Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  Another splash of heat burned up her neck and set her cheeks ablaze. Setting her jaw at a mutinous angle, she strode past him and into the quiet office. The servant pulled the door closed behind her with an ominous click. Lily froze at the entrance of the parlor. Black bombazine lined the walls and covered the curtains giving the room a look of a life-size spider’s web of black thread. The mahogany Chippendale furniture with the angry lions lent that angry air of rapaciousness, reminding her how she had always detested her protector’s choice of furnishings in her own cottage. And at the center of that web was a tall, too-slender gentleman. With his wild mane of crimson Brutus curls and long sideburns, the man had the menacing look of one of those predatory creatures.

  By the amusement in Mr. Lucas Holdsworth’s eyes, he’d noted her scrutiny. “Miss Benedict,” he greeted, stretching out those long, nasally syllables.

  “Sir,” she said through tight lips.

  With a casualness that set her teeth on edge, he propped his hip on the sideboard and studied her over the rim of his glass. “You are, indeed, as lovely in person as my father described,” he said without preamble.

  Did he expect her gratitude for such compliments? Lily remained stonily silent.

  The ghost of a smile played on his hard lips. “Shall I get to the heart of it?”

  She inclined her head. “If you would.” For all the vile things she’d done, for the depraved life she’d lived warming Sir Henry’s bed, at last she would have her freedom. A giddy lightness filled her chest, muting the self-loathing, and fear, and contempt. Oh, those sentiments would always be there. She’d never be free of them, but she had survived and there was something to be said for living.

  “You have nothing.”

  And just like that, a gentleman had cut the legs out from under her somewhat steady world once more. Lily went still and attempted to pick her way through her confounded thoughts. “Mr. Holdsworth?” She managed to force that inquiry out.

  “Nothing,” he said, the slow grin forming on his lips hinted at his twisted enjoyment. “You have nothing.”

  Lily gave a slight shake of her head. What could he be saying? “Sir Henry settled funds upon me,” she said, her voice hollow. He’d promised her through the years; promised to see her cared for after he passed.

  “No,” he said, inclining his head. “Perhaps he intended to settle funds upon you at some point. He did not, however, settle anything upon his death.” The man’s son took another sip. “You see, there is nothing to settle. There is nothing left of the estates and certainly nothing to give my father’s whore.”

  No! Just another man’s lies. Lily fisted her hands hard enough that her nails drew blood on her palms to keep from indulging in the scream stuck in her throat. The room swayed and she shot out a hand. She found purchase at the edge of the leather button sofa she was standing near. There is nothing. There is nothing… His mocking words echoed around her protesting mind. Lily pressed her eyes closed. She could not have sold her body and soul for freedom, only to have nothing. What was it for then? Surviving? Is that what this has been these past six years?

  “Tsk, tsk.” He made a clucking noise like a chicken that had pecked around her family’s home. “I see I’ve upset you.”

  “I am n-not upset,” she said, hating the break in her voice. She was livid. Enraged. Broken. Shattered. No, the dark swirl of emotions threatening to drag her under moved far beyond a mere upset.

  Holdsworth took yet another sip. “There is something I would have you to do for me.”

  She blinked slowly. Of course. Her skin went hot then cold with the inevitable insult; that vile proposition she’d not accept. The man could go to the devil and she’d send him there with a kick to his pompous arse. She’d not spread her legs again. Not for him. And not for any other.

  “I understand you are familiar with the Duke of Blackthorne’s family.”

  Had he pulled the Aubusson carpet out from under her feet and upended her, she could not have been more off-balance. She shook her head. She’d spent years hating everything and anything connected with that name. She’d spent the other years hating herself for having humbled herself before that vile family. Lily had vowed to never think of them again and only in the darkest corner of her mind, when the clock ticked in the dead of night, while the nightmares kept her awake, did she allow herself to think of any of them.

  “You’ve gone quiet, Miss Benedict.”

  “I did not know you required a response.”

