“O-of course.” The man sketched a bow and then backed from the hallway.
Derek stalked over to his jacket and shrugged into it. “I say we are finished here, Carlson.” Ignoring the knowing glint in the young doctor’s eyes, Derek, with the use of the serpent-headed piece, fetched his discarded garments. “I am not thinking about Lil—Mrs. Benedict.” His skin heated, like he was a boy just out of the schoolroom.
His insolent doctor spread his hands before him. “Ah, but I didn’t say that you were.”
Gritting his teeth through the difficulty of his movements, Derek stomped past the grinning man and set out in search of the lady who’d forced him out into the living, once more. With the aid of his walking stick, he limped through the winding corridors and reached his office.
“Where are you going?”
Derek stumbled and he caught himself against the wall to keep from falling.
His sister’s daughter stood in the middle of the hall. Curiosity set her eyes aglitter. His world had been infiltrated; there was nothing else for it—a spirited siren, a tenacious man-of-affairs, an insolent doctor, and this mischievous child. Odd, there was none of the age-old fury at that truth.
He strode into his room, and found his chair. “Shouldn’t you be with,” Lily, “your governess?” The mere utterance of her name sent an explosion of heat unfurling inside his chest, a lightness that freed him in ways he’d been chained to for so very long.
Flora picked her way tentatively toward him. She feared him. It read in the pale hue of her skin and the slight tremble to her fingertips. Her reaction hit him like a punch to the gut. Even as hers was the common and expected reaction.
Yet, afraid of him, as she was, she’d still brave his company. Instead of taunting her with the evidence of his disfigurement as he’d done in the past, Derek angled his face in a way to shield her from the scarred portion of his visage.
“Mrs. Benedict is gone.”
His heart stilled and forgetting his previous resolve to keep his face averted, he swung his attention to the girl. “What do you mean, gone?” Did that raspy, panicked inquiry belong to him?
Fear wreathed her cheeks. “She went out early this morning.” Flora went still and her lower lip trembled ever so slightly. “Do you believe she’ll not come back?”
Gone? Unease settled like a stone in his belly. Where in blazes would Lily go?
“It is not Sunday,” Flora confirmed with a nod. “And you’ve only given Mrs. Benedict Sundays free, so she should be here.”
“I—” Derek furrowed his brow. “How in hell do you know such a thing?”
A twinkle replaced the prior fear radiating from her blue eyes. “I heard it when you spoke with her.”
He swallowed a curse. Christ. The girl was better suited for the Home Office than any nursery. His cravat suddenly grew tight and he scoured his mind, trying to figure just what in the hell else the girl had overheard.
She hefted herself into the leather winged back chair opposite his desk and began pumping her legs furiously.
“I-I am certain she will return shortly.” His panicked heartbeat made a mockery of that empty assurance he issued for both his and Flora’s benefit. He cleared his throat. “Aren’t there other...?” She cocked her head, looking at him expectantly. “Children’s things you should be doing?” What was it children did? He no longer recalled those most innocent of times.
“I am alone. The servants are busy.” Flora shrugged.
“And so you choose to keep me company?”
She grinned. “And so I chose to keep you company.” As she glanced about his office, her smile dipped. With her gaze she took in the cane that had so displeased her and the hearth crackling in the fireplace. Flora settled her stare on the bronze and iron ormolu inkwell and frowned. “Lions,” she sighed.
He followed her gaze to the gold lion lid atop that gold and black base. “Do you have problems with lions and snakes?” he drawled, sitting back in his chair.
The girl abruptly stopped her distracted swinging movement and furrowed her brow contemplatively. “I prefer happier things.”
He no longer knew what such things were. Except...Lily’s beguiling smile slid into his thoughts. No, that was not true. Not anymore. He felt adrift at sea; with these emotions he no longer knew which way was up and which was down.
