“Th-they are all your halls.” Her gaze dipped to the whorl of black hair matting his chest and her mouth went dry. Should I not fear him? If she were wise, surely she would. But I do not. Not in this moment of charged energy between them. Of its own volition, her hand came up, and she braced her palm on his chest.
The duke went still.
She blinked and then swiftly dropped her arm to her side. “I...” He’d quite muddled her thoughts. “Forgive me.”
With his broad, well-muscled chest and powerful form, he was nothing like Sir Henry, who’d grown increasingly heavier through the years. Nor was the duke shaped in any way like his lean, late brother. This man was a broad bear of a figure who conjured knights of old brandishing their broadswords and eternally braced for battle; easily vanquishing all memory of others. Lily wanted to once again brush her hands over him, to steal the heat that penetrated the fabric of his shirt.
“And will you do it again?”
She would gladly do it again if... Lily blinked rapidly. “Do what again?” she blurted.
In a move surely meant to intimidate, he leaned down and stuck his face close to hers. “Is there something wrong with your mind or your hearing?”
She rather thought there was something wrong with both in this instance; for how else to explain the maddening control this man now possessed of her senses?
“Miss Benedict?” he barked, startling her from the haze of desire he’d cast over her.
So she was to be Miss Benedict again. Like a bucket of Thames water dropped upon her head, he doused the thick haze of passion cloaking her senses. She angled her neck back to meet his gaze squarely. “There is nothing wrong with, either.” Only my mind. With her height, she’d been able to meet the eyes of most men she’d ever conversed with. With his broad, towering frame, the duke was more bear than man. He somehow managed to make her feel like one of those diminutive young women always clamored for by the men in her father’s parish. She struggled to draw forth the question he’d put to her.
They stood so close she detected the flecks dancing in his blue eye. “If I allow you to remain, Will. You. Enter. My. Halls. Again?”
She wet her lips wanting to give him the answer that would secure her future. Being born a vicar’s daughter, the lesson on not sinning with lies on her lips had been ingrained into her with her father’s birch rod. All of those lessons had been shoved aside for the sake of survival. “I...” She slid her gaze away from his, thinking about the carved box that contained all links to her previous life, upon the vanity. Tell him what he wishes to hear... Lily closed her eyes a moment. She was a whore. A woman without a family. And now, a would-be-thief. Liar. For in this moment, it was not about the diamond. You are thinking of nothing now but him. She looked to him once more. “You have hired me in the post of nursery governess,” she began, faintly breathless. He stared at her with a remote expression, silently daring her to continue. “If I am to serve in that capacity, it will, at the very least, be my responsibility to speak to you if there are matters of concern pertaining to Lady Flora.”
“Who?”
“Your niece, Lady Flora.” What was it that prevented him from speaking the girl’s name? That aversion to a person’s name—hers, Harris, Flora’s. Did he fear a connection to people? The hint of that possibility softened the shrewish words on her tongue and fueled her resolve. She angled her chin up a notch. “I should also be clear, Your Grace. I will continue to visit the library and other parts of your household, for this is also Lady Flora’s household and, as such, she should not be a prisoner in her home.”
Without the faintest hint of shame at failing to note so much as the name of the girl whose care he’d been tasked with, the duke continued on. “I should sack you now then.” He spoke more to himself, with his words laced with bewilderment and frustration.
She placed her palms on his chest. “Do not send me away.” Her words emerged as a breathless whisper that would feed any person’s lowest opinion of her as a harlot. And yet, her body responded to him of its own accord. In a way, that defied logic and common sense.
He stiffened and, for an instant, she thought he’d pull away. Instead, he remained rooted to the floor as though the same madness that had besieged her mind had overtaken him. His gaze moved once more to her lips. A flare of desire sparked in his eye.
That flicker of emotion she recognized. She’d cursed all signs of it from her last protector, which had indicated he intended a visit to her bed. Hadn’t known what to make of it with the cad who’d deceived her. Now she did. And this man, this hard stranger with an inexplicable power, warmed her from the inside out. How could she account for the maddening heat he roused inside her? In a world where she’d made nothing but mistakes, he represented folly. So why did she not flee? Why could she not draw forth his treacherous brother’s face?
The duke dipped his head and her lashes fluttered. She tipped her head back to receive his kiss, despising herself for her weakness. “Are you attempting to seduce me into maintaining your post, Lily?”
His gruffly spoken question brought her eyes open. “Y-Your Grace?” She hated that his words should sting like dull needles being stuck into her skin. Only, she had no right to this hurt or resentment. By her actions in the past, she’d proven herself a whore.
“Derek,” he commanded.
Yes, in this they’d moved past the formality of titles and proper forms of address. His name evoked power and strength and was perfectly suited to one of his strength. “What would you say if I told you I was not?” Her voice emerged hoarse with her awareness of him.
Passion darkened his gaze. “I would call you a bloody liar,” he whispered and then claimed her lips under his.
At the heated burn of his mouth upon hers, she went still. This man who kissed her now with such hunger was the brother of the man who’d tricked her out of her virtue, and for that truth, there was surely a sin in this act. And yet George had brushed his wet lips over hers but twice and never had she felt this eddy of desire that threatened to consume her. It drove back all memory of those insignificant, fleeting embraces.