  Her tart response roused a booming laugh. “Ah, if you are this feisty before a man in discourse, how spirited you must be in his bed.”

  Bile burned at the back of her throat. Odd, she’d not grown accustomed to crude talk and leering stares. “Say what it is you’d say and be done with it,” she said with a practiced cool that drew a frown. Good, he did not care for her aloof dismissal. A thrill of satisfaction went through her.

  “It occurs to me you detest the Duke of Blackthorne’s family nearly as much as I do.”

  He would be wrong. “How do you…?” She snapped her mouth closed, already having said too much. Even as she longed to know just what he knew of her connection to that loathsome lot, she’d not allow him to toy with her like a cat with a mouse between its paws.

  He winged a red eyebrow upward. “How do I know that part of your past, Miss Benedict?” He paused meaningfully. “Or should I say Miss Bennett?” Holdsworth gave her a sardonic grin. “I know more than you would like.”

  A chill stole through her. Lily schooled her features into an inscrutable mask, refusing to give him a hint of shock and confusion currently running through her. She’d believed she’d carved out a relatively obscure identity as Sir Henry’s lover. With his two daughters near of age to Lily herself, she’d foolishly believed he’d keep Lily away as his dirty secret. Who else knew of the shameful life she’d lived these years?

  The memory of her family flitted around the chambers of her mind and an unexpected agony lanced her heart. What would her parents, her siblings, say of Lily’s deeper descent into depravity? Odd, she’d thought each memory of each member of her family was properly buried and forever forgotten. How awful to have that erroneous truth shattered before this heartless bastard, no less. As this icy stranger continued speaking, she forcibly thrust back the images of her brothers and sister.

  “My father was quite forthcoming.”

  Lily jerked erect. “Was he?” She could not keep the bitterness from creeping into that two-word question. Men had proven themselves remarkably boorish and detestable where she was concerned, and she’d proven herself foolish time and time again for trusting a word out of their treacherous mouths.

  “He was.”

  Should it come as any surprise he’d violated that portion of her trust with his son? The world was controlled by these men called gentlemen, when there really was nothing gentle in them. They were ruthless, grasping, and self-serving. What value would a single one of them ever place on her desire for some hint of privacy in her own past?

  Holdsworth set his glass down. With a taunting gleam lighting his eyes, he folded his arms at his chest. “It is no secret my family disapproved of the whore who kept him company all these years. Hardly coin to be had for my sisters’ Come Outs, and yet you lived this comfortable life in the country.”

  “Six,” she bit out. That was how long it had been since Sir Henry had insisted Lily go from his maid to his mistress. That was also the day she’d abandoned her name of Lilliana Bennett.

  He furrowed his brow.

  “It was six years.” A lady did not forget a moment of her life she spent in a hell of her own making. She tightened her jaw. Or in this case, a hell of hers and a now dead duke’s making.

  “Six years a whore,” the man mused, more to himself.

  She curled her hands into tight balls at her side, not giving him the satisfaction in knowing his words, even for their truth, nay especially for their truth, cut sharper than a dull-edged blade being t
hrust into her belly. “Yes,” she said with a stoic calm. “Six years a whore.” To a man who’d taken her to his bed, shared his home, and shared her secrets with his son.

  “Regardless,” he said with a flick of his hand. “It matters not how long you’ve warmed my father’s bed but rather what brought you in to his life.” He made a tsking noise. “Blackthorne, that lover of all things beautiful.” Things. That was how these pompous, arrogant nobles saw women and objects alike, as mere things for their pleasures. If only her fifteen-year-old self had known the ugliness in their souls. “My father asked that I care for you.”

  Dread pebbled in her belly. That tiny, anxious pit born of the treachery she’d experienced through the years. “How very kind of him,” she responded stiffly. Her eyes must have reflected the thousand panicked questions racing through her mind.

  He scoffed. “Surely you’d not expect my father to name his lover in his will? Not when he left his children facing financial ruin.”

