Of course. Isn’t that what George had done? He’d taken beautiful gems for his own pleasures and the consequences be damned?
Resentment slapped her with a power that drove back all warmth. That was who these gentlemen were. Bored men, each driven by greed and opulence. “Then, perhaps Sir Henry should not have turned the bauble over to the duke.”
Holdsworth rolled his glass between his fingers. “You do not like me much, do you?” he said, unexpectedly shifting the direction of the conversation.
Lily curled her hands into tight balls. “I barely know you,” she settled for the most basic form of the truth—she knew him but a handful of moments and despised him with every fiber of her being.
A chuckle escaped him, and he continued closer. “Why do you not tell me your true thoughts?” He spoke on a jeering whisper. “Tell me how you’d send me to the devil for breaking my father’s oath to you? Slap my face for stealing what you consider yours?”
Lily bit the inside of her cheek. For the truth was, spewing all the vitriolic words on her tongue would likely be the ultimate ruin of her.
“And that is why it was not a, what did you call it?” He arched another crimson eyebrow. “A legitimate exchange. I am a mere gentleman. Now, imagine were it the Duke of Blackthorne making such a request. With his ruthless threats to see my father’s businesses ruined, did he have any choice but to capitulate? Hmm?” he pressed, as she fell silent. Holdsworth ran a condescending gaze over her. “I expected one despoiled by that duke would have learned that family’s ruthlessness.”
She stilled, hating that his blasted words made any kind of sense. “What do you want?” she asked quietly.
He downed the contents of his drink. “I want you to retrieve it for me, my dear.”
She snorted. “If you think my familial connection is anything worth mentioning that will result in the current duke turning over that great gift, then you are mistaken.”
He opened his mouth to speak but a sharp rap at the door interrupted his words. Holdsworth looked to the door. “Enter.”
An older servant shuffled into the room bearing a copy of a newspaper. He handed the London Times over to his new employer and then took his leave.
Holdsworth held it out. “Read the front page.”
She wanted to slap the paper away and throw his more order than request back in his face. Curiosity, however, pulled at her. Accepting the paper with stiff fingers, she proceeded to scan the wrinkled, slightly aged sheet. One name leaped out. Her heart stuttered a beat.
After his disfigurement and near death at war, His Grace, the Duke of B has proven himself cursed once again. The early, tragic death of his eldest brother, George, the 7th Duke of B is now followed by the loss of his mother, and only sister and brother-in-law at sea…
For too many years she’d attended that family, feeding and fanning her hatred. At some point, she’d only absently skimmed the on dits about the Winters family. Angry this man would force her to delve back into a world she despised, Lily tossed the newspaper on a nearby rose-inlaid table where it landed with a soft thump.
“Do you have anything to say?”
“No.” Nothing that she cared to share with this man. She had read that handful of details on the new duke in the scandal sheets, but did not need to personally know the gentleman to understand very well that he’d been cursed. Then, as one who’d been cursed herself, it was easy enough to recognize it in another. And there was no doubt, someone in Winters’ line must have made a deal with the devil and the time of payment was due.
“Humph,” he said after the protracted silence. “The duke’s sister, Lady Stonehaven, left a girl.”
Regret tugged at her heart as it invariably did when thoughts or words of babes and children crept in. “Did she?” she managed to get out past the emotion clogging her throat. For in one reckless moment, she’d thrown away all hope or dreams of her own family; a child to love, an honorable husband.
He eyed her a long while and, for one horrifying moment, she thought he somehow knew that deepest, darkest longing that would leave her exposed in ways she’d not have him see. But then the look was gone. “Guardianship was recently given over to The Beast of Blackthorne.”
She looked at him askance.
He motioned to his face. “The whole disfigurement business.”
How ruthless they all were, these men who ruled the world.
“As you can imagine, the man cannot maintain a proper staff and, subsequently, he cannot maintain a proper governess for the girl.”
