Page 110 of Duke of Iron
She reached the picnic, where June was relating some dreadful bit of gossip to the Richfields and April was holding court with a group of matrons. May crouched beside April.
“Could I speak with you? In private, for a moment?”
April’s eyes sharpened. “Of course, darling.” She stood, smoothing her skirts, and linked arms with May. “We shall be back soon,” she called to the others.
They walked off together.
The house was too quiet.
Logan prowled its hallways, telling himself it was nothing, and that May’s absence from tea and supper was easily explained by the day’s picnic and the obligations of a new social circle. He had told himself he was not concerned, that the missing note at luncheon and the silent, shrouded library were only quirks of a household adjusting to new rhythms.
He was lying to himself. Every hour she did not appear was a fresh needle in his skin, and the silence of her step and the absence of her voice had begun to unmoor him.
He found himself at her sitting-room door—again—and knocked, this time with no preamble. “May?”
No answer came.
He tried the handle; it turned, but the door did not yield at first. He pushed, harder, and the door swung open to reveal a room that was not quite abandoned but bore the fingerprints of a recent, hurried departure. Her writing desk was closed, and the dressing screen was folded. Even her slippers—normally left like punctuation marks across the rug—had been tidied away.
He stepped inside, breathing the faint trace of her perfume—roses and spice. Logan’s gut tightened, and as his eyes moved across the room, they found a note on the low table. When he unfolded it, he found it was not addressed to him, but to the nursemaid. He read it anyway.
Hall,
I will be gone for a while. Ensure that Rydal has everything he requires.
Duchess of Irondale
No sign of a return, no explanation, only the implicit abandonment—‘I will be gone for a while.’
Logan’s jaw ached from clenching. He scanned the room, looking for something that would explain it, a missing shawl or reticule, a trace of where she had gone. Nothing.
He turned on his heel and strode to the main hall. “Bexley!”
The butler appeared. “Your Grace.”
“Where is the Duchess?”
“She left this morning.”
Logan scowled. “She went to the park? Out to tea with her friends? Shopping?”
Bexley’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “She left with her belongings, Your Grace.”
Logan’s breath nearly left him, and he momentarily paced the entryway.This is ridiculous. You are behaving like a jilted schoolboy. She is your wife. She is not hiding from you. She is not running away.
Hours later, Logan realized a bitter truth. He thought of the last time he had seen her, the rigid line of her back, the way she did not look over her shoulder. He thought of the words he had meant to say but could not.I do not want to lose you.
He thought of his father, alone in the echoing estate, and the vow he had made never to become that man.
You are a fool. You had her in your hands, and you let her slip away.
For the first time since he had become the Duke of Irondale, he was afraid.
May is not coming back.And he was not sure he could bear it.
Thirty-Five
“It’s quite all right, darling,” April said as she stroked May’s hair while she wept in her sister’s arms. “This is what drawing rooms are for. That, and the display of ghastly wedding presents.”
