by Laurel McKee
“Aidan, my man!” he shouted. “Haven’t seen you here in an age. Come to see the show, have you?”
“You know him?” Lily whispered.
“An old friend,” Aidan answered. If he wanted to know Lily, he had to let her see him. At least a little bit. He had learned long ago never to reveal his very deepest heart.
“I’ve been busy, Robbie,” Aidan said, reaching over the bar to shake Robbie’s hand. “But I can’t stay away forever.”
“You’ve been missed. Molly and Annie won’t stop asking about you.” Robbie’s curious gaze slid over Lily. “Looks like they’ll just have to keep waiting. Who’s the pretty lady?”
“Robbie, this is Lily. Lily, Robbie here was the most famous prizefighter between here and Edinburgh.”
“Really? That sounds impressive,” Lily said with a smile.
Aidan thought her voice suddenly sounded different, the accent softer, rougher at the edges.
“Retired now,” Robbie answered. He reached for Lily’s hand and raised it gallantly to his lips, making her laugh. “Always happy to meet a friend of Aidan’s. Where has the old rascal been keeping you?”
Lily gave Aidan a sidelong glance. “I think it’s more, what is he hiding here?”
Robbie roared. “Oh, love, the tales I could tell you. Later, after I feed and water this sorry lot. What’ll it be? Ale? It’s good stuff, none of that watered-down swill you’ll find at Aikan’s place across the street.”
“Two ales, Robbie,” Aidan said. “And no telling tales to my girl. I’m trying to impress her.”
Lily just smiled and turned to lean against the bar to watch the dancers. Musicians hidden up in the old choir loft played a lively polka, and the couples swirled and stomped around in a kaleidoscope of color and noise. When Robbie put a large beaker of dark ale before her, she reached for it and took a long swallow.
“He’s right,” she said. “It’s not watered-down swill.”
Aidan laughed and drank down his own ale as he watched the room with her. Oh, this was dangerous—he feared he could actually like her. Enjoy spending time with her, talking to her, even with their clothes on. Was this how poor, pitiful Freddy felt when he wrote her those wretched letters? Was he, Aidan, getting to be pitiful as well?
“How does a duke’s son come to find a place like this?” she asked. “How does he get to be friends with ex-prizefighters and girls named Molly and Annie?”
Aidan shrugged. “If I only had friends my parents approved of, I would be wretchedly bored. I met Nick, who owns this place, at one of Robbie’s last bouts. Nick was planning to open a music hall and needed writers to create new vignettes.”
“You write plays for him?”
“When I have time.”
“And will I get to see your work, then?”
“Not tonight,” he said. “I haven’t been able to write for some time.” Not until he met her and the ideas came back to him.
Lily shook her head and took another drink of her ale. “You are a strange man, Aidan. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”
“If you think I’m strange, you should meet my brother David. He’s the heir, and yet he lives like a hermit. Makes my father crazy.” Aidan finished his own drink and watched Lily closely. She seemed just as comfortable here, drinking cheap ale and watching shopgirls dance, as she had been sipping champagne at the Devil’s Fancy. “And you are rather unusual yourself.”
Her smile turned wry. “You have no idea.”
He put down his empty beaker and wrapped his arm around her to pull her closer to him. She gasped in surprise at his sudden move and braced her hands against his chest. He kissed her hair, feeling the soft strands under his lips, the twist of her body under his hands. Just like that, he felt his groin tighten.
“I want to know, Lily,” he whispered. “I want to know everything about you.”
She shook her head, but he felt her body relax into his, her palms flatten onto his chest. Her fingers stroked him through his thin linen shirt and wool vest, and he almost groaned.
“Believe me, Aidan, you don’t,” she said.
“It’s all right, Lily. You don’t have to tell me everything right now.” He reached for one of her hands and raised it to his lips. He slowly, gently, kissed every fingertip until he sucked the tip of her index finger between his teeth and bit down. Her breath hissed in her throat, and he smiled at the sexy little sound. He wasn’t the only one affected. “I can wait until I have you tied up again, in my own bed this time.”
