“I love you, Lily. That’s why. You have become so much to me, and I had to find out if Kingsley was as good as he appeared. I couldn’t stand the thought of you marrying someone who wasn’t the person you deserve to be with.” For a long moment, his gaze seared through her, intense, unwavering.
Then before she could think, react, even take another breath, he kissed her. His arms melded her against him, his lips sought hers with the urgency of a man long denied. Her knees turned liquid, her senses swimming—
She jerked away. And then did something she had never, not once, no matter how much he’d deserved it, done to Jackson.
Raised her palm and slapped him. Hard. The impact reverberated through her hand, sharp and stinging.
Nathan stumbled, eyes wide with shock and pain.
Her body trembled, as if caught in an intense bout of chills. “What are you thinking? You have no right, no right at all to meddle in my private affairs. And you have far less of one to do what you…what you just did. As for you saying such things to me…You are nothing more than a servant in this house. I know we have been friends, good friends, but you have overstepped your bounds in this.” She raised her chin, standing tall, proud, and every inch in control. “And you will leave this very day. Pack your things and go belowstairs to collect what salary is owed you.”
He stared at her, his skin pale, gaze unblinking.
Silence hung between them, heavier than New York fog.
“At least I can say I tried. You were warned that the man you are entering into an understanding with is only after you for your money. He doesn’t love you, Lily. He doesn’t deserve you. And now you know.”
It wasn’t true. He did. He did love her. How could he look at her and not mean the things he said? Roland Kingsley cared about her. She was sure of it. They would have a safe and happy future, complete with children to love and dote upon.
Yet as she met Nathan’s gaze and read the terrible truth written there, that future and those hopes faded away, like breath gasping from dying lips.
“Go. Just go.” She turned her back toward the window. Listened to his footfalls move away from her. The door closed with a click that echoed of complete and total finality.
She was going to be sick. If what Nathan said was true, then she’d been an inch away from repeating her very worst mistake. Signing away her life, and very probably her devotion, to another undeserving wretch.
“A true prince will always care for you, no matter what. But it’s your job to recognize the true princes from the villains who might look like princes. And never, ever give your heart away until you’re absolutely sure.”
Her stomach roiled, anxiety making her heart pound. Tears blurred her vision.
Where are You? Lord, help…
No answering rush of peace. No verse popped into her memory. No…anything. Just emptiness and tension and more emptiness.
She lowered herself onto the sofa, curling her body into itself. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought to remember how to breathe.
Help me, she cried inwardly. Somehow, someone help me.
Nathan left without taking a cent of his earnings. He briefly told Osbourne of his dismissal, turned away without waiting to watch the man crow, tossed his few belongings in a knapsack, said good-bye to Polly.
Then he left. Out the back entrance, down Bellevue Avenue.
What a joke. The chauffeur leaving on foot.
He walked, face to the wind, passing fancy motorcars and coachmen-driven carriages. As he neared the empty shoreline, his feet scuffing up sand, the crash of waves and screech of gulls increased in volume. Where exactly he was heading was anyone’s guess. It wasn’t like he had ten other prospective employers lined up to take his pick from.
He chucked the knapsack on the sand, crossed both arms over his chest and stared, gaze on the frothing water. Salt spray burned his eyes.
Or was it…?
Tears.
Nathan Evans, chauffeur and all-around errand boy, crying tears of loss over Lily Montgomery, society princess.
A woman he could never have.
A woman he loved with fierce and total devotion.
His throat tightened, aching. He’d kissed her. Known for the briefest of minutes the rightness of her lips against his, the sensation of his arms around her waist. It had been perfect. Undeniable. Indescribable. Perfect.
The sting of her slap still reverberated through him. The look of outrage in her eyes. As if he were some kind of criminal, worse than dirt.
All he’d done was tell her the truth. Tell her he loved her.
