The Price of Temptation

by Williams, Harmony

  When he met her gaze again, she blurted, “You bought our debts.” A small, tentative part of her had hoped their troubles would be over. She should have stamped out that hope from the beginning. Her short fingernails bit crescent moons into her palms.

  Still, he made no answer. His unwavering gaze and full attention, so unlike the man she’d known, was unnerving.

  “You must know we haven’t anything to repay you.”

  She searched him for some flicker of their shared history and bond. His eyes might as well have been made of glass for all their expression. His voice, when he spoke, was far silkier and more lethal than the Reid Chatterley she had known.

  “Oh, but you do have something to offer me.”

  Lily stiffened as a dozen horrible requests flitted across her mind. She rejected each one out of hand. He might be a different man, a harder man, but somewhere in there was the Reid she knew. Her friend for so many years.

  Where have you been all this time?

  She bit her tongue.

  “You owe me.”

  She flinched at the accusation. Her palms grew damp.

  “I didn’t ask you to buy the debts—”

  “Not the debts.” He bit off his words. A shiver crawled through her as he let them percolate before the next fell from his lips. “You owe me for my circumstances.”

  The lack of relics, of decoration. The sole servant she’d seen. His much-reduced collection of books. They had hinted at a circumstance akin to hers. But he’d had the money to pay the family debts…

  She bit the tip of her tongue hard, tasting blood. She had nothing to do with this.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Your husband…”

  No. Adam had been a swindler from the day he was born, but he couldn’t have stolen from one of her dearest friends. He loved her.

  Her chest burned. How foolish could she be, to still believe their whirlwind courtship to have been anything other than a farce to open her father’s coffers? She shut her eyes, swallowing hard.

  Her voice tremulous, she admitted, “He stole from me, too.” It was a confession she’d given to no one save her father. It burned her throat like poison. Heaving a breath, she opened her eyes and met Reid’s. “I’m not to blame for his actions. I would never have aided—”

  Reid lifted an eyebrow. “For better or for worse, isn’t it?”

  The words rippled through her, plummeting like a jagged rock.

  Leaning forward, he curled his lips. “He stole from my family. He is the reason I’m left with this house and nothing more.”

  “But you had enough to pay off my family’s debts…”

  He slashed his hand through the air. “Only enough. No more. I’d managed four years on my investment, but it has run out. And if your husband hadn’t taken everything in my father’s coffers, tricking him into investments that did not exist, I would not be reduced to this.”

  “And if he hadn’t left me, Papa would not have died and I wouldn’t be reduced to this.”

  The venom in her tone serrated the air, leaving a barren silence behind. For a moment, he held her eyes. Then his hard mask shattered like glass.

  Reid. Recognition danced through her despite the reflection of the man she knew looking faint enough to be a ghost. He sighed, dropping his head in his hands. His eyes, brimming with a squelched sort of hope like an insect beneath the heel of the world, shuttered behind his eyelids.

  “You’re right. Of course you’re right, Lily.”

  His words were muffled by his palm. She wrung her skirts. Was this a glimpse into his true self or another veneer? In her heart, she recognized him for the boy she’d spent hours, days, weeks alongside. Her closest friend outside the family.

  “We’re both victims in this. I knew you couldn’t have helped him…”

  Him. Adam. Potentially the reason she and Reid were no longer friends. When she’d turned her back on her friend’s advice to follow her fickle heart, she might have spurred him into leaving her behind.

  He lifted his head, shaking it before he met her gaze once more. Although he’d hidden the desperate, jaded man, Lily couldn’t forget that glimpse. She swallowed the thick lump in her throat.

  “What happened? I thought… I thought you’d gone on expedition.”

  His shoulders slumped as he leaned back in his chair. He studied the ceiling. “I did.” Those two words emerged thickly, reluctantly. “The money didn’t last. I encouraged my father to fight to have his money returned…but in the end, the fight proved too much for him. He passed, instead.”

  “I heard,” Lily whispered. “You weren’t at the funeral.”

  She had been, still grieving over Papa and hoping to find a kindred soul with whom to share her pain.

  “I was in Egypt, at the limit of my funds, forced to sell the very relics I had traveled to find. By the time I heard, it was too late. I always seem to be too late.”

  Lily’s hand clenched involuntarily. She wanted to reach out and soothe him, but a cavern of four years separated them. He hadn’t once asked after her life or her family. He purchased the debts— He knows. The money was only the tip of the hardships she’d endured these past years.

  “If you have so little, why did you buy Papa’s debts?” Had he done it out of concern for her and her family? Because of their shared history? Lily hated to think she was one more burden on his shoulders.

  He straightened, the shrewd look of determination returning. “That is an investment. Like I said, there is something you must do for me to repay me.”

  Lily folded her hands on her lap, afraid to ask. His voice carried an edge. Aside from the jewels still in her father’s storeroom, she had nothing left to offer. What would a few baubles grant him?

  “I will forgive your family’s debt in full if you find and retrieve one item for me.”

  “An item?” Her tongue trembled as she spoke. She held it despite the clamor of questions bubbling inside her.