Lily snatched her hand away and turned her back to him. “You’ll be waiting until doomsday, then, Aidan Huntington.”
He certainly hoped it wasn’t nearly that long. He wasn’t sure he could wait past tonight. He laughed and reached out to run his hands lightly over her shoulders. She stiffened but didn’t pull away. “I’ve told you before, Lily—I’m a patient man. In the meantime, will you at least dance with me?”
She glanced toward the dance floor, which seemed even more crowded now. The chairs were all filled, with the overflowing crowd lined up along the walls to watch the dancers. “Very well,” she said slowly. “One dance.”
One dance. It was a start.
Lily laughed helplessly as Aidan twirled her around in the dance. The room, so packed with people and filled with the warm, damp smells of ale, cheap perfume, and wool and cotton, swirled in a blurry, bright haze. All she could do was twine her arms around his neck and hold on.
The dance wasn’t like the decorous waltzes and mazurkas in the ballroom of the Devil’s Fancy, or the stately pavanes she had once learned for Romeo and Juliet. There seemed no pattern to the steps, only instinctive movement to the pounding beat of the music and the turns of the other dancers around them. Aidan understood how to move with the crowd, how to turn and spin her in a series of quick, graceful steps that awakened an answering instinct in her.
She hadn’t danced in so long, she realized as Aidan spun her out and back into his arms, smiling down at her. Not since she danced with her husband at the assembly rooms, and that was never like this. Harry would move her woodenly around in one waltz before going off to play cards with his business associates and leaving her with their dull wives. This seemed to be more than dancing, more than learned steps in a set pattern. She and Aidan moved together perfectly. Just like when they had sex and their bodies knew the rhythm of each other.
Lily had never enjoyed a dance so much.
Another couple bumped into them, making her stumble even closer against Aidan. She laughed and held on tighter to his neck.
“All right?” he said against her ear.
She nodded. He lifted her off her feet and twirled her to the edge of the floor where the crowd was a bit thinner.
“Having fun?” he asked.
Lily tilted back her head to smile up at him. He watched her with hooded eyes, a half-smile on his lips.
“Very much,” she said. “I haven’t been dancing in years. You’re very good at this.”
His smile deepened, revealing that enticing little crease in his cheek. “Oh, I have many hidden talents, Lily. If you’re nice to me, I just might show them to you.”
She bit her lip as she remembered the “hidden talents” he had already shown her. If they got any more intense, they would surely make her faint away. “Perhaps I have a few secret talents of my own.”
Aidan laughed and lifted her higher in his arms. “I have no doubt of that at all. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”
Suddenly a hard arm closed around Lily’s waist from behind and yanked her away from Aidan. Shocked, cold fear washed over her, numbing her. Instinct took over, the instincts of a child of the streets, and she lashed out with her fist at the same time she drove her foot back between her captor’s legs.
He tilted his hips back just in time, but her fist connected with a bristled jaw with a crack. She was suddenly dropped to the floor, and she scrambled back, ready to fight.
She whirled aro
und to see a tall, broad-shouldered man, striking and almost sinister-looking with long black hair and green eyes, wearing a black leather waistcoat over his white linen shirt. He laughed as he rubbed at his bruised jaw, and to Lily’s surprise, Aidan also laughed as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her back to his side.
“Please don’t frighten my lady, Nick,” Aidan said. “I’ll never be able to persuade her to go out with me again.”
“I didn’t know you’d brought a hellcat to my place,” the black-haired man said ruefully in a musical Irish accent. “They’re usually a bit more… amenable.”
Lily frowned between them. “You know this man?” she asked Aidan. Her body still hummed, ready to fight.
“Lily, meet Nick Riley, owner of this fair establishment,” Aidan said. “And a barbarian who has no idea how to treat a lady.”
“They don’t show up here very often, and never with a rascal like you, Aidan.” The man gave her a low bow and offered his hand. “Forgive me, miss—Lily, is it?”
Lily studied his hand for a long, suspicious moment before she lightly laid her fingers on his palm. “Mr. Riley. I suppose I can forgive you if you forgive me.”
