Chapter 9
Maxwell refrained from the urge to glance over to where Lydia was standing in a gaggle of her admirers. The last few nights, he had even stopped himself from asking anything other than whether she had enjoyed herself.
The answer had invariably been yes.
A figure sank into the chair beside him. When he glanced up, he saw Thalia, gazing appraisingly over at Lydia the same way he was trying not to.
“It must be killing you inside,” she said with a slight grin while relaxing into the chair.
Her dark curls fell about her face in a somewhat careless disarray, as though she had been running her hand through them, and he found the sight obnoxiously charming.
“What must be?”
“Her popularity.” She tapped a fingernail against the arm of her chair. “Does she know about the boxing?”
“No. No one does, as it happens.”
Thalia’s eyes flicked up to his; something startled in their depths. “No one at all?”
“No one in the ton, except for you, I suppose. Although that was more coincidence than intention.”
“What a secret,” she mused, one finger going to her mouth.
He watched the way it pressed against the soft flesh, paling the color, with what he hoped was not ravenous hunger.
He felt ravenous when it came to Thalia. None of his usual entertainments had sustained him. All he wanted was her, and it was driving him wild.
“If you had not intervened that first day, your secret would have remained safe,” she said.
“On the contrary, I have seen you several times since.”
“You could have avoided me any of those times.”
He gritted his teeth at the idea of having abandoned her to the devices of the thugs who spent their time at that place. “You ought to know by now that I am not the sort of man who would do such things.”
She pursed her lips as she looked at him. “No,” she said eventually. “I don’t believe you are. And I can hardly blame you for it, much as I sometimes wish you would leave me to my own devices.”
“So you might find yourself attacked on a street?”
“That,” she allowed with a slight smile, “was a singular case. It has never happened before…or since.”
“No, I can see it hasn’t, or you would not be sitting here with me.” He forced his hands to relax on his thighs. “Why are you here, out of interest? I am loath to assume it’s for the joy of my company.”
“I don’t know,” she said, her tone coy. “Perhaps I rather enjoyed watching you in the ring the other day. Boxing is such a fine sport, I think, although I never used to think so. Why do you do it and keep it such a secret?”
He hesitated, but when she looked at him, there was no censure in her eyes. It was as though she was actually curious.
Still, sitting in this stifling room with eyes on them and frustrated at his situation roaring through him, he felt as though he couldn’t fully articulate his reasoning.
“Walk with me,” he said abruptly, and rose. “I need some fresh air. We will stay within view of the house.”
If she was surprised by the request, she didn’t show it, merely rising and shaking out her dress. Of course, she wasn’t dismayed by this slight breach of propriety, as she regularly snuck out of her father’s home to visit disreputable clubs. This, in comparison, was nothing.
She frowned at his shoulder, then removed her glove and brushed at something on his shoulder.
As she did so, he noted that her fingers, although delicate, were not as soft and smooth as they had appeared.
Her nails were small—practical, even—and her fingertips were blunted with what he would have guessed to be some form of labor.
As though she sensed his attention, she curled her fingers into fists. He averted his gaze while she slipped her hand back into her glove.
Outside, a breeze stirred the distant trees, and London appeared shrouded in moonlight. He preferred the city at night, though it was arguably far more dangerous.
Beside him, Thalia tipped back her head to look at the moon. “I’ve always loved being outdoors,” she said dreamily. “There’s something so beautiful about the world at night.”
She was beautiful at night; the distant lamplight limned her dark hair and pale skin, and her eyes were like starlight themselves. She reminded him of a goddess somehow. Perhaps Diana, goddess of the hunt.
Although if he had his history correct, he rather hoped she was not like Diana in other ways.
Not that it should make any difference to him.
“So… tell me about boxing,” she said, glancing up at him, starry eyes full.
“Boxing,” he repeated. “I suppose you could say it has always been a means of… reprieve.”
“Mm.” They walked past a rose bush, and she brushed her gloved fingers along the petals, the movement so delicate it made something inside him stir. “An escape. I understand that, at least.”
“Do you?” The words came out too cynical for a moonlit stroll.
While her father had no doubt been a trial—the mere thought of the man made him angry—he was nothing compared to the way Maxwell’s father had been.
