“Hello, Lily.” The satiny edge to his greeting cut across her turbulent thoughts. From the space between them, he eyed her through those magnificent black lashes. He spoke as though they met in a ballroom and not here in the middle of his corridors in the dead of night.
“Derek,” she said softly, drifting closer to him. He thumped his cane twice in a way that had once menaced, back in a time when she’d heard the whispers and heard nothing beyond the snarls. She came to a stop before him.
His fierce blue-black eye dipped to the box in her hands. “You come bearing your box, once more.” His emotionless tone gave little indication of his thoughts.
Blinking, Lily followed his gaze and ashamed heat burned through her body as she recalled what had sent her roaming the halls of his home this evening. “And you prove that you do not sleep, once more,” she returned with a soft smile.
He reached past her and her breath caught as his powerful arm grazed her shoulder. But he merely shoved the door open. “Join me.” That old familiar icy steel underscored those words, more command than anything else, and unease turned in her belly. The recently dulled instinct of wariness learned these past years reared once more.
Lily cast a glance over her shoulder. “I-I should return to my chambers,” she murmured and turned to leave. “I—”
“I insist.” He shot his cane out, blocking her retreat.
Unbidden, her gaze went to the yellow-eyed serpent etched into his cane. An ominous chill spread slowly in her veins, icing her. Do not be silly. You do not fear this man. Not any longer.
With that false bravado, she shifted her burden and slipped inside the room. Derek entered behind her, shutting the door with a soft click. He moved past her, striding so close, his broad biceps brushed her arm. He continued walking and came to a stop on the other side of his desk, alongside that intricate revolving bookcase. Unbidden, her gaze wandered to that object and tendrils of foreboding plucked at the corner of her conscience.
“Come, Lily. Never tell me you’ve joined me on so many other evenings and now you will hover at the doorway like a thief in the night about to make off with my family’s jewels?”
The tendrils stirred all the wilder, blinding in their power. She blinked several times and gave a slow shake of her head. “N-No.”
Derek winged a black eyebrow up. “No?” he drawled.
A pit formed in her belly. Did she imagine the contempt of that single-word utterance? Do not be a fool, Lily. It was nothing more than her own sense of guilt that caused this rapid staccato beat of her heart. She cast a hesitant glance back at the doorway, contemplating retreat. This cold, icy version of the man she’d come to love... Her thoughts skidded to a jarring halt and her breath caught painfully.
“Lily?” His harsh inquiry jarred her from the panicky thoughts. “Please,” he swung the tip of his cane to the winged back chair opposite his immaculate desk. “Sit.”
She wet her lips and glided hesitantly forward. With each step, he eyed her through a thick lid, the way a predator honed in on its prey. In a bid to protect herself from the frostiness in that once warm stare, she drew her arms close. The wood box of her youth bit sharply into her chest and she welcomed the distraction of that slight sting of discomfort.
Derek sat, then leaned back in his chair, the perfect master of his lair, and sitting stiffly before him as she was, there was an icy dread she’d never before known from him, even on that first, fearful day in this very room. Silence stretched on with her pulse pounding in her ears, deafening, punctuated by the tick-tock of his long-case clock so that she thought she was one more beat from that grand piece away from madness.
He sprawled back in his chair, elegant in repose and continued to assess her. “Open the lid,” he said without preamble.
She blinked once. Twice. And then a third time. Open...?
Then all icy indifference gone, he lunged forward in his chair and she jumped. “I said, open the lid,” he thundered. Fire snapped within the endless blue orb of his eye. Her mind screamed a protest to the frigid disdain that threatened to freeze her from the inside out.
Oh, God. Her heart climbed into her throat and she slowly shook her head back and forth. She silently pleaded with a Lord who’d proven Himself unreal too many times before. For there could be no forgiveness in this. Please no.
“Yes, madam.”
