Chapter 22
The wheels hammered a steady rhythm beneath the carriage, a dull percussion that should have lulled Blaise into distraction, but it did not. Every jolt seemed to yank his thoughts back to Iris and the way she moaned his name.
How he longed to see her body, squirming with desire for him again.
Concentrate, Blaise.
He instantly snapped out of it. The month was over, and as much as Iris haunted his mind, so did Daniel’s smug voice.
It was as if the man had taken up residence in some dark corner and refused to be evicted.
Blaise and Marcus may have to face the court within the month, and everything could be tossed into the pit for the sake of a title.
“Are we nearly there?” Blaise called his driver.
“Yes, Your Grace!”
Blaise looked out the window and watched the Oxford spires rise in the distance as the road dipped.
He had delayed this visit as long as he dared, convincing himself that Marcus needed time and space without his uncle looming over him.
Now, each day he had granted began to feel less like kindness and more like cowardice.
“We have arrived, Your Grace,” the driver announced.
Blaise descended with more impatience than grace. He did not bother smoothing his coat, nor did he care if the dons and undergraduates stared at the scar.
“I am here for Marcus Vale,” Blaise spoke to the front desk person in a voice that brooked no delay, and after a flurry of bows and uncertain looks, the harried young man led him through echoing corridors that smelled of ink, coal smoke, and boyish arrogance.
He brought him at last to a narrow stair and a door at its top. The guide muttered, “I will leave Your Grace to it.” He bowed and vanished, leaving Blaise alone outside a room.
Blaise knocked like an uncle short on time, and the door opened a heartbeat later.
Marcus filled the frame like someone who had never fully grown into his height. He had broad shoulders like all the Vale men, and he was all limbs and awkwardness. With his hair in stubborn disarray like Blaise’s, he could easily be mistaken for his son.
“Marcus,” he said his name like a greeting.
Blaise noticed that a book was tucked under Marcus’s arm, and his thumb still held its place. His eyes flickered with annoyance.
“Uncle.”
“Are you going to let me in, or shall we conduct this visit on the landing, for the entertainment of your neighbors?”
Marcus stepped back without protest, though the set of his jaw was already tense.
The room was narrower than Blaise had expected, but neat in a way that showed Marcus’s own effort rather than any servant’s.
Books were stacked everywhere, some carefully shelved, others precariously balanced on the desk, and a single window looked out over a quadrangle.
Blaise shut the door behind him.
“If you have come,” Marcus said, even before Blaise could turn, “to keep trying to convince me that I deserve the title, you are wasting your time. And mine. And likely the time of several unfortunate horses.”
“And here I thought you would at least pretend to be pleased to see me.” Blaise leaned a shoulder against the wall, crossing his arms. “You might have offered me a chair. Or a drink. I swear, boys these days—”
“You are not a guest,” Marcus shot back. “You are...”
“Family?” Blaise supplied.
“A complication.”
Blaise let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “That, at least, is honest.”
Marcus set the book down heavily on the desk. “You said you would give me time.”
“I did.” Blaise’s voice was mild. “And I have. Unfortunately, Daniel is not inclined to wait while you sort through your every feeling on the matter.”
“I do not need to sort through anything.” Marcus turned to face him fully, arms braced on the back of the chair as if holding himself in place.
“You keep asking the same thing, and I keep answering the same way. There is no evidence that my father married my mother. None whatsoever. You can say ‘you are legitimate’ until your tongue withers, but that will not magically create a wedding certificate into existence.”
Blaise’s fingers flexed where they rested against his sleeve. “I am not relying on magic,” he said. “Only on the tedious workings of truth.”
Marcus gave a short, harsh laugh. “After the lawsuit becomes public, even if by some miracle we find proof, it will be too late. They will have read the news, and I will be branded a bastard forever. Whatever parchment you produce after will be a mere footnote, not a salvation.”
“What they say,” Blaise replied, choosing each word with care, “and what you are, are not the same thing.”
“That is a fine sentiment,” Marcus said coldly. “Perhaps you can embroider it on a cushion. I daresay the London ladies would find it soothing.”
Blaise suppressed an exasperated smile. “I would pay a shocking amount to see you present any cushion to a woman.”
A reluctant flicker pulled at Marcus’s mouth, but it was gone almost at once.
