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Were it anyone else looking at the baroness with such anger, Deirdre may have refused. But she wasn’t about to get in the way of a man in love.

Justin’s blood was a roar in his ears, his heart a thundering tempest. It had begun that morning, when he’d opened the paper to see her plastered on the front cover, with the headline of M
URDER
H
AUNTS
B
ARONESS
B
EAUTY
nearly sending him into a stroke. Had her father not shown up within minutes, he would have been pounding on her door long before the nine o’clock hour she’d asked him to come. As it was, he’d spent his morn
ing pounding on doors with Whitby instead, trying to find the solicitor that Rushworth used.

It had done little to cool his temper. Justin pulled Brook into a poor excuse for a garden at the side of the hospital and, for lack of privacy, turned to Monegasque as he spun her to face him. “Are you insane or just stupid?”

Not, perhaps, the best greeting if his aim were to keep her calm. But at the moment he had no desire for calm. He wanted a fight, and no one else in the world would give him the one he needed.

She pulled her hand free and looked as though she wanted to slap him with it. “Excuse me?” Her words were in Monegasque too.

Justin waved a hand at the world at large. “You have detectives chasing you with murder charges, a killer on the loose slaying people connected to these stupid Fire Eyes, and what do you do? You head out into the city, alone but for a maid, without ever pausing to consider for even one second that you could be next!”

He expected her to shout. Instead, she went calm—but seething. “What do you know of it? You didn’t even bother to come this morning when I asked you to.”

“Because your father came to
my
house at eight. I assumed you knew that and would wait for me—that while I was off pounding on solicitors’ doors with him,
you
wouldn’t be darting off on your own, trying to get yourself killed.”

“I didn’t know.” Still, frustration overtook the realization in her eyes, and she pivoted away. “But how could you possibly expect me to sit idly by? It’s fine and good for
you
to put yourself into the path of all this, but if I so much as take my maid to visit her uncle, I’m either stupid or insane?”

“You don’t
think
. Not about consequences. You never have.” He turned, too, and took a step to put himself in front of her
again. “You chase whatever impulse seizes you, valuing your blasted independence above common sense.”

“And what if I do?” Her eyes were ablaze, green fire spitting at him. “If it’s a fault, it’s
mine
, and one you’ve long known about. If you loved me like you claimed—”

“
If?
You doubt me because I don’t applaud when you run headlong into danger?”

Now the seething gave way to fuming, and she sliced a hand through the air. “For once in your life, why can’t you accept the fact that perhaps a person isn’t wrong just because they don’t agree with you?”

He took a step back. “When have I—”

“When have you
not
? ‘You’ll not take the stage.’ ‘You’ll not race.’ ‘You’ll not get near that horse.’ You always have to be giving orders, the one in control, and it drives you mad when you’re not!” She surged forward, poking a finger into his shoulder. “Well,
Duke
, you’re not my father. You don’t get to dictate to me.”

“You’re my son, Justin, not
my nursemaid.”
His father’s words rang in his head.

Yet again, being blamed for caring. For wanting someone to take two minutes to think about consequences, about how a decision might affect someone else. Might affect
him
. How
he
might feel if someone drove off the road or ran pell-mell into the clutches of a murderer.

He held his arms wide. “I guess that’s who
I
am. Who I’ve always been. If it’s a fault, it’s one you’ve long known about. What, then?”

She breathed a laugh as dry as the withered flower stalk by her foot. “That would be the question, wouldn’t it?”

The temper in his eyes went darker, calmer, more treacherous. Turned to ice.

No
. He had already lost his father—he wasn’t going to lose Brook. He
couldn’t
lose Brook. Not to this Fire Eyes insanity,
and not because of his own mistakes. He swallowed, breathed, sent heavenward a silent prayer. “Just tell me. Tell me what you need me to be.”

“Here.” She thrust her hand downward, pointing at the ground by her side. “I need you to be
here
, but you never are.”

“I’m here.” He stepped forward, clasping her elbows.

She wrenched free. “You’re not. Even when you are, you’re not, you’re behind that dashed wall you’ve built.”

She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her stomach. “You won’t . . . ever since I came here, you . . .”

When she averted her face, he caught the glistening of tears in her eyes. He reached out again, but she retreated and shook her head. “I thought I loved you. That we could make it work, but . . . but we
don’t
. We don’t work anymore. You can’t just kiss me again and set the world to rights. Maybe . . . maybe God only meant you to bring me here. Maybe friends is all we were meant to be.”

The earth beneath him crumbled, opened, swallowed him into its yawning darkness. “I can’t just be your friend anymore.”

“I know.” She held herself tighter. “I guess that means we’re . . . nothing.”

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. It was unfathomable. Because he needed her so much—how was it possible she could bid him farewell so easily?