Madam? She’d spoken aloud. “Derek,” she said hoarsely. Her hands of their own volition scrabbled at her throat. “You do not understand.” Because you did not tell him all...
“Open it,” he thundered.
Lily jumped and, with shaking digits, lifted the lid. The click filled the room like a shot in the night. The silence damning. A tear slid down her cheek, then another, and another. How very close she’d been to having all she’d ever dreamed of. Him. A family with him and Flora. Foolish, foolish, woman.
The room echoed the still of quiet and their rapidly drawn breaths. Slowly, he climbed to his feet. “Derek,” she tried again past a thick throat. But there were no words. There was no explaining. There was just Lily, the harlot, now thief, and the situation so very damning in ways she, nay they, could never recover from. Wordlessly, she lifted the bauble that had brought her into his life and forever doomed their love.
The air left his lips on a hiss as he peered at the evidence clenched in her fingers. She dropped her gaze. The magnificent piece shifted in and out of focus, blurred by her tears. She let it drop to his desk. Derek stood as immobile as the stone lions that flanked the front steps of his townhouse, and for one long, horrific moment she believed he would not let her speak, that he’d turn her away just as everyone before him. She slid her eyes closed and another tear rolled down her cheek. Only he had more reason to cut her from the fabric of his life than any of the others before him.
He sat down once more and spoke, bringing her eyes open. “Who was Sir Henry Holdsworth to you?” The rough, guttural evidence bore so much pain and despair that it cleaved her heart in two. Derek continued, not allowing her to respond. “And Lucas Holdsworth? Who are they?”
Her stomach churned with nausea. There was something vile in hearing this man who held her heart utter the name of her late protector. Unable to meet the fury in his eye, she looked down at her bare feet. “Mr. Lucas Holdsworth...he is the son of Sir Henry, m-my former protector,” she said softly. She curled her hands into tight fists with such force her nails dug into the palms of her hands. It was important Derek at least knew that. “He asked me to come into your home, to take from you, and I had such hatred for all who shared George’s blood, I convinced myself I could do that.” Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them back, despising the mementos of weakness. “But after knowing you, I could not betray you.” Her voice shook with an entreaty as she willed him to see. Willed him to see that her soul was inextricably tied to his.
The evening she’d abandoned her efforts to help Holdsworth, she’d convinced herself this part she could withhold. She’d deceived herself into believing that in disassociating herself from him, she could be free of the crime that had driven her into this household. What a horrible moment to realize how foolish she’d been with such a hope.
At his silence, she raised her head. A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye-patch, in that telltale sign of the tension in his tightly leashed frame. Please do not shut me out. She wetted her lips. “My protector pledged to see me cared for so I’d never have to warm another man’s bed.” Shame turned her neck hot. “And it was a pledge he broke.” Just as all men gave those broken promises. A spasm of agony racked her heart. Except Derek. He’d never been anything but honorable, believing in her when no one else had. And in the end, she’d betrayed him.
“Why did you come here?” he asked, harshly.
“Mr. Holdsworth...I-I was never his lover.” Her teeth clattered loudly and her body shook with the force of her trembling. “S-surely you see that I could not betray you.” Her words shook with an entreaty as she willed him to see.
When in his silence it became apparent that he’d say nothing else, Lily continued to shake. “There is no excuse to pardon what brought me here,” she said, not knowing where she found the courage to speak the words spilling forth. “There is no justification, Derek,” she managed hoarsely, pressing her eyes closed. “Don’t you see? I could not do it.” A tear slid down her cheek, then another, and another. “I could not do it,” she whispered. He is everything I’ve ever wanted and I’m going to lose him. The inevitability of that truth knifed at her slowly breaking heart.
He leveled her with such a frigid black stare; all warmth left her so she thought she’d be cold forever. “And yet, it would seem you already have, madam.”
Her legs trembled under the force of loathing in his eyes. She could not lose him. He was everything she’d never known she needed. He completed her in ways she’d not known her life had been incomplete. “Don’t you see, I am still here? I’d already resolved to not go through with the theft, when you came upon me...”