Uncomfortable with the tumultuous sentiments, he glanced over at the door, never longing for Davies’ presence more than he did this moment. This child forced him to acknowledge things within himself that he’d not allowed himself to in almost eight years. Surely Lily would return soon and he’d be spared from delving any further into the interests that made up this child. What if she doesn’t return? Panic cloyed at his throat.
“Books and flowers.”
He whipped his head back, just as his niece hopped to her feet. “I like books and flowers.” Of course. The urns filled with various blooms in his otherwise dark, dreary house. The servants had gathered the girls’ love of those flowers and filled his house with them. And truth be told, he’d not protested because there had been something purifying and hopeful in them. Something he’d never admit to a soul—not even this child. “My mother would read to me every morning amidst the gardens. She likes flowers,” Flora said pulling him to the moment. She dragged the tip of her toes back and forth over the floor. “Or rather, she liked flowers.”
With those words, memories of running through the hills of Carlisle with Edeline slipped to the surface. His sister’s exuberant laugh trilled through his mind. A swell of pained emotion ran through him at the unnecessary reminder of her loss. The man he’d once been would have had all host of appropriate soothing responses; even for a child. Now, the man who’d dwelled too long in the shadows sat in silence.
“That is why I’m named Flora, you know.”
God, the girl was tenacious. She required no one’s assistance to keep a discourse flowing. In fact, she would have impressed any Society matron with her effortless skill. Disappointment lined her chubby face and his chest tightened. She wished him to respond. He’d been too long without words. He hardly knew the proper ones to assemble to raise a smile and erase hurt. Hell, he couldn’t even dull his own pain. Yet again, evidence of his humanity assaulted him. “Is it?” he asked.
Her eyes went wide. Then, a slow, wide smile dimpled her cheeks. “Yes. Flora means flowers,” she instructed the way a governess delivering an important science lecture might. She came around the desk and stopped beside the arm of his chair. “Do you know what I believe, Uncle Derek?”
Ah, God. There it was again. The vise squeezed all the harder, cutting off airflow.
“What is it?” he asked, his tone gruffer than intended.
Flora rested her palms on the edge of his desk, alongside those stacks of notes connecting him to his past. “I believe that is why Mrs. Benedict is meant to be here. Mama knew I would need someone to help.” Such innocent hope flared in her eyes that it sucked the remainder of the breath from his lungs. “And Mama knew you needed someone, too. And so she sent us a flower.”
A flower. Lily Benedict.
“Lily Benedict,” Flora said, in echo of his unspoken thoughts.
The words were nothing more than the inane ramblings of a child who’d see hope when there was only darkness around them. Yet... He returned his gaze to her, still smiling and innocent in the face of great loss. Perhaps there was more reason to hope and be happy, after all.
“Perhaps you might take me to a bookshop one day?” she asked tentatively. “With Mrs. Benedict. She promised we would go this week.”
He cleared his throat, making a noncommittal sound. “Perhaps.” How to explain to this child that he, the man who bellowed and thundered to bring the townhouse down, turned numb with terror at the prospect of exiting these walls?
His niece tapped her hand on the pile of notes sent ’round by Maxwell and Christian, bringing his attention to the surface of his desk. Anxiety leapt in his chest, at this t
iny little interloper not only slipping past his defenses, but at having this world he’d hidden within invaded by another. She suddenly stopped her grating drumming. “What are these?” she curiously eyed the notes.
Derek leaned over and swiped the pile. “Nothing. They are nothing,” he bit out. Nothing but reminders of the men he’d joined in a grand adventure to nowhere but sin and destruction.
“They don’t look like nothing,” Flora continued, with a child’s relentlessness. “They look like letters.”
He yanked open his desk drawer and tossed them inside.
“Who wrote you letters? Was it your friend, the marquess?”
The girl was going to give him a bloody megrim. Derek dug his fingertips into his temple to blot out the girl’s incessant questioning, when her last words penetrated his thoughts. He snapped his eyebrows into a single line. “Who...?”
“The Marquess of St. Cyr?”
A dull humming filled his ears. How did she know about...?