For all of Society’s opinions of her as a whore, she’d been with but two men. Neither of them had truly taken the time to kiss her lips. Through the importance they’d placed on their own self-gratification, she’d been deemed unworthy of that intimate caress. This dark, angry stranger kissed her mouth as though he were memorizing the shape of her lips. In all of the clumsy gropings and painful exchanges she’d known, not once in all these years had either of those men ever liquefied her the way this stranger’s touch did. The duke slanted his mouth over hers, laying siege to her mouth, possessing her in a way she’d never been possessed, and she shut out all others, and turned herself over to him.
Lily twined her fingers in the luxuriant silken tresses of his unfashionably long hair and angled him closer, wanting to further know what this pleasure was. He slid his tongue into her mouth and then found hers. A soft, keening moan escaped her.
“Say my name, Lily,” he demanded, commanding with that gravelly tone, roughened by passion.
“D-Derek,” she rasped.
As though that utterance drove him to a frenzy, he increased the thrust and parry of his tongue. Lily boldly met those strokes. In a bid to be closer to the blazing heat pouring from his frame, she pressed herself against the hard wall of his chest. How was it possible for a man dripping ice, to possess such fiery warmth within?
Derek drew back and she cried out in protest, but he moved his attention to the sensitive skin of her neck. Lily’s legs buckled and she gripped his hard forearms to keep from falling. In that moment, with her body afire for him, she proved all those harsh, ugly words true—she was nothing more than a wanton harlot. And yet, she could not care. All she was capable of was feeling. Derek dragged his mouth down the column of her throat and then he trailed kisses over her décolletage.
A broken gasp escaped her, and she slid her fingers into his hair, anchoring him
close to her chest. She slid her eyes closed and gave herself over to the sensation of his caress and the hot sensation fanning out in her belly. She wanted to uncover all his secrets and know the man he was. To peel back his snarl and see his smile. And his touch. She wanted it to go on forever.
“Your body does not lie in your desire for me,” he rasped out, those words directed more to himself.
“N-no, it does not.” Derek ran his palm over her flat belly and she bit her lip hard wanting his touch at her aching core, wanting him to tug her gown up and slide his fingers inside to the wicked heat he’d created. What was this need for him?
“What power do you have?” It was as though he’d looked within her mind and plucked out her turbulent thoughts. Derek palmed her breast and caressed the stiff peak of her nipple through the thin fabric of her gown. She arched into his hand, as a wet heat settled heavy between her thighs, filling her with an aching need to know the feel of him between her legs.
He stiffened and made to pull away. She tangled her hands about his neck. “Do not stop,” she pleaded against his mouth. He broke the kiss so suddenly, that she silently mourned the loss of him; this feeling of closeness and desire. Her heart pounded wildly. His kiss, their embrace, had been the singularly most erotic, beautiful moment of her life. Never had she known even a hint of the passion she’d known in his arms.
“Lily?”
Her lashes fluttered. Kiss me again. Kiss me so that I know there is more than ugly shame and pain in the joining with a man’s body. She forced her eyes open. “Y-yes?”
“Forgive me,” he said, his tone gruff, but otherwise devoid of emotion. “I am not a man to go abusing servants in my employ.” His chest moved hard and fast, belying the calmness in his words. “And you, madam, are a servant in my employ,” he said in clipped tones that chilled. He didn’t sack me? He alluded to it, but even now, his words promised her the post and his respect. “That should have never happened.”
“O-of course.” Horror slapped her and her throat went thick with shame. “M-My apologies, Y-Your Grace.” Those words emerged garbled.
Dimly, she registered the sound of footsteps. The rhythmic boot steps cut across the tense quiet. Derek looked beyond her shoulder and his gaze narrowed imperceptibly. Lily followed his stare and blanched. Down the opposite hall, the butler ushered an older man with a shock of white hair into the duke’s office, but not before he leveled her with a look of loathing.
“Get out,” Derek said quietly.
Embarrassment brought her eyes closed with the muted horror of not only being in Derek’s arms, but being spied acting the wanton harlot she was. Servants would talk. They would all correctly assume she was, indeed, a whore.
“I said go.” That three-word utterance emerged on a long, harsh whisper that promptly sent her into flight.
Lily tore down corridors, her skin burning with the feel of Derek’s gaze on her.
Chapter 8
Derek stared down the now empty corridor and, dragging a hand through his hair, he unleashed a string of black curses. What in blazes had he done? For the young rogue he’d once been, he’d never been a manner of man such as his father and brother, who’d taken their pleasures with maids on their staffs.
In Lily’s arms, however, he’d felt more alive than he had all these years since his return. She’d made him forget honor and anger and pain, so all he had wanted was to lose himself inside her.
Running a shaky hand through his hair, he thrust aside the tumult of emotion whirring inside and looked to the door his man-of-affairs had disappeared behind.
