He became aware of other things in the room now. A gathering of people was at the door, staring at him like he was a monster. He looked down at himself. His jacket had blood on it, his waistcoat, even his cravat. And his hand hurt. His knuckles had split open sometime during the relentless assault, and they bled just like Sir Archibald’s face bled.
“Lydia,” he whispered. His ears began to ring as he looked at her horrified expression to his knuckles to Sir Archibald’s swelling face. And a wave of horror overcame him.
He was out of control. He was violent. He was everything he’d always fought not to be.
In that horrible moment, he was his father.
Adelaide all but pushed Graham into her little carriage, and he didn’t resist. She had never seen anyone like he was in that moment, blank, numb, mechanical. He staggered against the carriage seat and leaned there, staring straight ahead as she gave a quick direction to her driver, climbed in across from him and the vehicle began to move.
She looked at her seat beside her and flinched. Her Adelaide gown was sitting there, waiting for her. She always changed in her carriage on the way home. It was a thirty-minute drive, long enough to transform herself back into Adelaide from Lydia.
If Graham recognized the gown…
But he continued to stare at nothing, his silence and the pain on his handsome face keeping her from worrying about anything but him. She drew a deep breath and gently moved to the opposite side of the vehicle beside him.
“Graham,” she said softly.
He jolted a little, like he’d forgotten she was there. He turned his gaze down toward her and his vision cleared slightly.
“Lydia,” he whispered, and his voice was like nothing she’d ever heard before. “I’m sorry.”
Tears flooded her eyes as she stared at him. This man wasbroken. Not broken like everyone thought he’d been after the betrayal of the Duke of Crestwood. This was something different. Something deeper. This was something she doubted he had ever allowed any other person to see, even those friends who he loved so deeply.
This was a glimpse into the soft underbelly of a man who was nothing but muscle and bone and sinew.Thiswas what he fought to hide.
She saw it all. And she knew it was a gift. Not one he meant to give, perhaps, but a gift nonetheless. That it was given to Lydia, someone who wasn’t real…that was something to be faced another day.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” she soothed him. “You came to my aid. You saved me.”
He shook his head slowly. “I saw him hurting you and I went…blank. I went back in time.” His voice broke and he turned away from her to stare back out the window. She didn’t push. Not yet. She just reached across and took his hand, resting it in her lap as she smoothed her fingertips across his damaged knuckles.
The rest of the ride was silent. She wanted so much to talk to him, to press him, but she didn’t. Not in her carriage. It didn’t feel safe to do it here. She waited until they stopped in front of Graham’s big townhouse. The same place where he’d made love to her so sweetly.
Now she stepped out of the carriage and turned back, holding out her hand to him as she ignored the servants who came rushing to help. He took her hand, staring down at her with an intensity that was sudden and powerful. She forced herself to hold that stare, praying he would see her support, her trustworthiness.
Praying he wouldn’t see a fact that had become very clear to her the moment he rushed into the room to save her. She was beginning to care for this man. Deeply. Powerfully. She feared how strong those feelings were, especially considering the dangerous line she was treading between reality and fiction.
One Graham didn’t even know existed.
“Come,” she said as they moved toward the house together.
His butler hurried down the steps as they moved toward the front door, and she could see from the look of surprise and concern on the stern man’s face that he was as stricken by the expression of his master as she was. “Your Grace?”
Graham lifted his gaze slightly. “It’s fine, Rogers. I’m…I’m fine. Mrs. Ford will assist me.”
The butler’s gaze came to her and she met his eyes. It was almost impossible to do so, knowing what he would see. Knowing what he’d judge her as. But he merely nodded. “May I…may I do anything, Mrs. Ford?”
She smiled at his kindness and his loyalty to Graham. “I’ll need some towels,” she said softly. “Perhaps a bit of whiskey.”
“Yes, miss,” he said with another quick nod before he stepped off to arrange everything.
“I don’t want whiskey,” Graham said as they started up the stairs together toward his room. She recalled every step toward it from the last time they’d been there. What a very different walk that had been, with charged excitement in the air around them.
“It isn’t to drink,” she said softly as she opened his chamber door and led him in. “Your knuckles are injured. I’ll clean the wounds with some whiskey.”
He staggered toward the fire, shrugging out of his jacket as he did so. He dropped it behind him without looking and then went to work on his waistcoat. She heard him suck in breath through his teeth, and she moved toward him.
“Let me,” she whispered. “Your hands are bruised.”