Nick laughed and raised her hand to his lips. His kiss lingered, until Aidan pulled her closer to his side and Nick laughed even louder. “Where did you get such a mean right hook, Miss Lily?” Nick asked.
Lily glanced up at Aidan. “One of my hidden talents.”
“Remind me never to provoke your temper, then,” Aidan said.
“Any more than you already have?” Lily teased. She found herself relaxing again, her fighting instinct slowly ebbing away.
“Don’t remind me,” Aidan said wryly.
“Come, have a drink on the house,” Nick said. He led them back to the bar and signaled to Robbie. “Let me apologize properly. Tell me, Miss Lily, where did the villain find you? And are there any more like you there?”
Lily laughed and sipped at her ale. She couldn’t help but like Nick, despite the fact that she had just tried to break his jaw. He had an easy charm laid over a hard, careful watchfulness that reminded her of Aidan. Perhaps that was why a duke’s son was friends with an Irish bar owner.
“I do have a sister, but she is not much like me, and she is very carefully guarded by our very large brothers,” she said. “I doubt charming villains like you and Aidan could get anywhere near her.”
Nick grinned at her, his green eyes sparkling. Oh yes, she would make sure a man like him never got near Isabel. “I do like a challenge. And at least I am a charming villain now. I go up in your estimation.”
“Careful, my friend,” Aidan said. “Remember the lady is taken.”
Lily scowled at him. Taken indeed. She was no man’s to claim; she never would be again. But somehow Aidan’s flash of possessiveness gave her a primitive satisfaction.
“I’m no poacher, no matter how tempting the hunting might be,” Nick said. “Tell me, Aidan, did you see Mrs. Neil’s show at the Lyceum last week?”
The two men went on to talk about the local music hall programs, and Lily sipped at her ale as she studied the crowd in the mirror. The alcohol had been flowing, and everyone was even louder now, the dance steps wilder, faster, as the musicians raced to catch up. She tapped her foot against the bar rail, enjoying the music and the merriment.
Suddenly she caught a reflection at the edge of the room. A figure slightly apart from the others in the smoky shadows. It was a man, tall, almost painfully thin, dressed in a long, black coat. His face was concealed by a brimmed cap tugged low. And he leaned on a walking stick with a pale skull’s head handle.
“No,” Lily whispered. Her cup fell from her hands to land on the bar with a loud thud. Drops of ale spilled across the scarred wood and onto her hand.
She didn’t even notice as Robbie caught the cup before it could roll onto the floor and as Aidan cupped her arm in his hand and said something to her. She could see only that stick, that horribly grinning death’s head. She had seen that stick recently, on the day Aidan took her to the cafe and she glimpsed a man outside on the street.
Before that, she hadn’t seen it, feared it, in years. Why would it be here now?
She twisted around to peer over her shoulder, frantically scanning the crowd. She couldn’t see the man in black now; it was as if he had just vanished into thin air. Was she just imagining him? Was something summoning up the past in her mind, a past she had thought dead and buried?
Was she going mad?
“Lily?” Aidan said, his hand tightening on her arm. His voice pierced the cloud of her fear, and she looked up at him.
He gave her a bemused smile, and she tried to focus on that, on the fact that she was here, with him. The past was gone. This was the present moment, her life now.
Yet the past did not feel banished. It felt too close, too vivid, always ready to swoop in and tear away the thin facade of civility she had worked so hard to build around herself. Lily, the no-surname daughter of a whore, always lurked behind Lily St. Claire Nichols with her fine clothes and jewelry. And she didn’t want Aidan to see that.
She smiled at him. “I’m so sorry. I must be getting tired. So clumsy of me.”
“Do you want to leave?” he asked. “I can take you home.”
Suddenly there was a commotion from the other side of the room, a burst of screams and shouts, breaking glass. A brawl was forming, quickly becoming out of control.
“Excuse me,” Nick said tightly, and he plunged into the crowd. Everyone was suddenly tumbling over each other, rushing to see what the fight was about. Robbie reached under the bar and came up with a cricket bat. Lily was sure she didn’t want to see what he could do with that.
