by Gaelen Foley
“You are so sweet.”
“Why don’t you ever stick up for yourself around her? Someone ought to put her in her place and I think that someone should be you. I will do it gladly if you wish, but I really think it would be the best thing for you, and maybe the best thing for her, too.”
“What are you suggesting?” she asked in amusement. “That I have a shouting match with my own mother?”
“Aye, let her have it, girl. It’s the only way she’s going to learn that she can’t walk all over you.”
“Oh, Derek, I don’t think I could ever do that. It wouldn’t be, er, ladylike.” She couldn’t help smiling sheepishly at him.
“You never had a problem standing up to me,” he reminded her, then he flexed one bulging arm before her eyes. “Aren’t I a bit scarier than she is?”
Lily admired his biceps with a lavish caress, running her palm along the smooth, stony mass of muscles. She smiled at him with desire fluttering to life in the pit of her stomach. “Good point.”
He cupped her cheek. “You’re not a little girl anymore. Remember that. You’re a grown woman. A beautiful, luscious, fully ripened…woman,” he finished huskily as he trailed his fingertips down her neck and then brushed her loose, flowing hair behind her shoulder so he could better view her breasts.
Lily trembled as his light touch glided down over her nipple, and moaned softly when he slipped the strap of her chemise off her shoulder. He bared her breast and leaned lower, capturing her nipple in his mouth.
In a moment, he moved up to kiss her lips. She slid her arms around his neck, lying back and wrapping her legs around him as his tongue caressed hers.
“Are you too tired—?” she whispered, but he smiled wickedly against her mouth.
“Never.”
He reached down and stoked her desire to new heights with his deft fingers, and then went down on her, as well, pleasuring her with his clever tongue. But once they began making love, she spared him the exertion, letting him lie back and enjoy while she rode him.
“Take this off,” he ordered thickly, sliding her chemise higher. Still straddling him, Lily paused and slipped the simple garment off over her head. An almost pained look of appreciation etched his face as his hands followed his gaze. “God, I’m a lucky man.”
She was moved to hear that he still felt that way.
Leaning down to kiss him, Lily gave him her all, loving him with a smooth, gliding motion until she had brought him to a powerful climax to replenish his body and soul.
“Oh, Lily, darling, come to me,” he groaned.
“I love you,” she whispered as she achieved release atop him seconds later.
They lay together afterward, their bodies still joined, his big member lying semi-hard inside her. She rested on his chest and closed her eyes with a peaceful sense of wellbeing. Everything made sense again. His love had such a power for chasing off her fears.
In his arms, awash in the afterglow of love, it seemed as though nothing could ever assail them.
But this was only the calm before the storm.
The following night, Lily and Pamela crept up into the bat-infested attic with Derek, and while its winged residents were out dining on moths, they helped him fix the roof. All three wore triangular-folded handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces like a gang of bandits to avoid breathing in the dust of bat guano or the unhealthy black mold eating away at the beams.
It was no job for a lady—nor for a gentleman’s son, in fact—but after exclaiming over what a disgusting, or rather “macabre” task they had ahead of them, they got down to work. Lily kept the lanterns glowing so Derek could see what he was doing. He had brought up a ladder and climbed onto the roof for a closer look at the problem. Now he handed down the manor’s loose roof tiles like some unenviable dentist at work on a giant, extracting so many black, broken teeth.
While Lily made a pile of the old tiles, Cousin Pamela dutifully handed new boards up to him through the largest hole in the roof.
Derek kept banging away with the hammer.
Sometime after midnight, they started getting punchy, helping Pamela plot her next novel.
Derek had proposed a story about a young man who visits a strange castle and learns it’s infested with ghosts that he must somehow fight. Lily suggested an exorcist, but Pamela said that only worked on demons.
“Maybe he could have some special tool to fight the ghosts with,” Lily suggested.
“Like what? A magic hammer?” Derek replied with a grin, leaning down through the hole to show them the one in his hand.
“Would you be careful? If you fall, I’ll kill you.”
“That’s what he could do! He could die,” Derek exclaimed. “If he was dead, he could fight the ghosts as a ghost himself.”
“But then they’d have to find a way to bring him back to life,” Lily reasoned. “How’s that supposed to work?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to Gabriel,” he muttered, but he did not explain.
“I like this idea,” Pamela mused aloud. “I’ll start on it first thing tomorrow!”
“It is tomorrow,” Derek replied from up on the roof.
“Oh, yes. Can you see our bats flying around from up there?”
“No, but if I do, I intend to tell them as their landlord that their rent is overdue.”
By morning, Derek had sealed the bats out of the attic and they were swooping around outside the house in a bit of a panic. The servants had arisen for their daily duties; the footman and maid helped the three of them carry out the tools and nails and piles of refuse from their project.
“Eh, that was so disgusting.”
“Be sure and wash up well. Bats can carry diseases, which is why I didn’t really want you to help, but so be it. I’m glad that you did. Thanks, ladies.”
“We’re the ones who should be thanking you,” Pamela answered, but Lily merely gave him an adoring smile.
“Oh, there you are!” Aunt Daisy came rushing across the entrance hall below as they made their way down the stairs to put their things away.
