A hard glint lit his eye. It was a soulless, dark eye Satan would have begged the duke for. “Unless there is something more you’d ask for?”
As soon as the thought slid in, she abandoned it. If she failed to aid Holdsworth, he would see her in Newgate before he’d ever allow her a life of decency in this house.
Not for the first time since she’d agreed to this madcap scheme for survival, warning bells went off and blared loud in her ears. “N-no, there is nothing.”
A rap sounded at the door and she sent a silent thank you skyward at the interruption.
“Enter.” His thunderous voice kicked her heartbeat up into that frenzied rhythm he somehow managed to elicit with each command and utterance.
The butler entered the room. The poor man seemed to be a perpetual shade of gray. Or perhaps that was the effect of working in this particular household. He cast a commiserative glance in Lily’s direction and then swiftly turned his focus to his employer. “You rang, Your Grace?”
“This very important meeting is concluded.” She frowned at the mocking emphasis placed on that one word. Without waiting for any potential questions from the young servant, the duke walked slowly back to his desk. “If you’ll show Mrs. Benedict to her rooms?” he called out, not breaking his stride.
Lily hesitated. There was something she should say to him. She cast a glance back at Harris, who patiently waited with a pained glimmer in his eyes. He wanted out of the devil’s lair. And yet... She looked to the duke once again, now seated upon the leather winged back chair that may as well have been a king’s throne for the power he evinced in the leather folds.
“Mrs. Benedict?” There was a faint entreaty in Harris’ tone, which called her to the moment.
Giving her head a clearing shake, she started after him.
“Mrs. Benedict?”
At that steely edged whisper, Lily stilled and wheeled slowly back to face the duke.
“You sold yourself short. If you’d asked for triple that sum, I would have paid it to be free of the burden of the responsibilities that go with that child.”
Those callous words about the small girl drew a frown from her. She bit her tongue to keep from telling His Grace precisely what she thought of one who saw his ward—a motherless, fatherless child—as nothing more than an inconvenience he’d like to rid himself of. The child might be the niece of the man who ruined her, but she was still a defenseless girl, dependent on others for her security. “I am not greedy, Your Grace.” No, I’m a whore, liar, and a thief. But never greedy.
“No, you are naïve and trusting which is far more dangerous to you.” How eerily accurate he was with that throwaway comment. She’d been naïvely trusting twice before in her life. Both times it had destroyed her. “Do you intend to gape at me all day?” He jerked his chin. “Get out.”
His sharp order snapped her into motion and she took her leave of The Beast, grateful as Harris closed the door behind them. Only with that damning click thundering in the quiet, she started. She’d not even so much looked about his office for the revered artifact that had brought her into his home under false pretenses. Lily cast a glance back at the closed door and then followed Harris in silence as he led her through the labyrinth of the duke’s lair up the servant’s stairs and down corridor after corridor. With each step, her skin pricked with the eerie sense of being watched. She stopped abruptly and spun about, scanning the hall. The empty hall. Her heart pounded wildly as she sought the ghosts of the duke’s home.
“Mrs. Benedict, are you all right?”
Harris’ concerned question brought her around. “Fine,” she murmured. A dull heat slapped her cheeks at being a fearful, silly lackwit who saw ghosts in the shadows. “I’m fine,” she repeated when he continued to study her with that dubious stare. Anyway, hadn’t she well learned that real men were far more threatening and ominous than those who’d gone?
“Would you have me show you to the nursery first to meet Her Ladyship?”
“No!” The denial burst from her, earning a befuddled look. Following her meeting with the darkly dangerous duke, she needed a stolen moment of calm; one that did not involve the child whose care had been erroneously turned over to her. She steadied her tones. “I thought to refresh following my travels,” she said softly.
“Of course, ma’am,” he said, inclining his head. They resumed their path along the blood-red carpeted hall, a perfect color for the duke who called this his home. Harris stopped beside the last door at the end of the hall. He pressed the handle. “Here you are, Mrs. Benedict. I had your belongings brought to your room. Is there anything else you require?” Courage, strength, a calm imagination.