A wry, mirthless grin formed on his hard lips. “So that is why you were so quick to defy my orders and explore my corridors.” A black curse slipped from his lips and she flinched.
“That was true, but only at first.”
He surged to his feet once more. “When did everything change, Lily? Did you see the poor, scarred, lonely monster and realize you could warm my bed and easily have whatever jewels your heart desired?”
His words speared her. “No,” the raspy word tore from her lungs. He was deserving of that ill-opinion and, yet, his words had the same effect as if he knifed her heart with a dull blade. “I only saw you,” she whispered. “That is why I could not do what he wished me to do.” Lily folded her hands and stared at the interlocked digits. “I convinced myself I could do this horrible thing. I was here but a handful of days before I realized I could not.”
He stood silent, unmoving for so long, that hope fanned in her breast. But then, his expression grew shuttered and, with wooden steps, he crossed the room and poured himself a brandy.
He was at sea, amidst a different battlefield, no less horrifying and painful than the ones of Toulouse. Unable to look at Lily, Derek fixed his gaze on the satin wallpaper. He could not stare at the face of the woman who’d made him love and laugh and believe again, only to yank his world apart with her deception. In one quick movement, he finished his drink in a single swallow, welcoming the fiery trail it blazed down his throat. He reached for the crystal decanter when she spoke, freezing him mid-movement. “Please, do not send me away.” Not like the others. The words were as true as if she’d roared them into existence. “I love you.”
Ah, God. The hope she’d stirred to life, fanned once more; powerful under her seductive pull. With every shred of the person he was, Derek wanted to cling to her words as truth. Nausea turned in his belly. She’d been the only person since his return who’d truly looked at him. One utterance away from becoming the snapping, snarling beast he’d been accused of being these years, Derek grabbed the nearest decanter and poured himself another glass. The muscles of his stomach clenched. Why would a beautiful, spirited woman like Lily Benedict come into his home? Why would she take him in her arms, the scarred ogre he was, if it hadn’t been born of another reason...
The floorboards creaked and the flutter of fabric filled the room, indicating Lily had moved. “Will you not say something?”
He closed his eye, destroyed in ways the fire that had scarred him hadn’t been able to. Derek gripped his cane reflexively, his mother’s words slamming into him like a kick to the gut. ...you came back this monster. Surely you do not expect you can go about Society looking so...? “It was all a lie,” he whispered. He gripped the snifter so hard, the blood drained from his knuckles.
“No,” Lily positioned herself between him and the sideboard so close her breasts brushed his chest. She took his face in her delicate and perfect hands. “It is not true.”
He flinched as the satiny smoothness of her touch upon his bumped and raised flesh highlighted the absolute lie to her protestations. Derek shook his head, wishing to be the cold, heartless man he’d been before her so that her betrayal didn’t even now rouse this agonizing pressure in his chest. “That is enough,” Derek said, his words hoarse and weak.
The muscles of her throat bobbed. “I need you to understand. My reasons for being here changed.”
He gave his head a sad shake, dislodging her touch, and only feeling all the colder for that loss. “All along I believed you were here for freedom from the position you’d had as a mistress and I did not condemn you for the life you lived.” Her lower lip trembled and he shifted his focus away from that telltale sign of her misery or else risk becoming further lost in this deceptive masquerade she’d sucked him into, where reality was nothing more than a dressed up falsity. “But you were not here for anything other than revenge against my brother and a thirst for a diamond.”
“No,” she whispered. “I never wanted it.” Her eyes, windows into her soul, bled with regret and pain. Then, with a guilty glimmer in the endless depths, she slid her gaze away from his.
At last, it all made sense; the ease with which she’d defied his orders and wandered the halls of his house. All the times he’d found her in his empty office. It had never been about him. No. She’d been here for no other reason than to steal from him. The pain of that lanced his heart and he wanted to toss his head back and howl like a true, savage beast. “Get out,” he said in hushed tones.