He tried and failed to regain a semblance of control over his thoughts. Desire continued to course through him, with the remembered feel and touch of Lily. And this hungering had little to do with the lack of warm bodies he’d had to bed these past years and everything to do with the lush contours of her generously curved figure. He scrubbed a hand over his face and willed his thoughts to rights.
Women did not desire him. Not any longer. The teasing, charming rogue with his cocksure grin had died on the fields of Toulouse, and in his place remained a scarred, burned, seething beast. Yes, Lily, no doubt, had used her wiles as a ploy to retain her post, as he’d charged. And yet... He slid his gaze down the corridor which she’d fled... Her whispery moans and passion-glazed eyes spoke an altogether different truth. How could that be? How, when he could not even stomach the sight of his own visage should she tremble in his arms?
Dragging his attention away, Derek retrieved his cane and strode toward his office for his meeting with Davies. Lily Benedict was either mad, foolish, or both. As he made his way along the length of the hall to his office door, a room that had proven his sanctuary over the years, he grimaced. The muscles of his leg strained from his exertions but he pushed ahead, craving the privacy behind that wooden panel the way a drunk thirsted for French spirits. Except, now that sanctuary had been shattered...by a beauty with a mouth to tempt a saint into sinning.
People did not put demands to him and they certainly did not gainsay his wishes. Yet this insolent fool had done both. Derek stopped beside the door and reached for the handle. I should sack her. He paused with his fingers outstretched and a contemplative frown on his lips. The fact that, in her short time in his household, she’d entered these forbidden halls indicated she was not a woman to do as bid—even if she was a servant on his staff. But to turn her out would be a manner of beastliness that even he was incapable of. Only a true fiend would kiss her and then sack her. That callous act would mark him the kind of dark villain George had been when in the living.
He grinned wryly. Perhaps there was a sliver of good left in Derek’s rotted soul, after all.
“That wasn’t very nice of you.”
No, he hadn’t been kind to Lily. Except, he hadn’t been kind to anyone in so long he didn’t think he could recall those simple gestures; smiling, laughing and bowing, if he needed to save his other eye. He—Derek froze. He stared unblinkingly at the door. Did the conscience he’d thought long dead, in fact, live and still speak? His frown deepened. And yet, if those guilty remnants of his past belonged to him, why did they whisper about him in a soft, lyrical, singsong children’s tone.
“Did you hear me?”
He turned slowly around and scanned the corridor. Who in blazes—?
Small fingers tugged at his coat. “I am right here.” Derek jerked his gaze lower and then widened his eye. A stern, angry, little girl frowned up at him. For a moment he was transported back to the nursery above stairs—to another girl with those thick brown ringlets.
“I am a dragon! A fiery monster....”
“I never knew a dragon could speak...”
“Oh, yes...”
The air trembled with the memory of his sister’s laughter.
“Can you not see me because of your eye?” The rabidly curious inquiry made by the girl pulled him to the moment.
“I can see you,” he barked. “I—” Swiftly he closed his mouth as he realized he was a handful of words away from answering to a child.
When he said nothing else on it, the girl tugged his fabric once more. “You what?”
“I want you gone.” That menacing whisper turned the girl’s cheeks white. She released his coat and stepped away. Grateful that this tiny little person would take herself off, Derek turned around.
“And that wasn’t nice, either.”
Perhaps Lily’s madness had proven contagious and infected his sister’s damned daughter. For he’d occupied the same home as the child for weeks and, in that time she’d engaged but a handful of words with him, in meetings he’d abruptly ended. Oh, he was aware of her lurking in the shadows, stealing peeks the way all people inevitably had of the grotesque Duke of Blackthorne, gawking like he was an oddity. He’d studiously avoided her. It was a perfect arrangement for a man who craved nothing more than a solitary existence and a child who feared monsters.
Or it had been the perfect arrangement. Until now. He flexed his jaw
.
The child tapped his arm. “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”
His sister’s child had been a good deal easier when she had fewer words. Were all children this boldly stupid? His mind spun as he tried to recall the youth he’d been. Fearless. Unrepentant. Yes, stupid indeed.
Annoyance flashed in the girl’s blue eyes with silver flecks. Derek started. He knew those eyes. Or at least had known them at one time. They had been nearly the same shade of blue to meet him in a mirror every morning. The Winters eyes. He, George, and Edeline had possessed eyes the same shade of blue that it had been remarked upon by all who knew them. Now his siblings’ eyes had been forever closed. The other only had one left to show for his efforts fighting Boney’s forces. He tightened his jaw.
A brown curl fell over the child’s brow. “Don’t you know it is rude to stare?” She blew at the strand. The stubborn curl promptly fell back into place.
If he remembered how to laugh, this would have been one of those moments when he would have tossed his head back and roared with the hilarity of this child handing out lessons on proper behavior. A girl such as her didn’t require a nursemaid. She could be one.
His ward scrubbed her hand over her nose. “You don’t say very much, do you?”
Her question, teeming with curiosity, jerked him back to the present. “I did say something,” he hissed. “I want you gone and I have a meeting with—”
“Mean Mr. Davies?”
At the very moniker he and his siblings had given Davies years earlier, another unexpected smile pulled at his lips.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 13