  Oh, God. Was it a wonder that a gentleman who’d promised her freedom all those years ago had also betrayed her? How could she be so foolishly naïve, again? Once again, the floor dropped out from under her and she shot her hands out to steady herself with the support of the leather button sofa.

  In a maddeningly nonchalant manner, Holdsworth shoved away from the sideboard, and like a predator stalking its prey, closed the distance between them. The triumphant glimmer in his eyes indicated he relished her shock. He came to a stop beside her. “He was clear what was to happen to you were he ever to pass.”

  She braced for the sickening, vile proposition he’d put to her. Nausea turned in her stomach at the idea of spreading her legs for another. “Was he?”

  “And I quite assured him that I would. After all, what kind of son would I be if I did not see to his dying request?” A cold, taunting smile formed on his lips.

  Bile burned like acid in her throat and she remained frozen, incapable of words.

  “By your reaction, you expect an offer of protectorship from me, don’t you? Hmm?” he prodded when she still said nothing.

  Heat blazed over her body and she damned the cream white of her skin that surely revealed that telling color. “Do you not?” She prided herself on the steady deliverance of those words.

  Holdsworth ran his knuckles down her cheek and she stilled so as to not give him an indication as to how repulsed she was by his touch. “Would you like that, Miss Benedict?” His sickly, sweet breath fanned her cheek. “Would you like me to find a place for you in my bed? To stay in this cottage as my mistress?”

  Never again. She curled her hands tight. She’d pledged to never take another man to her bed and, with Sir Henry’s promise of a home in the country, she’d foolishly believed her future secure—at last. “I assure you not,” she said coldly. “Even I, a whore, have too much honor to take a married man to my bed.”

  “A whore with honor,” he chuckled. “Imagine that.”

  Her fingers twitched with the urge to slap him. “Nor was an offer of protectorship what your father pledged when he spoke of my security.” He’d promised a country cottage in Northumberland, far away from Carlisle, far away from London, far away from anyone and everyone who might know her.

  “Ah yes. Northumberland, wasn’t it, I believe?” he asked, dropping his hand to his side. “And you, my dear, may rest assured that even I have better taste than to rut between the legs of my father’s favored and well-used whore.”

  Her heartbeat kicked up at his knowledge of the future she’d hoped for herself. She took a step back, putting distance between her and this volatile stranger. No one was to have shared in that unchartered, unjourneyed part of her life. Sir Henry had promised as much. Tired of being the unwitting player in a game she did not know the rules for, she snapped. “Why do you not say what it is you want, instead of speaking in veiled terms of my past?” And my future. A now rather uncertain, bleak future. All because of another broken promise. Another swell of bitterness churned through her.

  “As I was saying earlier, about the Duke of Blackthorne…” He stared expectantly at her.

  Did he search for a hint of pain at the mere mention of George’s title? What he could not know is that she’d long ago found she’d never truly loved the Duke of Blackthorne. “What of him? It is my understanding the duke is dead,” she said. Not even a frisson of warmth stirred for the late duke. She’d loved the idea of being so very loved by him. She’d loved his whispered words of affection, those falsely whispered words. But she’d been nothing more than an infatuated girl, taken by his charm and looks. She winced. God, what a bloody fool she’d been. The laugh he’d had over her.

  “Not a hint of warmth for the man you gave your heart and virginity to?” he observed.

  For his obvious cruelness, there was an astuteness to him. “I have little warmth for men who use me and deceive me,” she said pointedly.

  A sharp bark of laughter escaped Holdsworth. “So that…lack of warmth as you refer to it, I take, extends to the members who share the blood of those men?” he asked when his shoulders no longer shook with his mirth.

  Lily shook her head. “You are speaking in riddles.”

  Holdsworth spread his arms wide before him. “Let me be more clear then, Miss Benedict. Would you share an equal apathy for the Duke of Blackthorne’s kin?”

  No one could abhor that vile family more than Lily. They’d turned her away when she was most desperate and sent her into the world without a hint of compassion. God rot their souls.

  “Ah, I see by the hatred snapping in your eyes, Miss Benedict, we are of like opinion for that family.”

