Page 100 of Duke of Iron
May settled in the window seat, balancing the baby on her knee and smoothing his hair. “You are not William, you know,” she told him. “You are Rydal. You are mine.”
A small gasp escaped her as realization dawned. She did desire motherhood. But it might be a desire that would never be fulfilled.
Thirty-One
Logan stole a glance at May as he sipped his port. He sat at the head of the long oak table, and May was on his right, resplendent in a dress of the palest blue.
He tried not to notice how pale she looked, or how little she had eaten. He tried not to notice her at all, but this proved impossible.
Logan cleared his throat. “You have been very industrious,” Logan said, carving the silence as precisely as he carved the pheasant. “Since the garden party, I have hardly seen you at all.”
May reached for her goblet and twirled it by the stem. “I am here now,” she murmured. “You cannot claim to be neglected at this particular moment.”
He studied her wine as if it might offer insight into her mind. “That is not what I meant.”
She tilted her head, that small arch of a smile settling at the corner of her mouth. “You miss me, then?” she asked, and the words had the sound of a joke but not the spirit.
Logan’s jaw tightened. “I suppose I had thought you would not wish to avoid me quite so energetically.”
May’s gaze slid off him and landed somewhere in the middle distance. She said, “I have been busy. There are always things to arrange.”
They ate in silence for a time, and after a while, Logan pushed his plate away and reached for the decanter. He poured himself a measure of claret, then, after a moment, poured another and set it by May’s place. “You do not have to keep up the pretense when it is only us,” he said, trying for a tone between command and invitation.
May lifted the glass, but did not drink. She pressed her lips to the rim as if testing the temperature of a pool before diving in. “What pretense do you mean, exactly?”
He thought of the many ways he could answer, and found none of them sufficient. “You have been distant.”
She looked up, finally. “You are not an easy man to be close to.”
He gave a small, wry smile. “You are not the first to say it.”
“But I might be the last,” she replied, and there was no jest in it.
Logan sat back, letting the chair creak beneath him. He measured her in the lamplight—her pinched mouth, the way she did not let her spine relax even for a second. He remembered the way she had been that afternoon in the library, and he wondered where that May had gone.
He found himself saying, “I am sorry if I have given offense.”
She shook her head. “You have not. I am simply—” May set the goblet down. She looked at him with a strange, searching intensity. “I do not wish to quarrel, Logan. Not tonight. Not ever, if it can be helped.”
“Then what do you wish?” The words came out sharper than intended, and he immediately regretted them.
May blinked. “Tonight, I wish for nothing but to go to bed and wake up to find that the world has not rearranged itself in my absence.”
He did not know what to say to that.
She stood and smoothed her skirt and drew on her glove with a small, practiced tug. The gesture was a dismissal, but Logan was not ready to accept it.
He rose as well, catching her at the threshold of the dining room. “May,” he said, and the name felt brittle in his mouth. “Will you not tell me what is wrong?”
She paused. “I told you. I am tired.”
He searched her face, looking for the crack in her composure. “You can tell me anything. That was the agreement.”
She made a sound—half laugh, half sigh. “The agreement. I remember.”
He wanted to reach for her, to touch her hand or her shoulder, but he did not. Instead, he said, very softly, “Do rest well.”
She turned, then, and for a moment her face was entirely open. He saw fear there, and something close to grief, and he realized—too late—that she was not avoiding him out of anger, but out of dread. Of what, he did not know.
