After too many minutes of painful movements, Derek gritted his teeth and walked the length of the corridor outside of his office. With each agonizing step, lustful musings of the bold woman were replaced with the throbbing pain that radiated up his entire leg. He trained his eye on the portrait of a young man at the far end of the hall. Why did it never become easier? Why would the pain never go away? And more, why did he persist?
Because I hope. I still hold on to the tantalizing dream that through my efforts, I’ll somehow become unbroken. Fool. To believe anyone could love him? Even his mother hadn’t had that warm emotion in her heart.
“Your Grace, there is no need to walk so briskly,” his doctor called out from the opposite end of the hall. “That is not the purpose of the—”
“Shut your goddamn mouth.” Derek did not break his stride. Instead, he continued to glare down the uniform-clad soldier in the painting. A handsome youth. Unscarred. His face gloriously perfect. Unmarred by life and war. A fool who’d believed in the gloriousness of the cause and the grandiosity of adventure. What had his efforts brought him other than scorn and pain?
“It is more a matter of practicing the movements. The stretches. The—”
“I practice the bloody movements daily,” he shouted.
“And I told you,” the man put in gently, “you no longer need to see me weekly.” He’d been working with Carlson after more than two years of languishing in his bed, forgotten by the world. And now, of course even he was eager to be done with Derek. Why should he remain? You’re a bastard to the only man to show you kindness. “You do not even need to exercise weekly,” the doctor reminded him once more.
Derek tripped, but quickly caught himself. “Are you telling me this is the best I’ll ever achieve?” he thundered.
“If you insist on remaining locked inside your townhouse, then yes,” Dr. Carlson said matter-of-factly.
Perspiration beaded on his brow and self-hatred twisted inside. Gone was the man who’d expertly fenced and waltzed ladies about the dance floors of Europe. After years of retraining his muscles, he still couldn’t even walk the length of his damned hall. Derek squeezed his eye tight a moment, as shame scorched his belly. “What is the point of it?” he asked, tiredly. What was the point of any of it?
“It is about properly exercising your muscles, Your Grace.” The doctor spoke with a casualness that should have grated. “Until you leave this townhouse and partake in actual—”
“I am not leaving,” he cut in brusquely. Occasionally, the determined doctor would get it into his mind to debate Derek on his self-imposed exile, as he termed it.
With a sigh, the fool doctor removed his spectacles and dusted the lenses with his crisp, white handkerchief. “You are too harsh on yourself. You have made immeasurable progress.”
Damn lackwit. The only reason Derek even tolerated his bespectacled, ever-optimistic presence was because he’d been the only damned doctor in the whole of the kingdom called in by him who’d said he would walk again. The man had, at least, been correct in that regard.
He tightened his mouth. What the man had failed to mention was that even with his efforts, Derek would never be anything more than a cripple; a weak, pathetic fool who struggled to climb stairs and who couldn’t move through a day without knowing pain. As if the fates were mocking him, Derek stumbled. He cursed and caught himself before he pitched forward and made a total arse of himself.
The doctor raced over with smooth, effortless strides. He reached a hand out. “Your Grace, please let me—”
“Get the hell away from me, Carlson.” Derek snarled. “I am bloody fine.” The man pursed his lips, likely one utterance away from calling him a liar. And then he’d be forced to sack the one person who’d not given up on him when his own mother and brother had. Edeline did not. She was loyal and loving, and you turned your own sister away... “You are done here for the day. So go,” he hissed.
Carlson also happened to be the only person unaffected by Derek’s shows of black temper. Though that isn’t true. There is a raven-haired, spirited beauty...
“There is still a good deal of time left, Your Grace.” Then, the other man had tended him from those early days when Derek crawled out of bed, limping and crying through those excruciating exercises. It was surely hard to fear a man who’d sobbed and screamed in his presence.
“Carlson,” he growled.
“Very well.” The doctor consulted his timepiece. “Perhaps we will conclude for the day.” Perhaps? Did Carlson truly think he’d be the one to determine the start and end of this session? “I advise you to rest for the afternoon, Your Grace.”