Winters blood and all, sadness filled Lily for that child. She knew the agony of losing one’s mother and father and being thrust alone into the world. Granted, the girl’s fate as a young lady, ward to a duke, was far more certain than Lily’s own miserable fate as a vicar’s daughter.
Holdsworth fished around the front of his jacket and withdrew a stack of papers. He handed them over to her. “Go on. Take them.”
Lily eyed them a moment and then took them from his long, gloved fingers.
“They are references,” he said as she began to read.
She raised her perplexed gaze to his.
“You will have your property in Northumberland, as promised. Once I have the diamond, my circumstances improve greatly, and that cottage you crave, is a mere pittance I can easily be rid of.”
Her heart tripped several erratic beats with giddy elation. But on the heel of that momentary trace of hope, came the cold crash of reality. No gentleman did anything unless it served him. And her security did not offer anything of worth to this man. “What do you want?” she asked, hating the tremble to that question.
“Why, you are going to retrieve my diamond.” His lips turned up in a triumphant grin. “And you are going to do it by wheedling your way into the duke’s employ.”
He was mad. Mad or desperate, and because of it, he would try and send her back into that vile home she’d been thrown from years earlier. She fisted the pages in her hands. “You are asking me to steal the diamond?” Incredulity crept into her tone.
“Retrieve it,” he corrected. “And, yes.”
She angled her chin up. “For your low opinion of me, I am no thief.” A whore, yes. A thief, never. Lily made to turn the false references over to him. Wordlessly, Holdsworth fished out another note. “What is this?” she asked not taking her gaze from his.
“Take it,” he urged, pressing it toward her.
Lily took the sheet with unsteady fingers. She ran her gaze over it and her stomach dipped. “I don’t understand.” Her words trembled.
“It is a contract, my dear. I’m not fool enough to incriminate either of us.” Seeming unaffected by her turmoil, he stalked over to the sideboard and proceeded to pour himself another brandy. “It merely states that when you’ve successfully completed your tenure as governess to the Duke of Blackthorne, the property will pass to you.” He paused, stretching out the moment so only her guilty thoughts and churning desires marched on with a vicious potency. “Why, it is your freedom.”
Lily clenched and unclenched the paper in her hands. This damning sheet that would make her a thief and send her along a new path of shame and ugliness—all for the vices of powerful men. Freedom. That word he dangled before her, floated on the air, tangible and real. Freedom from spreading her legs. Freedom from hunger. Freedom from men such as George and this ruthless gentleman before her.
“Well, Miss Benedict?”
She folded her arms close to herself, crunching the damning page. How she hated this selfish desire to do just as Holdsworth asked. Why should you not? Why, after everything you’ve endured, should you not have this small revenge against that hateful family? “There are too many uncertainties. How would I even go about finding this diamond? How can you orchestrate my placement within his household?” The questions flew from her lips, all the more damning for the lack of a simple “No, I will not help you”, there.
By the ghost of a smile, he’d detected her weakening. “You wi
ll have access to that household and a resourceful woman such as you can likely ingratiate herself with the beast through that pretty smile. Or…” He dropped his gaze to her décolletage. “Other ways.” Another chill raked her spine. He expected her to whore herself if she must. Again. Only now, this act, this was the level of duplicity that would land a person in Newgate. He must have sensed her waning for he pressed ahead with his defense. “Your actions within that household will be largely unobserved. The man is a monster who cannot even keep a staff beyond a butler and a handful of servants who bow to his bidding.”
Guilt warred with the rational age-old yearning to survive. She searched for proper thoughts. “And how will I correspond with you?”
“You are not to contact me,” he said brusquely. Ah, of course. He’d have no link to the woman committing a theft in his name. “You needn’t know the details.” A black grin formed on his cruel lips. “I will find you when I need you.”
Numbed by the proof of her own vileness, Lily turned away and strolled to the window. She peered out as the rain drove down in torrents, harkening back to a long ago, but never forgotten, black night. That night represented the death of dreams and respectability—and happiness. It also marked the death knell of happiness. Her blank expression reflected back at her in the lead panel.
