“And?” he prodded impatiently.
“The two are going toe-to-toe and I believe he intends to dismiss the lady.”
He stilled. Dismiss her?
“Yes, Your Grace. Dismiss her.” Derek frowned, unaware he’d spoken aloud. “Sack her. Send her packing and—”
He straightened. “I bloody well know what the word means.”
“Yes, of course.” The servant eyed him with a dubious expression that called into question Derek’s previous claims. Or mayhap he called into question his caring over the young woman’s banishment in the first place. The ruthless, unfeeling person he’d become, proved Harris correct in his opinion. Derek wouldn’t give a jot about a woman, a stranger, who’d only recently entered his household.
He opened his mouth to tell the butler to get the hell out, but something called the words back. If he uttered that dismissal, Harris would go and, ultimately, Lily Benedict would also go—but permanently from his household. A muscle ticked at the corner of his eyelid. What manner of weak fool had he become that a kiss from a young woman should so utterly captivate him?
The memory of that embrace seared his memory. Apparently, even monsters still felt—something. Desire. Passion. Hunger. He let loose a string of curses that turned Harris’ cheeks crimson. “Where in blazes are they?”
“They’ve been closeted in one of the parlors for the past ten minutes or so, Your Grace.” He dropped his voice to a furious whisper. “And there is yelling, because...” His butler blushed. Ah, yes, because even this man had witnessed that forbidden moment in Derek’s halls. Caught kissing a woman in my bloody employ. A dull flush heated Derek’s neck, proving him annoyingly human once more. “Yelling,” Harris finished lamely.
And in a household where none except Derek was guilty of that incivility, such a truth would prove shocking.
He cursed. After their meeting in his office, Davies’ first order of business had apparently been to sack Lily Benedict. No doubt because he’d seen the lady in question in Derek’s arms and had deemed her unsuitable. I gave him leave to see to her as he sees fit. If he dismisses her, I’ll never be again tempted by all I’ll never have... And yet... A growl worked its way up his chest. He limped across the room, all the while cursing the wound that slowed his steps. He gritted his teeth, wanting nothing to do with guilt and remorse or any other weakening sentiment that meant he, in any way, cared—about people. His actions. Life.
A curse exploded from his lungs. By God, he could not let Davies send her away. For all his fury in her invading his halls, she’d been the one person to boldly challenge him. To see not a duke. Not a beast. Not even a hero. But a man. “Why did you not immediately seek me out?” Pressing through the ache of his old injury, he lengthened his stride.
Harris fell into step alongside him. “You said you were not to be bothered, Your Grace,” he reminded with an obvious admonishment to his words. Interrupting his solitude, trying his door handle, and now being chastised by not only a bloody child, but also his damned butler.
“Yes, I did,” he said under his breath. “I’m a damned duke.” And if he wanted to put blame on someone else for his own order, by God, he would. He quickened his pace, adjusting the weight being put upon his injured leg. Davies would dare send away the one person who did not quake in his presence?
Harris cleared his throat. “I believe I heard the word harlot or strumpet being bandied about.”
A red curtain of rage descended over his vision. With each step, outrage spiraled through him. It was the kind of heated fury that roused memories of a burning fire and just like the one that licked a path over his person, so, too, did this conflagration spread. “That bloody, pompous bastard.” From the corner of his eye, he detected the hint of a smile on Harris’ lips that spoke to his approval. Not that he gave a jot for whether anyone approved of his actions or decisions; this man or any other. “Do you not have a bloody door to answer, Harris?” he groused.
“I do not, Your Grace. I—”
Apparently lacking in the good common sense to not darken Derek’s doorway, Harris also lacked the ability to discern a facetious response from his employer. “I do not need a damned escort to the bloody parlor.”
The butler fell back. “Of course.”
Derek reached the top of the stairs and paused. He glanced at the three possible corridors and scowled. Well blast and damn, it appeared he did need a damned escort. He thumped the heel of his cane and looked back and forth between the hallway entrances. Mayhap he should walk in the light a bit more. At least in his own damned halls.