Yet she did. She stood there for a moment, no tears spilling over their rims, no uncertainty shaking her. And then she turned and walked away, her arms still clutched around her stomach.

Justin could only stand there in the pathetic little garden and let his eyes slide closed. He tried to pray, but he had no words. Just a cry that came from his gut but couldn’t find purchase on his tongue. And so it echoed through him, clanging and pounding. An accusation.

A desperate plea.

Twenty-Six

M
y lady—”

“Don’t.” Brook didn’t even look at Deirdre as she slid into the driver’s seat of the roadster. She had already cranked it and had the key in her hands. Steady, those hands. As steady as her voice. Because inside, she’d ground to a halt. Still, if not peaceful. Too still for shaking. Too still for words.

Deirdre said nothing more. Brook didn’t let herself wonder what she had meant to say—no doubt it was some question about what she intended to do with the knowledge that she had acted as Pratt’s spy. But Brook couldn’t think about that right now either. She could only think of pressing the clutch, the accelerator, the brake. Where to turn, when to signal. How to park, and then to put one foot in front of the other to lead her inside.

She paused at the door but still couldn’t look at her maid. “O’Malley, when we get inside, I want you to pack—”

“My things. I understand.”

“No. Well, yes. But mine too. We’re going home.”

“We . . .” Wisely, she said no more.

Not in the mood to wait for a bell to be answered, Brook
pushed open the door. She bypassed the drawing room with its laughter and crowds of near-strangers and headed straight for the study, where Papa was most likely to be.

Aunt Mary was there too, leaning over his shoulder and pointing at some paper or another on the desk. They both looked up when she entered. Her aunt smiled.

Her father, when he saw her face, stood. “What is it?”

Words.
The only ones she could find were French. “Can we go home, Papa? Please?”

“What?” Her aunt had obviously understood, given the outrage in her eyes, though she answered in English. “Absolutely not! You are the darling of Town, you cannot
possibly
leave before the king’s coronation—”

“Of course we can.” Papa’s voice was low and soft, his eyes seeing far beyond hers. “Did your Justin find you?”

He tried, and failed, to pronounce it correctly. But his name still made a sob well up in that empty place, lodge in her throat. “He is not my Justin. He will never be. I . . . I want to go home.”

“Of course.” He came around the desk and pulled her to his chest. “My darling girl.” He said no more, because he was Papa, and he understood when silence was all that could soothe.

Aunt Mary, to her credit, held her tongue, too, and didn’t even faint. She just whisked by them. No doubt to go somewhere private to bemoan her niece’s utter ignorance of society.

Or perhaps to get reinforcements. A minute later, when Papa drew away, Melissa was there with wide eyes. “You’re leaving?”

Brook held out a hand for her cousin to grip, though she couldn’t manage a smile. “I have to. I don’t suppose you want to come?” She could use a friend to laugh with, to mourn with—one who may have been reserved at first but who loved her now. Who never feigned feeling just to turn on her.

But Melissa sighed. “I can’t. Mama would have a fit—and I need to stay here and snag myself a husband.”

“Oh, Lissa.” She tugged her in for a tight embrace. “Not out of spite. Don’t marry out of spite. You’ll be stuck with him for all your life.”

“I know.” Melissa pulled away, her face somber. “I promise. But I will stay. You need your open spaces and ocean to cope, I need my crowds and laughter.”

To that she could only nod. Papa, it seemed, was the only one who related to her need. So it would be just them again, and the staff who knew how she liked her coffee and sausage and to stir the fire earlier than usual in her grate.

And a maid who would sell her secrets to a land-grubbing neighbor—but she would ignore that for now. She would get home, get settled. Then talk to Papa about Deirdre.

If she were empty inside, should it not have made her feel lighter? But her legs, as she turned for the steps, felt heavy as despair.

Justin exited the House of Lords and paused a moment to look up at the grand, towering facade of the palace. For years, anytime he saw Westminster’s pointed spires and gothic styling, he had dreamed of being inside its cavernous chamber, taking the seat reserved for him. Facing the throne.

A lot of good he was doing, finally there but his mind a few crucial miles away. He
wanted
to focus on the laws and debates—but he couldn’t, not when Brook was still in danger . . . and had dismissed him so summarily.

His feet hitched when he caught sight of the figure leaning against a shining new Austin parked a spot away from the Rolls-Royce. Maybe Worthing was waiting for his father—Justin had noted the Duke of Nottingham chatting with a few other lords of his generation after the session ended. With any luck, the son wouldn’t even notice Justin walking by. He could hope. He
had, after all, spent half the night on his knees in prayer before exhaustion had claimed him. And then the other half sleeping on his hard floor. Surely that was penance enough.

Apparently not. Worthing straightened as Justin neared, that annoying grin on his face and his hands in his trouser pockets. “Stafford! Good day.”