“Mrs. Benedict and I met him at the park one day with his wife.” A taut energy pulsed through him. That man whose happiness he’d sought to end had met his charge in Hyde Park and knowing the good, always charming person Christian had been and the one papers purported him still to be, he would have been kind to the girl. He gripped the edge of his desk. When he’d been nothing but monstrous to that same couple who’d extended her that kindness. “She gave me a picture. The marchioness,” Flora clarified.
“Did she?” he asked, his voice rough.
Uncaring that she invaded the space of one of the most feared peers in the realm, Flora came closer and all but climbed on his lap in a bid to read those notes.
With a growl, he thrust the drawer closed with a loud click. “They are not your business.” Where in thunderation was Lily? By God he’d triple her wages and her pension if she pledged to never take another damned day off.
Displeasure turned her lips down. “I think Mrs. Benedict is right.”
He shook his head, not meaning to feed her curious statement, that he’d really rather not have her finish.
“You are a good deal like Pup.”
That blasted dog she’d likened him to. “Mrs. Benedict would be wise to focus on your studies and not on her damned comparisons,” he growled. Though, in truth, it would hardly matter. He’d sooner carve out his other eye than turn her out and the glimmer in his niece’s eyes indicated for her tender years, she knew as much, too.
Disregarding his diatribe, Flora leaned up on tiptoe and peered closely at his disfigured face. “You’re always snarling and snapping and barking, but the marquess said you were once good fun.”
His throat worked. He had been. Once upon a lifetime ago, he’d been charming and capable of easy laughter. I can still be that man. He pressed his eye closed, hungering for the slip of a dream dancing before him. He’d not believed so...until her. Derek forced his eye open and found Flora closely examining him. His stomach turned at this close scrutiny, so that he wanted to bound from his seat and tear from the room away from her bold study and seek out a new, undiscovered sanctuary. He’d never find peace with the monster that met him each morn. Derek forced himself to remain still.
Then, she gave a little nod. “Yes. You are just like Pup, but do you know what, Uncle Derek?” She didn’t give him an opportunity to respond, which was good, because this slip of a child had him at an absolute loss. “You pretend you hate everyone, but you really do care.”
He didn’t care about a bloody person. Derek opened his mouth to disabuse her of that notion, but the lie withered on his lips.
For he did care.
He cared deeply for the sister he’d lost and this child who was her image in every way...and Lily Benedict. He cared about the young woman who’d arrived on his doorstep, pleading for a post, all in a bid to be free from the hell she’d been thrust into because of his treacherous, deceitful brother. And it was that very woman who’d forced him to acknowledge that for the pretense he’d put on all these years, he did care—very much.
He was saved from answering by a sudden knock at the door. Derek looked to the front of the room. “Enter.” Please!
“You did not yell,” Flora whispered at his side.
Derek started. He glanced down as Harris shoved the door open. Why...she was correct. He hadn’t cursed down the office walls for the unwanted interruption.
His butler, ashen faced as usual, sketched a bow. “Mr. Davies to see you, Your Grace.”
The uncharacteristically somber set to Davies’ features belied his usual fear around Derek.
“You should take your afternoon meal.” So he might try and pick up the pieces of his ordered world, and reassemble them into something that made sense.
A smile lit Flora’s face, staggering him once again with the innocence unveiled. “Very well, but it would be a good deal better if you were to join me.”
The muscles of his throat worked. When was the last time anyone had felt that way about him? “Yes, well...” Derek patted her awkwardly on the head and watched as she skipped off past Davies, carefully skirting the man, and then taking her leave. The door closed with a loud click. “Davies.” He gestured to the winged back chairs. “Visits on Tuesdays, now? Your visits are either a sign of your dedication or stupid—”
“It was brought to my attention that Mrs. Benedict received a suspicious missive.”
A missive. He furrowed his brow. “How—?”
With an unexpected boldness, the older man strode forward. “I make it my place to assure that your household staff is loyal. As such, it was brought to my intention.”