She managed a smile. “No, that will be all.”
He bowed and took his leave. Lily stared after him until he’d gone.
With his leaving, she was now truly alone in this cold, empty townhouse.
She made to enter the room, when again the prickle of awareness sent shivers racing along her spine. “Hello?” She skimmed her gaze over the corridor. Perhaps the ghosts of the dead Duchess of Blackthorne hovered about, protesting Lily’s presence here, still. “Who is there?” The sharp echo of her words on the empty walls served as her only answer. “You are going mad,” she muttered to herself and took a step inside her rooms.
“Hullo—”
A shriek burst from Lily’s lips and she spun around and nearly collided with a young girl. “Oh.” So this was the ghost. No ghost really. Just a lonely child. Her charge. Heart racing, she managed a smile.
The child with tight brown curls stared at her with wide, curious eyes. Familiar eyes. Her uncle’s eyes. Such a detail should cause a pang of regret and yet there was nothing left but anger for the man she’d gifted her virtue to.
Lily dropped slowly to her knee. “Hullo.”
The girl’s cornflower blue eyes reflected suspicion and interest. “You are afraid.”
Terror had gripped her from the moment she stepped inside this home. “I’m not,” she lied. Not fear she’d admit to, anyway.
The child drifted closer and peered at Lily. Did she sense the lie there? “The last one was and she left. Never to return.”
Icy tendrils of fear snaked about her heart. At a girl’s words? She gave her head a shake. “Well, I do not intend to go.” Lily couldn’t very well admit to the truth of having no other options but to remain. “What is your n—?”
“You are scared.” She leaned forward and spoke in hushed, entirely too mature tones. “I was scared, too, when I first arrived, but then sometimes, when he thinks he is alone, I hear him crying.” Oh, god. Lily’s chest tightened. “They say he is a beast. Do not be scared. Be brave.” She must be all manner of fool for she remained frozen, transfixed by the words of a young child. The girl touched the left portion of her face. “He is ugly here.” She touched her opposite cheek. “But not here.” The duke. “And you will find he really isn’t that scary. All the time.” With that, the girl danced away and sprinted down the hall.
Lily surged to her feet. “Wait,” she called out. Except the child disappeared around the corridor, vanishing like the morning mist.
She stood there long after the small waif-like girl had gone; the child who’d been nothing more than the pawn that had brought Lily into this home in order to commit a theft upon the duke. The girl unwittingly represented Lily’s eventual salvation. Yet, with one whispered “hullo” and an urging to be brave, the child had become more than the means to an end of Lily’s years as a whore. The brown-haired girl was a stranger no more, but instead a person whose care she’d been charged with and, suddenly, the anger and hatred she’d carried for all who bore the Winters’ blood, dimmed.
Lily forced her legs to move and wandered inside her new rooms. With a deep sigh, she closed the door and leaned back against the wooden panel. She closed her eyes. She’d spent so many years only caring for and about herself that until this meeting outside her new rooms a handful of moments ago, she’d neglected the obvi
ous truth. What had brought her into the beast’s lair was not revenge or Holdsworth’s diamond.
It was a child.
Chapter 5
Following Lily’s corridor meeting with her charge, the girl had remained as elusive as a ghost. The next morning, Lily woke determined to begin her responsibilities as governess. The sooner she could locate that blasted diamond, the sooner she could be free of this cold, eerie home. Standing at the bevel mirror in her chambers, she pinched color into her cheeks and then, taking a deep steadying breath, left the safety of her rooms and ventured out in search of the duke’s ward. She glanced first left and then right, down the long, quiet halls. The hum of silence served as her only company.
“Now, how to go about finding a girl who does not wish to be found?” She nibbled her lower lip. Her experience as an older sibling had proven one certain fact—a child who did not wish to be found could hide like the very cleverest pygmy shrew.
