She frowned. In what context did they speak of Mr. Davies’s vile words? The part of her that had met and liked Harris hoped he, too, was not so very cruel to disparage a man so. Am I truly any better than Mr. Davies? Have I not entered his home and spoken ill of him and his family behind his back? “That is altogether different.” The words burst from her. She slapped a hand over her mouth, praying the girl would not notice.
Flora furrowed her brow. “What is altogether different?”
Of course her own younger siblings, even all those years ago, had shown her that children missed very little. “I am sure what Harris and Alcott say is not cruel and impolite like Mr. Davies.”
The girl nodded. “No, I do believe you are right. But Mr. Davies and the footman, Thomas are horrid. You shall see. Uncle has all the governesses deal with Mr. Davies.”
If she kept her post after shamelessly nearly spreading her legs for the duke, she’d have to deal with such an odious, reprehensible man. A faithless man, no less, who’d speak ill of his employer. The irony of her own disgust was not lost on her.
Flora dropped her voice to a low, haunting whisper. “Everyone fears him.” With her expressive eyes, the girl urged Lily to ask the question. Why did she cease fearing the duke? How could a person not become more and more drawn into the terror of this labyrinth with each passing day? Such questions, however, were not fit for a child, any child, but particularly not the ward of a man known as The Beast of Blackthorne. When Lily said nothing, Flora’s crestfallen expression marked her disappointment. She walked over to the door and then stopped at the threshold. “I think we will get on well, Mrs. Benedict.”
Warmth filled her heart, and with it, that old, never buried ache for a family of her own.
A knock sounded at the door and, together, they looked to the entrance of the room. Lily’s heart pounded. “E-enter,” she called out.
A white-faced Harris pushed open the heavy panel. “Y-You have been summoned by Mr. Davies.” His throat bobbed. “He is waiting for you in the White Parlor.”
Of course. It was the summons she’d been expecting. Even so it left her motionless, incapable of words. The servant continued to stare and it was Flora who broke the silence. “What does he want?”
Harris’ cheeks flamed red.
Snapped to the moment, Lily cleared her throat. “Flora, why do you not go with Harris? I expect he’ll entertain you until I return to see to your lessons.” If she wasn’t thrown out with her valise just as she’d been years earlier. She looked to Harris who held his hand out, motioning the girl forward.
“Very well,” Flora said, skipping with the ease of an innocent child.
He nodded and then rushed from the room.
Lily waited until he’d closed the door and then ran wary hands down her face. For the bond shared between her and Flora, there were vast differences between them. Flora still believed herself indomitable. She’d not yet learned the sorry truth life had taught Lily. Oft times a person, no matter how much control they sought over their life, was powerless in all the ways that mattered.
And now Lily was truly powerless, about to be sacked for kissing the Duke of Blackthorne with wild abandon.
Chapter 10
Blessed quiet.
With his ever-proper man-of-affairs now gone, Derek limped over to his sideboard. Resting his cane on the edge of the wide mahogany piece, he set to work making himself a brandy. The only sound was the soothing splash of liquid hitting crystal. He grabbed his cane and made his way to his leather chair.
Shrugging out of his jacket, Derek slid into the seat, and sank into the comfortable leather. He closed his eyes.
Quiet. There was no monotone Davies with his thinly veiled disgust, running through his reports. There was no small girl determined to make a nuisance of herself. And more importantly, there was no tart-mouthed Lily Benedict challenging him one moment and enticing him the next. At bloody l—
A knock sounded at the door. “Your Grace?” There was a strident note to Harris’ usually hesitant tone.
He forced his eye open. Of course. “First Lily Benedict,” he mumbled under his breath. “Then the girl, and now—”
“Your Grace, there is a matter I’d speak with you on. It is of some urgency.”
“Now you, Harris, bloody invading my hall again.” Lily Benedict was a witch. There was no other accounting for how a woman could turn his entire household on its ear so quickly and bring bloody confusion to his thoughts with a mere kiss. What was next, his brave butler entering Derek’s office without permission?
