The Price of Temptation

by Harmony Williams

  And the only thing she had left to buy them a little more time was Papa’s ring.

  The ring Papa had given to a man who’d wanted to marry his daughter. Lily had once flattered herself into believing she knew every facet of Adam Darling, including his long list of misdeeds as a confidence man. She’d fallen in love with him anyway.

  He’d taken everything, including her innocence.

  She was no saint, but she had been a naive clodpoll who had danced on air at the sight of one of his smiles. “Not anymore,” she mumbled under her breath. The ring was a reminder of the dolt she’d been. She should have cast it off four years ago, when she’d woken in the Bristol hotel room to find her husband of a week gone without a word.

  But she hadn’t. Her gaze drifted to the display once more as memories drifted like snowflakes through her mind. Their courtship. His entreaty for her help with jewels while he swindled one last target. The way he always had a kind word and a small pouch of coins for the injured veterans-turned-vagabonds on the streets of London. Everything, all the memories of what had led to her downfall.

  But he’d given as well as taken. Thanks to him, she had the knowledge and the skill to steal from anyone she pleased, if she deigned to sink to his level.

  Think of Willa and Sophie. She had two sisters to feed—not to mention a mother nearly catatonic with the grief of Papa’s unforeseen passing three years prior.

  With careful planning, she could snatch every last gem in this shop.

  But she was nothing—nothing—like Adam.

  A breeze stirred the stray hairs on the nape of her neck. For a moment, the bustle of the clotted London street swelled before the shop door closed again. Lily glanced sidelong at the shop proprietor. Greet your customer so I may forget I was ever in here. Better she spare herself the humiliation.

  However, the charlatan was too deep in wooing a young buck hoping to impress the woman he courted. All the jewelers near Mayfair traveled in the same social circle, competed for the same deep pockets. How would it look to find the owner of a jewelry store frequenting another’s shop? She held herself rigid and bent over the display, letting the curls at her temples fall forward to obscure her profile. She had too few customers to risk alienating one.

  A man swaggered along the floor behind her. His loud footsteps, far from the dainty little clicks made by women’s slippers, announced his gender. His stride bespoke his arrogance.

  She knew his type. The disdainful men who stepped into her shop demanding to deal only with the jeweler—the male jeweler. When she’d had the income to hire a man to wait on customers, the demands of arrogant men hadn’t cut so deep. But after… Her chest clenched as a deluge of memories took root. Too many instances when she’d had to inform the men calling that the renowned jeweler of whom they’d heard had passed from this world.

  Oh, Papa.

  But today, this blatherskite was another’s problem. To men like him, she was little more noticeable than the drapery. If she wasn’t to sell her wedding ring, she had no business being here.

  As she drew herself up and tensed to flee for the door, awareness tickled her neck like an errant feather. A man’s voice murmured near her temple, far closer than she’d thought him.

  “Are you contemplating taking them for yourself?”

  A frisson climbed her spine. It cannot be. She hadn’t heard that voice in four long years.

  Her lungs seizing painfully and her eyes suspiciously wet, she turned. He stood so near, hemming her against the pedestal housing the jewels, that her skirts brushed both with the movement. Blinking rapidly to compose herself, she battled the indescribable ache in her chest. Anger. It must be. She certainly hadn’t mourned his absence.

  She tilted her face up, and there he was. The dimple in his clean-shaven chin winked, begging for her touch. His hazel eyes danced with a devilish twinkle she recalled in mortifying detail. He looked older, his sun-kissed skin forming faint crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes. His hair, in dire need of a trim, curled to caress his cheek. Lily fought the inexplicable urge to surrender to the same desire.

  The last time she’d seen him, they’d been face to face, skin to skin, celebrating their marriage. She’d awoken to find the bed empty. No note—and no money. He’d left her with nothing, not even a kind memory.

  The betrayal sliced through the unwanted desire boiling between them.