“Well, Miss Benedict?”
Words hovered on the tip of her tongue, a desire to send him to the devil with his ugly request. She slid her eyes closed, warring with herself. This was the family who’d ruined her. Destroyed her. They had made her what she was. Lily drew in a slow breath and then opened her eyes. “I will do it,” she said, stiffly.
Holdsworth raised his glass in salute. His exultant laugh echoed around the room as with her silence as confirmation, she sold the remaining sliver of her soul.
It seemed she was a whore with less honor than she believed, after all.
Chapter 3
Rap. Rap. Rap.
It would stop.
Rap. Rap. Rap.
Because his goddamn butler could not be so blasted stupid—
Rap. Rap. Rap.
So damned foolish, as to…
“Your Grace?” His butler’s voice sounded from the other side of that wood panel.
He cursed roundly. So the man was a blasted lackwit to gainsay Derek’s wishes—
Rap. Rap. Rap.
Again. “What the hell do you want?”
Which, by the creak of his office door, constituted an “enter” to the man.
Derek whipped fully around, exposing his black satin patch. Even with but one eye and the dark of the room, he detected the muscles of the young butler’s throat work with the force of his nervous swallow.
“It is the child,” the butler said on a rush.
He didn’t make any attempt at pretending to not know of whom the other man spoke. The child. As in his sister’s sole living offspring; a girl of seven or eight years. A girl who’d not been born yet when he’d gone off to fight and who now resided in his home.
“Your Grace,” the butler prodded with a hesitancy in his tone.
“What of her,” he seethed.
The butler cleared his throat yet again. “Er, yes. Right. It is just that Flora,” Derek would have to be deaf to fail to hear the slight, reproachful emphasis placed on that name. “The girl is sliding down th-the bannister.”
“Then tell her damned governess,” he snapped. “I am not her nursemaid.” He rubbed the knotted muscles of his leg. No, he was just the man his fool of a sister had named guardian. He tensed his jaw. Damn Edeline for thrusting this on him.
The young servant took another tentative step closer. “Y-yes, well, that is what I’m here about, Your Grace. Lady Flora has been hanging over the edge of the stairwell.”
Hanging over the edge of the stairwell? A memory trickled in.
“…Oh, Derek. You mustn’t. You’ll fall…”
“…Ah, but how do you not know, Edeline, I am quite invincible…
His mind echoed with remembered laughter. He started. Where in blazes had those thoughts come from? He violently thrust the memory aside. “What would you have me do?” He wrapped his words in silken steel. “Fetch her myself?” At the man’s hesitation, he narrowed his eye all the further. By God, the man was cracked in the head.
Harris cleared his throat. “B-but she—” Those words ended abruptly as Derek shoved to his feet with a black curse. A mottled flush marred the man’s pale cheeks.
Derek limped across the room. At the abruptness of his quick strides, the muscles of his legs tightened. He forcibly tapped the bottom of his cane into the floor as he walked, fixing on the grating staccato rhythm instead of the pain of moving the blasted leg. “Speak to the girl’s bloody nursemaid and leave me,” he growled as he stopped before the sideboard. He leaned his cane against the rosewood surface and then reached for the nearest decanter.
Once more the servant cleared his throat and Derek glanced back. Ruddy color continued to mar the man’s cheeks. “Sh-she left, Your Grace.” Harris shot a desperate look over his shoulder at the door.
“Is something the matter with your throat?” With bottle in hand, he spun about, his movements less polished and elegant than his unfaltering steps years earlier. Back when he’d been a whole man not reviled as the beast he was.
His butler cocked his head. “My th-throat?” Clearing his throat yet again, he said, “Er, n-no, Your Grace. Thank you for your concern.”
“I wasn’t concerned, Harrison,” he bit out.
The other man blinked rapidly. “Er, right. Of course.” He paused, his brow furrowed as though he were pained. “And it is Harris, Your Grace.”
