“It doesn’t.” His chest was tight. Hell, his whole body was. He couldn’t bloody breathe. “She was supposed to be a girl with a shop and a dog and a secret. Not this.”
Drake didn’t say anything. Just leaned against the edge of the desk and waited.
Maxen’s jaw ached from clenching, temples starting to throb. The gloves were too tight. His clothes were too tight. His damn skin.
She’d been in his home. In his arms.
He’d kissed her like she was his.
A blue-blooded noble.
Christ.
It meant disregard. It meant games. It meant the kind of people who stepped over bodies in the street and still made speeches about order.
His hands curled at his sides. “She might not be like them.” Bloody hell. Even he could hear the desperation in that. He was done for. Damn well done for. Because while he hated the fact that she was part of that life, he didn’t hate her. He could never hate her.
He bloody lo—
“You look at her like she’d just handed you your heart back.”
Maxen froze.
“I don’t.” Look. Like that.
He thought of the way she’d looked at him—wide-eyed and flushed, lips parted. Likeshehadn’t meant for that night to happen but still decided to claim it for herself. Like it undid her as much as it undidhim.
She hadn’t seemed like a lady then. She’d seemed like a girl on the edge of something thrilling and petrifying. Just like he was.
“Maybe she’s hiding,” he muttered. Clinging. That was what he was doing, was it not? Clinging. He rubbed the back of his neck and turned away. Damn Drake for witnessing him like this. Damn himself for lettingherget close enough that the truth now almost tasted like bitter betrayal. A part of him didn’t want to care. Not about her reasons. Not about her past.
But that didn’t change what was already unfurling in his damn chest.
“What else do we know?” he asked, voice rough.
Drake nodded toward the letter. “Not much. Balfour hasn’t filed anything. No bounties. No inquiry. But Dare says the girl was supposed to marry some viscount.”
Maxen’s head snapped up. “She’s betrothed?”
“Don’t know, but whatever it was, the match fell apart with her disappearance. That’s the last known detail.”
He pressed a fist against his chest.
Christ. A lady. One with secrets and a fake name and damn it. He still wanted to kiss her again. Claim her again.
What was he if not a fool?
She wasn’t just a woman with a hidden past anymore. She waseverythinghe’d been taught to hate growing up. And she still looked at him like he was worth something.
Him.
A monster.
But still he wanted her. Wanted to understand her. Wanted to know why someone with titles and wealth and whatever privilege came with being a bloody earl’s daughter had ended up hiding behind a shop. He wanted to believe that their night together hadn’t been a mistake.
But was it?
Everything he felt for her—this confounding longing, need, protectiveness, want—felt like a betrayal ofhisworld. Of children born in gutters. Of men and women who starved while nobles grew fat off taxes and tariffs.
