Of all the inconvenient times.
They stared, locked in a battle of wills.
“Youwillask permission here, Mr. Ludlow,” she said suddenly, her eyes deepening to a stormy blue as she took him to task as if he were a recalcitrant youth. “Burghly House is my domain.”
“I will never humble myself before you,” he gritted, for if she expected him to bow and scrape to her, she would have an eternity to wait.
He was not her servant. Nor was she his better, though she may think it. He had spent the eight years since he had last seen her building himself into the man he was. She had not robbed him of his dignity or his desire to become something more than the bastard son of a duke, though she had tried.
“Then your time here shall be fraught with difficulty, I am afraid.” The curt edge to her voice could have sliced open the flesh of a weaker man, making him bleed.
She did not know who he was, what he had become. To her, he was still the young man she had known, the hopeful dreamer who had been about to have his naïveté so ruthlessly crushed. He would tell her now, because he wanted her to fear him. He wanted her to maintain her distance so he would not be forced to look upon her or speak to her. So he would not be reminded of how much he had loved her and how perfectly her body had fitted to his.
He laughed, allowing the blackest part of himself to bubble forth. “Do you imagine, my dear Duchess, that I have been charged with your protection from Fenian cutthroats because I am the sort of man who would be cowed by a tiny, harmless female such as yourself? I could break you in half with my bare hands without exerting an effort. You are like a butterfly flitting about the head of a lion, madam. Spare yourself the embarrassment of attempting to best me, for it will only end in your obliteration beneath my paw.”
“It is true then, what Carlisle said.” Her expression lost its frosty lines of disapproval, softening with shock. “You are a hired killer for the Crown.”
He did not deny her statement, for it was futile. He was not what she accused him of being. Not precisely. The truth was far murkier. He was sometimes spy, sometimes assassin, other times guard. “I am not a man with whom you should tangle.” And he had tarried far too long, speaking to her, clashing verbal swords, lingering in her charmed presence, breathing in her rarified air. “Now, shall I carry His Grace to the nursery?”
Ara stared at him without responding. Perhaps it was the newness of hearing her son referred to by his title. Perhaps she was repulsed by the notion of the acts Clay had committed. By what he had become.
The thought should not rankle, but it did.
He frowned, needing to be free of her troublesome presence as expeditiously as possible. “Madam?” he prodded. “What shall I do with the lad?”
She blinked. “I shall carry him to the nursery myself if you will remove him from your…from within.”
She could not even bring herself to speak the wordchamberaloud before him. Did he disgust her that much? Was it the memory of the acts of passion they had committed together that so repelled her?
Or was it that she did not trust herself in the same way he did not? Did she feel the old hunger that had ruled them both so long ago? If he touched her cheek, would the memories haunting him claim her as well?
He would never know.
He did not need to know.
For he had a task at Burghly House, and rekindling the madness he had once shared with the now-widowed duchess was not it.
He offered her a mocking bow and then returned to his apartments, finding the lad still sleeping soundly. For a moment, he stood, taking in the boy’s innocent face, relaxed in slumber. The poor lad had been through a great deal of trauma, not only losing his father, but the grisly manner in which it had occurred. The hard angles inside Clay rounded and softened in a way he did not want and could not like as he looked upon the boy.
Shaking himself free of maudlin sentiment, he gently lifted Ara’s son into his arms, ignoring the disturbed mewl Sherman gave him at having his slumber interrupted. The lad did not wake, instead curling his warm little body against Clay in blind trust. What would it be like, he wondered, to hold a child in his arms that was his own? To be the protector and defender of his own flesh and blood?
He had not thought about having a child of his own for years now—not since Ara—and perhaps her return to his life was responsible for the odd sense of loss infecting his chest just now. The tightness in his throat. The strange prickling on the back of his neck. This boy, sleepy and warm, his body too long for his years, was Ara’s son. A part of her.
And as much as he told himself he hated her for what had happened between them, he somehow still felt a connection to this child. A surge of protectiveness broke free inside him, and his palm flattened over the lad’s back, gently patting as if to offer comfort.
Swallowing, Clay tamped down the inexplicable surge of emotion and strode from the chamber, the lad still asleep by the time he reached his censorious mother waiting in the hall. Her mouth pinched into a line of deeper condemnation as she opened her arms and attempted to rescue her son from Clay.
“I will carry him, Your Grace,” he informed her, easily stalking past her.
The lad was lean and lanky, but he was heavier than he looked, and the chances of Ara managing to haul him to the nursery without collapsing en route were unlikely. He would not have her falling over or dropping the boy to spare her pride. The stubborn woman would simply have to accept his help.
“Mr. Ludlow, I demand you give me my son,” she called breathlessly, chasing after him like a hen pecking at his heels.
“Your demand is noted, madam,” he drawled softly, “and denied.”
“He ismyson,” she charged, hurrying her pace so she walked alongside him. “You have no right to flout my authority.”
“Recall my earlier words to you Duchess,” he hissed. “Now do hush unless you wish to wake the boy.”