“Come on,” Aidan said, and took her hand to draw her toward the doors.
She followed him, but the fight had escalated very quickly and their exit was blocked.
Suddenly a burly man careened toward them out of the swirling melee, and Aidan shoved him away. The man’s fist caught Aidan hard on the jaw and sent his head snapping back. He looked stunned for an instant, but then he lithely sprang back to his feet and landed a hard punch of his own, right to the man’s thick neck. The man bellowed with rage and came at Aidan, swinging wildly.
“Stay back there!” Aidan shouted at her. Then he leaped onto his opponent.
Lily pressed herself against the nearest wall, staring at Aidan in astonishment. She had never imagined a duke’s son, or anyone, could fight like that. She had seen brawls all the time when she was a child, but those were vicious, animal-like things, quick and brutal. Aidan was just as effective, but he moved with a smooth, effortless grace, dodging, blocking, his feet sliding over the floor as his fists shot out in a sudden, unexpected blur.
His attacker grew more and more furious as Aidan evaded him. His blows were more unfocused, and Aidan finally drove him to his knees with a powerful right hook that took the larger man to the floor.
Aidan shook out his fist and grabbed Lily’s hand. “Come on!”
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” she cried.
“West Indies,” he said shortly as he pulled her through a break in the crowd. He pushed her roughly up onto a table. “Stay there!” he ordered. “Don’t move until I come for you. I’ll find a way out of here.”
“Aidan!” she cried, but as she reached for him, he plunged back into the brawl. He was swallowed up in the tangle of arms and legs, screams and shouts of obscenities. People were suddenly crashing into her on all sides, jostling her violently.
Lily wanted to shout out a curse or two herself. The shock of the sudden fight was wearing off, leaving the half-remembered exhilaration of the brawl. Once she had seen and run from such things nearly every night, but she had begun to forget the rush of violence, the terrible urge to flee.
But she couldn’t flee. There were too many people between her and the door. She strained to glimpse Aidan but couldn’t see him. She saw Nick by the bar, bashing some man’s head i
nto the wood.
Lily reached down for a chair that leaned against her table perch. A few good, hard cracks broke off the leg. The next time a stumbling man reeled into her, she swung her makeshift club into his shoulders and drove him back.
She almost laughed at the primal satisfaction of landing a blow. When someone else tried to grab her, she hit him too. She pushed her loosened hair back from her face and spun around to swing again and again, keeping everyone away from her little island.
“Miss Lily, behind you!” she heard Robbie shout. She whirled around to swing yet again, but the chair leg was wrenched out of her hands so hard that she felt the painful reverberation all the way into her shoulder. Something hard and solid caught her at the back of her knees, and she fell off the table with a cry of panic.
She would have hit the floor, but bony, unyielding arms closed around her waist and dragged her to the edge of the room. The stench of acrid sweat, wet wool, and cheap whiskey overwhelmed her and created the sensation of smothering and drowning.
She kicked out frantically through her skirts, flailing against her captor. She was suddenly shoved up against the wall, the breath knocked out of her lungs. Her scream strangled in her throat when a calloused hand pressed to her windpipe.
“Well, well, Lily,” he said, his voice harsh with the accents of her childhood. The accents of Whitechapel and St. Giles. “You’re quite the lady now, ain’t you? Done better for yourself than your mum done, eh?”
Oh, dear heaven, no. No, it couldn’t be, couldn’t be. Lily frantically tried to twist away, but those fingers on her throat held her fast. She managed to wrench herself around and drive her elbow into his ribs, pushing back a few steps. He let her go, and she glimpsed his face in a ray of light. It was a face she knew in her nightmares, older, etched with deeper lines, with sunken dark blue eyes.
He gave her a terrible smile and a salute with his death’s head stick. Then he was gone.
Lily was shaking so hard she couldn’t stand. She slid down the wall until she fell to the floor, her hands pressed to her stomach. Sickening nausea rose up in her, choking her as if he still held her.