Page 114 of Duke of Iron
May froze. “What?”
April pressed the parcel into her hands. “It belongs to Logan. He bought it last month. We are here to see the renovations. And to buy you a lemon tart, because there is a very good baker just around the corner, and I am famished.”
May stared at the door. “He bought a house.”
June patted her on the back. “He bought a house, May. He is not that much of an idiot.”
The footman, either in on the scheme or possessed of supernatural timing, opened the door before May could protest further.
The inside was not what she expected. Not at all.
The entryway was flooded with light. There was no oppressive chandelier, no funereal gloom. Instead, a skylight arched overhead, pouring sunshine onto a checkered marble floor. The walls were lined with bookshelves, already half-filled, and a green velvet chaise waited by the window, flanked by a pair of squat tables that looked perfect for the dumping of hats, parcels, and babies.
A low, happy fire smoldered in the parlor to the left. The space beyond was wide open, with clusters of mismatched chairs and a battered piano standing at attention in the corner. There were more flowers inside, white ones this time, set in glass jars along every available surface. The scent was mild and sweet, not cloying, and it reminded May of her own childhood home—her mother’s kitchen, or the garden after a rainstorm.
It was not a palace. It was not a fortress.
It was a home.
She stood in the entryway, trying to make sense of it. “This is not possible,” she said.
June nudged her forward. “Anything is possible if you have enough money and no taste.”
April drifted off toward the nearest sofa and flopped onto it, arranging her skirts with a flourish. “I am going to live here,” she declared. “I will have a room on every floor and make Logan serve me breakfast in bed.”
May blinked back the beginnings of another round of tears. “You are not helping,” she said, but her voice was soft.
June squeezed her arm. “You do not have to go upstairs if you do not want to.”
“I want to,” May said. She let herself be led up the wide, shallow staircase, counting the paintings that dotted the walls—a different one at every landing, most of them landscapes or ships or small, impossible animals. At the first landing, she stopped, unable to move any further.
A window overlooked the back garden. It was a rectangle of wild green and color, the paths winding but clean, the flowerbeds edged with neat box hedges. The whole effect was one ofcontrolled chaos, every line soft and unexpected, but the result was unmistakably beautiful.
She touched her fingers to the glass.
“Do you like it?” asked a voice behind her.
She turned, and there he was.
Logan. Standing at the top of the stairs, hands behind his back, his face drawn and thin. He looked worse than when she’d left him—a shadow of the man she’d married. But the eyes were the same. Dark, and impossible, and hungry.
“I do,” she said, unable to keep the ache out of her voice. “Why are you here?”
He walked down the stairs, each step measured. “I live here,” he said. “Or I intend to.”
“You never told me,” May said. “You signed the papers and never even told me.”
He stopped three steps above her, so they were nearly the same height. “I wanted to surprise you.”
She laughed, a brittle sound. “You did.”
He was silent for a moment. “Will you walk with me?” he asked. “Just in the garden. I won’t keep you long.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “If I must.”
He smiled—barely—and offered his arm. She did not take it, but she followed him down the stairs, out the side door, and into the garden.
They walked in silence at first, the only sounds the crunch of gravel and the distant, insistent chatter of birds. May watched his shoulders, the way he squared them even when he was uncertain, and remembered the first time she had seen him in the park. He had seemed so untouchable then, so certain of himself and the world around him. Now he looked as if he had lost all the boundaries that kept him together.