“If I may, Your Grace?” Harris gave a discreet cough. “They are in the White Parlor,” the butler called after him. Did he detect the faint trace of amusement in the usually anxious servant’s tone?
Shoving aside thoughts of Harris, Derek increased his stride. So, Lily Benedict would force him back to the living—whether he wished it or not.
Chapter 11
After composing herself, Lily found her way to the White Parlor. With the grating tick of the ormolu clock atop the fireplace mantel, she now stood before the duke’s man-of-affairs. Hands folded primly before her, she felt the same reviled creature she’d been when meeting with Holdsworth. And she despised this man for making her feel as though she was a person of little worth. And hated herself more for having come to believe it.
Arms clasped behind his back, he studied her down the bridge of a long, hawk-like nose. “Mrs. Benedict.” He spoke to her with the same loftiness as a vicar lecturing the patrons of his parish, rousing all the darkest, most unpleasant reminders of the father who’d cast her out.
As this cold-eyed stranger condemned her with his stare, her patience snapped. She threw back her shoulders. “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir. You know my name and yet I do not—”
“I am the duke’s man-of-affairs.” How had a man of Derek’s strength hired this person? “You do not speak unless you are spoken to.” With this one’s high-handedness, this pompous lout and a commanding duke hardly made a perfect pairing.
She snapped her eyebrows together into an angry line. “I am not a child,” she bit out. “I—”
With the solicitor’s devotion to the late Duke of Blackthorne, he’d likely been abreast of all pieces of his reprobate life...including the lovers he’d taken. Did the man know of the girl who’d been robbed of her innocence and made empty-promises by that dastard?
“I know what you are. It does not take much to deduce just why you’re here.” He peeled his lip back in a sneer and her body went hot and then cold with shame. He’d taken one look at her in her employer’s arms whimpering and pleading, and gathered she was nothing more than a whore. Humiliation slapped at her and she balled her hands into tight fists. He continued, relentless. “You come here into this household under the pretense of caring for the girl—”
“Flora,” she corrected, underscoring that reply with ice.
At her bold interruption, the solicitor shot his eyebrows to his hairline. Then, he quickly schooled his features. “You are, no doubt, here as the duke’s whore and I’d ask you to pack your things and be gone.”
Granted, she’d played as a gentleman’s fancy piece for the past six years, but rage filled her anyway at this pompous lout’s supposition. She looked at the duke’s man-of-affairs through narrowed eyes. She’d gone through life these past seven years treated as less than human for decisions she’d made in order to survive. While the Sir Henrys and the late Duke of Blackthornes of the world would be forgiven those salacious relationships for no other reasons than the station of their births and—because they were men. Theirs were no crimes, but rather commonalities expected for gentlemen. “How dare—?”
“How dare I?” he barked. “I dare because it is my responsibility to see to the Winters name and your very presence here threatens that noble family’s reputation.”
Lily curled her hands so tight she nearly drew blood on her palms.
He brushed an imagin
ary piece of lint from his immaculate, pale blue coat sleeve. How hideous that the man should prove correct about her worth. “I do not need to know more of you than that you were hired by him.” The duke’s man-of-affairs wrapped that word in icy derision, speaking volumes of his ill-thoughts and low opinion of the current duke.
This perfunctory man should be so cruel, so condescending to his current employer when the man who’d come before him had been far more a monster than ever existed? Her thin thread of control snapped. Lily took a charged step toward him. “You summon me like a naughty child and assess my worth on what? Nothing more than your supposition I’m warming the duke’s bed?”
“It is more than a supposition,” he hissed. “I saw you in his arms.” Crimson color bathed the man’s cheeks. He retreated a step and she delighted in the fact she’d unnerved the lout.
All Flora’s recent admissions about the man came rushing in and flooded her with a renewed rage and fueled her movements. “And furthermore, what manner of man are you that you would go speaking as you do about your employer to his ward and his servants?”
He sputtered. “I need not account for my actions or words to you, madam.”