“Why do you think I go to the club?” she asked, a shiver of a laugh in her voice. “For the thrill of it? For business reasons? Perhaps, but also partly because it is something my father does not know about and cannot touch.”
“You value your independence,” he said.
“If I didn’t, I would be under my father’s thumb.”
A small silence fell between them, and he toyed with how much to reveal to her.
Eventually, he settled on, “Did you know I had an older brother?”
He kept his gaze straight ahead as they rounded a corner and turned back on themselves.
The exercise kept him from feeling as though he were going insane, but their surroundings made him want to pull her off the lawn and into one of the many shadowed areas so he might kiss her thoroughly the way he had once before.
But the lights from the house continued to illuminate them.
“A brother? No, I didn’t know.”
“He should have inherited. He was eight years my senior.”
Thalia slowed a little. “You never expected to become the Duke of Marrowhurst?”
Maxwell thought about the last night he had seen Christopher, the way his brother had been drunk and disorderly in his room, crying and begging Maxwell never to be like his father. Maxwell had been just sixteen, confused and afraid, but he had done what he could to soothe his brother.
It hadn’t been enough.
The next thing he knew, Christopher had ridden off into the dark and was found at the bottom of a cliff.
Everyone had presumed it to be an accident, but Maxwell knew better. He’d found proof of Joyce’s existence through letters in Christopher’s room, and discovered all about their ill-fated affair and the child Christopher had been forced to give up.
No, it could not have been an accident. Maxwell had seen his brother’s face and the devastation there. The goodbye was implicit in their last words to one another.
“I knew I was the heir from sixteen years old,” he said carefully.
“And from then, I was treated as one. But I never felt as though I fully came into the role. As a young man, I boxed with the local boys, and it was something I continued as an adult. A duke, especially one with a young lady he is chaperoning, does not box for anything more than sport. Thus, I keep my identity secret from most who attend the matches.”
“Do you like being the Duke?” she asked suddenly.
He frowned down at her. “How do you mean?”
“In the manner of being the Duke. Do you enjoy fulfilling your duties? I always assumed you did because you seem to take such pleasure from scowling and brooding in public spaces, but it sounds as though you do not enjoy it as much as I had assumed previously.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I enjoy scowling and brooding?”
“Well, it’s entirely unnecessary, so if you didn’t enjoy it, I don’t know why you would partake in so much of it.”
“I don’t brood.”
“On the contrary,” she said tartly. “You are quite the brooder. Believe me, I have seen you brood plenty over the past few weeks alone.”
He scowled at her, and she grinned at him, apparently delighted. Then, abruptly, she sobered. “You know, I had an older brother, too.”
Briefly, shock rendered him mute. “You did?”
“Adrian.” Her voice turned wistful in a way that sent a sharp pain through his chest. He recognized that longing—it was his own.
“I was never the heir, of course. I suppose he was, but he still died and left me with no one to care for me but my father. I gather you and your father did not get along?”
They had turned now, walking back up to the house, and he found himself wanting to linger there for as long as possible.
“We did not.”
“You already know my father, and I do not either. Neither did Adrian.” She sighed, her expression turning reserved.
“He protected me as much as he could, and then… he joined the army. He and my father clashed too much, and he felt as though he had to get away, however possible. He wanted to live a life of honor, in contrast to our father. That I understand, but…” She swallowed.
“He died in the war. I was eighteen years old, about to enter London for the first time, and the one person I had trusted to guide me was gone.”
He had assumed, erroneously, that her upbringing had been far easier than his; he had been wrong. The raw grief in her eyes proved that.
“That’s why I came to you myself,” she continued. “When I asked you to cancel the wedding. I had never chosen the match, and you must understand, it had nothing to do with you.”
“I know,” he said.
At the time of their engagement, they had not known each other. She could not have disliked him so much as the prospect of marrying a stranger, and that he could understand.
She stopped in an inky pool of darkness beside a tree, hidden in part by the house. They were skirting the very edge of propriety, and although he shouldn’t, he wanted to push her all the way past it.
Or rather, he wanted to offer his hand and have her accept; he wanted her to choose to step past it.