Derek didn’t give a damn if the man before him was the good Lord himself on the day of reckoning. He yanked the stopper from the decanter and tossed it to the sideboard. “Stop clearing your throat in that manner. It is bloody grating.” The color leeched from Harris’ cheeks. At one time he’d have felt compunction for talking so to any person. Back then, in the ballrooms upon the Continent, Derek had not only been favored by widows and ladies alike, but his company had been desired by all. Brilliant soldier. Charming gentleman. An ugly chuckle rumbled from deep in his chest. If only those same people could see what he’d become. He grabbed a glass from the otherwise immaculate surface and poured himself a measure of brandy. Now, he was rightfully feared. Glass in hand, he grabbed his cane and limped back over to his leather seat, considering the matter of the girl at an end.
Harrison or Harris or whatever in blazes he called himself, was of an entirely different mindset. The tenacious man raised his hand and cleared his throat, but then seemed to remember what he did, for he let his hand fall to his side. With a courage, or perhaps idiocy Derek would have at one time admired, the butler put his shoulders back and yanked on his lapels. “Lady Flora had a governess. She has not since…” He flushed. Again. “Since…”
“What?” Derek snapped.
“Since—” He gulped. Ah, yes, the lovely young woman who’d had the misfortune of stepping into the same hall he’d been. She’d taken one glimpse at his scarred face and, with horror stamped on her face, had turned on her heel and fled. Apparently she’d fled the damned townhouse, altogether. Smart girl. “The girl is leading the servants a ch—”
He downed a long sip. “Davies sees to the girl’s care, does he not?” After all, the man saw to all his business.
“N-no, er y-yes. Uh…” In the absence of a suitably proper reply, Harris clamped his lips tight and rocked on his heels. So, he wasn’t altogether a total lackwit. With the rapidity of servants and staff fleeing, Davies should have his salary tripled for the unenviable task he had of finding servants and nursemaids or governesses or whoever it was that attended smallish children.
Derek turned, deliberately presenting the other man with his scarred profile. “I am not to be bothered with matters pertaining to the girl,” he said with icy disdain. “Is that clear?”
The man gulped audibl
y and, for an instant, Derek thought he intended to issue a rebuke for his dismissive handling of Edeline’s daughter. “Indeed, Your Grace.”
He might be missing an eye, but his hearing was, at the very least, intact and he’d have to be deaf to not hear the frosty disapproval there. The butler’s clipped tones were the impressive type his austere, now dead, parents would have applauded.
Harris lingered; shifting forward on the balls of his feet.
“Why are you still here?” Derek demanded on a seething whisper.
The remaining color leeched out of the man’s cheeks and he turned to go.
“Harrison?” he said, deliberately using the wrong name.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“I do not care if the dead Queen Charlotte rises from the grave and comes to call. I am not to be bothered again. Is that clear?”
The butler gave a jerky nod and tripped over himself in his haste to back out of the room. The door closed behind him with a soft click. Bothersome servant now gone, Derek settled into the folds of his familiar chair and let fly a long, colorful curse and massaged the aching muscles of his left thigh.
Determined to set aside the reasons for Harris’ interruptions, he took a long swallow of brandy. His lips pulled back in an involuntary grimace at the fiery trail it blazed down his throat. With a sigh, he set his glass down with a hard thunk on the side table. His efforts proved futile. With Harris’ reminder of the girl’s presence, he’d merely served to remind Derek that his sister, Edeline, the last good soul in the world, had been dealt a watery grave for that goodness. His lips quirked up in a rusty, pained grin. That goodness had been what had driven his sister to visit, regardless of being turned away at the front door. For all the betrayals he had known at the hands of his mother and the whole of Society, Edeline had loved him with a devotion he’d never deserved. Fate had realized as much and repaid that folly with death.
The loud, whining creak of the door filled the office and he spun. “Who is there?” he thundered. Silence served as his only answer. He forced himself to his feet, damning the slow awkwardness of his movements. “I said I am not to be bothered, Harrison,” Derek boomed. He yanked the door fully open.
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 52