“You are not listening. The ton loves a scandal too much to relinquish it. They will say that I am a bastard, and then they will say I am a bastard who tried to pretend he was not. It will be twice the humiliation.”
Blaise held his nephew’s gaze for a moment, then stepped away from the wall and moved to the desk, where a pile of neglected letters rested beneath an open treatise on Roman law.
“Perhaps I should begin with something smaller than the entire edifice of your identity. At least come to the party.”
“I beg your pardon?” Marcus stared at him as if he had suggested attending a public beheading for amusement.
“The party I am planning at the end of the week,” Blaise clarified. “At Knoxford. It will be a modest affair.” His mouth twisted. “By our standards, which means the ton will be there in force, half of them curious about my face, the other half curious about my sins. I would like you to be present.”
“So you can put me on display?” Marcus scoffed.
“I would like to ensure that when Daniel makes his move, you are not a half-forgotten nephew tucked away in Oxford, but a man people have met and spoken with and quite possibly liked. It is harder for society to devour someone whose hand they have shaken.”
“You overestimate their stomachs,” Marcus muttered venomously.
“You underestimate the power of being known.”
Marcus gave him a look that might have bordered on mutinous amusement if he were not so determined to be offended. “I do not want anything to do with the ton. Those people—”
“Those people might save you. Even the viscountess is trying to help you.”
Marcus glanced aside, his fingers tightening on the back of the chair. “Why is she wasting her time?”
Blaise allowed himself the smallest, inward satisfaction. “You recall her, then. The viscountess.”
“Yes, she was… quite nice,” Marcus admitted and shrugged. “Considering the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Blaise frowned at the boy, and he looked at him smugly.
“What, with you barging into her house and threatening to throw her out.”
“What a brutal word. I merely informed her of the law.”
Blaise thought of Iris’s defiant chin and how that same chin had tilted up in the shadows of their privacy, not in defiance but in her throes of passion.
“That did not happen in the way you imply,” Blaise continued defensively. “She is a difficult woman to simply just… throw out.”
Marcus watched him with a perceptive stillness that always made Blaise feel, absurdly, as if he were the one being examined.
“I liked her,” Marcus said at last. “She spoke to me as if I were not a child. Or a problem. Or a charity case. That was—”
He broke off with a small shrug, as if aware he was admitting too much.
“That was?” Blaise pushed him gently.
Marcus’s mouth flattened. “You know what it was.”
“Then perhaps you might like to see her again?” Blaise straightened, letting his tone turn careless.
“She will be at the party. As will other eligible young women. And quite possibly some family we have not seen in a while,” he added, as if tossing in some minor information.
“Unfortunately, the viscountess’s charming niece, Lady Pamela, I believe, is only seventeen now, and her debut is next year. ”
“Who is that?” Marcus’s expression did not soften as Blaise had half expected; if anything, he seemed more wary. “And young women being paraded at parties in the hopes of catching a husband among the starving wolves of the peerage is not very noble.”
Blaise’s brows rose. “Be careful, you are speaking just like your father.”
“You did not need to bring him up,” Marcus said. “The peerage is corrupt anyhow. You know that better than anyone. You have spent half your life avoiding being a proper lord because of it.”
“And I spent the other half becoming precisely the sort of man they cannot ignore,” Blaise replied. “You grew up watching the worst of them, and I grant you that. But it is a larger world than the few cowards and hypocrites you have met.”
Marcus folded his arms, mirroring Blaise’s earlier posture. “The good dukes, you mean? Are we back to that phrase?”
“Careful,” Blaise said, “or I shall embroider that one on another cushion.” He let the quip land lightly, then allowed the humor to fade.
“Marcus. Come. You do not have to dance. You do not have to flirt with anyone. You can stand in a corner and glower at me all night, if that pleases you. But be there.”
“Why?” Marcus demanded. “If everything goes as you say, I will not be a duke. You do not even want to be a duke. Why do we care what any of them think?”
“Because Daniel seeks to destroy us,” Blaise answered simply. “And I will not have you walk into that battle unarmed.”
“If it is my battle,” Marcus said quietly. “Why are you fighting it?”
Blaise stilled. The remark was not petulant; it landed with the dull certainty of something rehearsed in countless solitary hours. “How can I not fight for you, Marcus?”
