Page 72 of The Duke Undone

She abandoned her efforts and regarded him warily.

“Yardley put you up to this.” He said it slowly. “He told you about the will. He wanted to catch me out, and you let him buy your help.”

He pressed his fist into the brick. The double betrayal maddened him. He wanted to stamp and snort, like a horse beset by bees.

He was as weak-minded as everyone believed.

“Blame him, blame me.” She shrugged, her indifference damning. “Anyone but yourself.”

Her hair was half-down, the twist she’d anchored with pins in the process of untwisting.

“You lied to me; he didn’t,” she said. “You said you’d talk to Mabeldon. He said you wouldn’t. Tell me who I should put my trust in.”

“Spare me your justifications,” he muttered. He pounded his fist into the bricks, once, twice, three times, mind reeling. All Yardley’s encouragement, all his prattle about self-control and the House of Lords—worthless. He expected Anthony to fail. Wanted him to fail.

“I don’t have to justify myself.” She was pallid but she didn’t flinch. How had she come by this equanimity? It was dark. It was late. An infuriated male was smashing the wall of the alley in which he’d penned her. But somehow, she persisted. In other circumstances, he’d be the first to admire her mettle.

Overheated, he snatched the cap from his head and stuffed it in a pocket, rocking on his heels. His jaw felt like flint.

“I acted in my best interests, in my aunt’s best interests, in the best interests of my neighbors,” she said firmly. “What would you have me do? Risk the roof over my head to protect your vanity?”

“More than my vanity is at stake.”

“Because you won’t follow your father’s rules.” She shrugged. “You said you’re not a drunkard. Don’t drink.”

“I didn’t drink,” he grated out. He’d pushed away his gin because of the look in her eyes.

“I don’t mean tonight.” She stood straighter. No, he would not be touched by that either, her small, upraised chin, her stiffened spine. “Tonight . . . I was surprised.”

“Surprised? How gratifying.” He smiled. “And here I thought you saw me as an open book. You seem an expert on my shortcomings. Cowardice, vanity. There are others in addition, I know. I’ll defer to you. Gluttony, of course, but it turns out I can allow at least one glass of gin to slip through my fingers.”

“If you can, why don’t you?”

His laughter echoed blackly between the bricks. “It’s not so simple. Why should I follow my father’s rules? He didn’t amend his will because I broke a bloody window. He wanted to break me. Do you understand?”

She didn’t, of course. How could she? But Yardley understood it all, perfectly. Pain twisted in his chest, and he jammed the heel of his hand inside his coat. Miss Coover’s eyes had widened. He could see the glassy whites through the gloom.

“My mother drank,” he said, his voice emerging as a rasp. “She was unfaithful. My father packed her off to the asylum. The doctors said it was nymphomania. I didn’t know the diagnosis, I didn’t know the word, until I heard it in the schoolyard.”

Bloody days. But he’d given as good as he’d got. With George’s help.

“I look like her. I have her face, her weak mind, weak character. That’s what he thought, what he said. Christ, I couldn’t wait to get away from him.”

From George, too. God forgive him.

“The army wasn’t what I imagined. War wasn’t a spectacle, was nothing like Waterloo played on the stage at Astley’s.” There was an understatement. Again, his black laughter echoed, and he had to breathe slowly through his nose before he could go on. “But for the first time, I lived my own life. Mine.”

The ghost of an expression flitted across her face, something akin to tenderness. Then she gave a slight shake of her head.

“I know about the court-martial.” She whispered it, but even so the words cut like a knife. He edged closer, until he could make out the cluster of freckles on her cheek, the Pleiades. How distant he felt from that giddy moment of discovery—the field glasses revealing an asterism of dark gold flecks.

“He told you that too.” He heard himself say it, the deadly calm astonishing him. “And what did he say?”

She was too quick, too perceptive, to mistake his purring tone for velvet. Beneath, it was all claw. She licked her lips, pausing before she formed her words.

“You behaved . . . dishonorably.”

“How?”