Lily threaded her fingers through his hair and tenderly played with those tresses. “Oh, Derek.”
Bitterness ate at his tongue like acid. “That is the man I am. The monster.” A beast for not the marks he wore upon his person, but the crimes against his friends...and sister.
Lily pulled him back from the abyss of guilt threatening to swallow him. She clasped his face between her hands and looked him in the eye. He wanted to turn away but she tightened her hold upon him, not allowing him to pull free. “Oftentimes it is easier to feed that hatred and anger. Because the alternative is allowing life to destroy you, and for the struggles that go with living, there is something very grand and beautiful in life, anyway.” The dark glint in her eyes sucked at him so that he wanted to delve deeper into the story of Lily Benedict. That regretful glimmer in her aquamarine gaze spoke of someone who knew and this connection between them grew all the more, terrifying him with the intensity in this needing her.
“It does not undo what I did.” There was no atonement. He clenched and unclenched his jaw. Especially not when one’s plan nearly resulted in that former friend’s death.
“It does not. I know that better than anyone. But he is still your friend,” she said. She touched her lips to his and she tasted of forgiveness and hope and new beginnings. He wanted those new beginnings—with her.
How could she not know that as she spoke, he’d lost his heart to her? There was no fear in that. Just an absolute rightness; a sense of being whole, when he’d been empty for so long.
“You were blessed to have those friendships.”
Yes. He had been. Derek winced. In the end, he’d gone and made a muck of everything with those men. Guilt sliced away at his conscience, even as something in her words gave him pause. “And what of you, what of your friends?” Please say there was someone you had all these years. Please say you were not alone in the ways I have been.
She gave him a sad, pitying smile as though he spoke with a child’s naiveté. “Women who are mistresses to noblemen do not have friends.”
His chest tightened painfully as with that handful of words, she confirmed what he’d already known. His exile had been self-imposed. Yes, he’d been shut away and scorned by Society but had he given the words, St. Cyr and Maxwell would have taken down the Tower of London with their hands, for their strength of friendship. Even his sister had not been deterred by the ugliness of his soul and continued to come day after day, with her young daughter in tow. And how had he embraced those kindnesses? By shutting out the only people who cared. And in his sister’s case, he was too late.
Who were the people important to Lily? Surely there was a friend for her somewhere in this world? Someone who knew the strength of her courage and beauty of her spirit. A desperate need to know all he could about her filled him. “Who are your letters to?” he asked, wanting those notes to be from a friend who cared for her and not some man who’d mattered to her.
Lily paused and, for a moment, he thought she’d withhold that knowledge he craved. Then she pulled away from him and he mourned that loss as she took the distance she now clearly required. She climbed to her feet, leaving him cold for reasons that had more to do with the loss of her body’s heat. Except, unashamed of her nudity, she strode over to the forgotten box she carried about his house in the earliest morning hours. She ran her palm over the top. Her lower lip quivered and she caught the trembling flesh between her teeth. “They are to my family.”
To. Not from.
Silence echoed through the room as this revelation made her more real and her loss all the greater for that realness. It had been easier when they’d been notes to amorphous strangers and he’d been left to speculate as to the person’s identity. In this case, it was a number of persons.
“I have two brothers and a sister,” she murmured. The person who should have protected her above all others had turned her out. Lily sucked in a jagged breath. “They were but children when I left Carlisle,” she said, her tone stronger for that breath.
Derek sat and stared through his lashes at her. “And do you still write them?”
The muscles of her throat moved. “No.”
“Did they ever write back?”
He held his breath, but her silence served as her answer. A black curse slipped out on a hiss at the coldhearted man who’d sired her, who’d deny her family. A man who’d left his child at the mercy of a merciless world. Then...was his own mother’s defection any different? Blood did not kindness or love make.
“He did not have a choice, Derek,” Lily said quietly, correctly interpreting the path his thoughts had traveled. “Your mother threatened to have the bishop strip him of his vicarship.”
The air left him on a swift exhale. God, his mother and brother had been the same kind of ruthless to rival the Devil himself. Guilt twisted his insides into vicious knots. “I am so sorry,” he whispered. How empty. How very meaningless those words were. Words that could never right George’s and his mother’s wrongs.
“It is not your fault,” she said so simply it ravaged him all the more. “Just as it was not my father’s. He had his other children to consider.”
“You were a child.” And she’d been cast out on her own. Insidious thoughts slid in, of a young, scared Lily, forced into the role of mistress by an old, lecherous gentleman. Rage descended over his eye momentarily blinding him so that he wanted to choke the life from that bastard’s body.
“But so, too, were they,” she said pulling him to the moment.
“They aren’t any longer,” he gritted out and came to his feet. He strode across the room and scooped up his previously discarded garments. With a growl, he tugged his shirt overhead. “You make excuses for them.” Her family had failed her in the worst possible ways. Nay, his family had failed her and her life had been one of hell for that cruelty. Grief contorted the scarred muscles of his face. To keep from descending into madness, he collected his trousers and struggled into them; when the stricken look in her eyes froze him.
“Sometimes excuses are necessary,” she said, as she set her box down and came over to collect her own garments.
