She followed his stare and with high color on her cheeks, Lily sprinted over. She dropped to a knee in a flurry of cotton skirts. His gaze went to her trim ankles and the naked soles of her feet. His mouth went dry. He wanted to place his lips on the satiny soft flesh and trail his lips higher, upwards—Derek gave his head a brusque shake. God help him, he was worse than a green boy.
He shuffled over and with a slight grimace, lowered himself to the floor beside her and took in the folded notes littering their feet. The muscles of his leg screamed in protest to the uneven pressure put upon his knee and thigh. Derek swallowed back a groan, but not before she heard that faint indication of his misery.
Lily froze mid-movement and picked her gaze up. He braced for the pitying look. Yet, the lady continually threw him off balance. “I am surprised you have not scolded me yet,” she murmured as she stacked her notes.
To give his fingers something to do, Derek picked up several folded sheets. “Would it do me any good?”
A smile pulled at the corners of her lips and the sigh of it roused lightness in his chest. “No, I rather think not.” She held her hand out and he eyed her outstretched fingers. Desire ran through him. A need to take her hand as she urged and twine it about his neck and...
Lily cleared her throat and, bemused, he followed her gaze. Her notes. Of course. Derek made to hand them over, and then registered the pages; these links to who she was. Were they from a lover? It certainly would account for her tear-stained cheeks. A white-hot envy swirled in his belly. The bold, slashing strokes suggested they were in a man’s hand.
“Your Grace?” she urged.
“Derek.” Reluctantly, he turned them back over to her care. All the while, curiosity ate at him to know the contents of those pages she filed away into her box.
As he climbed to his feet with slow, precise movements, Lily quickly stood. Once he would have risen and effortlessly guided her. Bitterness twisted in his belly. Now he could barely properly limp down a hall. They stood there a long while studying one another. “I should return to my rooms.”
Perhaps it was the madness of the midnight hours or perhaps it was years of solitariness thrust upon a man who’d once very much loved life, but he did not want her to go. Did not want to be alone with his demons. “Surely you did not get what you’ve come all the way below stairs for?” he asked when she turned.
Lily stopped, her foot hung suspended. Crimson color flooded her cheeks. “I came to read through my letters,” she said quickly. And then she completed that step. There was the slightest imperceptible pause that hinted at more to her response.
What secrets did she keep? Cane in hand, he spread his arms wide. “Then, please do not allow me to stop you from your pleasures, madam.”
She eyed him with wariness that surely came from a lifetime learned of mistrust. Who had put that cynical glint in her expressive eyes? As brave as the day she arrived, Lily squared her shoulders and retreated several steps, and he mourned her departure which would thrust him back into the maudlin thoughts haunting him this evening and a familiar loneliness. She stopped then wheeled back around, that small container held like a pirate’s treasure in her arms.
His heart thumped with that growing desire to have her near.
“Will you join me, Your...Derek?” She didn’t want to be alone any more than he himself wanted to be. He balled his hands at his side. He’d spent years erecting protective defenses about his deadened heart. Yet, each moment with Lily Benedict cracked those walls and reminded him of what it had felt like to laugh and love and be loved. It was safer to leave.
Over the years, his office had been a sanctuary of sorts. He’d shut the world out of those heavy oak doors. But now, in the madness of night, he wanted her there in a place that had previously only existed for him. “Will you come to my offices, instead?” She started. Was it shock that as a duke he’d make a request and not a demand? Or was it that she, too, saw he was letting her inside his world. Then, she held her hand out and led the way. Wordlessly, he trailed behind her. Their footsteps fell in a quiet, harmonious rhythm. Lily entered his office and he followed, now knowing how those poor, doomed sailors felt at sea when thrashed against Siren’s rocks.
