Page 80

Nathaniel heard it too. Laura watched his eyes drop to the floor as the words reached him, watched him understand exactly what he had just cost himself. He turned to look at her then. She did not have time to hide her sadness before he met her eyes.

“Nathaniel.” She reached for him, but he had already stepped away and turned his back to her, his split knuckles curling into a fist at his side.

“I need air,” he muttered. “Forgive me. I need⁠—”

He didn’t finish. He turned and walked out of the ballroom, the crowd parting before him like the Red Sea, whispers trailing in his wake like smoke curling up from a fire.

Laura stood alone amid the shattered glass and shocked silence, her heart breaking for a man who had just watched, in the space of an unguarded second, his own wife look at him the way the rest of London always had—as if he were a beast.

CHAPTER 28

Nathaniel did not come to her chamber that night.

Laura lay awake long past the hour when she would ordinarily hear the connecting door open, staring at the canopy above her bed, replaying the whole terrible evening over and over.

She had tiptoed out of her room to find him twice before finally retiring. The first time, she found him in his study, hunched over an untouched glass of brandy, his head in his hands. He did not acknowledge her or say a word. The second time, she had found him in his chambers. She had raised her hand to knock and then, hearing nothing but silence within, let it fall again, uncertain whether her presence would soothe him or make things worse.

He found her the following morning in the small breakfast room, before Iris had come down, his face drawn and pale from a sleepless night.

“Laura.” He didn’t sit. He stood at the head of the table with both hands braced on the back of his chair. “I think it best that we maintain some distance between us for a time.”

The words all but slapped her across the face. She had prepared herself for a difficult conversation, but this was something else entirely.

“Distance.”

It was all she could manage, the word dry on her tongue.

“I have a great deal to see to,” he said evenly. “I intend to focus my attention on finding evidence against Cumberlea. Properly. Without the caution I’ve forced myself into before. I cannot do that and also—” He stopped.

“Also what, Nathaniel? Also be my husband? Also be Iris’s uncle?” Laura stood up from her chair, her voice rising despite her effort to keep it level. “You can grieve your sister and still be present. You can seek justice but still come home to us at night! You have done both these past months. I’ve watched you do both!”

“This is different.” His hands tightened on the chair back, his knuckles turning white. “Last night I struck a man in front of the whole ton and very nearly did worse. A part of me wishes I had, and I am not entirely certain what I would have done next if Everett hadn’t pulled Cumberlea back. I cannot trust myself around either of you while my temper is so close to the surface.”

“That is not the same as needing distance from us.” Laura rounded the table toward him. “That is fear.”

“It is not fear,” he growled, his hands tightening on the chair.

“I understand fear, Nathaniel,” she pleaded. “I have spent a great deal of my life wearing it. But shutting the doors again, reverting to the man who locked up an entire tower rather than face his grief… that will not restore Isabella’s honor. It will only cost you the family you’ve just learned how to have. We need you.”

Something flashed in his eyes, dark and dangerous. “You know nothing of what I owe her.”

“Then tell me.”

“I made her a promise.” His voice had gone rough. “The last time I saw her alive, three days before she died, she asked me to look after Iris, and I told her I would look after both of them. Whatever Cumberlea had done, I would see it answered for. I have spent three years failing to keep half of that promise, Laura. I looked after Iris. Grantham made his own choice…”

“And none of that is your fault,” she insisted.

“I have not yet made a single person answer for what was done to Isabella! And last night, I finally understood how close I might come to it if I stopped restraining myself. You cannot understand what that means to a man,” he barked.

“I understand grief,” Laura said, her voice cracking. “I understand carrying a promise that feels impossible to set down. What I don’t understand is why keeping it requires you to disappear from the people who love you! It feels as though you think… you think that loving us and pursuing him are mutually exclusive. Iris needs you, Nathaniel. I need you. Last night, I watched you become exactly the man Society always said you were, and it frightened me.”

“And there it is,” he whispered.

“Not because I think you a monster, but because I care for you! I was afraid of what it might cost you to become someone I no longer recognized.”

“Afraid? You were afraid of me?” he asked, his expression shuttering. “That’s… That’s what I saw on your face, then. Whatever you tell yourself now, I saw it the moment you looked at me. It cannot be undone. I know what that look means—I have seen it my whole life.”

“That is not fair!” Laura’s temper flared, hot and sudden, cutting through the ache in her chest. “I was afraid of the violence, of the whole room turning on you at once, of what might have happened if Everett hadn’t been there to stop it. I was not afraid of you. There is a difference, and I think you know it.”