Derek retrieved her night-rail and drew it over her head. It slid in a soft rustle over her slim body, shielding her resplendent nudity from his gaze. What a tragedy to cover up such beauty. He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. “But not always. Just as some crimes cannot be forgiven.”
The color leeched from her cheeks and she took a staggering step backward. “I should go,” she said. Averting her gaze, she quickly gathered her box.
He opened his mouth, but before he managed any words, Lily raced across the room, pulled the door open, and fled. Derek furrowed his brow and stared at the entrance of the room. With the speed with which she’d taken flight, she may as well have been a fey creature of fantasies; equally elusive and imagined. He stood there a long while after she’d gone.
In this past hour he’d learned more than he’d ever known about Lily Benedict. And yet, oddly it felt as though he knew nothing about the lady, all the same.
Chapter 20
The morning sun just peeked over the horizon. At the early hour, Lily appreciated the quiet that blanketed London’s streets.
From where she stood by her bedroom window, she shot her gaze across to the gilt-bronze mantel clock. The golden Pan cheerily fluted for a menagerie of animals alongside a golden tree and that bucolic simplicity momentarily froze her.
When Sir Henry had visited her chambers and slaked his base needs with her body, nothing more than a vessel for that lust, she’d lie abed staring up at the whitewashed ceilings. In those dark, lonely moments she’d hunger to return to the obscurity of that graceful, peaceful English countryside, where no one knew the crimes of her past, or present. The golden moment captured of Pan conjured memories of the simplistic country life she’d left. The one she’d dreamed seven years of returning to. The one she’d not thought of in days.
The clock ticked away the passing moments and she
continued to stare. How could a week come to matter so? How could her hatred for a family who sustained her now throw her into this upheaval where she no longer knew up from down?
She buried her fists into the fabric of her taffeta cloak and it wrinkled noisily in the early morning quiet. With every day she came to know Derek, that emotionless land she planned on running away to was nothing more than a hollow, empty place that would never heal her hurts or right the wrongs she was guilty of.
“It is not enough,” she whispered. The Duke of Blackthorne had crumbled away at her defenses and in so doing, had proved her the same weak fool without a care for her future or safety or security. She squared her shoulders. Did she truly believe Derek would see her as an honorable woman of strength if he discovered the truths she deliberately withheld? A wry, humorless smile formed painfully on her lips. No. What man would feel anything but contempt and disdain for a woman who’d spread her legs for his brother and who’d then entered his own household with the most dubious of intentions, and now did the same for him?
Cloak pulled close about her person, Lily walked stiffly to the entrance of her room and braced for her upcoming meeting. Before her courage deserted her, she pulled the door open. The hinges creaked noisily in the quiet and she froze, her breath held. When no accusers came forward with their fingers outstretched, Lily slipped from her bedchamber. Drawing the door slowly closed behind her, she glanced back and forth down the hall.
Of course, at this early hour, the handful of servants on Derek’s staff would be thoroughly occupied with the preparations for the day.
Remorse twisted around in her belly as she padded softly down the carpeted halls through the townhouse. She made her way below stairs and as she approached the marble foyer, she braced for discovery. Heart pounding for the fear of discovery, she drew open the broad, heavy door and stepped outside.
The unseasonable chill of the early spring morn yanked at the hem of her cloak and, ignoring the early morning cold that penetrated the fabric, she all but sprinted down the steps. Her stomach twisted. These same steps she’d climbed years earlier and been thrown unceremoniously down, during a vicious rainstorm. With the street still echoing with her remembered cries and weeping, Lily now cast her gaze up and down the quiet streets in search of a hired hackney.
Biting her lower lip, she continued down the empty cobbled streets. Of course, hired hackneys had no place outside the lavish townhouses of these Mayfair residents. Each step she took away from Derek’s home, the tension and guilt weighting her shoulders lifted, so that she was left with nothing but the invigorating cleanliness of the crisp air. Each step carried her away, drew her farther away from the web of deception she wove upon that broken, lonely home inhabited by a very much hurting man and sad little girl. Only, when she returned, she’d resume her lying and scheming. Her throat worked. No, there was no escaping who she truly was and what evil she did. There was this temporary reprieve.
Lily drew to a stop, as her gaze settled upon a hackney. The wind continued to whip about her and she burrowed deeper into her cloak. She cast a glance back down the path she’d traveled. For the sliver of a heartbeat, she considered boarding that carriage and disappearing from Derek’s life and Holdsworth’s vile scheme and even darker threat. The ugliest memories of her days on the mail coach and approaching George crept to the surface. The cloying fear. The pain of an empty belly. Her breath grew ragged in her own ears. She could not go back to that. This time, it would ruin her in ways she’d not already been thoroughly destroyed.
She returned her gaze forward. Drawing in a deep breath, she rushed across the empty street and approached the coarse stranger. The pockmarked driver lounged against his black, numbered carriage with a cap tipped low over his eyes. From where he stood, the man ran an assessing eye over the fabric of her garments. No doubt, unchaperoned as she was, he took her for some scandalous miss. He would only be one part right on that score. She fished coins from her reticule and held them out. “Highgate.”
