Ara supposed that Reggie was Clay’s father, the former Duke of Carlisle. Edward’s grandfather. “We would have been pleased to know him, I am sure,” she said softly. For a brief moment, she considered confessing all to Lily.
But she thought better of it and forced another bite of cold eggs into her mouth instead.
In the brightmorning light outside Harlton Hall, Clay feinted left, then struck Farleigh with a clean blow to the jaw.
Farleigh’s head snapped back, but he surprised Clay by recovering with speed and precision, delivering a blow of his own to Clay’s chin that rather stung.Damn it all to hell, either the man was getting better at sparring, or Clay was getting worse.
“You seem distracted today,” Farleigh taunted then, as if sensing the vein of Clay’s thoughts.
Distracted.
Hell yes,he was distracted.
“Distracted men are dead men,” he said neatly, sidestepping Farleigh’s next blow and landing another of his own.
Farleigh grunted. “Truer words were never spoken, sir.”
Clay swung again, but his opponent performed a neat block. Trying to oust Ara from his mind was futile. She was a part of him, like his scar, like his heart and lungs and blood. There would be no excising her now, if indeed he had ever been capable of such a thing.
No, he realized as he pivoted on his right foot and avoided another swing from Farleigh.
He had never been capable of cutting Ara from his thoughts or his heart. Even in her eight-year absence from his life, she had still been there. She had been the reason he had never found another who could own his heart. She had been the reason he had roamed. The reason he had accepted mission after mission, putting himself at risk, not having a care for whether he lived or died. She had been the reason he had never loved anyone else. The reason he had never wanted a wife or children of his own.
Because any wife he would have chosen would not have beenher.
And any child he sired would not have beenhers.
Because she had been the other half of him, always. And she still was now. Would be, forever.
She had been gone, and yet she had been the driving force. The reason behind his every decision.
A blinding pain tore through him as Farleigh’s fist connected with his eye socket.
“Sodding hell.” The epithet was torn from him. It was the second time he had allowed thoughts of Ara to distract him so thoroughly that Farleigh was able to sneak past his defenses and land a solid fist to his face.
“I beg your pardon, sir.” Farleigh sounded genuinely contrite. “I expected you to move.”
Damn it. He could not continue to go about being defeated by the men he led. It was a hell of a blow for morale for one thing and an even bigger blow to his already wounded pride for another. Here he stood, mooning over Ara so pathetically that Farleigh had planted him a facer.
His eye smarted, and he was certain it would change color on the morrow. Precisely what he needed when he was attempting to woo Ara. At least, that was what he intended to do. She had been far too eager to leave his chamber this morning, and he had been haunted by questions from the moment he had watched her hips swaying back over the threshold between their chambers just before she’d slammed the door.
“Sir?” Farleigh persisted, dragging Clay’s attention back to him and away from Ara, where it wanted to stray.
And linger.
“Aye?” He rubbed his eye, shooting his man a wry grin.
“I did not expect you to sustain the blow.”
That made two of them.
He had thought he was impervious to the forceful yet relatively unskilled fisticuffs of Farleigh. Then again, he had also fancied himself impervious to the Duchess of Burghly. The mother of his son. The only woman he had ever loved.
Ara.
It did not matter what he called her or how he thought of her, she was his every distraction. She was the reason… She was everything he wanted, everything he needed.
“Sir?”