  Adam Darling was a dangerous man. And she knew better than to let him walk back into her life unscathed.

  …

  As the woman turned, confirming her identity, Adam’s innards winged into knots. Lily. He ravaged her with his gaze, drinking in the sight of her. After all these years, he was parched for her.

  A man shouldn’t feel this way about the wife of a week he’d knowingly left in his dust. But, lawks, Adam’s knees weakened at the sight of her. His heart throbbed painfully in his throat. Heaven preserve him, even if he didn’t deserve it. He still loved Lily.

  Which made her presence in this shop all the more alarming. Mr. Bancroft was a proud man, too proud to see his daughter shopping at one of his competitors. Why would she risk the disapproval of the father she adored? Unless this was now her shop. Because, upon his leaving, she had married a man more suited to her upbringing.

  He fought not to wheeze. His chest felt wrung out like a damp cloth as the possibility circled his mind. Four long years had passed since he had last seen her.

  But they were married. Surely she couldn’t have sought an annulment or a divorce without his signature?

  The look in her eye sharpened, skewering him along with an angularity to her face and form he didn’t recall. She’d always been soft of figure. She must have lost two stone or more since they’d last parted.

  Judging from the glint in her green eyes, she’d lost none of her shrewd wit or her bravery.

  The momentary confusion in her face washed away, replaced by a veneer of confidence and poise. He’d taught her to do that, taught her to look fate in the face and spit. She hadn’t forgotten their time together entirely.

  Even if cordiality seemed beyond her.

  Waspish, she snapped, “I’m afraid I occupy a higher moral ground than to steal from a person of my acquaintance.”

  The barb cut him to the quick.

  He gritted his teeth. I deserve her censure.

  Yes, but…

  In his bloodiest of nightmares, he’d never foreseen the cruel twist of the knife fate had wedged between them. If he’d had his druthers, he would never have left—never have taken the money they’d intended to set up as a dowry for their future daughters. Both choices had been wrenched from his control on one dastardly evening on the end of a Bristol pier.

  The only other time he’d felt so helpless, he’d held his dying brother in his arms. He hadn’t been able to save him, but after four years of back-breaking work to provide them with an escape, Adam might yet be able to salvage the situation with his wife. Unless she had married again. Or taken a lover. Or…

  Perhaps he’d only made that inane comment out of a desperation to learn her motives. Better she had turned to a life of crime than risen beyond his grasp. Better for his battered heart, in any case.

  He retreated. If not from the room, then at the least from wearing his heart so near to his sleeve. His old, practiced smile rose to his lips like a supple mask. He wanted nothing from her—save perhaps her forgiveness and the chance to make amends—but he was far more accustomed to pretending good intentions than to having them. Lily, as always, threatened his sure footing.

  When he inhaled through his nose, he caught the hint of rosewater. In a moment of weakness, he leaned closer. He’d forgotten how good she smelled. Forgotten how tall she stood, her face level with the crook of his neck when he held her close. He ached for her.

  And if she knew, she would shred him to pieces. The sparkle in her eyes
held a jaded edge. An edge he had put there.

  What a legacy.

  Offer her repayment and leave. It was what he’d come to London to do, to right the wrong he’d been forced to make. He had no right asking anything of her, not even her time. A lowborn bastard like him had had no right reaching for a jewel like her to begin with.

  He stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket. The rasp of fine parchment met his fingertips. Give her the documents. He couldn’t. Selfish as he was, he craved a few more moments in her company. And there was the small matter of the rumor he had overheard, the fact that a scholarly friend of hers, one long absent from both their lives, had returned to his native haunts.

  “Can I beg a moment of your time?”

  When she stepped back, he braced himself for ejection from her new shop.

  “No. If you’re looking for a malleable, biddable miss, I suggest you try Almack’s.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Since when have I asked for a biddable wife?”

  Their gazes locked. He refused to look away first. Instead, he willed her to remember all they had been together. Partners. Equals. He’d always encouraged her to think and act for herself. To take what she wanted.