His eyes flared with a faint surprise, but wordlessly he collected the coins and pocketed them. He helped her into the hack. Moments later, the carriage sprang forward and he sent the conveyance rattling through the empty streets.
Lily sat stiffly on the uncomfortable bench. Her fingers curled reflexively about the purse in her hands. Derek had thrown her world into upheaval, so she questioned her selfish efforts for survival.
With his gruff whisper echoing around the chambers of her mind, she pressed her eyes closed and willed his voice away. But then there was still the remembrance of his passionate loving. And his gentle caress. And his impassioned defense.
She was never more grateful than when the hack drew to an abrupt, jarring halt outside the high, metal gates of Highgate. The carriage dipped as the driver left his perch and pulled the door open. He reached a hand inside. “Ma’am?”
Lily placed her fingertips in his and accepted his assistance. She fished out more coin. “There will be more, when I return,” she pledged.
Greed lit his dark eyes and he touched the brim of his hat. “Very well, ma’am.”
She moved briskly, her gaze trained forward. Then, wasn’t that the way of their world? All people could be bought. Servants, lords, hackney drivers—and whores. She bit down so hard on her lower lip. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. For ultimately, she’d entered a man’s house, under the guise of caring for his ward, a girl who’d been so cruelly robbed of both parents, all to save herself.
She picked her way through the cobbled streets and pulled the hood of her cloak down further over her eyes, even as she knew the action unnecessary. Respectable lords and ladies did not arise at this godforsaken hour and those who might, would certainly never be paying a visit to Highgate.
...I do not see a whore. I see a woman and a survivor. And perhaps that is why we two can move along in some harmonious rhythm when I despise all who cross my path, because we are not unlike...
Guilt unfurled in her belly, gripping her with a vicious ferocity. Except Derek. Derek didn’t see a whore when others did. Did he not make love to you too, with no offer of anything more?
She squared her jaw. He was different; unlike all the others before. Forcibly tamping down the whispering doubt, she came to an abrupt stop outside Highgate Cemetery. The overhanging elm trees cast an almost park-like quality upon the space.
Lily drew the fabric of her cloak closer about her person and huddled within herself. Morning birds chirped their cheerful song, at odds with the consecrated ground that marked the end of a person’s life. She wandered through the gates. Her purposeful steps ground up dirt and gravel. She moved past the countless crosses and towering stone angels until she came to a stop.
She stared frozen at the well-tended headstone of a child. The weeping stone angels bespoke the wealth of parents who’d loved that child. Emotion wadded in her throat. Lily stole a glance about and finding the grounds empty, she dropped to a knee beside the headstone.
The wind stirred the leaves overhead and they rustled in the quiet. Silently, she dusted her palm over the traces of dirt and mud spattered on the carved name and date.
16 November 1813...
Her heart stuttered at that date. A day of agony and grief all around. For these parents who’d buried their babe and for Lily who had climbed inside Sir Henry’s carriage and buried the dreams in her heart, and the hope of a child and husband. Tears clogged her throat. I want to do it again. I want a start where there is only me and Derek and none of the ugly past between us. Lily drew in a shaky breath.
Methodically, she moved on to the handful of weeds that had sprung from the ground at the foot of the headstone. She tugged them out, finding a soothing balm as the tenacious weeds gave way and relinquished their hold. Efforts completed, she sank back on her haunches and dusted her palms together. “I promised I would one day have my retribution,” she said into the quiet.
The birds chirped in reply.
“I was so very clo
se.” Lily settled onto the ground, and drew her knees close to her chest. “And now I have never been farther away from it.” She dropped her chin atop her knees. For swearing revenge and carrying out shameful acts of theft, were entirely different scores when one knew a person, and foolishly she’d allowed the duke and his ward inside. She’d not let herself see them as the means to the end she so very desperately needed, but rather as a hurting man and child. They were human to her in a way that made her intentions nigh impossible.
Last night, with only the two of them and the quiet of the night, Derek, a man feared by all, had let her into his world in a way she’d wager he’d not let any other person. Racked with guilt and shame over that gift, Lily swallowed hard. The Duke of Blackthorne was a man who did not trust and when he should choose to bestow that gift, he erroneously turned it over to her undeserving hands.
She rubbed her chin back and forth over the rough, wool fabric. After George’s betrayal and deception, she’d lived her life without honor, all in the name of survival, so bitter and hurt and angry that she’d convinced herself all that mattered was survival. For, in the absence of her family or anyone who truly cared for her, what else had there been?
In granting her the post in his household, in not turning her out even knowing what she was, Derek had proven he cared. He was not the beast they claimed he was. So it begged the question: how could she turn that sought-after heirloom over to Holdsworth and betray Derek, in this cruel, unforgiveable way? Lily stared out into the distance at the tall graves of unknown strangers. If she did this thing, what good was left of her soul? What good was there in living that secure life, tucked away in a far-flung corner of England if every day she arose hating herself for betraying the one man who was good?
I cannot... She braced for the staggering panic and a screaming protest to resonate about her mind. Instead, an unexpected calm stole through her, leaving her with an odd peace. The branches shifted overhead once more and the leaves noisily shook, as though in agreement and support.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 26