As if on cue, the man jiggled the handle.
“Bloody hell.” Perhaps, he’d be better off sacking her after all. “This goddamn house better be ablaze,” he thundered. His cane was resting against the side of a nearby side table. Derek grabbed it and used it as leverage to heave himself up. He limped across the room just as Harris tried the handle once more.
The man tumbled unceremoniously into the room. “Thank goodness,” he breathed. Harris picked up the tray and note and then climbed quickly to his feet, with agility Derek himself had once possessed in abundance.
Regret coursed through him with a powerful force. “What do you want, Harris?” he snapped, annoyance churning through him.
The servant opened his mouth. And then closed it. And then opened it again. He spoke with the wonder of the man who’d discovered the New World. “You called me Harris.”
Derek started. Well, Christ, he had. He’d studiously avoided knowing people by name and referring to them in any context. To do so only created a bond, even if a small one, that he no longer wanted with anyone. That isn’t true, a voice jeered at the back of his mind. You used Lily’s name and commanded her to use yours. Then there had been that searing kiss. He glowered at the butler. “Is that what was so important you’d knock my door down, Harris?” That exhale emerged as a slow, lethal hiss. “To discuss my—”
“It is Mrs. Benedict.”
Mrs. Benedict? He frowned. “What of her?” Before the brave, but foolish, man could reply, he gave his head a shake. He’d already turned over all responsibilities of the lady to Davies. Let the stiff, proper solicitor see to her and her blasted responsibilities so he could get on with trying to forget how perfect she’d felt in his arms. “Never mind,” he snapped out when Harris made to speak again. “All questions or inquiries about the lady,” you should be nice to the lady, “are to be directed to Davies.” Dismissing the man, Derek started to turn.
“But it is about Mr. Davies.” The butler’s agitated words froze him. He shot a look at Harris who stood ringing his hands together. “I just escorted Mrs. Benedict to her meeting with him.”
“And?” he prodded impatiently.
“The two are going toe-to-toe and I believe he intends to dismiss the lady.”
He stilled. Dismiss her?
“Yes, Your Grace. Dismiss her.” Derek frowned, unaware he’d spoken aloud. “Sack her. Send her packing and—”
He straightened. “I bloody well know what the word means.”
“Yes, of course.” The servant eyed him with a dubious expression that called into question Derek’s previous claims. Or mayhap he called into question his caring over the young woman’s banishment in the first place. The ruthless, unfeeling person he’d become, proved Harris correct in his opinion. Derek wouldn’t give a jot about a woman, a stranger, who’d only recently entered his household.
He opened his mouth to tell the butler to get the hell out, but something called the words back. If he uttered that dismissal, Harris would go and, ultimately, Lily Benedict would also go—but permanently from his household. A muscle ticked at the corner of his eyelid. What manner of weak fool had he become that a kiss from a young woman should so utterly captivate him?
The memory of that embrace seared his memory. Apparently, even monsters still felt—something. Desire. Passion. Hunger. He let loose a string of curses that turned Harris’ cheeks crimson. “Where in blazes are they?”
>
“They’ve been closeted in one of the parlors for the past ten minutes or so, Your Grace.” He dropped his voice to a furious whisper. “And there is yelling, because…” His butler blushed. Ah, yes, because even this man had witnessed that forbidden moment in Derek’s halls. Caught kissing a woman in my bloody employ. A dull flush heated Derek’s neck, proving him annoyingly human once more. “Yelling,” Harris finished lamely.
And in a household where none except Derek was guilty of that incivility, such a truth would prove shocking.
He cursed. After their meeting in his office, Davies’ first order of business had apparently been to sack Lily Benedict. No doubt because he’d seen the lady in question in Derek’s arms and had deemed her unsuitable. I gave him leave to see to her as he sees fit. If he dismisses her, I’ll never be again tempted by all I’ll never have… And yet… A growl worked its way up his chest. He limped across the room, all the while cursing the wound that slowed his steps. He gritted his teeth, wanting nothing to do with guilt and remorse or any other weakening sentiment that meant he, in any way, cared—about people. His actions. Life.