Derek hovered at the doorway as Lily moved deeper into the room as though she were, in fact, the rightful owner of this very space. Only a few days, earlier he would have bellowed until she fled. Now, something stirred deep within him at the connection to life she represented. Lily slid her gaze about the room, giving her the look of a one searching for something. Escape, perhaps? He carefully schooled his features as she turned about the room, taking it in, with an assessing manner. Far safer to focus on her distracted movements than the hungering for this slip of lady now raging through him, he followed her curious stare.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” His question brought her attention up from the mahogany piece that had commanded her notice.
A fire still burned in the hearth, casting a faint glow about the room. Derek shoved the door closed and limped over to his sideboard. He poured himself a brandy and then swirled the contents in a small circle. “An odd piece, is it not?” With his snifter in one hand and cane in the other, Derek limped around his desk to the gilt-metal revolving bookcase that had captured her notice.
She gave it a slight nod, eying it through her endlessly long, dark lashes. “What is it?” she asked and, at the huskiness underscoring that hesitant inquiry, desire licked away rational thought.
Derek forced himself to focus on his ragged breathing. Her hold was born of nothing more than the lust of a man who’d gone years without a woman.
Liar.
His hands trembled and he set his cane down. “Here,” he said gruffly and moved over to demonstrate the intricacy of the case. “It was designed to contain books. It belonged to my brother.” A rusty grin formed on his lips. “My brother was not much of a reader.” No, George had been a notorious rake more interested in bedding beauties and collecting fine baubles than in enriching his mind. Registering Lily’s absolute quiet, he glanced up.
Her cheeks an ashen hue, she had the look of one close to casting the contents of her stomach.
He took a step toward her. “Lily?”
She waved her hand. “Fine.”
He strained to make out that hushed whisper.
She cleared her throat. “You were saying?” Lily set her box down on the edge of his desk and moved around, coming to a stop so that her slender leg brushed his. Charged awareness unfurled at their bodies’ closeness. Heat singed his thigh from where their legs touched and blazed through him, and this was a fire he’d wholly welcome.
“Compartments,” he managed to get out. “There are compartments hidden within.”
He lowered his head and stopped with their lips a hairsbreadth apart. He sprung the latch free and his pulse, pounding loudly in his ears, muffled the sharp click. Had he ever been so aware of a woman? In the past, it had been about those fleeting moments of pleasure and instant gratification. With Lily, it was a hungering that seared his soul; an ache to know her in every way, forever. His fingers shook slightly as he drew forth the extravagant diamond. He’d never understood the fascination his family had possessed over such fripperies.
Lily’s breath caught on a gasp.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it,” he murmured, examining the forgotten piece. For his own carousing and roguish behaviors, he’d not craved those fine baubles the way his kin had. The coldness of the piece, even now, merely served as a highlight of the equally cold existence he now lived.
“There is a story that surrounds this stone.” One Davies had insisted he know after his previous employer died. It was a story Derek hadn’t cared a jot about. “It once belonged to the King of France.” Derek held it between them. As one, he and Lily dipped their heads, their gazes trained on the diamond worth more than most kings’ crowns together. The heart twisted on the long, gold chain. It spiraled back and forth, rotating in a half circle and then spinni
ng back again, and even in the dark, the opulent gem shimmered and shined. “My brother had a taste for fine things. Extravagant things.”
Lily jerked up so quickly, they cracked heads. She stumbled away from him.
He eyed her quizzically as she skirted the edge of his desk. With her long fingers, she brushed them over his desk, his belongings, nearing the handful of letters he did not burn but instead left out as a constant reminder of a friendship gone. He frowned, unnerved by the intimacy of her presence here in a room that had been his shelter and sanctuary for so long. “What are you doing?”
His sharp command brought her up short and from where she stood over by his sideboard, she turned back. “I...” She wet her lips and his gaze, unbidden, went to her mouth, taking in that slight, seductive movement. The memory of their embrace sucked at his logical thought and desire slammed into him to know the taste of her once more. He suppressed a groan. “I am sorry,” she said quietly, the evenness of her tone indicated she’d not followed his desirous musings. “I find myself wandering when I am nervous.”
