Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“You’re the one who’s going to need one.”
No words a man wanted to hear. “Why? Did something happen with Peregrine?”
Drake shook his head. “He’s still trussed up like a chicken in the dungeon.”
“Good. Let him stew.” He turned the paper over, examining it. “So what is it?”
“News from Dare. Came this morning.”
Tension coiled. The Earl of Dare. Drake’s cousin. Given his brother’s face, this wouldn’t be good. Still, he unfolded the parchment, eyes skimming.
And stopped.
Then read it again.
His eyes lifted to Drake. “What am I looking at?”
“The client list of the solicitor, Fitz.”
John bloody Fitz.
“And?” There was no Turner. That didn’t mean much. She could be someone’s family. But he dismissed the idea as soon as it entered his mind. Who would send family off to live alone in a place like Brighton, running a candle shop?
“Balfour.”
Maxen’s gaze flicked to his brother before dropping to the last name on the list. He went cold. “It says here Earl of Balfour?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the connection?” Don’t bloody say family.
“Daughter. But the late earl, not the current one.”
Family.
Nobility.
Aristocracy.
A chill spread throughout his blood. “You sure?” His brother hesitated. “Since you didn’t think to add your cousin’s letter with this, just spit it out.”
“The Earl of Balfour had a daughter named Calliope.”
Maxen stilled.
“She went missing just over three months ago. Her stepmother has been frantic searching for her.”
“Dare discovered this?”
“He has a man who is friendly with a household maid. The earl’s daughter went missing before she could come out to society.”
Maxen stared at the name like it might rearrange itself into something less disagreeable. Of course, it didn’t.
“You good?” Drake asked.
He wasn’t. Not in the slightest. “It might not be her.” But even as he said the words, he knew they the question was shite. Hadn’t she admitted her real name was not Turner? But then, she hadn’t given her real one either.
You didn’t want it.
Hell and damnation.
Drake blew out a breath. “You think she’s here to spy?”
“No.” Final. Absolute.
“Maxen—”
“I don’t know what she’s doing here,” Maxen snapped. He tossed the list back to his brother. “But she’s not a damn spy.”
“I don’t need to remind you what happens when we cross paths with aristocracy. Or have you forgotten our father? Or uncle? Or the Duke of Mortimer?”
Maxen sneered. “You don’t have to bloody remind me of that.” His own mother had been the third daughter of an earl, cast out after her affair with his father and birthing a child out of wedlock.
Drake sighed.
“Balfour,” he repeated under his breath, like the syllables themselves were poison. “She’s a bloody lady.”
“A runaway lady, if it makes a difference.”
“It doesn’t.” His chest was tight. Hell, his whole body was. He couldn’t bloody breathe. “She was supposed to be a girl with a shop and a dog and a secret. Not this.”
Drake didn’t say anything. Just leaned against the edge of the desk and waited.
Maxen’s jaw ached from clenching, temples starting to throb. The gloves were too tight. His clothes were too tight. His damn skin.
She’d been in his home. In his arms.
He’d kissed her like she was his.
A blue-blooded noble.
Christ.
It meant disregard. It meant games. It meant the kind of people who stepped over bodies in the street and still made speeches about order.
His hands curled at his sides. “She might not be like them.” Bloody hell. Even he could hear the desperation in that. He was done for. Damn well done for. Because while he hated the fact that she was part of that life, he didn’t hate her. He could never hate her.
He bloody lo—
“You look at her like she’d just handed you your heart back.”
Maxen froze.
“I don’t.” Look. Like that.
He thought of the way she’d looked at him—wide-eyed and flushed, lips parted. Like she hadn’t meant for that night to happen but still decided to claim it for herself. Like it undid her as much as it undid him.
She hadn’t seemed like a lady then. She’d seemed like a girl on the edge of something thrilling and petrifying. Just like he was.
“Maybe she’s hiding,” he muttered. Clinging.
That was what he was doing, was it not? Clinging.
He rubbed the back of his neck and turned away.
Damn Drake for witnessing him like this.
Damn himself for letting her get close enough that the truth now almost tasted like bitter betrayal.
A part of him didn’t want to care. Not about her reasons. Not about her past.
But that didn’t change what was already unfurling in his damn chest.
“What else do we know?” he asked, voice rough.
Drake nodded toward the letter. “Not much. Balfour hasn’t filed anything. No bounties. No inquiry. But Dare says the girl was supposed to marry some viscount.”
Maxen’s head snapped up. “She’s betrothed?”
“Don’t know, but whatever it was, the match fell apart with her disappearance. That’s the last known detail.”
He pressed a fist against his chest.
Christ. A lady. One with secrets and a fake name and damn it. He still wanted to kiss her again. Claim her again.
What was he if not a fool?
She wasn’t just a woman with a hidden past anymore. She was everything he’d been taught to hate growing up. And she still looked at him like he was worth something.
Him.
A monster.
But still he wanted her. Wanted to understand her. Wanted to know why someone with titles and wealth and whatever privilege came with being a bloody earl’s daughter had ended up hiding behind a shop. He wanted to believe that their night together hadn’t been a mistake.
But was it?
Everything he felt for her—this confounding longing, need, protectiveness, want—felt like a betrayal of his world. Of children born in gutters. Of men and women who starved while nobles grew fat off taxes and tariffs.
She was one of them. Even if she didn’t look like it.
“So, what now?” Drake asked.
Maxen didn’t answer.
He didn’t know.
He hated lies. Deception. And he didn’t want to believe her capable of either. But promises were only as good as the people who made them, so he couldn’t rule out betrayal. He only hoped to God he was wrong. He needed to be wrong.