by Gaelen Foley
“Don’t call him that.” she shot back defensively. “I thought you were his friend.”
Derek made no comment.
“Besides, whether I’ve set my cap at anyone or not, I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Of course it is. It became my business last night.”
She dropped her gaze with a chastened look. In the fleeting silence, he could feel the heated awareness between them fairly vibrating on the air.
“At least now I know why you tried so hard to keep your identity a secret,” he remarked.
“You claim to be an honest man, Major, so why don’t you just come out and tell me what you want?” she demanded, stopping their forward progress and turning to him in exasperation.
He shrugged. “Merely to understand.”
“Understand what?” she exclaimed, stealing a nervous glance about at the other people in the park.
“You, Miss Balfour.”
“What about me?”
“I have the strangest feeling that the girl I saw at the Lundys’ today was your usual disguise, so prim and proper. Last night, though you were masked, you showed me your true face, didn’t you? A rare privilege, I suspect.”
“Major, I have no idea what you are talking about,” she replied in a withering tone.
“I think you do,” he whispered with a wicked smile. “Naughty little liar.”
She pulled back and drew herself up in regal indignation. “Did you summon me here just so you could insult me?”
“If anyone here has the right to be insulted, it is I,” he retorted.
“What?”
“You used me,” he accused her.
“You started it! I never asked you to sneak up behind me and grab me.”
“Well, no, but you did ask me to kiss you.”
She looked away, turning beet red. “Can I please have my diamond back?”
“Why are you marrying Lundy?”
“Why are you going back to India?” she countered, slanting him a scornful glance.
“India’s where I belong.”
“Well, I belong with Edward!”
“Oh, come, that’s rubbish and you know it. You left the ballroom last night to get away from him, didn’t you? That’s why I found you out in the garden.”
“Look, I’m not going to discuss this with you. I just want the truth. Are you going to tell Edward what happened last night or not?”
“You think I’d do that?” he asked softly, gazing into her eyes. “Do you distrust all men, or is it just me?”
When he saw how she faltered, he realized he might have pushed her too hard. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he murmured. “I’d just hate to see you make a massive mistake.”
“What mistake?” she asked warily. “What do you mean?”
“Your choice of husbands,” he exclaimed. “The girl who charmed the hell out of me last night was no callous fortune hunter. Is your family forcing you to do this? For I cannot bring myself to believe that such a sordid scheme could ever come from you.”
“Sordid?”
“Miss Balfour, I know your family’s bankrupt. Lundy himself told me so just this morning. I gather that’s partly why this diamond of yours means so much. But you had better know he’s onto you. You’re not fooling him a whit. He knows you’re only after him for his gold, and frankly, he did not appear overly sympathetic to your plight. He is using you for his own advantage.”
She was silent for a long moment, staring at the lake; then she looked at him. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I see. But that’s all right with you because you’re also taking advantage of him.”
“There is no cause to cast it all in such an unsavory light, Major. Surely you understand the way of the world.”
He shook his head at her—a mere chit of a girl telling him about the way of the world.
She furrowed her brow when she noted his cynical stare. “For your information, Mr. Lundy happens to be a—a very agreeable man!” she burst out. Her frustration was rising visibly, probably because she was not convincing herself any more than she was convincing Derek. “He’s a good man! A solid man. He has cause to be proud of himself. Look at all he’s accomplished in life, and he’s barely forty. Edward is a survivor, and that is a quality that I greatly admire.”
“Well, that much may be true.” Derek looked her over. “But I doubt you’ve ever kissed him the way you did me.”
She let out an unladylike curse under her breath and turned away.
“Have I unmasked you again?” he whispered, studying her delicate profile. “Last night, you know, I enjoyed it. A great deal, actually. You left me wanting more.”
“Why are you torturing me?”
“I want to know what we’re going to do about this.”
“About what?”
“This,” he whispered, and when he ran the back of one finger along a section of her arm, she quivered violently, then looked at him in fear and backed away, as if she knew that her response to him only underscored the fact that she wanted Lundy as much as she wanted a hole in her head.
She could not hide the fact that she wanted Derek.
And he wanted her.
“You don’t care about Lundy and he doesn’t care about you,” Derek told her. “That’s not a situation that a smart girl like you ought to put herself in. I am sorry for your family’s hardships, but can it really be so bad that you must sell yourself to the likes of him?”
“I beg your pardon,” she forced out bitterly to put him in his place, but he was not so easily deterred.
“You’re better than this, Lily Balfour. Don’t sell yourself for gold. Someone as lovely as you should never join the ugly ranks of cutthroat fortune hunters.”
“How dare you?” she uttered, taking a step back and glaring at him. She looked truly shaken by his words. Her face was white. “Who do you think you are, to judge me? You, of all people! A—a militaristic adventurer!” she flung out. “As if you can talk! Perhaps I am willing to marry to secure my future, but at least I don’t make my living killing people!”
Derek’s jaw dropped at her counterattack. He stared at her in astonishment.