  “When my father died, I didn’t have the money to return to England. Like I said, I had to sell the relic I had labored to discover. I sold it to an English family, here in London. And I want you to get it back.”

  Weakly, Lily protested, “If you sold it…”

  He stood, thrusting his shoulders back and pressing his palms on the desk. “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear. Your husband might have been the thief, but I know he’s taught you a few of his tricks. You will use that knowledge to steal the relic for me. And until you do, I have your family’s livelihood in my hands.”

  The mercurial man in front of her turned away dismissively. “Don’t disappoint me, Lily.”

  Lily gaped at him, speechless. What had happened to that hint of friendship, of camaraderie? It had disappeared like lightning, leaving only a fading imprint. Her friend wouldn’t ask this of her. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t.

  Chapter Three

  Lily had thought she would do anything to see her sisters happy and well-fed. But the longer Reid’s words circled her head, the more her resolve hardened. She would never steal. Her experience with Adam had taught her it was no solution. No matter the reason, it left behind a scar.

  You haven’t always believed that…

  The girl who had once helped Adam had been foolish, naive. She hadn’t pried beyond what she had wanted to see—the dashing, debonair man with the twinkle in his eye who cared for the veterans-turned-beggars of the London streets. She’d fancied him a Robin Hood when he’d been nothing more than a villain.

  And she could not descend to his level, not even for her sisters.

  Reid can collect on his debt at any time. He could send her family—or, perhaps more accurately, Mama—to debtors’ prison. At the very least, they would be left destitute, without even the meager earnings from the shop to support them.

  “Find a way to pay him.” It sounde
d so simple when spoken aloud to the plain wood of her front door. Lily sighed and unlocked it, bracing herself for whatever new disaster awaited her.

  At the very least, she must find a way to see her sisters settled and taken care of. Perhaps if they married…

  She entered the house to an eerie silence. Although the hour had grown late, Lily’s sisters must be awake yet. At this hour, they often gathered in the parlor and played cards or worked on the mending. The hairs rising on the back of her neck, Lily hung her shawl and tiptoed to the room in question.

  Sophie was curled in an armchair alone, a book unfolded on her lap and a pair of spectacles perched on her nose.

  “Where are Mama and Willa?”

  “Hmm?” Sophie blinked sluggishly as she raised her chin, slow to return from the world etched between the gossamer pages. A furrow creased her brow and she held her position in the book with one finger. “Mama is still abed from her headache. Willa is in her room, sulking.”

  Lily’s stomach shriveled like a raisin. “The dinner party?”

  Sophie wrinkled her nose. “What else? No matter how I try to explain it to her, she doesn’t understand. We haven’t the money nor the time to find Willa a suitable dress. Our acceptance would only lower our standing further.”

  Although Sophie delivered the words matter-of-factly, the faint expression of yearning betrayed her feelings. Their past—when they had been, if not welcomed, then at least accepted into polite Society—haunted her, too.

  Since the family’s decline following Papa’s death, they had avoided the judgmental gazes of High Society. If anyone knew the particulars of the family’s circumstances, the Bancroft sisters would become object of charity, not of admiration. Lily would find neither of her sisters husbands amid the ranks of those snakes.

  However, if Willa had already met a suitor in Hyde Park…

  “I won’t keep you from your book. Good night, Sophie.”

  Her sister’s answer faded in her ears as she mounted the steps to the family quarters. When she reached Willa’s room, light spilled from beneath the crack in the door. She rapped on the wood, laying her ear against it to listen for whispers within.

  “Willa?”

  “Go away. I’m not in the mood to talk.”

  Lily lifted the latch and entered.

  As the darling youngest daughter of the house, Willa had the smallest of the bedchambers to herself. Perhaps not only because she was Mama’s favorite— Willa kicked in her sleep. The room was in disarray, with Willa’s dresses strewn haphazardly over every surface, ribbons spilling out of the drawer to her vanity, and her paints and sketchbook piled in one corner near the bed. Willa’s feet stuck off the end of the bed as she languished atop the quilt, her arm flung across her face to shield her eyes. The flickering candlelight drew red splotches beneath the shadow of her arm.

  She’d been crying?

  “Have you written an answer to Lady Breeding’s invitation?”

  Willa turned her face away, her red hair spilling over the white pillowcase. “Why should I? I’ve been asking for an invitation for weeks. My friends will think I’m ungrateful.”

  “I haven’t worn my wedding dress since I married.”

  Willa lifted her head, her blue eyes red-rimmed as she studied Lily’s expression. She pressed her lips together, her expression a mix of hope and trepidation.

  “We haven’t a prayer of adding a few inches to the hem before the party, but if you happen to have an underdress that isn’t stained black with mud, we might salvage it yet. The style is a bit out of date, but with a shawl no one may notice. The quality is fine enough for a dinner party and—”

  Willa launched herself off the bed, shrieking with glee. She wrapped Lily in a hug so hard she squeezed the breath from her chest.

  “Thank you, thank you!”

  Lily’s ears rang.

  When Willa pulled away, her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Thomas has returned to Town. I can’t call on him because he’s taken bachelor lodgings but Cindy invited him and—”

  Lily clasped Willa’s shoulders, as much to silence her as to steady her spinning head. “Mr. Sanderson has returned to London?”