Derek made a crude gesture to show him exactly what he thought of his highhanded orders. “I said go, Carlson.”
“As you wish, Your Grace,” he said with a cheerful smile that grated on Derek’s every last nerve.
With Carlson gone, he focused on the same canvas that pulled at him every day since he’d made this hell his residence. Derek continued his march over to the portrait at the end of the hall and then stopped—he ran a hateful gaze over the last image ever captured of himself as human.
The grinning youth in his crimson uniform with gold epaulets stared back; foolishly optimistic and bloody arrogant in his seeming infallibility. Derek bent and fished a knife out of his boot. With loathing coursing through his veins, he drew his arm back with gleeful relish to slash the happy visage of that boy. The silver tip of the blade kissed the canvas. He closed his eye a moment and then, with a curse, he awkwardly bent, thrust the blade back into his boot and started his familiar walk back down the hall. The moment that memory was destroyed, all that remained was the monster and coward as he was. That, he could not bear.
With Dr. Carlson’s urging to quit for the day echoing around his mind, Derek hardened his mouth and increased his stride. The muscles of his thigh screamed in agonized protest and he dragged his left heel along the carpeted floor. The sudden, jarring movement sent him pitching forward.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered as he came down hard on the heels of his hands. He welcomed the pain that shot from his palms and up his arms, for it spared him from focusing on the burning agony of his useless leg and hideously scarred face. His breath came hard and fast as he stared at the red carpet. Where the crimson shade usually put him in mind of battlefields slicked with blood, now the hue conjured a pair of soft, eager lips. Lips that hadn’t demanded his kiss or attention, but rather a post in his employ. With the throbbing ache in his damned thigh, instead of fighting back the lady’s image, he let the thoughts of a determined Mrs. Benedict slip in. This hunger for her temporarily distracted him from the physical pain made worse by his exertions this day and he welcomed that diversion.
Tall, with generously curved hips and ample breasts, the woman was a mighty Aphrodite. Her mouth roused the memories of all the wicked ways in which he’d enjoyed a lady’s full lips upon his person. But Mrs. Benedict had an altogether different mouth. Lush, with her bottom flesh fuller than her upper, narrower lip, her mouth fairly begged to be kissed. A mouth that, if he were still the damned youth in the portrait, he would have kissed, and she would have pleaded for more.
She’d look upon him as though he were a man to be desired. Derek struggled into a standing position. It didn’t matter a bloody damn from now to Sunday what Mrs. Bennett or Mrs. Benedict or whatever the hell her blasted name was, thought of him.
He cursed roundly and poured himself back into his efforts. “Bloody walking,” he spat. His pathetic efforts. As though it mattered if he ever had proper use of his leg. He would still be the monster whispered about and feared. Hell, he could not even stomach the sight of his own hideous visage. He increased the speed of his stride. The heel of his boot dragged along the carpet and he stumbled. He sprawled face first into the corridor with his austere ancestors looking on in mocking disapproval.
Derek cursed again and shoved himself up. He sat sprawled in the corridor and rubbed his aching muscles; muscles which
hadn’t been, nor would ever be fully healed and restored to rights after the French bayonet that had slashed repeatedly through his ligaments when he’d laid on the battlefield, his face burning from one fool’s misfired volley. His younger self grinned on with that roguish charm he’d been noted for.
“Would you still be grinning, you bloody lackwit, if you could see yourself now?” he shot over to the unaging version of himself. Derek made to stand and his leg crumpled from underneath him.
Raining down a string of vile words that would have shocked a street thief in the Dials, he sank back upon the floor. Not unlike the moment he’d received that wound, with slow, clumsy movements, he dragged himself to the wall and borrowed support from the plaster surface. His chest rose and fell in a heavy rhythm, a combination of his exertions and the tortured remembrances of Toulouse. The bloody French city that had stolen all from him.
