Page 38 of Duke of Iron (Unyielding Dukes #2)

Thirty-Four

“ Y ou cannot be serious.” June, who had never encountered a secret she could not dissect and display, abandoned her half-eaten scone and nearly launched herself across the picnic blanket. “You are in the family way? April, you must swear it on pain of—of sororal exile!”

“I swear,” said April, hands held in a dramatic fan at her cheeks. “It was confirmed this morning by Dr. Entwhistle himself.”

Evangeline Richfield, the elder of May’s new friends, gasped with delight. “How divine! You will be the very first of our set with a proper baby.”

Martha, too shy to speak above a whisper, simply clapped her hands and turned an eager gaze to May, as if expecting the Duchess to declare the whole event a joke or a miracle.

But May found that her voice was caught somewhere behind her ribs. She managed a smile, forced the corners of her mouth into place, and said, “April, that is the best news imaginable. I am so happy for you. Truly.”

April, well-schooled in the art of reading her sister’s soul, reached across the tea things and squeezed May’s hand. “Oh, darling. I know you have not been yourself. I am so sorry?—”

“Do not be sorry!” May laughed, and this time it nearly sounded right. “I am simply stunned. You will be a magnificent mother, April. The best!”

June cackled. “She will be an absolute terror, you mean.”

“I will have you know,” April declared, “that I intend to run a model household, starting with the nursery and radiating outward in waves of tidiness and good manners.”

“The baby will eat you alive by Christmastide,” said June, “and you will deserve it.”

Evangeline held up her lemonade glass. “To April! And to all of us, for surviving her.”

The toast was seconded by a flurry of cups, and even May managed to join in the clink and chorus of voices. But then she found herself the object of a different sort of attention. Every few moments, someone would glance her way, as if expecting her to speak.

She deflected with smiles, nods, and the liberal application of cucumber sandwiches to anyone who looked peckish. But the pressure built regardless, a tide she could not hold back.

After an hour, she excused herself on the pretense of needing to walk Rydal.

“Take as long as you like,” said April. “We shall keep June from committing any major crimes in your absence.”

May collected Rydal from the nurse, settled him in the three-wheeled carriage, and set off along the duck pond, her hands tight on the handlebar.

She watched the way the wind riffled the surface of the water, the way the ducks jostled for space and food and primacy.

Even the tiniest creatures, it seemed, had better luck with their offspring than she.

She walked until the noise of the park faded to a manageable hum, then stopped beneath a tree and kneeled to adjust the baby’s blanket.

Rydal caught her thumb in both fists and gummed it with a determination that bordered on desperate. May smiled, and the smile hurt, but she let it linger.

“We do not need anyone else, you and I,” she murmured. “We are perfectly complete.”

But the lie was thin, and the longer she stood there, the more she understood how much she had hoped for something that could never be.

She had begun to see herself in the future—a mother, someone who belonged somewhere more solid than the shifting sands of the ton .

She had not realized, until this moment, how much of herself she had traded on the possibility.

“Your Grace?”

May looked up to see Mr. and Mrs. Beamond standing two paces away. She rose, brushing imaginary grass from her skirt. “Mr. Beamond. Mrs. Beamond. How do you do?”

“We are quite well, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Beamond, though her voice wobbled on the last word. She looked at the pram. “Is that… may I?”

“Of course.” May stepped aside, and the woman bent over the baby, brushing a gloved finger across his brow.

“He is so big,” Mrs. Beamond whispered, as if afraid to disturb the air.

Mr. Beamond hovered at his wife’s elbow. “We heard that you were here, Duchess. We hoped you might have a moment to speak.”

May nodded. “Certainly. Shall we walk?”

They set off down the path, Rydal’s carriage bumping in time with their steps. For a long minute, no one spoke. It was Mrs. Beamond who broke the silence. “We received word that there would be… changes.”

May’s heart thudded. “Changes?”

The woman glanced at her husband, then at May. “About the arrangements, at least we hope. We were told you might be moving.”

May stopped dead in the path. “Moving?” The word sounded foreign on her tongue.