With a sigh, Lily took the right hallway. In the years she’d been away from her younger siblings, she’d not allowed herself to think on them. The agony of missing them had eased with the passage of time. In the moments, she allowed them to slip into her thoughts, the agony of losing them from her life had ravaged her with the same vicious pain as when her father had tossed her aboard a mail coach and sent her off to London.
As such, she’d not allowed herself to think about all that made a child...well, a child. To think of those innocent, loving beings only roused thoughts of another babe who’d never be. Whores did not become mothers. Not mothers who were, in any way, respectable. Longing tightened painfully about her heart and she forcibly thrust aside foolish yearnings for what would never be.
Lily stopped beside a closed door. She pressed the handle and shoved it open. “Flora?” Skimming her gaze about the darkened room, she sighed and pulled the panel closed behind her. Since arriving in the duke’s household yesterday, she’d quickly learned that Flora was a spirited miss who reveled in her ability to hide in the shadows of this home.
She walked, her footsteps silent on the carpet-lined corridors, as she made her way through the maze-like home. Occasionally, she glanced at the paintings adorning the walls of the duke’s noble family who, by their dress and bewigged heads, were long-gone ancestors. With the great gulf between them, she and the duke may as well have belonged to two different universes.
He and his kind donned satins and silks and the finest fabrics. Hers had always been a respectable family, cut of religious cloth. Had her fifteen-year-old self seen this opulent home, surely even that naïve child would still not have been so foolish as to believe George’s intentions were honorable.
She continued walking, when out of the corner of her eye, she spied a particular portrait that brought her to a staggering halt. George, the late Duke of Blackthorne, with his condescending glint did not command her notice but rather the delicate woman at his side. Attired in a Grecian gown of white satin, the regal blonde woman evinced everything a duchess should be. Drawn forward, she stopped at the base of the painting. Lily’s gaze fixed on the obscenely large diamond about the woman’s delicate neck. Her stomach muscles knotted reflexively. So this was the piece that a man would have at all costs and that she would sell her soul for?
“Mrs. Benedict?”
Lily shrieked and spun about. “Harris,” she greeted, a hand at her racing heart.
The butler flushed. “Forgive me,” he said as he came forward. “I did not mean to startle you. I merely sought you out to see whether I might be of assistance?”
She pulled her attention away from the portrait. “Yes. I am looking for Lady Flora. I had hoped to begin our lessons.”
Approval lit his brown eyes. “If you will?” He did not wait to see if she complied, but merely turned on his heel and started down the opposite corridor.
Lily hurried to catch up. She fell into step alongside him. They moved silently through the maze of halls. Their footfalls fell in a matched pattern; eerily quiet on the plush carpeted halls. “What is she like?” Lily asked at last.
At his silence, Lily cast a look up. Harris slowed his steps; his expression contemplative. “She is...adventurous, bold, curious,” he said by way of explanation. “Her life has not been an easy one with the passing of her parents, and His—” He snapped his mouth closed. The servant did not need to finish the thought for his meaning to be clear. The girl’s life could not be a pleasurable one stuck in these dark, lonely walls of the current Duke of Blackthorne’s townhouse.
Ah, so that is where the young lady, motherless and absent of any governess these weeks, spent her days—with members of the staff. The duke’s angry words about his ward and the burden he’d presented her were surely known by the girl. Sadness tugged at Lily’s heart. What a lonely life Lady Flora lived. “The poor child.”
Harris stole a sideways glance down at her. He gave a slow, approving nod. “I like you a good deal, Mrs. Benedict.”
She stumbled and the butler shot a hand out to steady her. Lily dropped her gaze to the carpet and murmured her thanks. People did not like her. They avoided her. Spoke ill of her, but never held any favorable opinion of the fallen woman she was. “You do not even know me,” she said, guilt pebbling in her belly once more. If he did, he’d have saved the duke the trouble by packing her off himself.
