Page 97 of Duke of Iron
Logan nodded, afraid to speak. He felt the world contract to the space between his own beating heart and the thudding of his father’s blood.
“Then why, Logan, do you waste your time with peasants and rabbits and useless pursuits?” he spat the words like seed husks. “Tell me. Tell me why my only son is a disappointment.”
Logan’s chest hollowed. “It was a sunny day, and I thought—” He tried to smile, to make it a joke. “I thought I could work outside with John, the steward’s son. We made a contest of it. To see who could finish their lines first.”
His father’s hand shot out and struck him across the face. The sound was not loud, but the sting burned through Logan’s skull and into his bones.
“You are not a peasant. You do not make contests. You win them. You win, or you are nothing.”
Logan clamped his jaw shut. Michael Blackmore’s voice dropped. “You think you are safe here? You think you are protected by your tutors and your mother’s memory? Even in death, she haunts me, demanding you turn out perfect. But you are not perfect. Not even close.”
He stepped back, surveying his son like an insect under glass. “You will memorize the next two books tonight. Or you will regret it. Do you understand?”
Logan nodded, his cheeks wet with tears he would not have been able to stop if he’d tried. His father grunted and left the room.
In the sudden hush, Logan saw black and red spots before his eyes. The room seemed to shrink, the shadows congealing around the edges until the air itself was poisoned. He pressed his fists to his eyes and willed himself not to cry again.
But darkness pressed in, and the ground shifted beneath him.
Logan bolted upright on the sofa, his lungs straining, and his hair damp and plastered to his brow. For a long moment, he sat rigid with fists curled and waiting for the next blow. But there came no sound, no footsteps, and no threat.
He was in his own bedchamber, where everything was perfectly ordered, and the only echo of the past was in his own head.
He pushed a hand through his hair, then scrubbed at his cheeks with the heel of his palm. The wetness there was sweat, nothing more. He had not cried in two decades, and he would not start now.
Logan closed his eyes, trying to recall where the present had left off and the past begun. It took several deep breaths, but eventually the room steadied, and he remembered—May.
The thought of her was like a drop of ink in a glass of clear water. The memory of her lips, her warmth, the way she had looked at him with an equal measure of longing and accusation settled inside him, crowding out the darkness.
He stood, stripped off his damp shirt, and found a clean one. He fumbled with the buttons for a full minute before giving up and leaving it open at the throat.
The house was silent when he slipped out, and Logan padded through the hallways before stopping at her bedchamber door. He should not open it. He should not want to see her this badly.
He pushed it open anyway.
May slept, curled on her side in the nest of pillows, hair fanned out like a comet’s tail across the linen. In sleep, her features lost all the sharpness of her wit and became soft, almost heartbreakingly so. Her lips were slightly parted, and one hand was tucked under her cheek.
He moved to the side of the bed and kneeled. He watched her breathe for a time, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the way her lashes trembled when she dreamed.
Unable to stop himself, Logan reached out and smoothed a strand of hair from her face. She did not stir, but her mouth twitched at the touch, and Logan felt something inside him unravel.
He whispered, “What are you turning me into, May?”
He knew the answer. He knew that every hour with her pulled him further from the man he had spent a lifetime becoming, the one his father had shaped with pain and rage.
And it terrified him more than anything else in the world.
Thirty
“Come now, William,” May urged. “You cannot survive on air and compliments. At least try a taste.”
The baby’s answer was to swat the spoon so expertly that a glob arced through the air and struck May’s own spectacles, then dripped onto her nose.
She dabbed at herself with a handkerchief, sighing. “Sabotage, again. I see I am no match for your cunning.”
“He is outwitting you by design,” Logan said, entering the drawing room. “It is a skill that runs in the family.”
“You encourage him,” she replied, straightening her spectacles. “If you want a household of tyrants, you are succeeding.”