“You think you’re better than me?” she charged on. I know why men join up to go and fight in India! Believe me, I know it better than most, so you can get off your moral high horse, Major. Greed, that’s why! Fortune and glory! No doubt you’ll claim it’s for King and country, but the real reason all you foolish males go storming around that horrid place is to try to get your hands on Hindu gold and plunder!”
The moment she said it, Lily realized she had pushed him too far, but so be it! It was true.
Besides, he had overstepped his bounds, too, calling her a fortune hunter, making her feel like an out-and-out harlot for sale at some brothel. The nerve he’d touched was more raw than even she had realized. She had spent too many years submerged in shame to endure this chiding, this load of guilt from him.
But he was not happy with her, that much was plain, and when he spoke, his tone was ice. “Would you prefer that England go bankrupt? Become easy prey for her enemies? In the grand scheme of things, darling, if I kill, it is for England—and for you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t want to believe me, no doubt, for then all that blood would be on your hands, too, instead of just mine and my men’s. Civilians,” he said in disgust, shaking his head at her as though it were a name for some loathsome, useless thing.
His eyes had hardened, their expression as closed as silvery-blue mirrors to her now. “Before you accuse me of being some sort of hired mercenary, keep in mind it was the wealth of India that sustained our country through the war against Napoleon. Our nation has a right, indeed, a duty, to do what it must to survive.”
“And so do I,” she answered fiercely.
“Miss Balfour,” he said in a strangled tone, his face taut with rage, “you are very lucky that I am a gentleman.”
He grasped her hand, thrust her earring into her palm, and swung up onto his horse without further ado.
The look he shot her as he gathered the reins could have ground her down into the dust.
Her heart pounding, Lily watched him wheel his horse around with smooth expertise, urging the animal into motion with a click of his tongue and a light squeeze of his legs.
He rode off at a restless canter, leaving her alone.
Lily clutched her earring with such a hard grip that the sharp post on the back of it pricked her palm. The little jab of pain brought her back to the here-and-now, and the grim reality that they had laid bare for each other chased away the idle fantasies that had danced like wisps of smoke at the back of her mind ever since their brief encounter at the garden folly.
The whisper of a happiness that she had just barely glimpsed dissipated like dreams as she stood there. Her body trembled, but she refused to regret this angry break with Derek Knight. They had no business, really, even speaking to each other.
Well, then, she thought, steadying herself with a lift of her chin until she had forced the bewildering threat of tears into retreat. That’s that, then.
Good riddance.
At least she had got what she came for.
I have never been so insulted in my life.
Derek was still seething when he walked into his apartment at the Althorpe and slammed the door behind him.
Gabriel looked over in surprise. “What’s the matter with you?” he panted, hard at work on his punishing regimen to rebuild his strength.
Derek merely growled in answer as he threw his coat at the coat tree.
Gabriel put down his iron dumbbells and dabbed the sweat off his face. He frowned as he watched Derek pace to the window and back again, restless in silent tumult and obvious fury.
“Damn her!” Derek burst out with sudden vehemence. He would have punched the wall but stopped himself, not wanting to pay for the repairs he’d have been charged for it. He was not rich, after all.
“Damn who?” Gabriel asked in a quizzical tone.
Derek looked at him, paced some more, then turned when he reached the fireplace. “Lily Balfour, that’s who. Only the most infuriating woman I have ever met.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She,” he ground out, “insulted my honor.”
“Oh, I see. Are you going to challenge her to a duel?”
If his brother were not injured, Derek would have charged him for that remark as if they were still schoolboys on the rugby field. He narrowed his eyes.
Gabriel laughed at him; Derek glowered at his brother and kicked the ottoman out of his way as he left the room, stomping off to his own chamber to try to bring his fury under control.
Ungrateful wench!
He spotted a farewell note from Lady Amherst on his pillow but did not give a damn about reading it just now. At the moment, he wanted nothing to do with any one of their species.
He planted his hands on the edge of the dressing table and glared fiercely into the mirror.
It was one thing to be so disrespected by the politicians that they would steal funds earmarked for the troops. But this was more painful, more personal. She was not just anyone to him, devil take her. She had gotten under his skin, and her words had just negated all he held most dear.
She had made him feel like he was nothing, he and all his men, useless cannon fodder, as if all their sacrifice were meaningless.
Well, he thought after a long moment, what did it matter to him whom she married? Lundy would probably beat her, but that was not his problem, was it? She seemed hell-bent on making her miserable bed, so let her lie in it. It wasn’t as though he had any desire to offer for the little fortune hunter himself. Not that she or any of her kind would have accepted an offer from a mere younger son.
Gabriel, now, he might have had a chance with the fine and frosty Lily Balfour, but for his part, Derek knew the score. He’d been dealing with this all his life—and his brother wondered why he was ambitious! Ah, it was the same old story, the age-old quandary of the younger son.
