Dash shouldered past Hawk and marched out of the room, boots striking hard against the marble floor.
Upstairs, he barked for a bath. The order was half impulse, half necessity. He needed the scalding water. Perhaps he could drown the memory of her hands in his hair, the taste of her still lingering on his mouth. At the very least it might wash away the image he’d seen in the mirror: a man facing defeat.
His valet hesitated at the doorframe, as though tempted to comment on his employer’s present circumstances.
“Not a word,” Dash snapped. He raked a hand through his disheveled hair. “Not a single, bloody word.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Edwards bowed low and withdrew at once, leaving Dash to the solitude he’d demanded.
Closing his eyes, his sister’s worried eyes came back to him—and then Hawk’s pity. Two people who wanted only the best for him, who, he had no doubt, would do anything for him.
But they did not know how important this was to him, how important she was.
He could not imagine defeat. He would not.
Three days. Three days, and then he would have his answer.
If she turned from him then, if she chose another… he would have no choice but to walk away.
Even so—Dieu me pardonne—he could not leave without saying goodbye.
After wallowing, waiting, enduring, for two long days, Dash could no longer stand his own company. The entire household, it seemed, was taking pains to avoid him. It was what he’d asked for—and likely for their own preservation—but the silence had grown unbearable.
He’d tried going over estate reports, but the numbers swam uselessly before his eyes.
He’d stepped into his own garden, only to find it already in perfect condition, each bed neat, each border trimmed, offering him no excuse to lose himself in labor.
Only Ambrosia’s hothouse called to him still, needing a few final touches—and the table he’d sent crashing to the ground in a fit of temper required mending.
He would not knock on her door. He would not make himself known.
At least there he could put his hands to something tangible.
He’d given it his all. If she chose to throw true love away for something fleeting with Ashbourne Covington, then that was her choice.
But it wasn’t really about Grimm. It was about the past.
Dash could not force her to trust him.
Hell, he’d lied to her, if only by omission, from the moment they’d met.
But everything else had been real. He’d been more himself than he’d ever been with any woman. He had been real.
They had been real.
Dash closed the iron gate behind him and made his way to the back of the house. Already the place felt hollow, stripped of sound and presence.
The rhythm of work was all that kept him steady. The rasp of the file against wood, the beat of the hammer pounding steel, a steady counterpoint to the storm inside him.
The toppled table taking shape again beneath his hands—an object that could be mended, unlike the rest of his world.
He had stripped off his shirt more than an hour ago; sweat slicked his skin, his hair stood in unruly tufts, and mud stained the knees of his breeches.
“Dasborough?”
The call broke through his focus. Dash straightened, breath dragging, and saw his old schoolmate limping toward him—Ambrosia’s dog clutched awkwardly under one arm.
“Grimm.”