Marcus stared at the floorboards, as if the answers were written there. “My father might have abandoned me,” he said carefully, “but that is not your burden to carry.”
Blaise let out a slow breath through his nose. “That is not quite how it works.”
“It is exactly how it works,” Marcus said, looking up sharply.
“He made his choices. He did not visit me, nor did he write. He did not even acknowledge me. You did all those things, had no obligation, and did them anyway. That does not mean you now have to break yourself trying to fix what he never bothered to begin.”
“You think this is about fixing his mistakes?” Blaise asked.
“Yes,” Marcus said bluntly. “You forget I watched this family, too. From the edges, perhaps, but I am not blind.”
Blaise’s hand curled around the edge of the desk, the wood biting into his palm. “I appreciate your keen analysis of my psyche,” he said dryly. “But I do not agree with all of it.”
“You do not have to agree for it to be true.”
“Marcus.” Blaise took a step nearer, close enough now to see the faint shadows beneath the young man’s eyes and the tightness at his mouth that spoke of nights spent awake, thinking too much. “Do you care to know how your father died?”
Marcus flinched.
“No, not particularly.”
“That is a lie.”
His nephew’s eyes flashed. “I know that he was hunting. Like the good duke he was meant to be, and I know that there was an accident. I do not see what further details would accomplish now.”
“Nevertheless, I am offering to give you the full story.”
“And I am declining.” Marcus’s voice sharpened. “That is your memory, not mine. Keep it. I have enough of my own.”
Blaise pressed his lips together. He had pictured this moment a dozen ways during the journey, but now the words cut his throat, sharp as glass.
“You are at Oxford,” he said instead, each syllable feeling like a strategic retreat, “because your father made sure to provide for you.”
Marcus scoffed, grateful for the easier topic. “No. I am at Oxford because you convinced him. Do not pretend otherwise. He did not wake up one morning, wracked with paternal concern. He cared enough to sign what you put before him. That is all.”
“Sometimes, that is what caring looks like. It is imperfect and inadequate, but it is not nothing.”
“You would defend him until your last breath. I wonder what he did to deserve such loyalty.” Marcus shook his head as if he were disappointed.
“He was my brother.”
“You are insufferable,” Marcus said. “But I am… grateful for it, occasionally.” His jaw flexed. “That does not mean you must wear his sins like a cloak. Or mine.”
Blaise’s breath caught. There it was again, the haunting clarity that pierced through Marcus’s defensive disdain, leaving behind something raw and simple.
His tongue felt heavy. He saw Benjamin’s body collapsing into the leaves once more, and he remembered Marcus’s eyes, dry as stone, when he was told that his father was gone.
Say it, some part of him urged. Give him the truth and be done with it.
His mouth opened.
“Come to the party,” he heard himself say instead.
Marcus stared. “Were you listening to anything I just—”
“Yes.” Blaise cut him off gently. “I heard you. I am choosing, in this instance, to be stubborn rather than obedient. Come to the party, Marcus.”
Marcus braced his hands on the back of the chair again, head bowed. The posture was weary rather than defiant now. “You will not relent.”
“Rarely,” Blaise agreed. “It is one of my more charming qualities.”
“You think you are charming?” Marcus laughed humorlessly.
“I know I am charming. Ask half of London.”
Marcus’s mouth twitched.
“If I agree to come, I make no promises to be agreeable. I am not going to be paraded like a prize bull. And I will not—”
“You will be my guest,” Blaise said. “Nothing more or less. Do you trust me that far?”
Marcus’s answer was almost instantaneous. “Yes.”
It landed between them with surprising weight. Blaise’s chest tightened around it. He nodded, allowing himself no more reaction than that. “Then come. That is all I ask.”
Marcus breathed out slowly. “I will think about it.”
“For you, that is progress,” Blaise said.
“Do not sound so pleased with yourself,” Marcus retorted.
Blaise smiled faintly as his hand found the latch, then he froze and looked back. “If, at some point, you decide you do care to know more about your father… ask me. I will not volunteer another word uninvited. But I will not lie to you.”
Marcus’s throat worked again. He nodded once. “I know.”
“Good.” Blaise opened the door, and the corridor’s chill crept in around the edges as he stepped out.