  And when he had been the object of her desire…

  He blew out a pent-up breath and mustered a shaky smile. “And, darling, if memory serves, I’ve already accepted a woman for better or worse.”

  She stiffened. A blush swept onto her cheeks like a crashing wave. When she turned away, her color swamped her freckles and nearly matched her hair.

  “I don’t know what we had, but it certainly wasn’t a marriage.”

  She turned so violently, her skirts whipped him in the legs as she fled. Not toward the safety of the back of the shop, but out—onto the busy street. The door crashed into its frame like a landslide.

  He took one involuntary step forward before gritting his teeth. Give her time.

  Time to do what—to prove she’d rather see me dead than hear my apology?

  He still loved her. She deserved better than to be forced to face him without warning. He should have thought his plan through more thoroughly, but when he’d spotted her entering the shop…

  A surge of emotion smothered him. Balling his fists, he glared at the shopkeeper, a man much too old for her. He looked perplexed, which didn’t seem to give his customer much confidence in him. Had Lily remarried?

  Adam had no right to be jealous, but logic couldn’t dam the flood crashing over him. He forced his hand out of his pocket before he crumpled the gift he meant for his wife.

  His wife, not any other’s.

  “This isn’t over.”

  The mumbled words should have been succor. But as he slipped onto Bond Street, searching in vain for the pale flash of Lily’s dress or the glint of red in her hair, he felt as if he stepped back onto a battlefield. He’d scarcely left the last alive.

  This time, it wasn’t only his life at stake. It was also his heart.

  If he couldn’t have her, the very least he could do was prove himself worthy of forgiveness. But in the sticky summer air, desire swelled in him.

  He couldn’t help but yearn for what might have been, if not for the intervention of a blackguard pretending to be her friend. Hearing of the man’s return had hastened Adam’s plan to make amends and return to London, despite the fact that he had a few repairs left to do on his means of redemption. He couldn’t leave Lily to the likes of the man who had hurt her—especially one who called himself her friend.

  Chapter Two

  Lily returned home to blessed chaos. The moment she shut the door, the click of the wood against the frame overpowered by her sisters’ shouts, she released a sigh. At last, normalcy. The rigid muscles of her back, wound tighter and tighter with every step that she’d spent replaying those short few moments with her husband, finally relaxed. Her hammering heart slowed and she shut her eyes.

  Unbidden, Adam lurked in the recesses of her mind. As unrelenting in memory as he was in life. She sorely needed a distraction—and not only from him. She’d scurried into the jewelry shop with the intention of staving off the creditors for a week or two more.

  Without the money from my wedding ring, what will we do?

  Steal.

  No. That was Adam’s domain, and he was welcome to it. Whatever life hurled in her path, she would face it with aplomb.

  No thanks to him. No, that bounder had set everything into motion when he’d seduced away her heart, her virtue, and every penny she had. He had even—with the shock of his abandonment—contributed to Papa’s rapid decline in health.

  If not for her poor choice of husband, she might have been able to cover the debts with her dowry. At the very least, she would have been free to remarry, even if the idea sickened her.

  She hadn’t had a marriage. She’d had a few treasured days together before the illusion had been viciously ripped away. It could have been far worse. I might have been tied to him for life.

  Yes, on paper, she and Adam were yet wed. But she would gouge out her own eyes before welcoming him into her life again. What business did he have speaking to her at all, unless he meant to grovel while presenting her with a thick sheaf of bank notes?

  If he presented himself at the house…

  Lily shook her head. Even Adam wouldn’t be so audacious. If he was…she would find a way to handle the matter privately. After four long years, her sisters and mother still didn’t know the extent to which he’d wounded her. Certainly, they’d seen her heartbreak. She’d been inconsolable. But when Papa had nearly called the Bow Street Runners down to look for Adam, Lily had begged her father to keep the matter a secret. She didn’t want to be a spectacle or to harm her sisters’ chances at happiness. So she’d concocted a simple tale about investments and Adam’s oversight of them personally, leading to his impromptu and extended departure.