His secret admiration was no longer secret. He’d spilled it. And like clean water, sloshed from a bucket, it lay on the ground to be stepped on and muddied.
Tears ran down his face, hot and angry. He swiped them away and picked up clods of dirt, throwing them as hard as he could into the water. His breath came in short pants.
He didn’t quit. Kept throwing, kicking, venting until his heart thundered and he collapsed on the sand, spent.
He let his face fall into his clasped hands.
“Why, Lord? Why did I tell her? It would have been better to keep it secret. Then she would never know. Then I wouldn’t be left with this…this rejection. I don’t understand. Why are we taken down paths that lead nowhere? Is it to test us? Well, I’m passing this one about as well as I passed second-grade reading. Lousily.”
Life was a cruel ringmaster. It drew one in, reeling and wooing. Then when you got to the point of no return, it dropped a cloud of pain and misery so thick and stifling it left you unable to breathe.
“Why do bad things happen, Mama?” He’d been eight, sitting beside his mother on the front porch. The sky had been a perfect color blue, the wind whispering in the trees.
His mother had looked at him with one of her beautiful smiles. Even now he could see that smile. Turned it over in his mind, remembering.
“If Jesus is so good, why does He let the badness in?”
And her answer…what had it been?
Oh. Yes.
“I don’t know, Nate. I don’t expect anybody, even the Reverend Jones, does. Some things, I don’t think we’re supposed to know. Because if we knew everything, there would be no need for faith. And I think God wants us to have faith. It’s all about trust. Knowing for sure and certain that no matter how hard the road gets, we’re not on it alone. He’s always walking right there with us, holding our hands through the ruts and helping us over the hills. During the clear stretches, He’s there, too. Always there, Nate. That’s what you need to remember.”
“I remember, Mama,” Nathan whispered. “I remember.”
No matter what happened in life, Mama lived by those words.
“Always there, Nate.”
Always there. A reason for everything. The reason for this, Nathan didn’t know. Maybe he never would. Maybe his relationship with Lily hadn’t been for him. Maybe he’d been there, through the broken moments of her marriage and the healing afterward, for her. Put there by a sovereign God who always had a purpose.
He drew in a deep breath. Let the air fill him while peace cleansed his soul.
“All right, Lord. What now? I don’t have a job. I have about ten dollars to my name. I don’t even have a place to sleep tonight. But I guess You already know that. So show me what to do. I’ve got faith, Lord. I figure I don’t have much else going for me, but I’ve got that.”
He looked up at the sky. The blue of afternoon darkened into the gray of evening. There’d be a party at the Montgomery mansion tonight. Kingsley would be there, his charming facade hiding the secrets within. Lily would smile at him, probably forgetting that only hours ago she’d stood in the parlor and been kissed by a man who loved her with everything inside him.
Forget about the party? That he could do.
Forget about Lily?
Never. He had little of his own, but he had those memories to cherish.
Faith. He had that, too.
Two things
to hold on to.
Chapter 9
The evening had perfection written all over it. From the elegant decorations to the scrumptious food to the carefully tuned musicians. There wasn’t a thing that could go wrong. Not with Jackson’s money behind it all.
Tonight would be a night for the memory books. For the society columns.
So why did darkness cloak Lily? Why did the smile on her face feel as false and stiff as those she had donned during her marriage to Jackson? She was supposed to be happy tonight. After all, isn’t that why people threw parties? To celebrate? To have fun?
Neither felt appropriate for her current mood.
Nathan’s accusations toward Mr. Kingsley filled her mind. As did the nagging sensation that they might possibly be true.
If they were, where did that leave her?
A duped woman yet again. Duped by her longing to be cherished, despite her appearance. Duped by her desire to be loved.
Well, she was through. She wouldn’t repeat earlier mistakes, no matter her other faults.
And tonight’s maneuvers would be a test of Mr. Kingsley’s true motives.
