Page 33 of Duke of Iron (Unyielding Dukes #2)

Twenty-Nine

“ Y ou had a grand day today and gained many admirers,” May whispered the words against the crown of Rydal’s sleeping head as she laid him in the cot.

As she straightened, she tried to draw her hand away, but Rydal caught two of her fingers in his fist. May gazed at the small hand, marveling that such a fragile thing could hold her so utterly in place.

The sensation that swept her then was not gentle affection but something fiercer—a rush of possessiveness, as if she would tear the world to tatters for the sake of this borrowed child.

She bent and pressed a kiss to his hand, then another to the downy patch at the center of his forehead.

The second kiss uncurled his fingers and released her.

May straightened, reluctant to break the spell, and as she turned, she found Logan standing in the nursery doorway, his arms folded, and his eyes inscrutable.

She started. “How long have you been there?”

Logan uncrossed his arms. “Long enough to witness the most interesting display of maternal sentimentality in this county.” His mouth slanted up, and the smile—God help her—stole her breath in a way she’d never admit.

“You are incorrigible,” May said, gathering the skirts of her robe as if it might insulate her from him.

“Perhaps.” He leaned against the doorframe, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, his hair carelessly tousled in a manner that suggested he had run his hands through it at least twice since supper. “But I am also correct.”

May ducked past him. “If you intend to scold me for spoiling the child, you are at least a day late. He has been thoroughly ruined by a dozen gentlewomen already.”

“I did not come to scold you, May.” He let her get a stride down the hallway before falling in step behind her. “At least, not for that.”

“Then for what?”

He did not answer, and she could feel the shape of his silence behind her, pressing close and quickening her pulse. May walked faster, but she was not truly trying to escape.

When she reached her chambers, she pushed open the door and strode directly to the hearth, where the fire was down to the coals but still throwing enough heat to make the room glow.

She perched on the arm of a chair and pretended to adjust the silk sash at her waist, but her fingers only knotted the fabric and undid it again.

Logan entered after her, closed the door, and leaned his back against it. “How did you find the party? Are you satisfied with how it turned out?”

She smiled. “It was a triumph.”

“Indeed,” he said. “I am surprised you did not charge admission.”

“Admission would have defeated the purpose,” she replied, willing herself not to look at him. “It was meant to be?—”

“—a gift for the unwanted, I know,” Logan finished. He moved to the mantel and rested one hand there, so the fire illuminated the sharp lines of his face. “You have a talent for making people feel as if they matter. It is rare.”

She glanced up, startled by the seriousness in his voice. Logan was not smiling now. “Did you enjoy it, May?”

She wet her lips. The real answer wanted to burst from her, but she restrained it and chose the smaller truth. “I enjoyed it more than I expected.” She met his eyes, or tried to, but the memory of their kiss in the garden that afternoon flashed in her mind, and her gaze skittered away. “Did you?”

He made a small, unreadable sound. “It was less dreadful than I imagined.”

“You lie badly,” she accused.

He grinned. “Only when the truth would embarrass me.”

A silence grew between them, and May wrapped her arms around her waist, unsure whether it was the fire or his presence that left her so flushed. She should say something clever, or at least practical, but the only words in her mind were, Why did you kiss me? And why do I wish you’d do it again?

Logan moved toward her. It was a deliberate, measured approach, and the kind that left May nowhere to look but at his feet or her own. She counted his steps—three, then four—and then he stopped directly before her, close enough to cast her face in shadow.

He held out his hand. May stared at it before she set her hand in his, because it seemed the only polite thing to do.

He drew her to her feet and then, without warning, into his arms. She stiffened, then blushed furiously and leaned into him. “What are you doing?” she managed.

“Testing a hypothesis,” he said, his lips against her hair. “I suspected you would blush.”

“I am not blushing,” she lied, attempting to muster dignity.

Logan cupped her face, his thumb brushing her cheek. “You are.”

May willed herself to look up, but his proximity made it impossible to focus on anything but the shape of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the faint scent of shaving soap and ink. She opened her mouth, prepared to scold him for such unseemly conduct, but before she could, he kissed her.

It was not like the afternoon’s kiss, light and daring. This was deeper and more insistent, like a question and a demand all at once. She let her hands rest on his chest, and her fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt, drawing him closer.

For a moment, May was suspended outside herself, as if watching from above—the Duchess of Irondale, properly undone by the man she had once sworn to avoid.

When he broke the kiss, he did not release her at once. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers, their breaths uneven.

May’s knees threatened to buckle. She gripped his arms to steady herself. “Logan?”

He looked down at her, and the mask of composure returned, but not quite complete. “Goodnight, May,” he said, his voice so soft it barely reached her.

He let her go and stepped back, his hand trailing down her arm until it caught her fingers once more. He gave them a squeeze, then turned and left, closing the door behind him.

May stood there with her heart hammering and her lips tingling.

She wondered what this second kiss meant, and what it would do to her by morning.