  As far as she knew, her family had believed the tale.

  The cacophony of her sisters’ voices swelled, drowning out Lily’s thoughts. Up the tall balustrade framing the stairs, her mother stepped into view with delicate, shuffling steps. She clutched the railing for balance, the sleeve of her mourning gown dusting it clean. Dressed all in black, she looked a shadow compared to the vivacious daughters trailing in her wake, shouting atop one another. Mama’s shoulders bowed inwardly, her skin wan and waxen as if she wanted to sink into the floor. Mama occasionally snapped out of her morose moods, but today was not one of the lucky days. Her hand tightened on the railing, her knuckles thin and white. Her lips moved, but the argument of the two young women snatched away the words.

  Lily filled her lungs and bellowed, “Enough!”

  The word rang in the silence. All three women on the landing turned to stare at her as though she were the culprit disturbing the peace.

  Mama didn’t seem of a mind to explain the altercation, so Lily took charge. She thrust away from the door, her shoulders pushed back as she mounted the stairs.

  “Let Mama rest, for goodness’ sake!”

  Her sisters—as different as night and day—exchanged a speaking glance. Sophie, short and curvaceous, embodied serenity with her neatly pressed clothes, the knot of her strawberry blond hair, and her guarded expression. She plucked at one sleeve, the shine of her buffed fingernails marred by a single splotch of ink. Willa, tall and lanky, wore her hair loose like a river of fire down her back, framing a molten expression.

  “What has you so out of sorts?”

  Her younger sister scowled and brandished a letter like a rapier. When the paper nearly thwacked Mama, Lily planted herself between the taller woman and her mother, who was an inch or two shorter and as thin as a wraith.

  “This! Sophie wants to put me on the shelf.”

  Don’t snap at her. With the tears shining in Willa’s robin’s-egg blue eyes, her conviction on the matter was absolute. Lily to
ok a breath, held it for the count of three without looking at either of her sisters, and managed, “If you’re on the shelf at nineteen, I daresay Sophie is at the back of it.”

  Only the softest, almost imperceptible sigh betrayed her sister’s exasperation. “I said nothing of the sort. Willa is deliberately misunderstanding me.”

  Drawing herself up to tower over her elder sister, Willa exclaimed hotly, “You said—”

  The smallest pinch at Lily’s elbow drew her attention. When she turned to look over her shoulder, the crags in Mama’s face seemed to deepen. “I have a headache. Would you…”

  “I’ll handle this.”

  Lily’s voice cut through the renewed squabble between her sisters. Sophie stepped forward, her hasty movements betraying more guilt than her expression. “Mama, let me help you to bed.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Lily rounded on her younger sister. “I don’t suppose you’ve left me any of the seedcake? I sense I’ll need the fortification if I’m to hear the full story.”

  Willa pulled a face. However immature, it never seemed to lessen her youthful beauty. “In the pantry. Will you tell Sophie that she’s wrong?”

  Their elder sister, already halfway up the stairs to the second floor, paused to lean over the banister. “I—”

  Lily held up her hands. “I’ll wait to hear both sides of the story before I weigh judgment. And I’ll put on a pot of tea.”

  She ignored Willa’s gusty sigh as she retreated down the stairs to the ground floor. Her sister followed, persistent. The click of her slippers called to mind less a dainty lady and more a clomping horse. As Lily turned down the narrow corridor toward what used to be the servants’ domain—when they had been able to afford the luxury of hired help—Willa reached past her shoulder and shook the letter next to her ear.

  Apparently, Lily would not be permitted to rest until she’d read the missive. She took it and opened it as she walked, following the path from memory. Not that there was much left in this house to trip over. In the threshold of the open kitchen door, she paused. She angled the page to catch the light pouring in from the kitchen’s lone, high window on the far wall.