“No.” She strode over to the seemingly bored servant and stopped so close the toes of their shoes brushed. “You need to account for your actions and words to the man you so disparage with each vile, ugly, hurtful word you’d level at the gentleman.” Of nearly a like height to the loathsome man, she locked her gaze with his. “You have assessed my worth on nothing more than your swiftly drawn conclusions about my presence here and the duke’s judgment in offering me the post. But you, sir, you are the one who is lacking. For you are a bully who goes about scaring servants, disparaging your employer,” and me, “and frightening the child who lives here.”
The solicitor flicked his hand. “That is neither here nor there, Mrs.,” she flinched at his deliberate emphasis on that form of address, “Benedict. The current duke,” he shuddered, as though repulsed by even the mere mention of his new employer, “has ordered me to see to you.”
Tendrils of fear wrapped about her. “What?” she asked dumbly. Why could I not close my blasted mouth and control my bloody desire? Her impulsivity, once again, would be her demise. She ran a panicked gaze over the perspiring man-of-affairs. Davies had assessed her worth and made up his mind to show her the door before she’d even spoken. Dread filled every corner of her being and spread up to her brain, momentarily freezing her thoughts so she could not process his words. “Are you saying His Grace is sending me away?” she demanded. The man’s mouth fell agape. Ah, so the decision had been all this foul, pompous bastard’s. She took a step forward. “Or are you?”
“You insolent chit,” he thundered, shaking his fist. His face turned a mottled red and she’d wager the little she had, this was not a man to so easily lose control. The old man yanked his lapels. “I speak for the duke. He gave me leave to do with you as I see fit and, so, madam, I am doing just that.”
Her stomach lurched, as with Mr. Davies’ words he dragged her back. Only it wasn’t a sneering servant, but a ruthless, heartless duke and his mother. Now, Derek would send her away. Just like them. Bitterness seeped in, numbing her fury, leaving her...empty. Then, you have always been the one to make more of a kiss than there is.
Just like before, there would be nowhere to go. She’d return to Holdsworth with no diamond and no future. Panic pounded away at her chest and filled her ears with the erratic beat of her heart. Clearly, the matter was at an end for the solicitor. Davies stepped around Lily. A desperate energy fueled her movements and she hurried to place herself in front of the duke’s man-of-affairs, blocking his retreat. “That is all?” Her words emerged as a high-pitched squawk. “That is all you’d say to me?”
Mayhap the heartless servant was the true beast. In a show of tedium with the exchange, he pulled out his watchfob and consulted the timepiece. “Mrs. Benedict, what would you have me say?” She braced for his streaming line of insults. He did not disappoint. “You preyed upon a monster of a man and whored yourself to him. Such a person has no place in this household.”
Terror receded under the rapidly building outrage and she nurtured the safe sentiment that made her stronger against such attacks upon her person. “How dare you?” She speared him with a hard look. Despite the damning embrace he’d witnessed in the halls, she’d no intention of whoring herself again. “I have done no such thing where His Grace is concerned.” Except, hadn’t she come to prey upon Derek? Mayhap not in a sexual way, but in the more loathsome, insidious way of slipping past his defenses to gain entry into his home. Guilt crept in.
Mr. Davies peered at her through his lenses and she curled her toes hard under the force of his scrutiny. “I do not know who you are, Mrs. Benedict.” Wagging a finger, he took a step toward her. Not allowing him to intimidate her, she held her position. She’d braved far more abhorrent fiends than this one. “I was not, however, born last evening. Respectable young women do not simply arrive on a gentleman’s doorstep, seeking employment. As such, I have already ordered your belongings packed.”
Her heart missed a beat at the finality there. “P-Packed?” Did that faint inquiry belong to her?
Ignoring her question, he tugged his lapels once more. “Out of my dedication to the previous duke, I will not allow a common harlot to care for Her Ladyship.” It did not escape her notice that he did not pledge his allegiance to the current Duke of Blackthorne and it spoke volumes of this man’s poor judgment that George should have commanded this man’s loyalty. “Here,” she looked on in abject confusion as he fished around the front of his jacket. He pulled out a purse and handed it over.