  Although Willa had battled away suitors four years ago, Lily had always wondered if her flirtatiousness was meant to cover a deeper attachment to one particular man. Thomas Sanderson had taken an officer’s commission abroad, claiming he would prove himself head and shoulders above her other suitors if only Willa would await his return. If he’d returned at long last, why hadn’t he presented himself at the house? Unlike Lily, Willa had exchanged letters with the men in her life, the last some months ago.

  “Thomas was injured. His leg. A terrible enough wound, the army sent him home.” Rather than sympathy, Willa bubbled with glee.

  “You’ve met with him?”

  Her enthusiasm banked. “He’s confined to his house. I can’t call on him there.”

  “But he’ll be at Lady Breeding’s dinner party.”

  “He will!” Willa threw her arms around Lily’s neck. “I’ll get to see him at last! It’s been so long, Lil.”

  This must be the week for reunions. Lily only prayed that Willa’s would be better received than the two Lily had suffered through today. “Let’s look in my wardrobe and find you something to wear.”

  Willa squealed in glee and rampaged from the room. The stir of her passing flickered the candle on her bedside. Lily fetched it and turned to follow.

  She found Sophie on the top of the stairs. Her older sister narrowed her eyes. “You’re encouraging her to go to this dinner party?”

  It’s our best option. If she could arrange Willa’s marriage to Sanderson, Lily would have one less person relying on her.

  “Don’t fret. I’ll accompany her, as chaperone. I might only be able to do it this once, but once might be all we’ll need.” Lily was resting all her hopes on that one soiree. “Would you like to come as well? I might have something else in my wardrobe…”

  Sophie shook her head, her expression shuttering. “You need not worry about me. I never believed in love or marriage.”

  She retreated downstairs, leaving Lily speechless and hurt in the corridor. She swallowed hard, tasting the lie still hanging in the air between them. When had her older sister turned so jaded?

  Yes, Sophie, you did.

  …

  As Lily followed Willa out of the hackney cab that had taken them to Mayfair, leaving payment on the seat, the first tremor of unease assaulted her. Nestled among brick and stucco buildings, with light spilling from the windows and the lamp over the door, Lady Breeding’s townhouse was twice the size of the one her family owned. It loomed over her and Willa with ominous portent, as if it knew they no longer belonged here.

  Lily swallowed thickly. They’d managed to salvage Lily’s wedding dress and repurpose it to better use. No one needed to know the extent to which the family had fallen in recent years. Still, as Lily followed her sister’s clipped, excited steps to the red-painted door, she couldn’t help but feel as though she were walking into a foreign land.

  I’ve been to houses akin to this one in the past. Perhaps even to Lady Breeding’s—so much time had passed that she couldn’t recall. However, she felt as if eons separated those innocent parties from this one. Lily had changed.

  She adjusted the gloves shielding her hands. Hands calloused from work. Thrusting her shoulders back, she vowed that she would hide her other, less visible wounds from the prying eyes of Society. For Willa’s sake. Tonight, her sister must make a match.

  The alternative was unthinkable.

  A neat man opened the door before Lily’s fingers brushed the knocker. Face as still as stone, he stepped aside to let them pass. Willa did so with her head held high, as if he were no more than a piece of furniture. Lily met his inquiring e
yes.

  “Miss Willa Bancroft and Mrs. Lily…Darling.”

  Uttering her husband’s name aloud felt like summoning the devil. She itched to look over her shoulder, half afraid to find him there. Or perhaps half hoping.

  Think of Willa. Tonight, assuring her sister’s happiness was her only objective.

  “May I take your shawl, miss?”

  Willa tugged the lacy, off-white confection closer to her bosom. “No, thank you. It’s rather chilly this evening.” More importantly, the shawl masked the outmoded dress.

  Lest he press the issue, Lily doffed hers and asked after the family. Tucking the shawl over the arm of his livery jacket, the footman gestured for her to follow. “This way, madam.”

  Lily patted the front of her second-best dress, a green that dulled in comparison to Willa’s splendor. She wasn’t here to draw attention to herself. Adam said this color brings out my eyes.

  Don’t think of him.

  The last time she had attended a party in Mayfair, her family had been at the height of success, and Adam had escorted her. Despite the far more intimate atmosphere this evening, compared to that lavish, long-ago ball, Lily couldn’t help but imagine him walking into the corridor from one of the many closed doors. Though she had endeavored to forget him, she couldn’t fall asleep without the memory of his arms around her. He haunted her.

  Not tonight.

  Ahead, chatter spilled into the corridor along with the light of a parlor. Lily gathered her wits as the footman announced them. Silence swelled as all eyes turned to them. Lily entered first, imitating the serenity of her older, absent sister. Whispers circulated as Willa stepped up next to her.

  Unlike Lily, her younger sister didn’t appear to hear the indecipherable gossip. Willa vibrated like a tuning fork as she scanned the dozen people in the room in search of the man she most craved. As she spotted him sitting near the hearth with his foot propped on a stool, her face flushed with color. Lily grabbed her by the elbow as she started forward, stopping her in place.