Page 34 of The Boxer’s Belle

“He’ll be pleased,” she said, pulling herself out of such thoughts. “So will Effie.”

“She will,” he agreed, with a small, pleased smile.

Bella couldn’t name it, but there was something in her brother’s expression, or perhaps his carriage… He was a man in a way he hadn’t been the night before.

Impending fatherhood suited him.

Her teeth would be ground to nubs by the time West arrived. She’d painted two signs out in their makeshift workshop in the field without a single wry comment from him—because he’d found elsewhere to be. The arse was two hours late.

Annoyance threatened to overtake her.

Bella tossed the paintbrush aside and turned for the stables, determined to remind him of his responsibilities. He’d promised to help with the last of the plantings—and Bella certainly would not dig the rest of holes.

Her goldenrod skirts clung around her ankles with every furious stomp toward the barn, where West was surely hiding. He’d be lucky if she didn’t run across Effie first—it would serve him right if she told his mother he was neglecting his duties.

The fury—as well as all the air—left her the moment she rounded the stables.

West at the heavy bag was a dangerous sight at a distance. But this—mere steps away—he was deadly.

She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. Though she couldn’t hear anything over the rushing of her veins, she must have made a sound because he straightened and turned toward her.

“Bella.” His voice was hoarse and tight. She had only heard such a tone from him once—the morning after that night.

She rolled her shoulders down her back. “Weston. Did you forget you agreed to help with this absurd festival?”

“I— No. I only thought—” He shook his head, banishing whatever thought he’d conjured. “I wasn’t certain you’d wish to see me after— I thought perhaps it might be best if I returned to London.” Finally, his darkened eyes caught hers—regret, or something very much like it, written in their down-turned set.

Her stomach dropped straight into the center of the earth. “Now? Now you want to return to London?”

“I thought to, yes—” He intended to leave her with nothing but chaos to organize. The infuriating arse⁠—

“Now that Eliza is with child and Ben is having a fit of apoplexy over it— Now you wish to abandon me to deal with the fallout?”

His eyes widened. “Eliza is with child?”

“Obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes. Honestly, men were entirely ignorant about such things. “And you wish to leave me to manage Ben while he fusses himself to death? He’ll not wish to worry Eliza, which means the only person left to worry is me!”

“Is she well? And the babe?”

“As far as anyone can tell, yes. But Ben certainly is not. He’s already fretting that she’ll… You cannot go to London.”

His brows hit the sweat-dampened strands of hair decorating his forehead. “I cannot?”

Bella crossed her arms, knotting her hands into fists to keep them from tightening at her waist. “I forbid it.”

“You forbid it?”

“Yes, it would be beyond the pale for you to abandon me with a half-finished festival, an invalid, and Ben’s mother-hening.”

“I thought—after last night—that you would want me⁠—”

“Away from my bedroom in the middle of the night?” she supplied, refusing to consider the real reason she had ordered him from her room.

“Gone,” he finished, voice raked over coals. The single word, so absolute, so final, left a void in its absence.

“I want you to speak sense into Ben—that way always you do. And I want you to dig— I do not dig. You cannot do those things from London.”

His shoulders unfurled. Until that moment, she hadn’t noticed how hunched they were—how small he had made himself.