by Gaelen Foley
She lifted her lashes and gazed dreamily into his silvery blue eyes. “Yes.”
“Good. Because, darling, there’s something that I really need to tell you.”
Derek knew the moment of truth had come.
Ah, bugger.
Damned nuisance, those bloody moments of truth.
“I love you,” he told her again. It was true, but perhaps he was stalling just a bit.
“What is it, darling?” Her eyes flew open wide. “Oh, God, you’re going back to India!”
“No! No, no, of course not. Come, sit down, sweeting. You’ve had a bit of a shock.”
Though that was nothing compared to the shock she had coming.
He led her out of her parents’ bedchamber, a room that frankly made him uncomfortable, and drew her gently into the threadbare settee under the mullioned windows at the end of the long, darkly paneled corridor.
They both sat; Lily gazed at him earnestly, folding her hands in her lap in that gentle way of hers that did strange things to his insides. He laid his hand over both of hers.
“Is something wrong, husband?”
“No.” He took a deep breath and reminded himself he would have done much more than this in order to protect her. He just hoped she didn’t want to plunge a dagger in his chest when she heard the news. “Uh, firstly, I am glad to report that our finances are in excellent order.”
“Oh.” She furrowed her brow, then nodded. “Good.”
He swallowed hard. “Gabriel asked me to accept the role as Father’s main heir.”
“What?”
“He said he no longer wanted to be burdened with the responsibility.”
She paused, frowning. “That doesn’t sound like him. Is he all right?”
Derek shrugged. “I don’t know. He usually knows what he’s doing. But as you can imagine, this will be a great benefit to us,” he added.
She considered this revelation with a look of increasing surprise. “Are you saying I managed to marry a rich man, after all?” she exclaimed.
He laughed. “Quite.”
“How clever of me! Why, you dickens!” He was relieved to see her loosening up after that row. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Gabriel could still change his mind, though God knows, his temperament is that of a mountain. Even so, there’s plenty to go around, so I’m not worried.”
“Were you afraid I was going to go spend all your new inheritance?”
“No.” He touched her cheek fondly. “I was afraid you’d tell your mother, and then she would.”
“Ah. Well…”
They exchanged smiles of glowing attachment.
“At any rate, my coming up in the world,” he said dryly, “is not the only part of our circumstances that’s undergone a change.” As he gazed at her, his expression sobered.
“What do you mean?”
Derek willed himself to maintain the most soothing possible tone of voice. “We’re going to be moving.”
“Moving?” She went on her guard. It was the subtlest shift, like a wall coming up behind her eyes.
“Yes,” he murmured, lightly holding onto her hand. “I would like you to start thinking about what sort of house you’d like to live in—I mean, your ideal.”
She seemed confused. “But I already have a home. I live in Balfour Manor.”
“No, darling,” he said softly. “Not anymore.”
“What?” She yanked her hand out of his hold.
“We can’t afford this place—”
“But you just told me you’re rich! I know the house is run-down, Derek, but now you can hire the workers—”
“No.”
He looked into her blue eyes and refused to waver, despite her panicked look of heartbreaking betrayal.
“I’m taking you out of here,” he told her very gently. “This place is bad for you. I can see what it’s doing to you, even if you cannot. Lily, I’m your husband and it’s my job to protect you.”
“Protect me?” She rose and glared at him in shock.
“The house is rotten and there are bad memories for you everywhere.”
“But Balfour Manor is mine! It’s mine! You can’t sell it out from under me, you wouldn’t!”
“It’s ours.”
Technically, it was his now that he’d married her and he could do with it what he wished, but there was no point in mentioning that. She knew it full well. She just didn’t want to admit it. Now she was shaking her head at him like he was Judas. “I don’t believe you. This is what you warned me Edward would do. Edward! And now you, acting just like him! How could you do this to me? Balfour Manor is my home, the only home I’ve ever known! It’s been in my family for three hundred years, and now you’re going to sell it to some stranger? Chop it up and hawk it away? How dare you?”
“I’m doing this because I love you. I know you’re upset, but this house is dangerous, Lily. I’m not going to raise my children here.”
“How could you betray me this way?”
His words did not quite seem to be sinking in. “I’m not betraying you,” he said calmly. “I’m going to take you somewhere you will be happy. I can’t stand seeing you like this. I don’t want you breathing this air.”
She folded her arms across her chest and paced back and forth across the corridor, shaking her head. “I don’t believe you’ve been scheming all this behind my back. That’s why you said Georgiana had her guest rooms ready for Mother, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So, your sister knew you were selling my house before you even told me?”
“Just try to listen to the plan.”
“Oh, the plan?” she spat.
“Charles Beecham has arranged an auction at the end of the week. That’s why I’ve been trying to do at least the most obvious repairs, to help get a good price.”
She shook her head at him with eyes full of accusation, but, grimly, he forged on.
“I tried to interest your kinsman first in the hopes of trying to keep all the Balfour properties together, but not even he wanted the place.”