He gritted his teeth. Nay, it hadn’t been a city, but rather a man. A former friend, at that. For back before he’d been turned into a beast, Derek had friends closer than brothers. Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr and Tristan, the Earl of Maxwell. The bond between them had been so strong that he’d allowed St. Cyr to convince him of the glory and adventure to be had in battle.
He swiveled his head and stared down the hall at the canvas. In the end, it hadn’t been some French soldier who’d seen Derek laid low in battle, but St. Cyr, who’d misfired and set him afire.
Bile burned Derek’s throat and he sucked in slow, steadying breaths. The acrid taste of burning flesh permeated his senses until he wanted to cast the contents of his stomach up. He fed his hatred for the man responsible for this beast he’d become. Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr, a failure of a soldier had proven an even greater failure as a friend.
He pressed his eye shut.
A sweaty lock of hair tumbled over his brow. He dabbed at the moisture. What fools they’d all been. Then, up until that bloody day of fighting when his life had been irrevocably altered, Derek, too, had been that heroic fool believing in a war, in his own self-worth and capabilities.
Derek opened his eye and stared blankly at the cheerful robin’s egg blue satin wallpaper of the opposite wall. Sweat dripped into his eye and blurred his vision. “I should be dead,” he whispered.
For really, what was the purpose of this? This empty house that had belonged to his father, and then brother. A ducal obligation that should have never been his. A child to care for when he didn’t want to care for anyone or anything. Yet, the fates in a cruel twist had spared him, and killed his brother, and taken his sister. Then, perhaps the devil had exacted his due on both him and George for the indolent, self-serving lives they’d both lived. But there was no explaining how the only good person he knew in the world—his sister—had also been taken.
He yanked out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. The memory of Mrs. Lily Benedict flitted in once more. Not the sultry quality of her contralto speaking voice or her smoky black lashes, but rather the bold tilt to her chin as she’d challenged him. In fact, if he’d called her Miss Bennett once more, Derek suspected the lady would have choked him with his own expertly folded cravat for the deliberate insult. He’d grown so accustomed to women who fled him in horror that he didn’t know what to make of this undaunted stranger.
He stuffed the wrinkled kerchief back into his front pocket. Derek shoved himself to his feet. A groan escaped him when he put his full weight upon his weak leg. He shot a hand out and caught the wall. The woman’s presence served one purpose here—to care for his sister’s child, so he could be free of the responsibility of her. He wouldn’t have to be bothered with speaking to his family’s ancient man-of-affairs about a suitable replacement. Any day he was spared a visit from Davies, the better off his life was—quiet, empty, just as he preferred it.
He reached for his cane and, with the words of his doctor burned into his thoughts, proceeded to stretch the muscles of his leg by walking the long, length of the hall.
Chapter 7
A woman who’d spread her legs for an old gentleman and a caddish duke should have a harder heart for thieving. Instead, seated at the vanity in her borrowed chambers, Lily stared into the bevel mirror. Her worried visage stared back. As guilt and self-loathing assailed her, she gave her head a hard shake. “Do not be silly. You’ve no other choice. And you’ve assuredly done worse than s—” She caught herself and then cast a quick glance over at the doorway. It would hardly do to be caught whispering about her plans to rob The Beast of Blackthorne. She slapped her palm gently against her cheek. “Clear your head, girl.”
With all the time she’d had to consider Holdsworth’s demands, she’d not given a thought to finding such a cherished heirloom. A task made inestimably more difficult by a man who’d quite deliberately ordered her away from an entire wing of his townhouse. The duke’s disinterest in her and Flora would allow her to search out that famed heirloom, locate it, and then be off like the thief in the night she was.
She propped her elbows onto the smooth surface of the vanity. So, why was she not relieved? And grateful, and all things happy that she would escape his notice and attention? Because for some inexplicable reason, she could not rid herself of the thought of him, the Duke of Blackthorne.
Lily sighed and dropped her chin into her palm. She’d have made a dreadful London pickpocket. For, she didn’t have her focus on obtaining that family heirloom and restoring it to Holdsworth. Nor were her thoughts on the ghost of the cad who’d ruined her life with his pretty lies.
