This forced the duke to throw his body back, his left arm crossing his chest to bat away the trajectory of the knife aimed at his throat. He performed a simultaneous attack as he blocked, but the thrust went wild, missing its mark.
“You’re distracted,” Argent accused.
“Am I?” Trenwyth baited.
This exchange gave Argent the time he needed to regain his balance, and he took no occasion to savor it, but struck like a coiled viper, the weapon aimed directly beneath Trenwyth’s sternum.
Now squared to his opponent, Cole caught Argent’s outstretched arm by crossing both of his in front of his body. He maneuvered the weapon out and away from danger, and turned against the extended arm to plant an elbow in Argent’s jaw with a gasp-inducing crack.
Imogen’s hands flew to her mouth, barely containing her cry of astonishment.
Argent caught the knife-wielding hand that closely followed, and spat blood on the grass. The men strained and grappled for an instant, their movements concealed by the substantial shadows they both created with their magnificent bodies.
After a heart-pounding struggle, they both froze, locked in some painful-looking impasse.
“You’re distracted, and you’re dead,” Argent said victoriously, a bit more breathlessly than before.
“Am I?” Trenwyth repeated.
The blunted blade glinted against his neck as Argent made a slashing motion.
“So I am,” the duke relented, and then made a gesture that directed attention to where he held his own blade.
Scandalously high against Argent’s inner thigh where the femoral artery would spill all his blood in less than two minutes.
“So are you.” It might have been the first time Imogen had ever heard a smile in Cole’s voice. At least, the first time in almost three years.
Their sparring ended with a draw, and the men separated with a handshake, then each used the back of their hands to wipe blood from their faces in an eerily synchronized manner.
“Care to divulge what’s troubling you?” Argent prompted mildly.
“What makes you think I’m troubled?” Trenwyth bent to gather other discarded sparring implements such as canes of bamboo, fencing swords, and their knives. He returned them to a sturdy trunk at the foot of the garden stairs.
Imogen knew she should go, but had to remind herself to even so much as blink. His sleek, powerful beauty mesmerized her into stillness, hypnotized, nay, seduced by the potency of his masculinity.
Argent assisted, though he paused to study Trenwyth whilst he was unaware. “If I’ve learned anything in my life, Your Grace, it’s this: if you watch people long enough, they reveal themselves to you.”
“Your Grace. What a ridiculous moniker,” Cole murmured bitterly. “You and I have known very little grace in life, Argent. And we possess even less. I wonder if such a thing exists.”
“It does,” Argent affirmed in his toneless way. “I’ve found it with my wife. My mother had it. Most women are built with an extra element of grace. It is because of men like us that they need it, I think.” He elbowed Trenwyth in the ribs, as though to mark the rare occasion upon which he employed humor.
Ridding himself of his burden of weapons, Cole looked down at his hands. One streaked with his blood, the other with the metallic reflection of the cold moon. “Blood and steel. These are the only elements I recognize anymore. I only find grace in a single memory. A memory of a woman who gave it to me once. In that, I fear, is my tragedy. I wonder if reminiscence has smothered my sense of reality.”
Argent contemplated that for a moment. “It is only human to prize most what we have lost.”
“I know that.” Cole made an impatient gesture, directed more at himself than his companion. “It’s a tactic I’ve used against others countless times. And so … I should be above that base impulse, should I not?”
Argent shrugged. “Even remarkable people are subject to human banality.”
“I seem to be imprisoned by it,” Cole said bitterly.
The big, stoic man brought his hand to his auburn hair, looking about as though seeking permission from the darkness to say what he did next. “More than most, I understand that a prison can keep you long after you’re released. That a man, locked away, becomes an animal. And that animal walks with you into freedom, until freedom becomes confining. It is … not an easy thing.”
When Cole glanced over at Argent, the careful expression on his face caused an ache to well in Imogen’s chest so painful that she clutched at it.
“It is exactly as you say. My mind has become a sort of prison. The walls are bricks mortared with remembered screams. The bars lock me in with remembered torments. My body squirms to be rid of it all. Of me. Of the past. And the disgust I feel drenches me until a vague sort of numbness takes over … and erases me altogether. I want to tear myself apart. Or others. Or the entire world. I feel at once violent and apathetic and—” He broke off, his hand curling into a fist.
“And you are looking for the one person you think can hold you together,” Argent finished for him.
“Yes.”
That one broken word shattered any semblance of Imogen’s composure. Tears made tracks of fire down her cheeks, and her heart thundered so loudly it was a miracle that both superlative men couldn’t hear it.
Imogen ducked further into the shield of the tree as Argent turned to look past her house toward his own, hunkered on the other side. Millie was, no doubt, slumbering within, awaiting her husband’s return.
“Don’t stop until you find her,” Argent said with more ferocity than she’d ever credited him for.
“What if she’s nowhere to be found?”
“I would burn this empire to the ground if Millie were taken from me. I would scour the world until fate swallowed me whole and hell tried to claim me, as it surely will.”
“I feel as you do. But I only knew her for the space of a night … It seems ludicrous, doesn’t it? I should have my head examined.”
“Sometimes it only takes one night to fill a chamber you thought empty.” Argent thumped Cole on the chest, above his heart.
The duke nodded, turning so Imogen could no longer see his face. “I was going to ask Dorian Blackwell for his aid, but I think I made an enemy of him.”
Argent made a sardonic sound. “Dorian never forgets a thing, but his own bit of grace has taught him to forgive. I’ll talk to him on your behalf.”
Feeling as though she’d stolen enough luck to remain concealed, Imogen sneaked back into her garden on trembling legs, holding in sobs that threatened to reveal her. She didn’t know what terrified her more. That Cole would find her and reveal the clandestine life she’d been forced to live …
Or how very much a part of her yearned to be found.
But it was impossible now, wasn’t it? He’d never forgive her secrets, or worse, wouldn’t believe her. She had details of their night together locked into her memory, of course. She could prove that she’d been Ginny.
Oh God, was she even considering this lunacy? Was the risk worth the recompense?
Her heart bled for Cole, for all the suffering he’d endured these past years. But every encounter they’d ever had as duke and countess had been fraught with antagonism. He disliked almost everything about her.