A curse exploded from his lungs. By God, he could not let Davies send her away. For all his fury in her invading his halls, she’d been the one person to boldly challenge him. To see not a duke. Not a beast. Not even a hero. But a man. “Why did you not immediately seek me out?” Pressing through the ache of his old injury, he lengthened his stride.
Harris fell into step alongside him. “You said you were not to be bothered, Your Grace,” he reminded with an obvious admonishment to his words. Interrupting his solitude, trying his door handle, and now being chastised by not only a bloody child, but also his damned butler.
“Yes, I did,” he said under his breath. “I’m a damned duke.” And if he wanted to put blame on someone else for his own order, by God, he would. He quickened his pace, adjusting the weight being put upon his injured leg. Davies would dare send away the one person who did not quake in his presence?
Harris cleared his throat. “I believe I heard the word harlot or strumpet being bandied about.”
A red curtain of rage descended over his vision. With each step, outrage spiraled through him. It was the kind of heated fury that roused memories of a burning fire and just like the one that licked a path over his person, so, too, did this conflagration spread. “That bloody, pompous bastard.” From the corner of his eye, he detected the hint of a smile on Harris’ lips that spoke to his approval. Not that he gave a jot for whether anyone approved of his actions or decisions; this man or any other. “Do you not have a bloody door to answer, Harris?” he groused.
“I do not, Your Grace. I—”
Apparently lacking in the good common sense to not darken Derek’s doorway, Harris also lacked the ability to discern a facetious response from his employer. “I do not need a damned escort to the bloody parlor.”
The butler fell back. “Of course.”
Derek reached the top of the stairs and paused. He glanced at the three possible corridors and scowled. Well blast and damn, it appeared he did need a damned escort. He thumped the heel of his cane and looked back and forth between the hallway entrances. Mayhap he should walk in the light a bit more. At least in his own damned halls.
“If I may, Your Grace?” Harris gave a discreet cough. “They are in the White Parlor,” the butler called after him. Did he detect the faint trace of amusement in the usually anxious servant’s tone?
Shoving aside thoughts of Harris, Derek increased his stride. So, Lily Benedict would force him back to the living—whether he wished it or not.
Chapter 11
After composing herself, Lily found her way to the White Parlor. With the grating tick of the ormolu clock atop the fireplace mantel, she now stood before the duke’s man-of-affairs. Hands folded primly before her, she felt the same reviled creature she’d been when meeting with Holdsworth. And she despised this man for making her feel as though she was a person of little worth. And hated herself more for having come to believe it.
Arms clasped behind his back, he studied her down the bridge of a long, hawk-like nose. “Mrs. Benedict.” He spoke to her with the same loftiness as a vicar lecturing the patrons of his parish, rousing all the darkest, most unpleasant reminders of the father who’d cast her out.
As this cold-eyed stranger condemned her with his stare, her patience snapped. She threw back her shoulders. “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir. You know my name and yet I do not—”
“I am the duke’s man-of-affairs.” How had a man of Derek’s strength hired this person? “You do not speak unless you are spoken to.” With this one’s high-handedness, this pompous lout and a commanding duke hardly made a perfect pairing.
She snapped her eyebrows together into an angry line. “I am not a child,” she bit out. “I—”
With the solicitor’s devotion to the late Duke of Blackthorne, he’d likely been abreast of all pieces of his reprobate life…including the lovers he’d taken. Did the man know of the girl who’d been robbed of her innocence and made empty-promises by that dastard?
“I know what you are. It does not take much to deduce just why you’re here.” He peeled his lip back in a sneer and her body went hot and then cold with shame. He’d taken one look at her in her employer’s arms whimpering and pleading, and gathered she was nothing more than a whore. Humiliation slapped at her and she balled her hands into tight fists. He continued, relentless. “You come here into this household under the pretense of caring for the girl—”
“Flora,” she corrected, underscoring that reply with ice.