Derek and the footman were carrying the ladder, Lily held several doused lanterns, while Pamela had the last board that hadn’t been needed.
Aunt Daisy fluttered about in a state of agitation. “Hurry, daughter, oh, hurry!”
“What is it, Mother?” Cousin Pamela asked in concern, setting the board down carefully at the bottom of the stairs, leaning it against the newel post.
“Something’s come for you—a letter! Here! Oh, quickly!”
“Is it from that poet fellow you met at the literary society, hm?” Lily teased, giving her cousin a knowing look.
“No!” Aunt Daisy exclaimed, waving it like a winning slip in the parish lottery. “Dear heaven—it is from a publisher!”
Pamela gasped aloud. “What?” She flew over to her mother and gripped the sealed letter in both hands. “Murray! John Murray, Publisher. Oh, dear God, he publishes Lord Byron a-and Sir Walter Scott! But how could he even know about me?”
Derek cleared his throat, lowered his head, and feigned innocence.
“You didn’t!” Pamela’s jaw dropped as she turned to him.
“Why not? The tale was good enough. My dear, you can never succeed if you won’t even try.”
Pamela turned to Lily, her face white. “I-I can’t. I can’t open it. Lily, you read it. I can’t bear to see what it says.”
Lily set her lanterns down, took the letter from her hyperventilating cousin, and sent her husband a dubious look, for this was the first she had learned of his mischief.
He gave her a nod full of cavalry confidence.
Lily cracked the letter open, but her eyes widened as she read the letter.
“What’s it say?” Pamela squeaked.
She looked at her in amazement. “Mr. Murray wants to publish your book.”
Pamela screamed.
“Wait! There’s more.” Lily gripped her arm and glanced again at the letter. “He
wants to know if you have any more you might be interested in selling!”
Pamela shrieked again and burst into tears.
Then everyone was hugging her, cheering. Aunt Daisy was crying and prattling on incoherently about how proud she was of her daughter. Lily was jumping up and down, while Derek clapped the footman on the back and beamed with pride. But then, into this clamor of rejoicing, a cold voice gusted in like the frigid north wind.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Everybody stopped.
“Oh, Clarissa,” Aunt Daisy spoke up bravely, though her voice was barely a whisper, “Mr. Murray of London wishes t-to publish our Pamela’s books.”
“Really?” Mother breathed, turning her needle-sharp glance toward the authoress. “Pamela, I am shocked at you! How could you risk the family’s reputation this way?”
“I’ll use a pen name, Aunt Clarissa, I-I swear.”
“No! It is out of the question, and I am stunned you would dare contradict me in this manner.”
“It wasn’t her doing,” Derek announced in a bristling tone, stepping forward. “It was mine.”
“Ah, I should have known,” she said with dripping sarcasm.
“Mother,” Lily warned.
“Don’t ‘Mother’ me!”
“Oh, please, everyone, please stop!” Aunt Daisy wailed. “I feel the palpitations coming on!”
Lady Clarissa ignored her and refocused her anger on Lily, her blue eyes flashing dangerously. “This is all your fault, you selfish girl! You’re the one who got us into this, marrying this pretty fellow instead of keeping your word and taking your family duties seriously. But then again, knowing you, you probably had no choice.”
Lily stared at her in hurt shock.
Derek drew off his work gloves. “Did you just insult my wife’s honor?”
Lady Clarissa looked away with a nonchalant shrug. “If the shoes fits.”
“Madam,” Derek addressed her, “go upstairs and pack your bags. You are leaving.”
“Oh, I see!” she mocked him. “You’re going to throw me out of my own house?”
“It is not your house, Lady Clarissa,” he reminded her succinctly. “It is mine. And I…want…you out!”
Lady Clarissa jumped as he bellowed the last word in drill sergeant fashion. She stared at him, looking like a breeze could have knocked her over. “Well!” She glanced at Lily, who was standing there frozen in shock. “If that’s how you all feel,” the queenly woman clipped out. Then she snapped her jaw shut, whirled around, and flounced out with her chin high.
Everybody turned and looked at Derek in amazement.
He glanced around at them with no signs of remorse.
Lily gazed at him uncertainly, then shook her head and ran upstairs to check on her mother. The woman probably didn’t know what hit her.
When Lily reached her mother’s grand but frayed and dusty bedchamber, she found her angrily packing her things.
Or at least making a show of it.
“Mother?”
“Don’t talk to me, you little traitor,” she said under her breath as she tossed another armful of threadbare clothes into her portmanteau, which lay open on her canopy bed.
“Mother, please. Derek just wants everyone to get along. You don’t really have to go—”
“As if you care what happens to me!”
“Don’t be like that. Please, calm down. Shall I bring you some tea? It’ll be all right—”
“No, it won’t!” she shouted, turning to Lily with eyes wrathfully ablaze. “You’ve ruined everything! This is all your fault and you can’t even be bothered to care! What were you thinking, bringing home someone like him? He doesn’t belong here! A half-pay officer? He’s not at all what we agreed upon! Do you have any idea how completely you’ve let us all down, all because, once again, I presume, you were incapable of keeping your legs crossed?”