“I know enough about you, Mrs. Benedict.” They turned right at the end of the hall and then continued on to the staircase leading below stairs. “I know you were courageous enough to go toe-to-toe with His Grace—”
“You make more of it than it is,” she said, while the pebble grew to the size of a boulder. Nothing but her own selfish motives had brought her here.
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But I also know you’d not abandon the girl because of how the master looks and behaves.” How ready this servant was to welcome someone into the household, and for what purpose? To slay the demons that lived here and to save the cherished inhabitant of these walls? Unfortunately for them, Lily was not, nor would she ever be, that person.
They reached the main living quarters. “Do you wish to know the truth?” she asked Harris, not wanting the faultily placed praises he’d put upon her shoulders. “I am here because I have no other choice.”
“We always have a choice, Mrs. Benedict.”
She shifted her gaze away, unable to meet his kind-eyed, understanding stare.
...You will have a home. Security. Your freedom... Holdsworth’s coaxing promise slammed into her, and she blinked back a sheen of useless tears at the unwitting recollection of the day she’d sold her soul for stability.
Lily was never more grateful than when he stopped beside a closed door. “She enjoys the library immensely, Mrs. Benedict.” He pressed the handle and admitted her to another lavish space.
Sunlight streamed through the floor-length windows along the side of the room and drawn to the unexpected cheer and warmth, she stepped inside. She searched the room, dimly registering the closing door as Harris took his leave.
A high-pitched shriek split the quiet, and heart racing, Lily did a quick search of the room. Her gaze landed on Lady Flora, seated upon a leather button sofa with her skirts rucked about her knees. “Hullo,” she said gently.
Ignoring the greeting, the girl touched a hand to her chest. “You frightened me.” She dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I thought it was my uncle.”
No child should live with fear. That sentiment shouldn’t come until much later. Lily advanced deeper into the room. “Do you come to this room often?” This space, so very close to the guardian she clearly feared.
“I like to come here and read.” Flora swung her legs over the edge and pumped them vigorously back and forth. “The sunshine,” she gestured to the long row of floor-length windows, where glowing rays shone brightly through the crystal panes. “I would so greatly love to take my lessons outdoors,” she said in a wistful manner that tugged at Lily. It was a tug that opened up all the conflicted thoughts that con
tinuously ran through Lily’s mind.
She is not your concern. Your freedom. Your safety. Your security... Lily needed all those things. But whose concern should the little girl be? “When the weather permits, we will take your lessons in Hyde Park,” she said, unable to call the words back and as tangible joy lit the girl’s eyes, she found she didn’t want to.
“Truly?”
Lily nodded. “Truly.” She walked over and slid into the vacant mahogany-caned library chair nearest the girl. She’d been gone so long from her own younger siblings she forgot the absolute lack of artifice. Not yet jaded by life, a child of this age did not have the ability to distinguish sarcasm. She took in the pile of books littered at the girl’s feet and strewn about the sofa. “I thought you were unafraid of the duke?” she asked gently.
Flora grabbed the book at the top of the pile. “It is hard not to be afraid of him.” She fanned the pages, all the while directing her words to the leather volume. “He does yell.”
His thunderous roar as he’d ordered her from his office echoed around her mind. “Yes, he does yell a lot.” Lily studied the top of the girl’s brown curls. As stern as her father had been, wholly devoted to rising to that esteemed position of vicar, her childhood had been filled with laughter. What was this girl’s life to be like? Pain stabbed at her in thinking of the sad, solitary existence Flora would know.
Flora stopped her distracted movements and picked her head up. “But you aren’t afraid of his yelling? You’ll not leave simply because you are afraid.” Emotion filled her breast at the trusting look shot her way.
She drew in a ragged breath. No, she would leave after she’d committed the greatest theft against the duke. A painful vise squeezed tight about her heart. And now, this child. She turned a question on Flora. “When I first met with the duke, were you not laughing while he yelled?”
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 9