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He’d tried to stay on formal terms with her, evoking her title and keeping his distance, but when a woman shed tears over you … he’d been lost. Lost to her, lost in the moment, lost in general. Up and down, left and right, entirely confused.

She thought them perfectly suited for one another. The scoundrel and the wicked widow, a natural pairing. He saw it a bit differently. He saw a yearning man and the brave, quiet woman he adored. He saw a tired performer and a determined mother, a man who could cheer up a gray life and a woman who could give comfort just by being herself. He saw a damn family. That’s what scared him most. She tempted him to think of a string of tomorrows stretching into decades he did not own and could never have. If he gave in to her request to play the scoundrel to her widow, he might never want to let her go. And then he’d fall from a horse’s back and die and where would she be? In possession of a dead lover when she’d already had too much pain stooping her shoulders over.

A woman like her—forged tough in the fire of loss—deserved peace and security, things he could never give her. He could put on his jolly smile and play the lover, though. For a night or two. Scratch an itch for one another they clearly shared. Her soft body beneath his own, her silky hair unraveled and splayed across his bed.

He shivered, tightened, hardened. His heart attempted to beat out of his chest when it never even fluttered for the courtyard birds who winged his way each evening. Freddy was like them. Lonely and courageous. But she differed in one significant way. She made him want more from life than gas lamps, flight, and falling. She made him not want to die. So he could never let her closer because to die early and spectacularly was his only fate, the fate of his father, his own daring destiny. What challenge would exist in life if he quit riding, if he gave up the spectacle of blood and bone and glitter for the staid oak and leather of a desk chair?

He could put on a jolly smile and give her the interlude she desired, but it would gut him to do so.

Besides, Max had fists like sledgehammers, and Grant courted those fists by kissing Freddy.

Garrison greeted him as he stabled Wellington. “A bit rough tonight. A bit rough the last few weeks. You know … it’s no shame to admit your aging body can’t handle what it once could.”

“It’s not that.” Not entirely. He’d been more distracted than usual.

Garrison lifted his brows, leaned his forearms on a stable door. “The body breaks down when you use it so often. I’m not saying you have to stop performing, certainly don’t want that, but perhaps fewer shows. Spend your time serving Garrison’s in other ways. Have you considered the contract yet?”

He’d read through it so many times he’d damn near memorized the thing.

“I’m tired.” He patted Garrison’s shoulder and stepped into the shadows of the courtyard.

“Of course you are. So why refuse my offer?”

Grant stopped moving. He didn’t even turn around. Suppose he signed those papers? What would happen to Garrison’s when he finally fell, when the horse’s hooves ended his days if the hard ground didn’t first? Chaos, that’s what, and not the good kind. An entire organization, a family, without a leader. Better for Garrison to choose a different man as his heir.

Besides … “I like performing.” It was like starlight through his veins, making him more. “It’s who I am.”

“You’re more than a name and an act. You’re not the act.” Garrison circled him, captured both of Grant’s shoulders in his veined hands. “You know that, don’t you?”

Grant wasn’t quite sure. Besides, what harm was there in being the act, being the name, and not the man? The man was nothing and no one. The act was all—what people wanted, what they cried out for and snuck to backstage doors to kiss.

Likely that’s what—who—Freddy wanted, too: the famous trick rider. Humiliating that, like razors on his skin, when he wanted her.

He patted Garrison’s arm and shrugged out of his hold. “I’ll tell you when I’ve made up my mind.”

“Don’t wait too long.”

Grant waved as he walked across the courtyard, his boots crunching his frustration onto the walkway with each rapid step. Frustration with Garrison, frustration with his own flaws in the last several months of performance, frustration with all of London, too.

But mostly his blood boiled with frustration for the widow. He had put Lady Woodfeld in a bell jar long ago to cordon her off, to keep his own heart safe. Oh, he’d flirted a bit and tended to her comfort when possible. Tame little moments when his regard for her had escaped his control. Retrieving a shawl to warm her up, breaking up a fight between the girls, refilling her wineglass, calling her flawless when her eyes looked a bit bleak.

But she had upended the damn thing herself, shattered the glass to pieces, and now she stood wicked and wanton before him, beckoning, asking him for what he desperately wanted himself.

Damn, how she tempted him, though he could never let her know. He wanted her, but when he died, where would Freddy be? Widowed again. If she married him, which of course she wouldn’t. His wicked widow wanted an affair, not marriage.

The flimsy door to his dressing room gave easily beneath his hand, and his breath gave way, too, when he stepped into the room.

“Freddy.”

She’d been poking through the pots of kohl on the table and turned whip sharp, clasping her hands behind her. Her hair was a rich riot of golden and honey hues in the flickering candlelight, and her plump lips were parted on a gasp. “Mr. Webster.” Fluttering lashes, generous chest rising and falling, teeth torturing her bottom lip.

His body tightened with raging need. He may not be worthy of her, but he wanted her, and the want almost abolished the recognition of his own worth.

“To what do I owe this surprise visit?” he asked, using his back to press the door closed. Probably should keep it open, but … the woman he wanted in his dressing room, biting that lip he wanted to bite, seemed reason enough not to bother with probably. He threw the word and the concept to the wind.

“I need to know why.” She leaned against the vanity and wrapped her fingers around its edge until her knuckles shone through the thin, fragile skin. “Why did you kiss me if you do not desire me? Is it truly only a question of Max’s approval?” She shot off the desk and stopped a flashing inch away from him. “He is not my husband. Nor is he my keeper. I do not allow him to choose my bed partners.”

A bolt of anger shot through him. “Have there been other bed partners?” Irrational to swim in rage at the thought. He couldn’t help it, though. The idea had drowned him instantly.