Lily stared unblinkingly at the small sack. Another purse. Another person turning her out of this same household. Her chest rose and fell hard, and she alternated her gaze between the velvet bag and the scowling solicitor. In this moment, she was that young girl all over again, dependent on merciless men. She closed her eyes a moment to blot out the ping of rain echoing around the chambers of her mind, the stinging bite of wind lashing at her face—
“It is more than you deserve,” he said, bringing her eyes open. He pressed the bag into her hand and then drew his fingers back, no doubt, repulsed by the slight touch of their fingers. He pulled out his handkerchief and brushed off the fabric of his gloves.
Reflexively, Lily closed her hand tight around the bag of coin. Her fingers twitched from her need to toss the meager offering in his arrogant face, and her fury redoubled.
Derek hovered outside the parlor, feeling much the way he had as a child listening at keyholes. Periodically, Lily Benedict’s angry voice reached through the wood panel.
“You dare to condescend me? You, who speaks in such a vile way about your employer...?”
He really should press the handle and cut in to the volatile exchange between his governess and man-of-affairs and yet, something kept him still. The thick wood panel muffled the other man’s stammering response.
“...With your cruel words and cold heart, you are the monster, sir. Not he...”
Her defense froze him, and while the battling pair on that opposite side of the door barked charges and furious words at one another, he stared with his lone eye fixed on the panel. He’d accustomed himself to being the loathed, despised, hatefully whispered about duke. People disparaged him. They did not defend him and, assuredly, not so staunchly as this mighty avenger in his parlor.
The pompous prig who’d been loyal to Derek’s brother and not much more, cut into his musings. “...I have already told you, madam. You are dismissed...”
Derek pressed the handle and shoved the door open. The quarreling pair started. As one, their gazes flew to the entrance of the room. He flicked a cold, disinterested stare over Davies and then shifted his sole focus to Mrs. Lily Benedict. Bright color splashed her cheeks and her chest rose and fell with the force of her breathing. As she held his stare, there was none of the horrified revulsion or sick fascina
tion he’d come to know from others. His pulse pounded hard and loud in his ears at the power of that unexpected bravery on her part. “Mrs. Benedict,” he drawled.
Lily dropped a hasty and belated curtsy. “Your Grace.” She did not look away in disgust, however. Rather, she held his gaze with an unrepentant strength. Admiration for the delicate slip of a beauty slammed into him; unexpected and unwanted.
He forced his focus to the other man. “Is there a problem, Davies?” he asked on a lethal whisper.
The color seeped from Davies’s face, leaving his skin a sick, ashen hue. “N-no problems, Your Grace.” Heavy fear coated Davies’s words, so that they emerged garbled. That unease was certainly founded. In the years since Derek had ascended to the role of duke, not once had he left his offices to meet the man—until now.
Derek narrowed his eye.
Davies shifted back and forth on his feet, periodically mopping at his damp brow with the handkerchief in his shaking fingers.
Good, the man should be fearful. With the tip of his cane, he shoved the door closed behind him with a soft click.
His man-of-affairs jumped.
Derek delighted in that show of fear and, with the assistance of his cane, he limped toward the battling pair. Mrs. Benedict stood with her delicate but strong shoulders squared. His man-of-affairs scrambled backward, tripping over himself as Derek strode past him. He’d grown long accustomed to such horrified fear from his servants, strangers...his mother. There was only one person who’d looked upon him with the hint of anything different. The very same person responsible for Davies’ presence here this day. Derek continued walking past the quaking man and stopped beside the heavy, brocade curtains. He rested his cane against the wall. Sunlight streamed through the slight crack in the curtains. That slight, deliberately gaping fabric that afforded him a view of the world; his only view. “You were instructed to deal with Mrs. Benedict,” he infused a deliberate lethal edge to his words. All his attempt at power was ruined as his leg buckled under his exertions in racing to the parlor. He silently cursed.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 16