He slid the rest of the liquid down his throat, though it did little to quench his thirst or tame his rising panic. Damn. Hell. Hell and damnation! He’d play it calm. Pretend it was the nothing it was.
He cleared his throat again, a useless tic that did no more than reveal his panic. Press on, Grant, press on. “Technically, she’s Frederica Brooks, Viscountess Woodfield. But she prefers not to use the title.”
“You tell me what she prefers. As if I do not know that about my cousin?” He turned to face Grant, his face a granite cliff, impossible to read.
“Everyone calls her Freddy.” A lame mumble, guilt drenched and weak.
“Yes, but no one damns her. Not Freddy. Why would you ‘damn’ her?” Max retracted his legs until his boots thunked on the floor. Then he rose on steady legs, his chin lowering to keep his gaze pierced into Grant as he made his full height known.
Grant could stand, too. He did, almost meeting his friend eye-to-eye, his fists mirroring the strongman’s—clenched and hard and ready to be used.
The worst had happened, and he must face it as he faced the good people of London every evening—with courage and bravado and truth.
“Because she has everything I want, damn you. Everything I’ll never have, no matter how much I ache for it. Punch me, then. Get it over with. Your violence cannot change a man’s heart. Cannot change my heart.”
Max’s gaze softened, lost its focus, and he shook his head softly, slowly, as if trying to muddle little bits and pieces of a whole picture together into something that made sense. He blinked, finally met Grant’s gaze again. “You … love her? She’s your best, your only?”
Grant cursed again, a sound as rage-red as the flames dancing before them, turned on his heel, and strode to the window, clasping his hands behind his back. The dark world beyond the glass did nothing to calm the whisky fire within him.
“Yes.” Words soft and hopeless. “Yes. She’s the best. The only. For me.” He waited for the hand on his shoulder to swing him around, for the reared-back fist, the crack of bone against bone. He would deserve it, but he would not take back the bits of herself Freddy had given him. He’d meet a fist over and over again for those. He liked knowing what the back of her skull felt like on the tip of his fingers. He liked knowing the texture of her hair and the curve of her generous hip. He liked the soft flutter of her shyness and the bold glance of her eyes. He liked how she looked at her girls, as if they were her only, her best. And he liked how she looked at him, as if he were a mystery and the answer all in one.
He’d fight a strongman, a champion boxer, or a damned five-headed dragon to have all that.
When the hand finally found him, it was not fist-shaped. It curved around his shoulder, pouring soft gentleness into him, not the bruising edges of anger. And breaking Grant much more surely than a fist would have.
Did stars wink in a night sky far above London? If they did, the smog meandering through the streets did not let their flickering lights through. He drew in a breath as murky as the nighttime fog and looked over his shoulder.
Max wore the look of a man who knew love, soft and hard at the same time, with the blooming curves of hope and the hard angles of fear. “Have you told her yet? What are your intentions?”
“No. I’ve not told her. How can I? Besides, even if I were inclined to do so, she would not welcome my attentions. Particularly matrimonial ones.”
“Is it because you’re a bastard, and she’s a lady?”
“No, actually? What do I care?” Truth there, too. “I’m not interested in a union blessed by the peerage. And I take it neither is she.”
“Then what?”
“Other than her own refusal to wed again?” Grant turned fully, rested against the window’s ledge, and crossed his arms over his chest.
Max whistled. “She’s said as much?”
Grant nodded.
“I’ve heard nothing to that effect. From Freddy or from Nora.”
Did that mean she was not serious in that regard? Perhaps she’d said such because she thought it would reassure him she wanted nothing he was not prepared to give her. A small hope-shaped flame kindled in his chest.
And swiftly extinguished. Whether or not Freddy intended to remarry did not signify.
“Be that as it may,” Grant said, “death still stands between us.”
Max snorted, rocking back on his heels. “You look alive to me.”
“But for how long? My father died at an early age. And I am likely to follow in his footsteps. I have in almost every other way. Including falling in love with a woman with children from another man.” Including loving those children. “Every evening, sometimes twice a day, I throw my body about as if it’s of no more use than a sack of flour. I enjoy my work. But my body hurts.” He’d not admitted it out loud until now. And his knee pinged, a small flare where he should feel nothing, reminding him of the deadly truth of his words. “One day, my body won’t work as it should. Either it will break all at once, and I’ll find death quickly, or death will come agonizingly slow, taking me bit by bit.”
Max made a sound in his throat that spoke of understanding, something guttural between a growl and a groan with more sorrow than a feral sound should have. He made a slow procession, step by ponderous step, back to the fire and retook his seat, swung a bit more whisky into his glass, and took a sip. “This work eats you alive.” He turned his gaze to Grant. “But you do not have to let it consume you.”
Grant scoffed.