“So, that’s why you wanted him to be invited to the wedding!”
“Once we have a buyer, then we’ll arrange a suitable length of time to move your family’s personal effects out of here. I will see that your kinswomen are set up in suitable living quarters, perhaps in a house near Mrs. Clearwell’s. Would that please you?”
She didn’t even seem to hear the question, but turned to him sharply. “Are they going to tear the house down?”
Derek squared his shoulders. “Depends on who buys it.”
Fury rushed across her countenance at his response. He was not surprised. He knew this was the one possibility she did not want to contemplate, above all. She stared at him in withering silence for a long moment.
“Well, let them just try to get me out of here,” she vowed. “They’re going to have to rip this place down with me still inside, because I’m not leaving. Balfour Manor is my home, and I’m not going to let you destroy it.” With that, she pivoted on her heel and walked away, slamming their bedroom door farther down the hallway.
Derek lowered his gaze and took a deep breath. “Ah, bloody hell.”
Ah, well. At least he had broken the news. He had waited until the auction was just a few days away because he knew it would be best to have it over quickly.
Like a post-battle amputation.
Deciding to let her mull it over for a while, he jogged downstairs to see the ladies off.
They took the news better than Lily did.
Pamela and Aunt Daisy seemed almost happy to hear it. Truly, they were ready to fly out of this cage. Lady Clarissa barely seemed to absorb what he was saying; Derek got the feeling she was still in shock. That her daughter’s angry tirade was finally sinking in.
As their shabby black carriage pulled away, he watched it heading down the drive, past that damned tree. They were on their way now, he thought, confident they would be fine once
the upheaval of the move settled down. After all, they had not stopped talking about their visit to London for weeks, musing about the people they had met and the places they had gone, all of them, starved for life and color and activity. In London, perhaps they would not be so haunted by the dead Balfour males in the parish graveyard.
Once they had gone, he braced himself to return to the bedroom, but discovered his wife had barricaded herself inside. Of course, it would have been an easy matter to knock a hole through the worm-eaten door or the ancient plaster, but he didn’t dare.
He knocked on the door like an oh-so-civilized gentleman. “Lily?”
“Go away! I’m not speaking to you!”
“Fine, I’ll speak, you listen.” Somehow it was easier to spill out his heart to a plain brown door. “I can’t stand to see what’s happening to you here. I love you so much, and I feel like I’m losing you—to this place. It changes you in ways I don’t understand. I want to help you.”
No answer.
“Lily, your coming back here is as bad for you as going back to the battlefield would have been for me. We both have our ghosts. You weren’t about to lose me to mine, and I owe you the same loyalty.”
“Loyalty?” she yelled in a fury through the slab of wood that separated them.
“Of course! I would do anything for you. Anything,” he added in a choked whisper. “The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you. And I know you’re angry. I understand that. But whatever you might think, I’m doing this because I love you. Someday you’ll thank me.”
Silence.
“Can’t you say something?”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” he told her wryly. “You love me. You know you do.”
“Go away!”
“Fine. I’m going to go find some food. You want something to eat?”
A wordless yowl of rage was her reply.
Oh, dear. It seemed he lacked a proper terror of her fury. “Lily, it’s as plain as day that you are not happy here. So why do you refuse to sell this place? It doesn’t make any sense! Why were you willing to go to such lengths to save it? Tell me that. Why were you willing to marry someone like Ed Lundy to preserve it? With all its rotting beams and caving-in fireplaces? Why does it matter so much?”
“It just does!” she wrenched out.
The answer sounded like something he would have expected from a little child.
That was when he started to suspect what was really going on inside that head of hers, whether she knew it or not.
“Well,” he said evenly through the door, “hate me all you want, but I’m not letting you go. Mrs. Clearwell’s orders.”
“Oh, shut up.”
He smiled in spite of himself. The reminder of her chaperone’s advice on their wedding day had to soften her up at least a bit. “Darling, I’m going to buy you the most beautiful house you ever saw,” he promised her. “What would you like? A garden? A ballroom?”
“But I want this house!” she wailed, twisting the heart in him with her tone of youthful despair.
Bloody hell. The tears had started in earnest now. He could hear her crying in there. “Lily, let me in. Let me hold you.”
“No. Just go away! I can’t believe you did this to me, you traitor.”
Despite his certainty that he was in the right, hearing her crying and knowing that he was the reason made Derek feel approximately one inch tall.
Damn, but there was no helping some people!
He shook his head, half distraught himself, and left her to weep her tears in privacy. He knew her, and as much as he wanted to break down the door, he knew it was important to give her time and not lose faith. So with all his military discipline, he made himself wait one half hour and did not come back until he had washed himself from the dirty attic job, changed into clean clothes, and procured a tray of food and tea for both of them.
He carried it up to the door, knocked gently. “I’m back.”
No answer.
He frowned. “Lily?”
This time, when he tried the knob, it turned, no longer locked. He opened the door and peered cautiously into the room, and there was his wife, sitting crumpled on the floor below the window, crying with her arms wrapped around her and a look in her big blue eyes like a fractured little girl.
