Lilya smiled. ‘You’ve done splendidly, then, and in such a short time.’ Lilya hoped their efforts would be enough. She didn’t think Christoph would burn the place. But he would not leave anything unturned if he thought the diamond was still here or if he was angry enough to want revenge. He would not like knowing she had slipped past him again.
Beldon looked up as she entered the drawing room. He had a shirt on, which must have been no small feat even with help, and his arm rested in sling. ‘How are things going out there? It doesn’t seem nearly as chaotic as it ought to be,’ he joked. Lilya took it as a good sign. The hoarseness had faded from his voice and his blue eyes were still clear. No fever yet. Hopefully no fever ever, although she fully expected there would be. She just hoped it wouldn’t be bad. Some fever she could deal with on the road, but a raging fever would be difficult.
‘It’s time to go.’ Two footmen came and helped him to the carriage. It was the last thing to do. Lilya climbed in once he was settled and shut the door, giving permission for the coach to set off.
‘You’ve dismissed the staff?’ Beldon asked, a bit winded from the exertions of the move. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow and she hoped they were from the exertions, too.
‘They’re just putting the last of the valuables away,’ she assured him.
‘I had not thought of that,’ Beldon said with admiration. ‘You’re good at this sort of thing.’
‘Hospodars have some practice at “this sort of thing”,’ she said lightly. They’d only gone a few streets and she could see the effort it cost him to travel, the constant rocking of the coach jostling his arm.
He managed a wry smile, acknowledging that she saw his pain. ‘Distract me, Lilya. Come sit beside me and tell me why is that you’re good at this sort of thing?’
She obliged, moving to his side of the carriage and taking his good hand in her own, as happy to have something to do as he had of distraction. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘the life of a hospodar is inherently dangerous. As a tax collector to the sultan, the serfs beneath you don’t always admire your status. You are someone to be trusted warily. You may overcharge people. And, of course, even though people don’t trust you, they want to be your friend since you have the power to grant favours. So, in return, you can’t really trust anyone yourself. Everyone’s using everyone. Then there’s the sultan, who is always and perhaps rightfully paranoid.’
‘It’s the sultan’s own fault. He should not have set up a system where he is so reliant on a group of people for his own interactions with the rest of the world,’ Beldon argued. ‘This is a paranoia of his own making.’
‘Oh, indeed it is,’ Lilya readily agreed. She took it as a good sign that he was alert enough to follow her story. ‘Years ago, the sultans looked to the Phanariots to act as go-betweens. The empire forbade the speaking of any language other than Arabic, the holy language of the Koran. This made communicating with the French, the Russians, the British, impossible without the Phanariots. It was one of the reasons our power had grown so large. The sultan appointed us to vital positions in the government until the Phanariots were responsible for the majority of the empire’s foreign policy.
‘With dire consequences,’ Lilya continued, idly tracing the lines of Beldon’s hand. ‘Many of the hospodars were double-dealing. Without the ability to communicate in other languages, the sultan had people plotting revolutions beneath his nose.’ She paused. ‘Like my father. In the end, he could not balance himself between multiple loyalties any longer: loyalty to his belief in independence and the need for a separate Christian state; loyalty to the wealth of the sultan, which provided so magnificently for his family; and his loyalty to the Phanariot community. He’d given his word to protect it from the diamond.’ Lilya sighed. ‘This… Beldon? Are you awake?’ She laughed softly in the darkness. Somewhere during her dissertation, he’d fallen asleep. She pressed a hand to his forehead and breathed relief. No fever yet.
Lilya fell quiet, her ears straining for anything untoward on the road. They were far outside London now. The race for Cornwall had officially begun if anyone discovered their absence and dared to pursue. It was better to think of that than to think of what lay at the end of the road: a wedding to a man she had fallen in love with whether he loved her or not. She hoped that the wedding was not a prelude to his funeral or, worse, that she’d live to regret the decision.
Christoph Agyros sliced a sofa pillow in abject frustration. Everyone had gone. Even the servants. The cunning little witch had escaped and who knew how long ago? Had she left an hour ago? Two hours? How had she managed it with a wounded man? He’d meant to come alone in the night when the servants were asleep and it was just her and the wounded baron. He’d felt sure Lilya, in her panic, would have been ready to bargain for lives with the diamond. But she hadn’t panicked. She’d managed to pack a wounded man off and leave the city hours before he’d arrived. Not even her departure had the signs of chaos. The silver had been locked up and the servants dismissed—the latter done on purpose, no doubt. Their absence served to protect Lilya’s destination. Not that it was a secret. Lilya and Pendennys had gone to Cornwall to celebrate their wedding, fabricated or no, and to be safe.
