“No,” she said instantly, surprising him. “Not brutish.”

It was a lie. He was covered in blood and his clothes were falling from his body. If he’d ever looked the part of a brute, now was it. “How do I look, then?”

She cut him a look. “Are you searching for a compliment, Duke?”

“Just the truth.”

She lifted one shoulder and let it fall in an affect he was coming to rather like. Not that he should like this woman. She was too beautiful to be anything but dangerous. “Big.”

God knew that was true. “Too big.”

“For the coat and trousers, yes,” she said, “but not too big.”

“The rest of England might disagree.”

“I am not the rest of England.” She stopped, considering her next words, and added. “I rather like how big you are.”

The words sent a thrill through him. She didn’t mean it to come out the way it sounded. It was the darkness of the night and the motion of the carriage and the enclosed space.

And it did not matter if he wanted her to say it again and again. Lillian Hargrove was not for wanting.

Now, if only his body would listen.

“I assure you, the rest of England disagrees,” he said, shifting on the seat, wondering how much further they had to go.

She smirked. “Not your countess.”

Peg. He feigned ignorance. “My countess?”

“Lady Rowley. She doesn’t think you are too big.”

Peg didn’t think that now. Not when he stood before her, the Duke of Warnick, with a higher station than she’d found for herself. But once . . . Peg had valued him much, much less. Even as he’d wanted nothing more than to belong to her.

Alec looked out the window. “She’s Lord Rowley’s countess, don’t you think?”

“I don’t, actually,” Lily said. “I saw the way she touched at you. Like she owned you. And the way you looked at her. As though . . .” She trailed off.

He told himself not to speak. Not to ask. But somewhere in the silence between them, there was something he wanted quite desperately to understand. “As though?”

She shook her head and looked out the window. “As though you wanted to be owned.”

He had wanted it. From the first moment she’d smiled at him when he was a boy, showing him what desire was. Before he’d known what she would make him. What he would make himself for her. He’d have done anything she asked. And he had. He’d trailed after her like a lovesick pup.

Until she’d made it all clear.

Sweet Alec, girls like me don’t marry boys like you.

But he wasn’t about to tell Lillian Hargrove any of that.

“Peg is not my countess.”

“But you were Peg’s,” Lily said, her silly frock turning her into a dog with a bone.

He sighed, looking out the window of the carriage for a time. “Ages ago. She was sister to a schoolmate.”

“And you weren’t a duke.”

He gave a little huff of laughter at that. “No. If I had been . . .” It was his turn to trail off.

“If you had been?” Lily prompted, and he looked to her, finding her gaze locked on his, waiting. She was still and straight, as though she could wait forever for an answer. She wasn’t getting it.

He shook his head.

“You wanted her?”

Like nothing he’d ever wanted before. He’d wanted all the things she’d represented. All the pretty promises she’d never given.

He’d wanted it all. Like a fool.

Lily did not move for a long while, and Alec refused to ask what she was thinking, instead saying, “So, you see, Lillian, I know what it is not to get the match you wanted.”

She nodded. “It seems so.”

Silence fell between them, and Alec became more and more aware of her in the darkness, of her long legs beneath the silk skirts of her dress, of her graceful hands, wrapped in kidskin, clasped together in her lap.

Those hands began to consume him. He watched them, wishing they were not gloved. Wishing he could see them, bare. Wishing he could touch them.

Wishing they could touch him.

He sat straight at that. She was not for touching.

And he was not for her to touch.

He looked out the window again. How far could they possibly be from the damn dog house? Not close enough, clearly.

And then she said, softly, “I thought he loved me.”

The sentence undid him, flooding him with jealousy and fury and a keen desire to stop the carriage, find Hawkins, and finish what he had started earlier. He flexed his right hand, the welcome sting of his knuckles reminding him that he’d done good damage, but not enough.

“Did you love him?” He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. The answer wasn’t for him to know.

And then she answered, slowly destroying him with every word. “My mother died when I was a child. My father never remarried, and when he died, I went to live with the duke. He was kind enough. He settled me. Provided me with rooms and a more than generous allowance.” She hesitated, searching for the right words. “He took great pains to be a good guardian. He intended to give me a season, you know. Before he died. But he wasn’t a substitute for a family.”

“And the staff?” he asked, remembering how little they knew of her.

She smiled, small and sad in the moonlight. “They don’t know how to interact with me. I’m neither fish nor fowl. Not an aristocrat. Not a servant. Not family. Not entirely guest. Untouchable. Doubly so, somehow.” She paused, wrapping her arms around herself, as though to ward off a chill. Looked away. “I would go months without being touched by another person, beyond a maid helping to button a dress, a gloved hand taking mine to help me into a carriage.”

His gaze fell to her hands again, and he loathed the gloves anew. “Your room. Under the stairs.”

She lifted one shoulder in that shrug again. “It was nice to hear people. Up and down the stairs. At least I was reminded that there were others in the world. At least I was close to them, physically. Even if I didn’t have them in my life.

“I would hear them laugh . . . the girls. They would giggle all the way down the stairs about some silly thing I never knew of. And I would have given anything to trade places with them. To be with them. Instead of where I was—in between worlds.”