A memory slid in of Lily bearing that mysterious box of letters in her arms; supposed notes to her parents as she’d wandered his halls... Guilt pebbled in his belly. With all the ways in which Lily had trusted him, in everything she’d shared, he’d doubt her? Doubt her when she’d been the only one to see him as a man and not a beast. “Say what it is you’d say and be done with it,” he bit out.
“Of course,” Davies said, giving his throat a clear. “Out of respect to your late father and brother, I took it upon myself to have the young woman you’ve recently employed investigated.”
A growl rumbled in his chest and he sought the indignant fury that this man had dared question his judgment. Except, the stoic calm of this usually quaking man froze the scathing diatribe on his tongue.
“I have received news on your Mrs. Benedict. I rather think you would care to know the information, immediately.” Derek’s heart missed a beat. His man-of-affairs removed his spectacles and dusted them off with his kerchief. “I am afraid not everything is as it seems with the young woman.” Fishing around his jacket, he extracted a folded ivory note and handed it over.
Derek stared at it for a long moment and then with wooden movements, accepted the page. He unfolded it, and scanned the black scrawl. His heart thumped to a slow stop.
...I write you to warn you. The woman you’ve accepted into your home as governess intends to commit a theft. Mrs. Benedict, really Lilliana Bennett, spoke often of obtaining the Tavenier diamond and...
Oh, God. Bile burned like fire in his throat. He couldn’t read any more. Impossible. “I do not believe it.” Did that raspy denial belong to him?
Had Davies been condescending or triumphant, it would have been easier than this unexpected sadness. “Can you verify the presence of the necklace, Your Grace?”
...My brother had a taste for fine things. Extravagant things...
Nausea burned in his belly. It singed his throat until the harsh rise and fall of his ragged breathing distracted him so he didn’t cast the contents of his stomach upon the floor. “That will be all, Davies,” he said quietly.
The man gave a slight nod and came to his feet. He hesitated a moment, appearing as though he wished to say more. And then he did. “I made a pledge to your father when he lay dying that I would see I looked after his sons. I’ve not liked you, even feared you, since the moment you returned from w
ar,” Davies said with a directness Derek found himself respecting him for in that moment. “I failed your brother and cannot fail your father once again.” The old man gave him a look full of such pity that Derek would have gladly traded his remaining eye to be spared the horror of that sentiment. “But I would not see you hurt in this way.” A dull flush mottled his cheeks and he yanked at the lapels of his jacket. Giving his throat another clear, he sketched a bow. “Your Grace.”
Derek stared at the old servant as he treaded silently across the floor. Davies pulled the door closed behind him and that faint click propelled him into movement. With his heart climbing into his throat, he jumped to his feet, clasping the edge of the desk to steady himself. He lurched toward that magnificent case and fiddled with the latch. It gave with a satisfying click and he reached a trembling hand inside—and his body went cold. Hope flickered out like the just extinguished flame of a candle as the remnants of the heart he’d recently assembled cracked and split into the millions of shards they’d once been.
No.
Chapter 22
With an eerie similarity to a moment last night, Lily crept through the empty corridors, moving purposefully to Derek’s office. Her fingers trembled around the box in her hands and she gripped it harder in a bid to calm some of the turbulent unease. Derek’s ancestors stared down their hawk-like noses, recriminating with their fierce gazes this woman who now carried the revered heirloom in her hands. “Do not be silly,” she mumbled under her breath. She picked up her pace, desperate to be free of the burden that had brought her into this home. She turned the corridor and came to an abrupt halt. Her heart thumped madly.
The duke stood with his shoulder propped against the wall and a hand braced upon his cane. The towering dark perfection of him brought her to a sudden jerky halt so that she forgot the evidence of her crime she now carried in her hands. He was a portrait of midnight and masculinity that spoke of satiny warmth to the lady fortunate to hold his heart.
I want that woman to be me... The breath froze in her chest and the filigree box in her hand trembled. She adjusted her grip on it and stared boldly back at him. The air crackled with remembered passion and sexuality and warmth.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 28