At her bold interruption, the solicitor shot his eyebrows to his hairline. Then, he quickly schooled his features. “You are, no doubt, here as the duke’s whore and I’d ask you to pack your things and be gone.”
Granted, she’d played as a gentleman’s fancy piece for the past six years, but rage filled her anyway at this pompous lout’s supposition. She looked at the duke’s man-of-affairs through narrowed eyes. She’d gone through life these past seven years treated as less than human for decisions she’d made in order to survive. While the Sir Henrys and the late Duke of Blackthornes of the world would be forgiven those salacious relationships for no other reasons than the station of their births and—because they were men. Theirs were no crimes, but rather commonalities expected for gentlemen. “How dare—?”
“How dare I?” he barked. “I dare because it is my responsibility to see to the Winters name and your very presence here threatens that noble family’s reputation.”
Lily curled her hands so tight she nearly drew blood on her palms.
He brushed an imaginary piece of lint from his immaculate, pale blue coat sleeve. How hideous that the man should prove correct about her worth. “I do not need to know more of you than that you were hired by him.” The duke’s man-of-affairs wrapped that word in icy derision, speaking volumes of his ill-thoughts and low opinion of the current duke.
This perfunctory man should be so cruel, so condescending to his current employer when the man who’d come before him had been far more a monster than ever existed? Her thin thread of control snapped. Lily took a charged step toward him. “You summon me like a naughty child and assess my worth on what? Nothing more than your supposition I’m warming the duke’s bed?”
“It is more than a supposition,” he hissed. “I saw you in his arms.” Crimson color bathed the man’s cheeks. He retreated a step and she delighted in the fact she’d unnerved the lout.
All Flora’s recent admissions about the man came rushing in and flooded her with a renewed rage and fueled her movements. “And furthermore, what manner of man are you that you would go speaking as you do about your employer to his ward and his servants?”
He sputtered. “I need not account for my actions or words to you, madam.”
“No.” She strode over to the seemingly bored servant and stopped so close the toes of their shoes brushed. “You need to account for your ac
tions and words to the man you so disparage with each vile, ugly, hurtful word you’d level at the gentleman.” Of nearly a like height to the loathsome man, she locked her gaze with his. “You have assessed my worth on nothing more than your swiftly drawn conclusions about my presence here and the duke’s judgment in offering me the post. But you, sir, you are the one who is lacking. For you are a bully who goes about scaring servants, disparaging your employer,” and me, “and frightening the child who lives here.”
The solicitor flicked his hand. “That is neither here nor there, Mrs.,” she flinched at his deliberate emphasis on that form of address, “Benedict. The current duke,” he shuddered, as though repulsed by even the mere mention of his new employer, “has ordered me to see to you.”
Tendrils of fear wrapped about her. “Dismissed,” she parroted back. Why could I not close my blasted mouth and control my bloody desire? Her impulsivity, once again, would be her demise. She ran a panicked gaze over the perspiring man-of-affairs. Davies had assessed her worth and made up his mind to show her the door before she’d even spoken. Dread filled every corner of her being and spread up to her brain, freezing her thoughts so she could not process the words he continued to speak. “Did His Grace send me away?” she shot back, not knowing where she found the resolve to do so. The man’s mouth fell agape. Ah, so the decision had been all this foul, pompous bastard’s. She took a step forward. “Or was it you?”
“You insolent chit,” he thundered, shaking his fist. His face turned a mottled red and she’d wager the little she had, this was not a man to so easily lose control. The old man yanked his lapels. “I speak for the duke. He gave me leave to do with you as I see fit and, so, madam, I am doing just that.”
Her stomach lurched, as with Mr. Davies’ words he dragged her back. Only it wasn’t a sneering servant, but a ruthless, heartless duke and his mother. Now, Derek would send her away. Just like them. Bitterness seeped in, numbing her fury, leaving her…empty. Then, you have always been the one to make more of a kiss than there is.
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