. One moment, he was standing in the drawing room, and the next, he was out in the cold, the holly leaves scratching at his coat as though trying to keep him from ever returning.

The city spun around him. The horse waited, impassive. He mounted it and rode, with no idea where he was going, until the cold became a living thing in his chest.

He did not return to Irondale House until the lamps were lit and every window glowed with the warmth of a home he was no longer sure he recognized.

“Rydal just ate an entire serving of mashed peas without a single protest…” May pushed the study door open as she spoke, proclaiming the baby’s accomplishment as if it were a war trophy, and then stopped so sharply she nearly dropped the note she’d meant to share.

Logan sat at his desk, elbows braced on the dark wood, hands locked around his skull as if trying to contain a storm inside it.

He did not look up when she entered. The lamp on the desk painted sharp lines under his eyes, hollowing his cheeks and turning his hair almost black against the pallor of his skin.

May’s heart skidded sideways. She crossed the room without thinking and set her hand lightly on his shoulder. He did not move.

She kneeled so that her face was level with his. “Logan?”

The silence was heavy and close. His hands did not uncurl from his head. For a second, May wondered if he had even heard her, or if his mind had finally snapped and left him a shell, like so many she’d read about in the medical pamphlets.

She tried again, softer. “Logan. It’s me.”

He let his hands fall, slowly, as if gravity worked differently in his vicinity. The gray eyes that met hers were rimmed with red and rimmed again with something darker—horror, maybe, or grief.

May felt her pulse stutter. She wanted to reach out, to touch his cheek, to do anything except sit there and watch a man come undone so quietly. Instead, she folded her hands in her lap, as her mother had taught, and waited.

Logan’s voice was hoarse. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“I was going to,” May said, “but Rydal demanded a second supper. He is developing a will.” She tried to smile, but the joke shriveled and died in the air.

Logan stared at the far wall, beyond her, beyond everything. “Sit,” he said, gesturing toward the fire.

May obeyed, taking the armchair nearest the grate. The heat stung her shins. She tucked her feet under her and waited, trying not to fidget.

Logan stood and moved to the mantel. For a moment, he braced himself against it, head bowed. Then he straightened, and when he spoke, his voice was clear and stripped of every defense.

“The baby,” he said, “is not my son.”

May blinked. “He’s not—” She stopped, reconsidered. “I do not understand.”

Logan managed a sound that might have been a laugh, but it had too much bone in it to be healthy. “He is my brother. My father’s son.”

The words hung in the air, refusing to settle.

May’s mind rifled through everything she knew about inheritance and marriage law, about ducal lines and the desperation of men to keep their blood alive. “Is he?—”

“He is legitimate by every law that matters,” Logan said. “And the moment the ton knows, he will be the most famous bastard in London.”

She pressed her hands together to keep them from shaking. “How did you?—”

“I went to the Beamonds. This morning.” His mouth twisted. “They are not subtle people. They told me everything. Their daughter died in Italy, and left her baby to be sent back to his ‘family.’ Which is, apparently, me.”

May wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite the fire. She thought of Mrs. Paxton’s calm hands, of Miss Abbot’s devotion, of all the people in the house who would be swept away by this news, as if by a wave they never saw coming.

Logan turned, finally, and looked at her. His eyes were rimmed in silver, sharp enough to cut. “He is my father’s last act of vengeance,” he said. “Even in death, the old bastard gets what he wants.”

May stood. “That cannot be true.”

He raised a brow, and it was almost a smile. “Oh, but it is. He never forgave me for living when she died.”

May’s insides shriveled, and she wanted to tell him it wasn’t true, that he was wanted, that there had to be some error. But she knew too well the efficiency with which the world arranged its losses. “You are not to blame for that,” she whispered.

He shook his head, jaw clenched. “I was the perfect project. His redemption. The instrument by which he would justify my mother’s death.

I was to be the best. I was to be everything she died for.

” His laugh was raw. “So when I disappointed him, there was nothing left but to start over. To create another.”

May felt a rush of panic, an old fear surfacing. “He… he did not—” She stopped, unsure how to phrase the next part delicately, and then decided not to. “He did not… hurt you, did he?”

Logan met her eyes for a long, unbroken moment. “Not in ways you can see,” he said, and May felt as if someone had pressed a hand to her chest and squeezed until it hurt.

They stood like that, neither quite knowing what to do.

“I am sorry,” May said, because it was the only thing that seemed possible.

“You are not the one who should be.” Logan’s smile was a ghost of itself. “But thank you.”

He let his hand drift along the mantel, and May saw the way it trembled before he closed it into a fist.

“I have to keep him,” Logan said suddenly, as if the words had been hiding somewhere and leaped out without warning. “The boy. I cannot let him go. He is all that is left of my father, and all that is left of me, too. I have to keep him safe.”

May moved to stand beside him. She set her hand, carefully, on his arm. “You do not have to do it alone.”

He turned to her, and in the firelight, his face was younger than she’d ever seen it. “You do not have to stay, either. The arrangement was never meant for this.”

May thought of all the ways she could answer—with pride, with anger, with hurt. But what she said was, “I think I should like to stay. If you will have me.”

Logan stared at her, as if she were an equation he could not solve.

She laughed a little. “Someone has to teach the baby to play chess. And to torment the servants. And to be good at cards.”

Logan covered her hand with his. “You are very strange,” he said.

“I know.” She squeezed his fingers. “But so are you. And you are not as alone as you think.”

His eyes softened, just a fraction. “You really mean to stay.”

“I do.”

He let her hand go, only to draw her into a sudden, impulsive hug. It was brief, and awkward, and he pulled away almost at once, but in that moment, May felt something in her chest go soft and bright and terrifying.

She looked up at him, and for the first time, thought, I am not afraid. Not truly.

He released her and turned his face away, but not before she saw the shine in his eyes.

There was a pause, during which May tried to recall what it was like to have a heart that beat in a regular way. She felt as though she had been struck by lightning, and the inside of her was all burnt sugar.

Logan stepped back, smoothing his coat. “I should warn you. The world will not be gentle. The news will be everywhere, and we will be dissected, analyzed, made into a parlor game.”

May smiled. “Then let us give them something worth gossiping about.”

He snorted, and this time the smile was real. “You are incorrigible.”

She made a small bow. “I have learned from the best.”

The fire had burned low, and the shadows in the room seemed to gather around them like a cloak. Logan looked at her and said, almost gently, “Thank you, May.”

She did not trust herself to answer.

He held the look for a moment longer, then said, “I suppose I should see to the baby.”

May nodded, unable to speak past the heat rising in her throat. She turned to leave, and at the door, paused. She looked back and saw Logan watching her, all his defenses down, and her chest ached with the beauty and the terror of it.

She walked the hallway in a daze, barely aware of her feet. She found Rydal asleep, thumb in mouth, a faint green stain of peas on his chin. She touched the baby’s cheek, careful not to wake him, and then sat by the cradle for a long, long time.

In the dimness, with only the sound of the fire in the grate and the city’s sleep beyond the glass, May at last let herself know the truth.

She loved Logan. Foolishly, impossibly, and hopelessly.

It was not the love she’d read about in books, all thunder and swoon and grand confessions. It was smaller than that, and so much more dangerous. It was the kind of love that makes a person want to stay, no matter what.

She pressed her palm to her heart, and felt the thrum of it there, fierce and living and altogether her own.