He had learned the way of the world at his mother’s knee. As firstborn, Gabriel could afford to lounge on his arse if he wanted, but there would be no such luxury for Derek. No one was going to help him, and since, by necessity, a younger son would always seem the lesser choice, he had been brought up shrewdly doubtful that any woman was ever going to love him unless he could give her several very good reasons to choose him, advantages like fortune and glory to make up for his lower status by birth.
In truth, there was a time when he would have done much more than that for true love, a figment in which his foolish heart had insisted on believing. Even as a boy, Derek could imagine no worse fate than never being loved by some wonderful girl. He had always been completely fascinated by girls, even when other lads his age had scoffed at them. He’d had no trouble talking to the magical creatures when other boys had stuttered, thrown rocks, and run away, and the only thing better in his youthful view than riding a very fast horse had been making a pretty girl laugh. Oh, yes, he intended to be loved one day—well and often. It was the very motive that, years ago, had set him on the path of his present career.
If he had to risk life and limb to gain the riches that would bring love to him, if he had to face death undertaking magnificent deeds to get himself hailed as a hero, he had told himself it would be worth it.
Otherwise, he might just as well be invisible.
Well, the job was habit now, and as for his faith in true love, it had long been fading. It dissolved a little further with each married woman he seduced.
Then last night he had met “Mary Nonesuch,” and for a few hours he had dared to hope she might really be different from the rest. But he saw now he had been deluding himself. She was like all the others, a common schemer with a pretty face. Her kiss had been sublime, but, Derek thought with a snort, no young lady who went around kissing strangers in garden gazebos was marital material for him.
Ah, well. At this late date, he did not really expect to marry for love any more than Lily Balfour or her vulgar nabob Lundy did. There was none of that romantic boy left in him. He was older now, wiser, hardened by life, and he understood better what love meant.
After all, if he still believed in true love, he would have hoped for someone who would love him now, when he had only a small fortune and the fuel of large ambitions, large capabilities. Women sometimes claimed to love him, but his mental answer was, Then bloody prove it. Let any woman steel herself to share in his burden now, before he was rich. Let her follow the drum and come to the edge of the war, like some officers’ wives would do. That was love.
Let her see for herself the daily hell he knew. Let her help him tend his mangled men and shoot a broken-legged cavalry horse or two to spare it from its agony. Let her watch him behead a few fellows in battle and slash the enemy to bits with his razor-sharp saber, and then they’d see if any lady had the stomach to be wed to a bloodstained killer…just like Lily Balfour had accused him of being.
No, Derek did not even bother trying to find that kind of love. It was never going to happen. He simply did not believe it could exist.
Besides, he would not have asked for such sacrifice from any gentle female. He was too protective to have allowed it. He knew too well that even to see a war was a kind of violation of the soul.
He had learned that it was better on the whole just to let the girls admire the uniform. The uniform was mask enough for him.
Besides, he had already devised a more realistic plan for his future marriage. One day, when he had made his fortune of Indian treasure, why then, he would buy the best bride that he could afford—the haughtiest, the highest born, the purest.
Until then, it was merry widows and other chaps’ wives for him, and if Lily Balfour didn’t like it, she could go to Hades.
Unfortunately, their mutual acquaintance with Edward made it inevitable that they would have to endu
re each other’s company again before long.
By the night of Lord and Lady Fallow’s musical soiree, Lily had nearly managed to convince herself that she had forgotten all about Major Derek Knight.
This was no small feat, given the fact that he had begun associating with Edward on a regular basis, to say nothing of the frequency with which her chaperone saw fit to mention the blackguard.
While Edward mentioned meeting with him on committee business, Mrs. Clearwell seemed to have decided that Major Derek Knight had hung the moon. And much to Lily’s horror, her chaperone had opined on more than one occasion that that cad, that “stud of the Season,” was the man she ought to chase, snare, and wed.
Over my dead body, was Lily’s mental reply. But such a vehement response would only have intrigued her shrewd sponsor, so rather than run screaming from the room whenever his name came up, as she would have preferred, Lily merely smiled at her godmother in a superior fashion and made no comment on the topic. Anything she said was certain to incriminate her. Once, however, in a moment’s weakness, she had pertly suggested that Mrs. Clearwell chase, snare, and wed the rogue herself. He seemed to fancy rich widows.
But for her part, Lily was done with the man. Having rescued her earring from his evil clutches, she really had no reason ever to think of Derek Knight again, nor did she care to.
Unfortunately, she still did.
She was still stung by his words that day at Hyde Park. Who was he to make her feel ashamed of herself for her plan to marry Edward? He had called her a fortune hunter, a species he seemed to equate with the ranks of soiled doves! If others had seen her in this light since she had arrived in London—an impoverished aristocrat in search of a wealthy husband—Major Knight had been the only one rude enough to say it to her face, and as far as she was concerned, he could go hang.
It was all very easy for him to sit back and judge her. Men had a hundred courses open to them in life. They could go to school, receive an advanced education, or learn a respectable trade, but not women, and certainly not ladies. As her mother had said, there was only one acceptable route open to ladies of quality, and that was the path of an advantageous marriage.