She turned back to the window, looking upon the busyness of the street below, and tried to ignore the pang the notion of his departure left in her heart. He had not even been here for one day, and he had already torn the fragile peace she had erected in the wake of Freddie’s death asunder.
Ara shivered again, but it wasn’t from the undeniable chill in the air. And no fire in a grate could quell it.
She was beneathClay’s skin. In his blood. Like a contagion. She had been another man’s wife. The reminder had been a harsh but necessary rebuke. She carried a lock of her husband’s hair, pinned with pride to the mourning weeds she wore in his honor.
He had never been her husband. He had been her lover. Her secret. Ultimately, her shame. The man she had rejected. The man she had marked forever.
Clay stalked down the main hall of Burghly House. It was not the finest home he had ever been inside, and nor was he unaccustomed to opulence and wealth. He had lived in a home that was larger, grander, and more ostentatious than this one. But that had been a lifetime ago, when he had believed he would ever have a hope of being perceived as something more than his father’s bastard son.
The son to be pitied.
The son to be reviled.
The one who would never be good enough. Who would never quite be able to rise above the ignominy of his birth. To the polite world, it did not matter that Leo’s mother’s marriage with their father had been loveless and arranged or that Clay’s mother had been their father’s true love. Love was not good enough when it came to the quality, and it was a lesson Clay had learned as a lad but one that nevertheless ached like an old wound—like his bloody scar—even after all these years.
But Ara’s scorn burned hotter than all the fires of condemnation combined.
He wanted to hate her, but her tremor had reminded him that she was only human, all too fallible. What he actually hated was the cold that touched her. The fear that infected her. Despite her icy hauteur, he had seen the terror in her eyes.
He wanted her to be warm.
Even though he should not. Even though he had told himself, as his gaze caught on the lock of her dead husband’s hair she displayed above her heart—the heart that should have been his, damn it—that he would not do as she bid, he knew he could not leave her to the chill.
He located a footman dressed in the distinctive Burghly livery of scarlet coat and black trousers and stopped the young man. “You will build a fire in the drawing room. Her Grace is chilled.”
The fellow bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“Mr. Ludlow,” he corrected, for he knew his place here. He was not, and nor would he ever be a lord. He was a commoner. A baseborn bastard. He was the brawn, the fighter, and the killer. He was not what Ara had chosen. He was not a duke. He was the darkness. The reflection of what a duke could never be.
He was nobody’s duke.
“Of course, sir,” the footman said, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously in his throat.
“Why do you tarry, lad?” he barked. “Attend your duties at once.”
“Yes, Mr. Ludlow.” The footman bowed again and fairly fled in the direction of the drawing room.
It occurred to him that he had yet to interrogate the staff. He needed to make certain none of them would pose a danger to Ara. If the Fenians had managed to either plant themselves amongst the ranks of the Burghly House domestics or sway a domestic already in her employ in some fashion, it could prove ruinous. This house was to be their stronghold.
She had to be safe here.
Hehad to keep her safe here.
He followed the lad, doing what he had sworn he would not. She bid the footman enter at his knock, and Clay stepped back over the threshold. Back into her realm. She stood at the window once more, her back a stiff, elegant line, her wasp waist more pronounced by the sweeping train pooling in a fall of silk and ribbon around her. Glittering jet ornamentation called attention to the graceful column of her throat, the carefully wrought upsweep of her copper curls.
Why did he recall how soft those curls had been when they had fallen to her waist, when they had brushed over his bare chest? He did not want to remember. He wished to hell with everything in him he could forget. That he could remove the memories of the stolen moments they had shared a lifetime ago, but they were as intrinsic to him as his organs, and they would not part from him.
“You are here to build a fire, I presume,” she said coolly, without bothering to turn to face the person who had entered.
By God, had she not listened to a word of the stern warnings he had just issued? There were murderers who wanted to slaughter her just as they had the duke, and she did not even look to see who had intruded upon her solitude.
“Yes,” he bit out grimly, a heated surge of anger rising in him at her lack of regard for her own safety. Was she daft, foolish, or merely defying him out of spite?
His voice pried her from her vigil. Her eyes were wide when they collided with his, her expression startled until she quickly replaced all emotion with her customary hauteur. Who was this stranger she had become? Every inch of her was a duchess.
Her face remained the same, but beyond that he could not recognize even a hint of the Ara he had known. Of course, that Ara had proved a lie.
“Why have you returned, Mr. Ludlow?” she demanded in a frigid tone.