How very interesting. That slight detail revealed made her more than a governess in his employ, but a woman with peculiar habits that made her—her. “It is fine,” he said gruffly, shocking the both of them with his concession.
Her keen eyes followed his every movement as he turned the lock and sealed them effectively off from the handful of servants who’d not been run off by his horrifying features and surly bellows.
The graceful column of her throat worked as she slid her gaze over to the doorway. “Is there a reason you locked the door?” There was a faint tremble to her voice.
Did she fear him? She’d be mad not to. “Are you afraid to be alone with me?” He turned a question back at her. Annoyance stirred. Perhaps it was merely the midnight weakness, but he detested a world in which she feared him the same way all others did.
Lily rested her palms on the edge of the sideboard. “I have long ago learned to be wary of all men.”
The same warrior’s bloodlust that had filled him in battle and made him able to slay men and fellow soldiers ran through him with a powerful force. Men. With that telling word, she spoke of more than her golden-haired Gabriel, an unknown to him figure who’d left a mark upon her happiness, and Derek needed to know all those secrets she held close. Nay, he wanted to. Wanted to, when he’d made it a point to not know or care about anyone these many years. Yet this woman had slipped into his household and in a matter of days, captivated him with her bravery. “Was he a previous employer?” he asked, silently loathing the bastard who’d put this wary hurt in her eyes.
She hesitated, but then shook her head once. “He was not.”
That three word revelation roused a deep-seeded, inexplicable jealousy. Derek clenched and unclenched his jaw. It spoke of a former love and a broken heart, and as such, a man he hated. A man whose notes now rested in the box on his desk, then. The urge to stride across the room, flip open that lid, and read about her past, consumed him. When it became clear she intended to say nothing more of it, he spoke. “Ah, so it was your archangel Gabriel with the face of perfection and magnificent golden tresses?” That bloody paragon she’d spoken of, with regret in her eyes. A man he despised for being the perfect man, Derek himself once had been.
Lily started. “How...?”
Yes, why should he remember such a thing? And his earlier resolve to allow Lily her privacy left him. “Who was he?” For ultimately, he wanted to know everything there was to know about the spirited, fearless woman who’d braved his lair.
Chapter 15
Tell him...Tell him, so that when he discovers the crime I’ve committed, he might at least know why. Tell him, because he deserves that truth... She curled her fingers tightly into her night-rail.
Derek stepped up to her and ran his knuckles down her jaw and warmth stirred to life within her. In all the ugly, vile couplings with Sir Henry, and even George’s rushed, thoughtless attentions, never had she been touched with the tenderness Derek now showed. Her lashes fluttered and she turned into his butterfly-soft caress. How could one of his size and commanding power be capable of such gentleness? This man, called The Beast, who snapped and snarled, who’d also become her defender against his condescending man-of-affairs. Shame lapped at her conscience. A defender when she’d not deserved it. Not this time. Mayhap at some other point in her life when she’d been pure and unsullied and worthy of that protection. “Lily?” he prodded.
The weight of her lies pressed down, threatening to drag her under with the crimes she’d commit against this man. And his ward. For he was no longer a means to her security...he was a man of courage and valor who by the marks he bore had given of himself upon the fields of battle, who knew great hurt and—she would betray him.
Lily took a step away and broke that mesmerizing, whisper-soft touch. She hugged her arms close but her efforts proved futile at driving it back. Where did one begin when confessing the shameful, sinful person they’d become? Where, when it would ultimately mean her ruin, proving her a naïve, stupid, chit, once more.
A charged energy blanketed the room, as Derek fixed his intent, piercing stare upon her.
