She reached him in a few steps and touched his bicep to turn him. She felt the muscle tighten beneath her fingers and he stared down at her, expression unreadable as she lifted her hands to unfasten his buttons. He caught her fingers before she could.
“I’m bloody,” he ground out. “I don’t want to…to sully you with what I did tonight.”
She shook her head. “There is no sullying, Graham.” She shook his grip off and unfastened his waistcoat. He was right, there was blood on the fabric and the buttons. She winced as it slid across her skin, proof of the violence that had brought this man to his knees in a way she’d never expected.
Men fought all the time, didn’t they? But Graham had lost control. This was the consequence. She didn’t understand it. But she was terrified of it.
When the buttons were parted, he pulled the vest away. She would have gone to work on his cravat and his shirt, but there was a light knock at the door. She turned away from him and moved to answer, finding Rogers there with a tray containing a pitcher of water, a bottle of whiskey and a pile of small towels.
“Will there be anything else?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
He glanced past her into the room, his face drawn with concern, but then he nodded and she closed the door. She moved to the table beside Graham’s window and set the items there, then filled the small basin on another table with the clean water. She took a towel and dipped it into the water. As she turned toward him, she found he had already managed out of his bloody shirt on his own and had dropped it with the rest.
She caught her breath, taken in by how beautiful he was, just as she had been the last time she’d been here with him. Tonight, though, his expression was far different. Gone was the predatory, confident, sensual man who would seduce her.
And what was left was something painful, someone she very much wanted to console and protect and heal.
“Come here,” she said, motioning to the chair beside the table.
He did as she asked, sinking into the chair and watching as she lifted one hand and began to gently wash the combination of his blood and Sir Archibald’s away. He winced as she did so, but didn’t try to pull away or stop him.
“I hit Simon,” he said softly after a silence that had seemed to stretch out forever.
She lifted her gaze to him, searching his face with renewed concern. “No, darling. Not Simon. You hit Sir Archibald, it wasn’t your friend.”
Graham shook his head slowly. “Not tonight. I-I hit Simon when I found him with Meg. I broke his nose. Like Archibald’s. I looked down tonight and I saw Simon’s face for a moment and I thought—”
He cut himself off and jerked his hand from her grip before he got up and paced away from her. The muscles in his shoulders rippled as he dragged a hand through his hair, freeing it from the queue so it fell around his handsome face.
She clenched her hands in her lap, willing herself not to get up, not to go to him. To just let him speak. She could feel the dam of whatever he held inside straining. It was bound to break. At least with her…with Lydia…he would be safe.
She would make certain of it.
“I think you could be forgiven for punching Simon after how he betrayed you,” she said softly.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “It wasn’t that I hit him. It was that this…thing rose up in me. This…thing. This angry, cruel, out of control thing. I reined it in that day, but tonight I couldn’t. Tonight it broke free. If you hadn’t caught my arm, Lydia, I would have killed that man. I wouldn’t have stopped until he was dead.”
She rose at last, setting the bloody cloth back into the basin before she took a tentative step toward him. He flinched even at that barest movement so she stilled immediately. She drew in a few breaths, fighting for calm because she knew he needed it.
“Graham, you stopped him from attacking me,” she said.
“I could have thrown him off of you and stopped him,” Graham said. “I may have grabbed him for the good and honorable reason of staying his attack, but I pummeled him because I wanted to. Because I felt good while I was doing it. Because I’mhim.”
Her brow wrinkled, for she was truly confused. “Him who?” she asked slowly. “Him, Sir Archibald? Him, Simon?”
All the air left Graham’s lungs and he was perfectly still for a moment. Then he lifted blue eyes so clear and perfect that her chest hurt when she looked into them. He held her gaze, unblinking, unwavering, and said, “I’m my father.”
She saw it all so plainly then. Saw a glimpse, brief but bared, of a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes, one that had seen a monster, a real monster, and now the man before her feared that the monster had returned. She saw what no one in Society knew or had ever whispered about.
She saw the truth of Graham Everly, Duke of Northfield, and she choked on her grief for him. For whatever he had seen and gone through.
“Tell me about him,” she said, moving a step closer. He didn’t back away this time, and she was grateful for that. She didn’t touch him yet, though, and he seemed equally grateful.
She watched his throat work, she watched the pain on every line of his face. Then he choked out, “No one knows the truth.”
She nodded. “I imagined as much.”