  There was no shortage of enemies for the Winters kin. Was it a wonder?

  “Something was taken from me, something very valuable and special, and I would have you return it to me.”

  So embroiled in her own tumultuous thoughts of hate, it took a moment for the man’s words to register. “Taken?” She blinked several times, knowing she must appear a lackwit, but too absorbed in her own pained remembrances that she couldn’t put to right Holdsworth’s words. What matter was it to her what this man had lost? Whatever it was of the material variety could never, ever come close to the loss she’d suffered at that family’s hands. Lily squared her jaw. “I do not see how this pertains to me,” she said impatiently.

  “Ah, but it very much pertains to you.” He returned to the sideboard and retrieved a glass. The gentleman appeared to consider his selection, passing over several decanters before settling on a bottle of brandy. He held the bottle aloft and made a show of studying the amber brew. “Would you care for a drink?”

  “I do not drink spirits,” she said stiffly.

  His lips quirked in a sardonic grin that set her teeth on edge. “My, you are the very proper mistress, aren’t you?”

  Lily bit back the sharp retort on her lips. She could ill-afford to become insolent to a man who with one curt word could see her tossed out on his recently inherited doorstep.

  “The French have a great taste for fine things and beauty.” He stared expectantly back at her as though they were to deliver lines in a play and she was absent of verse. But she was remarkably empty in terms of talk on fine things. She’d been born to a vicar and became a maid and then a gentleman’s plaything.

  “I do not know much of fine things,” she settled for at last.

  “Come, never tell me my father did not see you properly fitted in diamonds and fine baubles?”

  He’d given her food, shelter, and not a thing more. She allowed her silence to serve as her answer.

  “Oh, that is rich!” Holdsworth tossed his head back on a thunderous laugh and she curled her hands tight as he dashed back tears of mirth.

  “Was there something you wished to speak with me on?” she asked, unable to quell her impatience. What a horrid world in which women were born. To be subject to the whims and fancies of men and so very dependent upon them for one’s everything.

  “There was,” he sa
id, withdrawing an embroidered kerchief from his pocket. He brushed aside the remaining evidence of amusement on his cheeks. “There is a diamond. A very sizeable diamond, worth far more value than the cottage in my possession.”

  Her heartbeat sped up with the fragile hope. Mayhap there had been some honor in Sir Henry and he’d see her cared for. “A diamond?”

  “Do not be silly, Miss Benedict, it is nothing left by my father to you. It is a cherished heirloom.”

  Hopes dashed once more, she said, “I still do not see what this bauble has to do with me.”

  “Bauble?” He winged an eyebrow up. “The diamond I am speaking of is over sixty-eight carats.”

  She choked on her swallow.

  He took a sip of his drink. “I see you are suitably impressed,” he said over the rim of his glass. “My family descended from a man of French origins. Jean Tavenier.” He stared back at her, as though that name should mean something to her. “After King Louis and Marie Antoinette were killed, my ancestors secreted that stone out of France.”

  Lily lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “I do not see how your familial lesson on history has any bearings on my future or your father’s promise.” His broken one. Unless his information could ensure her security and spare her from spreading her legs ever again, then it interested her not at all.

  Annoyance lit the man’s eyes. “You should care. You see, it is what happened after that exchange you should care very much about. It was in our possession until a powerful, obscenely wealthy duke took it from my father.”

  She stared blankly at him, as the words began to make slow sense. “George—” She caught herself. “The Duke of Blackthorne,” she amended.

  “A lover of all things beautiful,” he said with a slight inclination of his head. A sneer pulled at his lips as he looked her up and down. “The late duke sought to purchase the stone from my father as a gift for his then betrothed.” A memory slid forth of a long ago night inside the duke’s hallowed halls, but trickled out, as Holdsworth continued. “Refusing to sell that heirloom, my father was convinced to allow the future duchess to wear the piece at their betrothal ball and on her wedding day. Blackthorne paid a fee for that honor.” He tightened his mouth. “It was never returned.”