She looped her arm through his, smiling up at him. He’d dressed in a male counterpart of her female shepherdess costume. Had it been mere coincidence? Or was something deeper going on there?
“I’m tired of dancing.” She’d only danced three, one with Kingsley, two with other guests. But she was weary. Of dancing. And secrets.
“Me, too.” He looked down at her fondly. What a consummate actor he was. If he was as poor as Nathan let on, maybe Mr. Kingsley’s next career should be the stage. “Besides, I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk.”
They made their way into the gardens, the strains of “The Skater’s Waltz” drifting on the warm, summer air. Light shone from neighboring mansions, all of which would be shut up in a matter of days. These monuments to wealth and beauty would soon become as quiet and dark as tombs for the next ten months, until those who owned them decided to return again, filling them with the powder-thin veneer they called social intercourse.
She was heartily sick of the whole stupid ritual.
“Shall we sit here?” Mr. Kingsley motioned to a secluded stone bench.
Lily took the proffered seat, folding her hands in her lap. She looked up at him, forcing adoration into her gaze.
“Mr. Kingsley…Roland. Will you allow me to be bold? Permit me to say what you may think too forward?”
His eyes took on an ardent look. “You know you can tell me anything, my dear. There is nothing that you could say that would make me think any less of the beautiful woman you are.”
“Good.” She reached across the space between them and took his hand in hers. The music inside had switched to a jaunty march. The rhythm matched that of her heart.
To use a cliché, this was a moment of truth, if ever one existed.
“Over the past weeks we have spent together, I have grown to…feel something for you. Something I wondered if I could ever feel again. But I have a secret. And I can’t continue to nurture these feelings, until I can be sure that you are made fully aware.”
No change in his expression. In fact, he actually scooted closer.
“I’m listening.”
“To put it bluntly, I feel the terms of my husband’s will are not quite as they should be. In fact, if I were ever to remarry, I would receive nothing from him. This house, the one in New York, and all of his assets would revert to his younger brother, Jeremy. Jeremy currently lives in Chicago.”
As she spoke, Mr. Kingsley’s expression shifted. Not drastically in a gape-mouthed astonishment kind of way, but there was a tension in his posture that had not been there before. If she’d thought any of this mattered, she’d have told him long ago. That though she was an heiress in society’s eyes, she was an heiress only as long as she remained a widow. But she hadn’t dreamed, hadn’t even imagined…
She hurried to continue. “I know this probably doesn’t matter a bit to you. But I consider myself an honest woman, and I want to be quite frank about anything that concerns myself. Especially since you seem to wish to…to…” Here she dipped her head and peered up at him through lowered lashes. Her outward expression was everything a well-brought-up woman’s should be. Inwardly, her heart pounded and anxiety coursed through every vein. “…enter into an understanding with me.”
There. She’d laid it all out.
And in the space of a second, the sickening blow of reality backhanded her full in the face. Before he even said a word, he revealed the truth. In the way he drew back, not much, but enough. In the way his breath came in quick bursts.
In the utter shock in his eyes.
She fought against the battle of her own emotions and continued to look as trusting and demure as ever.
Now, sitting perfectly erect on the opposite edge of the bench, Mr. Kingsley cleared his throat. “Mrs. Montgomery.” He said her name with unapologetic formality. The time for “Lily” and “my dear” had evidently come and gone. “You have misunderstood me if you were under the impression I intended to become—”
She couldn’t endure such blank platitudes. Not after the day she’d had.
With great control, she lifted her hand, regally halting him. “You needn’t trouble yourself to explain. You’re no longer a wealthy man. Don’t bother to deny it. I know. You can no longer marry me because I haven’t enough cash to pull you away from the poorhouse’s brink.”
His statuesque pose softened. Slightly. “I won’t deny it.”
“Then your courtship of me was not in the least a pursuit of myself?” She despised herself for the tinge of desperation worming itself into her words.