Shame flooded Lily at those cruel words. Head down, her heart reeling from the blow, she had not noticed Derek leaning in the doorway. But then she heard his deep, steadying voice, reminding her of who she really was.
“Lily Knight,” he said softly from across the room, “you are the bravest woman I know. Are you going to stand there and take that?”
He was right.
Through a sort of fog, she recalled the stable fire, and how she had fought like mad to save him. Could she not summon up just a little of that defiance now to fight for herself?
“I’m right, aren’t I, Major?” her mother drawled, interrupting Lily’s reeling thoughts. “You only married her because you had to, for honor’s sake.”
Derek shook his head in stony silence, refusing to rise to the bait.
Lily knew he was also silent because he wanted her to be the one to speak up. Her heart was pounding. She barely knew where to begin, there was so much anger bottled up inside her. “You just can’t stand to see me happy, can you?” she ground out, startling even herself with the vehemence of her tone.
Slowly, she lifted her head and looked her mother in the eyes.
Lady Clarissa regarded her in aloof amusement, one eyebrow raised. “Ah, what’s this, a show of spirit from the mouse?”
Lily flinched. “I am so sick of you hurting me. A mother is supposed to love you, but all you ever do is mock me and find fault. I’ve tried so hard to win your approval. For years I’ve tried, but you know what, Mother? I give up,” she declared, tears filling her eyes. “Nothing I do is ever going to be good enough for you, so what’s the point? You’ve been ashamed of me since the day Lord Owen Masters wrecked my life.”
When her mother rolled her eyes, Lily’s temper snapped.
“Where were you when he was preying on me?” she shouted at her. “Absorbed in yourself! I was fifteen years old, Mother! Only a child! I didn’t know anything—I didn’t understand! That bastard all but raped me, but you didn’t even care how it had affected me. Instead of helping me or comforting me, all you did was scream at me and worry about how we would cover it up! Well, maybe you deserve some of the blame,” she said coldly. “You were my mother—you were supposed to be protecting me. My father was dead—mainly because you drove him away.”
These last words startled Lily even as they came tumbling out of her mouth.
They were the truth that no one had dared speak in so many years.
“You and Grandfather. You both pressured him into leaving for the money’s sake and he died.”
Lady Clarissa’s eyes had filled with tears, but she was silent and stock-still.
“Well, you’re not going to drive my husband away, too,” Lily finished in trembling shock, her composure hanging by a thread. “You can live in proud, stiff misery if you want, and I know, misery may love company. But I’m not going to join you in it anymore.” She glanced over at Derek. He sent her a steadying nod. She looked at her mother again, her heart pounding. “I intend to be happy,” she said, “and if you can’t live with that, then Derek’s right, and you should go.”
Lady Clarissa took a deep breath, avoiding Lily’s gaze. She turned to her portmanteau and closed it, fastening it with a click. “You’re right,” she said at length, still staring at the distant wall, refusing to look at Lily, as though her daughter’s face were a mirror that revealed too many un-flattering lines. “You’re quite right,” she clipped out. “I failed you. I failed your father, too, and now I have to live with my regrets.”
Lily trembled, waiting for her mother to look at her, but instead, Lady Clarissa picked up her valise and walked out the door, apparently persuaded to accept her banishment.
Derek stopped her by the doorway with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “My sister, Georgiana, has already made a guest suite in her home ready for you and the others. Have the footman drive you there. She will be expecting you.”
“I see. You’ve been planning this for some time.”
Derek said nothing.
Lily closed her eyes, holding back sobs by sheer dint of will, and then her mothe
r was gone.
She heard Derek’s approach heralded by the squeaky floorboards. Then strong arms wrapped around her, and she broke down against his chest. He held her close.
“Brava,” he whispered. “I love you.”
Lily wept.
“You needed to do that.”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel any better yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
“You will. I promise,” he breathed and he kissed her head again.
“She—didn’t react very well.”
“You said your part. That’s the important thing.”
“I suppose.”
“I’m proud of you. I know how hard that must’ve been.”
“I’m not as brave as you,” she whispered.
“Oh, yes, you are.”
She glanced up at him with a wry but tremulous smile. “Do you really think so?”
“I’m living proof of it, my dear. I’ll tell you one thing. She heard you. I think you’re going to start seeing a change.”
“I hope you’re right. I don’t know why she has to be so cold. I don’t think she quite knows how to love.”
“But you do.”
“Yes. I do.” After a moment, she let out a small laugh and shook her head, beginning to feel better. “I can’t believe you threw her out.”
“Aunt Daisy and Pamela will ride with her to London. Georgiana was happy to offer a few rooms in that palace of hers for a while.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” she forced out with a sniffle. “Pam will be able to meet with her publisher, and Aunt Daisy will love seeing Matthew again. Maybe Mrs. Clearwell can find a nice rich gentleman for Mother.”
Derek succumbed to a reluctant laugh. “Oh, my darling, she’s not a miracle worker.”
“Oh, you are bad.”
He captured her face between his hands and bent his head, pressing a gentle kiss to her lips. “Lily?” he whispered after a moment. “You know I love you, right?”