He lunged. Evander twisted, but the alley was narrow, and the wall caught his shoulder, and the blade caught his arm. A hot, slicing burn ripped across his left triceps, and Evander felt the fabric of his coat and shirt part in a single line.
He seized the man’s knife hand, twisted the wrist until the blade dropped, and drove his forehead into the man’s nose. The mancrumpled. The knife clattered against the cobblestones and spun into the dark.
Evander stood over three unconscious men in a Southwark alley and breathed. His pulse hammered. The burn in his arm sharpened into a throb, and he looked down and saw the tear in his coat, the dark stain spreading beneath it. He pressed his hand against the wound and felt the wet heat soak through his fingers.
He pulled his neckcloth free and wound it around his upper arm, using his teeth to cinch the knot. The linen turned red before he finished tying it. The cut ran the length of his triceps, long and open and bleeding with the steady persistence of a wound that would not kill him but would not let him forget it.
Evander retrieved his gloves from his pocket. He stepped over the man with the broken nose, walked to the end of the alley, and climbed into the carriage.
“Home,” he told the driver.
The carriage lurched forward. Evander leaned his head against the seat and pressed the soaked neckcloth tighter against his arm and watched the streetlamps of Southwark blur past the window.
He thought of Goss’s words.Madame Fontaine’s. Past the Heath.
Another thread. Another place Richard had gone to ruin himself while Evander stayed behind and held everything together.
The carriage crossed the river. The bleeding had not stopped. The neckcloth was soaked through and warm against his skin, and the throb in his arm kept time with his heartbeat.
He closed his eyes and saw Mary’s face at dinner that evening, composed and distant, discussing the price of beeswax as though he were a stranger she had been seated beside at a party.
He had wanted her to ask where he was going. He had wanted her to look at him with that sharp, searching expression she had worn the first week, the one that demanded answers he would not give.
She had not asked. She had not looked.
He was bleeding in a carriage at one in the morning, and the thing that troubled him most was that his wife had stopped caring enough to argue.
The carriage turned onto the Mayfair streets. Evander pressed the neckcloth tighter and watched the familiar houses slide past, and he did not think about the blood soaked through the linen and ran down his arm and dripped onto the seat.
CHAPTER 10
“Boil, would you?” Mary glared at the kettle as though it had wronged her.
The kitchen was dark save for the low fire she had coaxed back to life from the banked coals, and the single candle she had carried down three flights of stairs in her dressing gown because sleep had abandoned her at half-past two and she refused to ring for Hattie over a cup of tea.
She leaned against the worktable and crossed her arms. The house was silent above her. Tommy had settled after his midnight feeding, and Mrs. Bridwell had things well in hand, and there was no reason for Mary to be awake except that her mind would not stop turning.
The kettle ticked against the grate. Mary watched the firelight play across the flagstones and listened to the silence and did not think about where the Duke was tonight or whose bed he was in or whether he would come home smelling of perfume she would never wear.
She was very good at not thinking about these things. She had practiced.
The kitchen door opened.
Mary spun. The Duke stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. His greatcoat hung open. His cravat was gone. In the dim firelight, the front of his white shirt looked wrong. Dark. Wet. The stain spread from his left shoulder down across his chest, and it was not dirt, and it was not rain.
“What happened?” Mary crossed the kitchen in three strides. “You are bleeding.”
“I fell.” He straightened from the doorframe and took a step inside. His face was pale beneath the stubble. “On my way back. The steps were?—”
“That is a lie.” Mary caught his arm and felt him flinch. The fabric of his coat was soaked through the left sleeve, warm and heavy under her fingers. She pulled her hand away and saw her palm stained red. “Sit down.”
“I can handle this myself.”
“Sit down, Evander.”
His name left her mouth before she could think about it. She had never used it. In three weeks of marriage, he had been “the Duke” and “Your Grace” and “my husband” in the privacy of herown thoughts, but never his name, never the word itself on her tongue.
It stopped him.