“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 will 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 ent
irely 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 audibly 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.
Empty.
Furrowing his brow, he stuck his head out of the room and peered into the hall. From the corner of his only eye, the flash of white skirts caught his notice and he swung his head about. White skirts fluttered at the end of the hall as a small creature disappeared around the corner.
Derek frowned. With a deliberate show for the girl who, no doubt, lingered at the edge of the corridor, he slammed the door with such force, it rattled in its foundation. This had not been the first time she’d crept into his sanctuary. Eventually, she always fled, which was good. He didn’t have use or need of the child his sister had saddled him with.
Then, what manner of girl was she that she did not have a suitable fear and horror?
He lurched across the room but paused to swipe another note left by Harris. This from St. Cyr. The familiar inked scrawl stared back at him. Good God, why did the man persist? Had Derek not suitably severed that lifelong friendship recently? With uneven movements, he limped over to the hearth. He stood, transfixed by the crimson and orange fire. It possessed that same, powerful hold upon him that it always did. Do not turn yourself over to that fear. Do not. Do not... As the heat touched his skin, his mouth went dry. A rapidly growing disquiet stirred within him, ushering in a familiar panic. He drew in slow, rhythmic breaths and concentrated on those ragged airflows to keep from descending into the pit of madness that had followed him since that day. Derek pressed his eye shut to keep the memories at bay. But Toulouse would always be there. Just as the scars and the eye patch and the useless leg would always be there.
The screams of men blended in a hideous symphony with the explosion of cannon fire and filled his senses, deafening. Derek thrust the note into the fire and the flames eagerly licked at the ivory velum until the note was no more. He spun on his heel so quickly, his left leg nearly buckled with the suddenness of his movement. Relishing the pain that radiated up his thigh and momentarily distracted him from the memories of battle, he limped across the room, escaping the fire.
Escaping when he’d been unable to on the field of battle. Derek drew to a jerky stop beside the window and, in a reflexive movement, pulled the curtain back. Light streamed through the crystal windowpane, momentarily blinding him. He jammed the heel of his palm into his remaining eye. White orbs danced within his vision and he blinked frantically. Derek made to release the curtain and then stopped.
The London streets below bustled with activity as lords and ladies went about their daily business. Carriages rumbled by. Phaetons being driven by dandies rattled along. Life was...the same and yet, not. For those satin-sprigged ladies and perfumed dandies in the streets below, the world carried on as it always had and would continue to do so. The hideous visage he went out of his way to avoid reflected back at him in the windowpane. Only this time, he did not look away but stared boldly at the stranger, burned for his efforts on the fields of Toulouse, forever transformed into a person not even a mother could love. Nausea twisted in his belly; a deep sickness that had nothing to do with the memories and everything to do with the beast before him.
“You are the same bloody, weak fool you always were,” he whispered into the quiet. Thrusting aside the maudlin thoughts, he let the curtain go, just as a hackney came to a quick halt directly outside his townhouse.
Derek adjusted the band of his eye patch that bit painfully into his temple. A hired hack? No one had business here. He opened the curtains once again and cursed as the sunlight streamed inside, temporarily blinding his eye once again. His vision cleared just as the driver opened the door. A flash of blue penetrated the opening of that carriage; that color so vibrant and powerful, it conjured memories of summer in the country, traipsing through the hillside, while he’d hidden from his tutors.
The driver reached inside the carriage and handed down the owner of that flash of color. All the breath sucked from his chest and he pressed his brow to the warm windowpane.
The young woman, a stranger in a wool cloak took several tentative steps toward the front of his townhouse and then, as though she felt his beastly gaze upon her, paused. Tilting her head toward the sun, she raised a hand to her eyes and stared at the front façade of his townhouse. Only, what would one such as she have business with here?
Derek quickly ran his gaze over her. A powerful surge of desire slammed into him, at the sight of her lean, lithe frame and generous dé
colletage pressing against the fabric of her cloak. The man he’d been had appreciated beauty. He’d relished the satiny perfection of a woman’s skin, celebrated the silken tresses of a woman’s hair as it had fanned about them upon satin sheets. The man he was now still appreciated beauty, even knowing he would never again experience the taste of passion he’d sampled through the years. And this woman, frozen outside his townhouse, evinced the heart-stopping beauty that drove men to sonnets.
The silly straw bonnet atop her head did little to conceal the raven color of her curls. Several strands hung haphazardly over her shoulder. Taller than most women, she had the look of a Spartan warrioress. Just then, the captivating stranger inched her gaze up higher and found his window.
Derek cursed and let go the curtain with such alacrity it snapped noisily in the quiet. Tightening his jaw, he thrust aside his fleeting appreciation for the stranger outside his home. There was no business she could have here. After all, Polite Society and impolite Society all knew—you never stirred The Beast of Blackthorne.
After her most recent shameful fall from grace, Lily had become attuned to gaping stares; none of those looks were kind and all condemning. That acuity was how she’d known someone had been staring at her.
She raised her gaze up the white façade of the Duke of Blackthorne’s townhouse. The faint flutter of velvet curtains in the top window lent proof to her earlier feeling of being watched. A slight shiver of unease raced along her spine. The first real stirring of anxiety since she’d rented a hack and left the shameful life she’d lived these past years, ran through her. Granted, it would be the height of foolishness to not be attacked by doubt. After all, what powerful duke known as The Beast would turn the care of his ward over to a woman ruined by his dead brother?
“This is lunacy,” she whispered to herself. Foolishly, she’d not allowed herself to think of, once again, setting foot inside these halls. Despite the warmth of the spring day, her teeth chattered. Her fingers curled hard around the handle of her valise. She stared dumbly at the door as her past converged with her future, whirring and twisting so she could not sort out that long ago night from the now. A pressure weighted her chest, restricting airflow as she recalled climbing those same steps, pleading, begging...hoping. I cannot do this. A heavy wind slapped at her skirts, as if nature concurred.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 5