Mr. Beamond cleared his throat. “A house on the edge of Mayfair has been sold to the Duke of Irondale, or so we are told.”

May searched her memory, but nothing surfaced. “I… this is the first I have heard.”

Mrs. Beamond gave a little gasp. “Oh. Then you have not decided. You are not…” She broke off, shaking her head. “Forgive me. We misunderstood.”

May forced a smile. “There must be some error. I am sure the Duke meant to inform me, but…”

She trailed off, her mind racing. Why would Logan not tell me? Why would he buy a house without so much as a word?

“Perhaps it is nothing,” Mrs. Beamond said, but her disappointment was so obvious that May wanted to shrivel up and blow away on the wind.

They walked a few more steps. “Were you hoping,” May asked, “to have Rydal returned to your care?”

Mrs. Beamond began to answer, but her husband cut in. “He is your charge now, Your Grace. We would not interfere. But if there is ever a time when…” He faltered. “We only wish to be part of his life, in some way. If it is allowed.”

The woman’s eyes shimmered with tears. “We have lost so much. I thought—when we heard the news—I thought perhaps we could…”

May nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Steeling herself, she marched back toward the picnic, the problem forming in her mind with the clarity of a mathematical proof.

If Logan had bought a house and if he had not told her, it could only mean one thing—he was making arrangements for a future that did not include her.

He must have realized that she wanted something more, that her heart was not as cold as she claimed, and now he meant to cut her out of the equation.

He will not have the last word. Not this time.

She reached the picnic, where June was relating some dreadful bit of gossip to the Richfields and April was holding court with a group of matrons. May crouched beside April.

“Could I speak with you? In private, for a moment?”

April’s eyes sharpened. “Of course, darling.” She stood, smoothing her skirts, and linked arms with May. “We shall be back soon,” she called to the others.

They walked off together.

The house was too quiet.

Logan prowled its hallways, telling himself it was nothing, and that May’s absence from tea and supper was easily explained by the day’s picnic and the obligations of a new social circle.

He had told himself he was not concerned, that the missing note at luncheon and the silent, shrouded library were only quirks of a household adjusting to new rhythms.

He was lying to himself. Every hour she did not appear was a fresh needle in his skin, and the silence of her step and the absence of her voice had begun to unmoor him.

He found himself at her sitting-room door—again—and knocked, this time with no preamble. “May?”

No answer came.

He tried the handle; it turned, but the door did not yield at first. He pushed, harder, and the door swung open to reveal a room that was not quite abandoned but bore the fingerprints of a recent, hurried departure.

Her writing desk was closed, and the dressing screen was folded.

Even her slippers—normally left like punctuation marks across the rug—had been tidied away.

He stepped inside, breathing the faint trace of her perfume—roses and spice. Logan’s gut tightened, and as his eyes moved across the room, they found a note on the low table. When he unfolded it, he found it was not addressed to him, but to the nursemaid. He read it anyway.

Hall,

I will be gone for a while. Ensure that Rydal has everything he requires.

Duchess of Irondale

No sign of a return, no explanation, only the implicit abandonment—‘I will be gone for a while.’

Logan’s jaw ached from clenching. He scanned the room, looking for something that would explain it, a missing shawl or reticule, a trace of where she had gone. Nothing.

He turned on his heel and strode to the main hall. “Bexley!”

The butler appeared. “Your Grace.”

“Where is the Duchess?”

“She left this morning.”

Logan scowled. “She went to the park? Out to tea with her friends? Shopping?”

Bexley’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “She left with her belongings, Your Grace.”

Logan’s breath nearly left him, and he momentarily paced the entryway. This is ridiculous. You are behaving like a jilted schoolboy. She is your wife. She is not hiding from you. She is not running away.

Hours later, Logan realized a bitter truth. He thought of the last time he had seen her, the rigid line of her back, the way she did not look over her shoulder. He thought of the words he had meant to say but could not. I do not want to lose you.

He thought of his father, alone in the echoing estate, and the vow he had made never to become that man.

You are a fool. You had her in your hands, and you let her slip away.

For the first time since he had become the Duke of Irondale, he was afraid.

May is not coming back. And he was not sure he could bear it.