“I am not a lady.” He stilled. “I am...was, just a vicar’s daughter.” It was the first time she’d breathed that truth to anyone since she’d boarded that mail coach. An aching poignancy filled her. That part of her story had died, when she’d been snipped from the fabric of her family like a bothersome thread at the edge of embroidery. Unnerved by Derek’s singular focus, she strode over to the hearth. “I never dreamed of...of...” She shot a look over her shoulder. “Lofty titles and expensive baubles.” Lily returned her attention to the fire. Self-loathing tightened her throat and she struggled for words. “I was content to bake in the kitchens alongside the handful of servants and wander the hillside, collecting wildflowers.” A grimace pulled at her lips. God, what a pathetic creature she’d been. “I was quite fanciful,” she said softly, staring down into the dancing flames.
The hardwood floor groaned. Her body tingled with awareness as his broad frame brushed against her back. He said nothing, but through his quiet, reassuring presence she found the courage to continue. “My father called me a dreamer,” she said bemusedly. Among the uglier, more damning charges he’d leveled. Then, her father had always known the manner of person his eldest daughter was. “And I was.”
Derek settled his powerful hands on her shoulders and she borrowed from his strength; another theft she committed. “We all begin that way.” His breath stirred against her cheek and a fluttering danced in her belly. “We are hopeful and optimistic and naïve and fail to see the perils of life, until we are scarred by them.”
His words offered a window into what he’d been and she wanted to shove it open and know even more. She tried to imagine him as the young, grinning boy in his portrait.
Derek limped over to the spot opposite her. He caressed her cheek. “But the truth is we are capable of dark, ugly deeds, all to survive, aren’t we?” The unerring accuracy of those words raised gooseflesh on her arms. For there was no darker act than having deceived a broken man and young child, all in the name of security.
Lily mustered words. “You speak of your experience on the battlefield, Derek. What I did to survive—” A spasm racked her heart, threatening to crush her chest from the pain of it. “There was no honor in it.”
“I killed,” he said flatly. His words spoke of a man who knew. A man who’d done horrible, ugly things, all in the name of survival. Anyone who’d merely heard that detached utterance would have taken them as more proof of the Duke of Blackthorne’s ruthlessness. It would have fueled the myths and whispers about a duke more monster than man. “I killed men and boys. I turned wives into widows and made mothers childless.” There was such a cool, emotionless thread to his words that raised the gooseflesh on her arms once again. “Surely what you did can never be worse than that?”
And she looked past his words and on to the
tight lines at the corners of his mouth; one corner badly burned from the hell he’d lived and even now suffered through. His eye bled the same familiar agony that stared back at her each night in her vanity mirror. No, the Duke of Blackthorne was no monster. He was a very real, broken, man who had more honor than all the other men she’d had the misfortune of knowing in the course of her life. Sadness weighted on her chest. The greatest tragedy is that he saw himself in the same, dark light as the other men of his world and not the gentleman of honor and courage and valor. One who, with his words and defense of her actions, continued to defend others.
“Tell me, Lily,” he demanded.
How did he know she needed to speak the words aloud? How did he know those secret pieces she’d not even known of herself? He touched his lips to the shell of her ear and her breath caught at the butterfly soft caress. The moment, however so slight, so fleeting, she might have very well imagined it. She gave a jerky nod. “I met... I met...” Lily layered her palms to the smooth, cool marble mantel, borrowing support. That slight shift broke the contact between their bodies and she welcomed the heat thrown by the blazing fire. Her throat worked. I met your brother...
Why could it not have been you instead? Her body jerked. God, in Heaven. That silent yearning was illogical and irrational. It was based on but a handful of meetings and exchanges and his kiss and his willingness to defend her in need and—
“Who did you meet?” The gravelly question rumbled up from his chest and she gave thanks as he yanked her back to the moment.
Under his questioning, unease stirred within her belly. She’d been fooled by a lord once and proven herself the biggest, naïve fool. Time had aged her. Made her wary. She was not the same innocent she’d been then. She drew in a breath through her lips. “I met a nobleman. A—” Duke. “A powerful lord. I was nearly sixteen. Young and foolish and hopelessly optimistic. I believed myself in love and the promises made, and—” She forced her inane ramblings to an abrupt cessation.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 21