“I can, at least, give the honesty I denied you before. I think very highly of you, but you are right, I do not…My feelings toward you are not romantically inclined. My first wife, God rest her, was a beautiful woman whom I loved deeply. I could never hope to find her equal again. What I did to you was wrong, and for that I am sorry. I do not dare hope that you could find it within yourself to forgive me…or to say nothing of what you have learned.”
The boning in her corset jabbed her ribs with every exhale. “I won’t say anything. You have my word. But you have wronged me, Roland Kingsley. Courting me for weeks under false pretenses, about to propose marriage…” She swallowed, the roof of her mouth dry and cloying. “Make no mistake about the long and bitter wrong you have done.” She got to her feet, the sounds of a polka providing a backdrop for their final moments together. Like a tragic heroine in an opera, she lifted her chin and looked down at him. This man who had almost coerced her into repeating the mistake that cost her so dearly before.
“Good-bye, Mr. Kingsley,” she said simply and turned and walked away, clinging to the final, tattered threads in her cloak of polite behavior.
The climb up the stairs to her room seemed to take an eternity. When at last she closed the door, she crossed the room and stood in front of the full-length mirror, fingers of firelight the only illumination.
For a long, quiet moment, she stared at herself. More plain than pretty, little willowy slenderness evidenced in her curvaceous form. Roland Kingsley’s first wife had been beautiful. So stunning that no woman could ever hope to equal her. Lily, of course, possessed nothing more than her supposed cash to recommend her.
How had Mr. Kingsley done it? Had it reduced him to inner gagging to gaze at her as he had? Had calling her “my dear” made him inwardly recoil?
What would he have done if they had married? He could not have kept up his lover-like facade forever. What would it have done to her? To realize that once again, she’d married someone who did not love her? Would the pain have been as deep, scalding her heart and burning her with blistering intensity, as it had the last time?
Tears pricked her eyes as truth whispered within her heart. She hadn’t loved Roland. She hadn’t even truly loved Jackson. What she’d been looking for in the affections of both men was a realization of her own w
orth. That, through the eyes of another, she could, just maybe, see herself as beautiful. Beloved. Cherished. Despite her outward flaws and inner insecurities, she wanted this. Wanted it with a deep, driving ache.
“You’ve been doing it all wrong, precious daughter. No one sees you in greater beauty than I.”
The words seemed to come out of nowhere, gently spoken to the inner places of her heart. Her throat clogged with emotion.
“See yourself not as man sees you but as I do. I love you. I died for you. And if there had not been a single human being on earth besides yourself, I would have done no less.”
“Truly, Lord?” Oh, how she wanted this. Wanted to let the healing oil of Jesus’ truth salve the scars etched into her heart by the world’s careless hands. To reject the lies she had been told—that because of her outward appearance, her inner held no worth.
“Always.”
She wept. Cried out to the Lord in those tears, crying for forgiveness for believing the lies all those years. And slowly, sweetly, she began to heal. Felt the hands of the Lord mending, redeeming those hidden, wounded places. It wasn’t painful, nor did it make her hang her head in shame, the way the words of her father and Jackson had. As if the Lord truly understood what it was to feel rejected.
Of course He did. He understood because it was what His people did to Him time after time, day after day. They ignored His outstretched arms, pursued meaningless pleasures rather than His embrace. Spent time in attaining wealth, friends, fame, while all the while He looked down, knowing that such things would never bring true peace.
She was guilty. Hadn’t she run after the world’s acceptance rather than His? Even this party tonight had been a plea to reenter the society that seemed to spurn her.
Oh, she was guilty.
Lord, forgive me.
She continued to sit in the presence of the Lord, freedom replacing bondage.
And then she thought of Nathan. The one man who didn’t care whether she was an heiress or a kitchen maid. Who’d called her beautiful. Who’d kissed her and declared his love. Who’d held her hand as if he wanted to hold her heart.
The Secret Admirer Romance Collection Page 6