Rather, it was the man with his half-beautiful, half-ravaged face. A chill stole through her. Through his crude words and snapping commands, he’d shown himself to be the manner of beast a wise person took care to avoid. She nibbled at her lip. Only that same beast had also granted her a post in his household. He’d done so when any other nobleman would have tossed her out on her backside or made her an indecent offer. Yes, any other gentleman would have wanted the use of her body and nothing more. The momentary spark of desire in the duke’s eye indicted he wanted her...but instead, he had offered her respectability. That selfless offering made him more than a duke or monster—it made him a man of honor. A man capable of good and that was more heady than any kiss or touch.
A groan escaped her. “You are a fool,” she whispered into the quiet. How many times would she make mountains out of the mist with her romantic spirit? That spirit she’d believed long since dead. She’d do well to avoid the duke and his dangerous pull, not because of his surly attitude or wounds, but because she was no longer that sort of woman.
Though his clear orders for her to avoid his office at all costs indicated he wanted nothing to do with her, he stirred feelings inside her that she could not sort out.
She should be equal parts grateful and relieved over his icy indifference. There was a coldness to the Duke of Blackthorne’s soul that could freeze the Thames.
So why was she not fearful or relieved? Instead, a greater unease came from this enigmatic hold he had which made him far more dangerous than any of the Holdsworths of the world.
As such, she’d closeted herself in her borrowed rooms and given no thought to the diamond or her future. Yet, sitting as she’d been with nothing but her own contemplative self for company, guilt had crept in. For years, she’d not given consideration to anything but her own survival and what little semblance of happiness she could eek out of her lonely existence.
Even the task that had driven her into this dark household had been fueled by that selfishness.
Now, she thought of him. Filled with restlessness, she pushed up from the narrow vanity seat and walked the length of these new quarters. White draperies hung over the floor-length windows, a white satin coverlet adorned the bed, and a white Aubusson carpet muted the fall of her footsteps. Lily stopped beside the hearth and ran her fingers over the cold marble. By all intents and purposes the brightly decorated room should have been nauseatingly cheerful. Instead, it possessed an eerie, haunting quality of a pl
ace that had known loss and of which no cheer lived, nor would ever dwell.
She recalled Flora’s words about the duke being shut away. Had he truly made himself a prisoner in these dark walls, content to live alone, in the shadows? What a tragic way to be. Then, having been tucked away as she’d been, was she truly any less alone and dead inside than the duke?
“Enough,” she gritted out, and dug her fingers into her temples to blot out his visage. Forcibly shoving aside all fascination with the brooding duke, she instead fixed on something far safer—his disregard for Flora, a child entrusted to his care. In failing to enumerate his expectations and responsibilities for the girl, the new Duke of Blackthorne had demonstrated the same disregard held by all gentlemen toward those women, young and old, whose care they should see to.
Annoyance spiraled through her and Lily chose to feed that far safer sentiment. That made him not this brokenly beautiful figure who’d invaded her thoughts, but a man, just like all the others. Tired of selfish noblemen, Lily spun on her heel. Determination fueling her steps, she marched to the door and wrenched it open. Gaze trained forward, she stomped down the corridor, made her way downstairs, and came to a stop.
The butler, Harris, stood at the foot of the stairs. His cheeks were their familiar ashen hue. Perhaps that was the man’s perpetual color. “M-may I be of a-assistance, Mrs. Benedict?” he stammered as she descended the sweeping staircase.
She inclined her head. “I’d like to speak with His Grace regarding my responsibilities.” Lily stepped around him and continued on the path to the duke’s office.
“His Grace?” Harris called after her and she turned around.
The butler collided against her back and then shot his hands out. He swiftly steadied her. “Beg pardon.” He cleared his throat. “His Grace? As in the duke.” He continued as though he’d not missed a proverbial beat.
In a bid for humor, she arched an eyebrow. “Is there another?” She made to step around him.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 11