“Repetit, ut felix… Repetit, ut felix…” Logan’s voice shook on the final syllable, the sound swallowed by the ancient shadows of the Irondale library.

He was twelve, and his eyes moved over the Latin primer even as his ears strained to hear past the hush for the telltale snap of leather or slosh of decanter from the study next door.

He forced his gaze back to the page. “Repetit, ut felix colonia…”

A crash sounded from beyond the hall, louder than before, of a toppled glass, maybe, or the shattering of a paperweight against wood. Logan stiffened, every muscle remembering the script. He counted three, then two, then one ? —

Another crash came, louder and closer.

He shrank into his chair. Not today, he pleaded silently, but his hand betrayed him, tightening around the primer until the edge bit his palm.

Footsteps tracked the hallway until they stopped directly outside the door. There was a pause before the latch turned and the door swung wide.

His father, Michael Blackmore, stood there, filling the doorway with his presence; his eyes were bloodshot and his hair wild. His cravat was untied, and the bottle in his fist sloshed dangerously.

“Logan,” he said, “what, precisely, is the use of a son who cannot remember a single line of poetry?”

Logan scrambled up from the desk, the primer nearly slipping from his hand. “I—I can, Father. I just ? —”

Michael Blackmore advanced with the lazy menace of a beast that had already decided how the chase would end. “You just what, boy? You just played in the orchard all morning instead of reciting your Virgil?”

Logan’s throat closed up. “I finished the Virgil last week. Miss Hewitt said ? —”

“Miss Hewitt is a fool,” his father snapped, “and so is her pupil.” The Duke stopped a handsbreadth away, so that Logan could see the cracks in his father’s lips, the flecks of dust in his irises.

Michael leaned in. “Did you know I was the best scholar in all of Cambridge?” his breath was sour and hot. “Did you know they compared me to Caesar?”

Logan nodded, afraid to speak. He felt the world contract to the space between his own beating heart and the thudding of his father’s blood.

“Then why, Logan, do you waste your time with peasants and rabbits and useless pursuits?” he spat the words like seed husks. “Tell me. Tell me why my only son is a disappointment.”

Logan’s chest hollowed. “It was a sunny day, and I thought—” He tried to smile, to make it a joke. “I thought I could work outside with John, the steward’s son. We made a contest of it. To see who could finish their lines first.”

His father’s hand shot out and struck him across the face. The sound was not loud, but the sting burned through Logan’s skull and into his bones.

“You are not a peasant. You do not make contests. You win them. You win, or you are nothing.”

Logan clamped his jaw shut. Michael Blackmore’s voice dropped. “You think you are safe here? You think you are protected by your tutors and your mother’s memory? Even in death, she haunts me, demanding you turn out perfect. But you are not perfect. Not even close.”

He stepped back, surveying his son like an insect under glass. “You will memorize the next two books tonight. Or you will regret it. Do you understand?”

Logan nodded, his cheeks wet with tears he would not have been able to stop if he’d tried. His father grunted and left the room.

In the sudden hush, Logan saw black and red spots before his eyes. The room seemed to shrink, the shadows congealing around the edges until the air itself was poisoned. He pressed his fists to his eyes and willed himself not to cry again.

But darkness pressed in, and the ground shifted beneath him.

Logan bolted upright on the sofa, his lungs straining, and his hair damp and plastered to his brow. For a long moment, he sat rigid with fists curled and waiting for the next blow. But there came no sound, no footsteps, and no threat.

He was in his own bedchamber, where everything was perfectly ordered, and the only echo of the past was in his own head.

He pushed a hand through his hair, then scrubbed at his cheeks with the heel of his palm. The wetness there was sweat, nothing more. He had not cried in two decades, and he would not start now.

Logan closed his eyes, trying to recall where the present had left off and the past begun. It took several deep breaths, but eventually the room steadied, and he remembered—May.

The thought of her was like a drop of ink in a glass of clear water. The memory of her lips, her warmth, the way she had looked at him with an equal measure of longing and accusation settled inside him, crowding out the darkness.

He stood, stripped off his damp shirt, and found a clean one. He fumbled with the buttons for a full minute before giving up and leaving it open at the throat.

The house was silent when he slipped out, and Logan padded through the hallways before stopping at her bedchamber door. He should not open it. He should not want to see her this badly.

He pushed it open anyway.

May slept, curled on her side in the nest of pillows, hair fanned out like a comet’s tail across the linen. In sleep, her features lost all the sharpness of her wit and became soft, almost heartbreakingly so. Her lips were slightly parted, and one hand was tucked under her cheek.

He moved to the side of the bed and kneeled. He watched her breathe for a time, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the way her lashes trembled when she dreamed.

Unable to stop himself, Logan reached out and smoothed a strand of hair from her face. She did not stir, but her mouth twitched at the touch, and Logan felt something inside him unravel.

He whispered, “What are you turning me into, May?”

He knew the answer. He knew that every hour with her pulled him further from the man he had spent a lifetime becoming, the one his father had shaped with pain and rage.

And it terrified him more than anything else in the world.