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“But do you know”—his father’s thick-ended fingertip came to the center of his chest with force—“if you offered Lord Penney for her hand, she would not refuse?”

Rafe studied the worn edges of the man’s lower incisors. They were all that shone when he spoke, his upper lip and teeth shrouded behind the wiry grey mustache. Fuck it all.

Rafe straightened, still against the wall, to full height. He was a head taller than his father. “And why is that?”

“What?” Venom. Pure, unadulterated poison in those eyes.

“Why is it that Lord Penney would accept an offer from me, when both myself and his daughter can hardly withstand a minute of each other’s company?” Oh, his heart was racing now. Like that of a wildebeest with a lion at his heels. “Why will you not allow me, and poor little Miss Penney, for all that, to choose for ourselves? Surely there are other wealthy men for her to pick from, and I know damn well there are respectable ladies I’d rather court.”

One. One respectable lady. Who he was just delusional enough to hope might have him.

The nerves on the left side of his face screamed. An instant later, his vision tracked the slap. Hot tingles of intermingling pain and mortification, borne deeper than the fascia of his flesh.

His father hadn’t laid a hand on him in years. Rafe had somehow questioned whether he still would, or if he even possessed enough pride himself to still mind the offense.

“Bloody worthless nodcock.”

Tremors vibrated Thomas’s body—no, that was Rafe’s own unsteadiness; the world rattled in time with his pulse: the worn incisors, the polished banister, the three wall scones, the bald pate of the smirking butler who lingered in the corridor.

The finger returned to Rafe’s chest, and this time, it felt more like the tip of a stiletto blade. His chin dipped—fatal mistake, to show this cowardice—just to confirm it wasn’t.

“Do as you’re damn well told, Rafe, or I swear—I swear to you—the least of your concerns will be pretty townhouses and supplicant bed partners.”

He refused to look up. He stared, instead, at the way the littlest joint of Thomas’s finger caved on itself, at the bloodless white of his nail. Father.

By God, this was someone’s father.

Rafe turned sharply left, capturing the door handle in his sweaty palm and thrusting it open in one seamless move. He was halfway down the steps when it finished slamming in his wake.

His breaths were noisy, each one laced with a touch of his panicked voice. He hadn’t even uttered a response! Not one syllable of protest. He’d let the words, the evil tongue’s threats, absorb into him. Worthless. That was the chief among them all, wasn’t it?

He passed the mews. Flattened himself against a tree to catch his breath. Squeezed his eyes closed as a dray trundled by. Christ. He hated his weakness. His relentless insufficiency. All his life, he had been this way: fearfully obedient. What did that say about him? That even his boldest hours, like breaking his mother out of that institution, had been tainted by the cold blood of fear?

It might have been an hour that saw him to the Malloys’ door. Perhaps more. It was falling light now, not quite dark, but dim enough to cast the cramped cobbles in dusky blue and make the candlelit windows appealing. The paint-chipped door swung open. Had he even knocked yet?

“Rafe?”

The street suddenly seemed quiet. Alfie’s eyes were wide, his shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows and his neck bared. He moved back, and the door clucked on its hinges. Rafe took a step, but saw, at the far end of the house’s interior, Mrs. Malloy carving meat at the table. She stole a glance in his direction.

“I-I, uh … I’m sorry to have troubled you, Alf.” He took two steps back. “I’ll see you around. Good evening to you both.”

“Where does he think he’s going?”

The feminine voice floated out to him, and curse his impoliteness for showing up here like this, counting on some hospitality he wasn’t owed—Rafe exhaled mightily. As if he’d carried that breath all the way from Mayfair. As if his father’s knife-edged fingertip had trapped it in his lungs, and now kindness had released it.

“I haven’t a clue,” Alfie said. “Come on, laddie. Get your hide in here, or I’ll not leave a scrap for you to sup on.”

Rafe smiled as well as he was able, tucking his chin as he crossed the threshold. “Thank you both.”

His hand went up to capture the edge of his hat, but he found nothing there. What a sight he must look. He expected curious stares, but Alfie and Lucia had gone back to the table and resumed what he had surely interrupted.

Mrs. Malloy laid her carving knife back against the chicken, flaying it into paper-thin slices—more skilled than any gentleman doing the job at a mahogany dinner table. Alfie began whistling one of his favorite tunes, “The Lass that Loves a Sailor,” and scooped more coals atop the lid of a cast iron roaster on the hearth.

“I apologize it’s so warm in here, Mr. Balfour,” Mrs. Malloy said, glancing up with a smile. “It was a hot day, this one.”

“Oh, I hadn’t even noticed.”

Truly, he hadn’t. He had only been to Alfie’s home a few times; so much of their business was conducted at the store and on the road that there was seldom a need to meet up elsewhere. “Can I be of assistance?”