All the wind, all the heated air gushed out of me, but I didn’t buckle. I couldn’t. The duke was here to stop Markham.
We took a step together, and he stumbled.
“I typically despise assistance, but I hate waiting more.”
I sympathized.
Waiting wasn’t my strength, either. Charging forward with little hesitation was my special talent. As I strained under his weight, I feared that this time my flaw might be fatal.
The duke and I wobbled, each of us trying to lead the other to Hamlin’s grand entry.
“You’ve a lot of heart, minion, but get in step with me. It will be easier.”
Nothing waseasierwhen I complied. Submission was a softer shade of hard.
But I acquiesced like I’d done with Colin and leaned in closer. The duke’s brawny arm smashed my face into his chest. The white cosmetic smeared onto his ebony greatcoat.
Then I heard him counting. The rhythm sounded strong like a conga rattle. I swayed with him. It became our music. No longer struggling to show him the shortest path, I fell in step, my full stride matched his two half jumps.
My reward was his scent. Enmeshed in his cloak was something heady and familiar. It wasn’t like my sweet milled soaps, but something honeyed and peppered with hints of cloves.
“I’m heavy, young man, and you’re scrawny. Your employer, well, former employer, must not be giving you a decent wage to fill your belly.”
“I suppose you eat enough, Your Grace. You’re weighty.”
“I suppose I do.” The duke chuckled, but this noise sounded forced, as if to cover his winces when we stumbled over rocks hidden in the melting snow.
I felt the tension in the man like I’d felt his laugh. He was more hurt than he wanted anyone to know.
I steadied my arm about him. He’d made me into a crutch, and I’d be a decent crutch. He was coming for Markham. That had to be good.
Yet, this close to the duke, I felt the hardened muscles of his stomach and knew the leanness of his thigh. The man was injured but not indolent or lazy.
His scent hit me again, deeper, more acute. I knew what it was, a blend of fine cigar tobacco and rum.
I inhaled once more. Definitely rum, and it was the expensive stuff. It would be wrong to cling to him, sniffing his coat to see if it was Demeraran rum, but this aroma was the closest I’d felt to home in four years.
“Maybe you’re not so scrawny, son. You seem to be keeping me upright.”
Both of us heaving a little, we stopped in front of the fourteen perfectly hewed steps that led into Hamlin Hall. Moonlight and lit torches highlighted the strong, curved stones of the portico covering the doors. Hamlin was majestic and isolated, a lovely loner in the countryside.
“Someone lit the grand chandelier. Good,” the duke said.
It was the biggest, brightest wrought iron fixture I’d ever seen. As a new bride in August of 1810, I stood under that chandelier and watched my husband leave for London the night he’d abandoned me here.
He said it was for my protection, my comfort, for his, for a hundred other excuses, but I was made to stay at Hamlin and accept his comings and goings.
“What a house.” The duke’s breathing was heavy, and his voice sounded wistful, but I could barely fill my lungs.
Colin and I had a marriage of misunderstandings, a morass of letters inked with halfhearted apologies, a mattress made for two that, almost always, held one.
Then Markham told me Colin was dead.
All before my twenty-fourth birthday.
“We’ve caught our breath, son. We move forward, now.”
The duke pulled me, but I couldn’t move. “How, sir? How do we go forward? The obstacles . . . these steps are too steep.”