Lily jerked as though she’d been struck but, with a hasty curtsy, grabbed her box and bolted for the door. “Of course.” Her barely there whisper came so faint he strained to hear. She stumbled over herself in her haste to back away from him. She reached the front of the room and paused with her fingers on the handle. “It was not a lie,” she said, not taking her gaze from the wood panel. “I have been a whore and a liar and d-d...” Her voice cracked and he squeezed his eye shut, pain ripping at his insides, shredding him. “And done a number of things I wish I could undo, but I cannot. Those are sins I will always carry with me. I came here intending to steal from you.” She drew in a shuddering sigh and the aching sadness of that sound brought his eye open. She faced him once more.
The muscles of his stomach contracted and he gripped the edge of his sideboard.
Do not let her deceive you... do not let her have you play the fool once again...
“I never wanted to be another man’s whore, Derek. I wanted so desperately to disappear and carve out a new life where no one knew who I was.” She sucked in a slow breath. “What I was,” she amended. “I didn’t believe there could be more for me.” She held his gaze squarely. “Until I met you, and you made me feel, made me see there was more. There was you, and Flora...”
The muscles of his throat worked. Ah, stop, or I will be completely and irrevocably lost.
“I came here intending to steal from you, but you were the one who stole something. You stole my heart, and whether you wish it or not, it will always belong—to you.” She turned to go, when her gaze lingered upon his well-worn leather winged back seat, and then she looked about the room. This office had been the first place he’d seen her. How very fitting that this should also be the last.
“Lily,” he said quietly, when she again made to leave. “Was any of it real?”
“Everything...” she said, her voice cracking.
More lies. He cursed roundly and her cheeks flushed red.
“I will have my belongings packed,” she said quietly and made to leave once more.
That was it? She would leave so easily, so effortlessly without any further compunction? Did you expect anything else? She’d only been here for one thing, after all. Derek growled. “Halt.”
She turned back. “Your Grace?”
Something about that grating use of his title set his teeth on edge. By God, he was The Beast and His Grace, to all. With her, she’d been different. Or I wanted her to be. Pain squeezed so hard at his hear
t, how was there not a mark of blood upon his chest? She was no different... but she was still no less useful. Her purpose still no less necessary. “You are not leaving.”
She tipped her head at an endearing angle. A black curl slipped from her artful arrangement and tumbled down her shoulder. Which only put him with reminders of her as she’d been with those luxuriant tresses draped about them. Lust slammed into him and he focused on that safe, empty desiring for her body; that was safer than the stirrings inside his chest.
He folded his arms and passed a glance over her. That up and down scrutiny brought her shoulders back. God, she was magnificent in her indignation, a regality to rival the proudest of queens. “I still have not decided what I am to do with you.” For when she was gone, the last glimmer of light in his otherwise dark world would be forever extinguished. He rolled his shoulders.
Lily pursed her lips and, for a long moment, he expected her to launch into a familiar scolding. “You would keep me a prisoner here, then?”
Derek propped his hip on the sideboard. “Would you find Newgate preferable?”
The color leeched from her cheeks. She sucked in her breath and agony sluiced through him. Even with her lies and deception, God help him, he loved her so. Madness. His judgment was as faulty as his vision. For he could no sooner send the lady off to Newgate than he could carve out his remaining eye.
“We are through here for now, Miss Benedict.” Now and forever.
Tears filled her eyes. “Derek,” she whispered, pulling that damning box closer to her chest. “I—”
Swallowing a curse, he shoved away from her. “You are dismissed.”
Lily hesitated and, for one sliver of a broken heartbeat, he thought she would issue protestations; thought she would vow her love and explain away the damning evidence in that bloody box she carried so close.
Instead, she dropped her gaze to the floor and walked from the room, leaving him as he’d been for a long time before her—alone.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 29