Christoph growled. The last thing he wanted was to make a gruelling journey all the way to Roseland– St Just, especially when she would be on the alert for him. He let himself out of the town house by the alley gate. He would give Lilya this small victory as a wedding gift. She could have her getaway. She could even have her wedding and a little honeymoon. He had business in town with the talks progressing. Prince Otto was going to be given the Greek throne and borders were being decided. It would be important to be the Filiki’s eyes and ears for those discussions. Once that was done, he’d go to Cornwall and surprise Lilya out of her new-found complacency when she was least expecting it, when she thought she could have peace at last.
There was no place he’d rather be, Beldon thought, raising the shade to let the late-morning sun come through. They were on the long road from Roseland–St Just to Pendennys, the homeward road. Across from him, Lilya slept the sleep of the truly exhausted, finally worn out from four days of vigilance. Violet smudges populated the space beneath her eyes. When she awoke, they’d be home. Outside, the twilight world was green, wildflowers growing up by the sides of the road. He was home thanks to luck and Lilya.
They’d managed to elude any discovery for four days. They’d stopped at inns in the evenings. He’d kept his hat low and always taken off his sling when in public and Lilya had kept the hood of her cloak drawn close about her face.
So far luck had served them on all accounts. They had not been pursued. His wound had not festered, nor given him much of a fever after the first day, although it had hurt like the dickens from all the jouncing over the road. Even his fine carriage could not save him from all the ruts, but he could stand a little pain. Best of all, the feeling had returned to his arm and his worries of permanent damage could be laid to rest. It could always be worse, as his grandmother had been fond of saying. Indeed, in this case it could have been far worse than it had been.
Lilya stirred, the travelling rug about her dropping from her shoulders. What a complex creature his soon-to-be wife was—so beautiful and delicate on the outside, so very strong on the inside. That strength continued to take him by surprise. She was not afraid to fight, not afraid to live without comforts, not afraid even to sew him up. Whether she knew it or not, her own strength had given him strength during that difficult procedure.
Now, he was taking her home to Pendennys, the place he loved most in the world, to share with her. If he wasn’t careful, he’d turn this into a fairy-tale ending. This was no fairy tale.
Marrying Lilya meant marrying her legacy. He had only abstractly understood that before. The shooting had not driven home what that meant so much as the flight to Cornwall had, watching Lilya’s efficiency closing up the town house, sending off the staff for their protection and hers, hi
ding the valuables against fear of destruction. To know that she thought of doing such tasks told him much about the nature of her life before England. It also served as a precursor about what he might expect later. This would become his life, too.
He prayed it wouldn’t come to that—that they would not be bundling up children in the dead of night to flee Pendennys, perhaps never to return, with a travelling trunk and necessities tucked beneath a carriage seat. It was the stuff of nightmares. What had happened in London showed him that he must prepare for such an eventuality, even if it never happened. He had to act and think as if it would. Well, so be it. Better the devil you know. Such an endeavour would be far worse if he didn’t see it coming. He’d choose organised chaos over random panic any day. Perhaps this was the reason he had fine horses in his stable at Pendennys and a superb travelling coach. He would see to the rest of the arrangements immediately. He would encourage Val to do the same, although he fervently hoped having Lilya out of Val’s home would protect them, that they’d be left alone entirely.
But as much as he wanted to avoid it, he could not leave Lilya alone to face it. He cared for her more than he’d planned on caring for another. That was all he was willing to admit to. From the moment he’d seen her back, he’d been fighting the attraction. He was still fighting, but he was losing.
They passed the stone fence marking the entrance to Pendennys lands. He toed Lilya gently with his boot. ‘Wake up. We’re nearly there.’
‘Nearly there,’ Lilya echoed sleepily, peeking out the window with a soft smile. ‘I like the sound of that.’
Beldon did, too. Perhaps now she could relax back in safe surroundings. He had not failed to notice the mental toll the journey had taken on her in addition to the physical exigencies of fast travel. She always awoke with a start as if expecting trouble at every moment. Beldon highly suspected she had another knife strapped to her leg for security. And that she slept with the diamond on her person. Sometimes when he watched her sleep, her hand would caress something near her hip. That would definitely have to go. Beldon had no intention of sharing his bed with anything else but Lilya. Once she felt safe again, they’d find a place for her to keep the diamond.
Lilya was suddenly all feminine alarm. ‘I must look a fright, four days on the road and just awake from sleeping.’ She frantically rummaged through a satchel, searching for a brush.
Beldon laughed; he couldn’t help it. It was a splendid sight to see Lilya worried over something trivial like her hair after a week of worrying over something much more.
She skewered him with a stare. ‘What are you laughing at?’
‘I’m laughing at you,’ he admitted with a grin.
Lilya’s only recourse was a loud ‘humph’.
Lilya raised her arms up to brush the back of her hair, her breasts pushed forwards by the motion. Beldon’s body stirred in excited possibility. If she kept that up, they’d make all haste available. His body’s message was clear. He was nearly recovered in many ways. He’d been without her for too long.
She caught his gaze and blushed. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ He feigned innocence.
‘Like you want to devour me.’
‘But I do.’
‘You’re wounded.’ She tied her hair in a blue ribbon she’d rummaged from her bag.