Oh, God. Derek closed the door behind him. “Do you want some tea?”
“I figured it out,” she said in a shaky tone.
“What’s that?” He set the tray aside and went to her. “What did you figure out, love?”
“Why this place mattered so much.” Her teeth were chattering as if she had caught a chill.
“Why?” he whispered, crouching down before her.
“I-I guess a part of me thought my papa might still come home. And we ought to be here to see him when he came b-back or he wouldn’t know where we went. He might not be able to find us again.” Twin tears fell from her eyes. “But he’s not coming back. I know that, of course. I guess I always did. But it still hurts.”
“I know, sweetheart.” Derek reached for her and pulled her into his arms. She draped her arms wearily around him, crying.
“Shh,” he breathed as he held her on his lap. “I’m here.”
For a long time, she cried until all of the tears were out of her. Derek still stroked her and comforted her until she lapsed into spent silence.
He was unsure how much time had passed, but beyond their bedroom window, twilight had come.
“I’m sorry for all the things I said.”
He kissed her brow. “It’s all right.”
“You forgive me?” she whispered.
“Always. Do you forgive me?” He looked into her eyes.
“You were right,” she said barely audibly. She nodded, lowering her gaze. “This place. I needed to be free.”
“You are now.” He threaded his fingers through hers.
“Derek?”
He looked at her in question.
“Take me out of here,” she whispered. “Can we leave? Can we just go now, before I lose my nerve?”
He nodded, rose, and helped her up. “Let’s go.”
They went outside to the stable, where he saddled the horses and that night, they rode back to Town. He cradled Lily before him while he rode on the black stallion with the sorrel mare, Mary Nonesuch, comfortably tethered behind.
They cantered through the darkness heading toward London with no firm destination in mind. As long as they were together, they had all that they required.
They had everything.
EPILOGUE
Lily’s ideal house summoned up images of taking tea in a pleasant summer garden. Warm golden tones on the walls cast a hazy glow over airy interiors, filled with soft, plump furniture clad in muted floral chintz. Plants in pots flourished everywhere, thanks to the abundance of light through the tall, arched windows.
The white cottage they had found was perfect for them: not too big, not too small. Just far enough away from Town for tranquillity—they could see cows grazing in a meadow from their bedroom window—and yet near enough to partake of London’s endless amenities.
And it was new. Everything worked just as it should with barely a squeak in the light hardwood floors. It had good copper plumbing, a modern w.c., and a roof that was snug with no drafts. From the day Derek bought the house for her, to Lily, it was a little slice of heaven on earth.
It was home.
A place of safety. A place of joy. Above all, a place of love.
Balfour Manor was no more. An architect had bought it at the auction and had taken it down, sending the best parts off to his various new projects.
The Balfour ladies split the proceeds from the sale among themselves, and with astonishing speed, the alteration in their circumstances drastically changed their lives.
Mother moved into an elegant little house on Mrs. Clearwell’s street. Upon her reentry into Society as a still-beautiful and independent widow à la Fanny Coates, Lady Clarissa
soon found herself hotly pursued by some of the ton’s wildest young bucks. Around them, her stiff-necked propriety couldn’t last long. Constantly surrounded by lusty and high-living, amorous younger men, she had no time anymore for criticizing Lily or anyone else. She was too busy having the time of her life.
Cousin Pamela also had her share of admirers. She had already jilted the poet—thereby providing him with an abundance of new material to sob about in his verses, no doubt—and was on to the next companion, an aspiring composer this week, Lily believed. Upon her arrival in London, Pamela had ditched her spectacles, procured a daring short haircut, and took to wearing red. John Murray, Publisher, had arranged for six of her novels to be printed over the course of the next two years. As for Aunt Daisy, she had no shortage of Knight children to play with. Her current favorite was the ducal daughter known as Baby Kate.
The Balfour ladies were so busy—and so happy in their new lives—that Derek and Lily were largely left to themselves, which suited them quite well.
Derek had finally received the long-awaited letter from his old commander with news of his men. Ironically, Colonel Montrose reported that the Maratha Empire was defeated after only four months! It was all over even before the navy treasure ships had arrived, and as for Derek’s men, they had seen no action. His former regiment had been stationed on the other side of India when the first shots were fired and “all the fun” was over by the time they reached the front. The ferocious Baji Rao was dead and the British colonies were safe again.
Derek had laughed at the letter, then forwarded it on to Gabriel in his lonely, rural hermitage so that he, too, could read the news—never mind the fact that the firstborn Knight did not seem to care for any reminders of his old life or the affairs of the world. Gabriel kept to himself out there, waiting, according to Derek, for some sort of divine signal that would reveal his future destiny.
Derek and Lily, of course, had no further questions about their destiny. They had found it months ago one night at a masked ball.
“Lily!” She heard her husband calling from outside and went to the window, but when she saw Derek down in the garden, amazement struck her. She opened the window with an incredulous smile.