‘My arm is wounded, not my—’
‘You’re insatiable!’ she scolded, cutting off the end of his reply.
‘And you’re a siren, Lilya Stefanov,’ he countered easily, stretching his legs out in front of him. It felt good to flirt, good to not be in constant pain from his arm, good to think about what might be waiting for him at the end of the evening.
Pendennys gleamed in sunset splendour before them, the smooth sandstone walls awash in the rosy hues of dusk, two storeys of windows reflecting the last light of day. Lilya had been to Pendennys before on a few occasions, but never had its magnificence struck her so deeply. Today she saw it through different eyes. No longer did she view it through the lens of a temporary visitor. This was to be her home and she was to be its mistress, a thought that inspired awe and trepidation. What a responsibility lay before her. She hoped she was up to the task. For it was clear that Beldon held these acres of England more dear than any other.
The carriage rolled to a halt in the drive and they eagerly got out, knowing this was the last stop. After days of travelling and sitting, they would not have to get back inside.
Beldon led her inside, grinning wolfishly as he said, ‘The only thing I regret is that my shoulder won’t permit me to carry you over the threshold.’
Lilya laughed. ‘That’s purely a western European superstition.’ But surreptitiously, she carefully picked up the hem of her gown anyway to prevent anything that might resemble tripping as they crossed the threshold. Superstition or not, they would have enough bad luck as it was.
There was organisation and official introductions to take care of in the main foyer. Then it was time for a long looked-for bath. There’d only been the most rudimentary of washing on the road and Lilya sank into a steaming tub with alacrity at the first moment possible.
She’d been given the baroness’s room since it made little sense to unpack her things in a guest room just to move them after the wedding. The baroness’s room was well appointed, all done in blues and yellows. Most especially, Lilya noted, the baroness’s room connected to the baron’s room. She’d spotted the door to Beldon’s chambers immediately, a warm heat taking root at the prospect. She could hear him next door, talking with his valet as he carefully prepared to bathe without getting his shoulder wet. She could not make out the words precisely, but the rise and fall of his voice through the wall was a heady domestic melody—one that could easily lull her into a sense of complacency and security. Her house, her soon-to-be husband getting naked in the room next to her’s…
She closed her eyes, imagining him stripping off his trousers, his firm buttocks bending and flexing with his movements, his chest bare of his shirt, his nipples perhaps erect from the slight chill of the room. Of course it wouldn’t be quite like that. With his shoulder, it would be a bit hard to bend and flex, but his body would be magnificent nonetheless. He wanted her. She’d seen it in his eyes in the carriage as he’d flirted. She wanted him, too, the memory of their love-making in the drawing room foremost on her mind. To claim the glorious rapture it brought again was a heady temptation.
Lilya relaxed in the luxury of her bath until the water cooled. Then she dressed in a silky rose-coloured robe and gave herself over to the maid who combed out her wet hair, all the while waiting for Beldon, her eyes going periodically and ridiculously to the connecting door. They were not husband and wife yet. He could not come through that door with her maid present.
She would go to him. A small tremor shuddered through her at the thought. If they were going to play at a marriage, they might as well play at all of it. There was no sense denying themselves the more pleasant aspects of their ruse. She might not be able to claim his love, but she could claim the pleasures of his body.
The maid put down the brush and Lilya dismissed her for the night. The door had barely shut behind the maid before Lilya was opening a door of her own. She put her ear to the door, listening to make sure he was alone. Hearing nothing, she turned the handle.
The scene in the master’s bedroom was perfect domestic bliss. A warm fire burned, the bed was turned back for the night and Beldon sat at a small writing table, dressed in a silk banyan, jotting in a journal with his good hand, the remnants of his bath clinging damply to the ends of his hair, darkening the chestnut strands. The only thing marring the scene was the stark whiteness of the sling Beldon wore, a reminder that his world wasn’t restful at all.
Beldon looked up from his writing and closed his book, his eyes roaming her body appreciatively. She grew warm from the perusal. She’d gone to her lover’s room clad in nothing but a dressing gown. There could
be no mistaking her intentions or expectations.
‘Is there something you want, Lilya?’ How did he do that—take a polite question and deliver it with the seductiveness of a lover just as he had bowed over her hand at the ball and left her tingling with want? He rose from his chair and moved towards her.
‘You know what I want.’ She opted to play the siren.
He grinned wickedly. ‘I want to hear you say it.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘I want you.’ The words were surprisingly difficult to say. It would have been easier to simply unbelt her robe and ask without the words. The words made it so much more intimate, more binding. She’d wanted him for days, to be honest. She’d wanted to feel his strength, wanted to feel the power of his arms, to know that he was all right.
Then he kissed her, his mouth hot and full over hers, and all of her pent-up excitement was released, given free rein. Oh, how her body had missed this during the days on the road, through the long hours of worry over Beldon’s shoulder.
Secret Life of a Scandalous Debutante Page 14