The doctor drummed his fingertips together and contemplated him in that manner of a man of science studying a puzzling challenge. “And you find it to be a problem you fell for Lady Flora’s governess.”
He scoffed. “Come, look at me, Carlson. Do I appear a man who’d pass judgment on a person for their station?”
The other man arched an eyebrow in return. “Why, because you are scarred?”
Derek cursed. “Yes, because I’m scarred. These things matter,” he said, slashing the air with his hand. The abrupt movement sent his weight pushing over his thigh and pain gripped him, momentarily sucking his ability to think. He drew in several deep, calming breaths. “Because I’m a man who can’t walk,” he said, at last. “Because I’m a man who would rather be thrust into the middle of a battlefield than step outside the walls of my townhouse. Because I am incapable of the warmth my sister rightfully deserved and the care my niece still does deserve.”
The other man gave him a long look. “And you believe that matters to your Mrs. Benedict?”
“She’s not my Mrs. Benedict,” he gritted out. She’d never been his. Or had she? Surely soulful eyes and passionate lips could have not lied with such finesse. Derek leaned against the wall, still unable to meet the other man’s eyes. “Would you have the truth?” He didn’t wait for a response. “The lady was here for nothing more than to steal from me. She found the prized diamond she sought and all along she was only here...” His mind shied away from revealing the most intimate piece of what she’d shared—his brother and the man she’d taken as her lover. Those belonged to nobody but her—and now him.
“She was only here?” Dr. Carlson prodded.
“On a matter of revenge,” he settled for. “Against my family. And I was so desperate to know love and the feel of a woman that I allowed myself to believe the lies she fed me were truths.”
Silence descended on his revelation. Carlson was calmly stoic and logical as he always was, in all matters. “Well, how do you know they weren’t truths?”
Derek blinked.
“Did the lady make off with the diamond?”
“She discovered it.” He allowed the agony of that discovery to wash over him again with the same vicious pain.
Dr. Carlson adjusted his wire lenses. “She discovered it, committed the theft, and then left?”
...I love you...I could not go through with it...
Derek furrowed his brow. She had discovered the diamond and had it on her person, and yet, she’d remained. Why would she do that? Why if that had been the only reason she’d been here?
...I love you...I could not go through with it...
He made a sound of impatience and at his doctor’s prodding stare, then he limped off. “You don’t understand,” he mumbled.
“Oh?” The amused drawl. “You’ve hated yourself for years, Your Grace. You’ve tried to run people off and have proven largely successful.”
“Thank you.” His sister’s visage flashed to mind. Then Maxwell. And St. Cyr. All of them, he’d effectively cut off from his life.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” the doctor returned.
“I was being sarcastic,” he muttered. Long ago he’d lost all traces of his humor.
A wry grin formed on the other man’s lips. “I know.”
“Oh.”
Dr. Carlson gestured to him. “Horrible things happened to you, Your Grace. I will not deny that. Suffering no person should ever have to know, and yet you knew that pain, and still do. You’d spend the whole of your life shut away believing yourself undeserving of any warmth, believing no one can see good in you when it is you who cannot see the good in you.”
Those words speared Derek with shock. It ran through him with a potent accuracy that left him speechless. After the horror of looking upon himself and seeing the world’s disdain, he’d spent years shaping himself into that unfeeling monster. How long had he spent believing himself unworthy? Until Lily came along. Unafraid to go toe-to-toe with him, she’d dragged him by his proverbial heels from the shadows. She’d not fled.
He recalled her as she’d been yesterday with agony etched in the delicate planes of her face and her whispered words—no, those were not the actions or words of a deceiver. Why would she have entered his office with that diamond?
The air left him on a slow exhale. She wouldn’t. There had been no reason for her to return to his office with that damning piece in her possession; no place for her to be in the precise halls he’d forbade her from entering with the diamond in her hands. “My God,” he whispered. She was returning it. There was no other accounting. But he’d not allowed her to speak. She’d begged to be heard out and instead, he’d spat and hissed and snarled like the beast he’d been accused of being because it was the only protection he’d known—and because it was easier than letting her in. Only it hadn’t been easier. It had left him hollow and empty, aching for her.
Footsteps sounded at the end of the hall and he looked up, grateful for the distraction. His heart lifted on the hope that the same woman he’d ordered to her chambers had defied him yet again. Disappointment sank that hope as Harris called out, “Your Grace.” The high-pitched tenor, steeped in panic, as it always was.
Derek narrowed his eye, as the man rushed forward with...he squinted...with...Lily’s valise? He stared blankly at it. She was leaving. What reason did I give her to stay? “What is it, Harris,” he interrupted when the man drew to a panting stop before him.
“This was discovered in the corridors of the servants’ hall,” the other man blurted out.
He shook his head. What was the man on about?
“Mrs. Benedict is gone,” the man whispered.
A loud humming filled his ears like a thousand swarming bees and Derek dug his fingers into them to turn sounds into words. “Gone?” Did that sharp, desperate question belong to him? For her departure could only signal... He looked to the valise. Her bag. She’d left her bag. The niggling trace of dread worked its way around his belly. He looked to Dr. Carlson, the man of logic and reason, and found the lines of his face etched in concern.
“And Lady Flora is missing, as well.”
Harris’ frantic words jerked his attention back. He stumbled forward and caught the man by the lapels of his jacket. “What do you mean, Lady Flora as well?” he demanded sharply, giving the man a shake.
The butler swallowed hard and reached between them to fish a note from his pocket. “This just arrived, Your Grace.”
Derek swiftly released the man and yanked the sheet from his fingers. He opened the ivory vellum and quickly scanned the contents of the note. His body went cold. He jerked his head up. “When did this arrive?” he rasped.
“B-but a few moments ago.”
Derek dropped his stare to the sheet once more; the chilling foreboding worked through his being like a venomous serpent slowly spreading his poison to his entire being.
...you have something I require. If you would see the restoration of two things of great importance to you, make for Loughton. You will find a cottage at the edge of River Rodig, halfway between the marsh and the forest. If you value the safety of that which is in my care, you are to arrive alone...
Oh, God. The earth dipped and swayed, and he closed his eye, sucking in great, gasping breaths. He’d believed his life empty before, but he’d been so, so wrong. If there was no Lily and Flora, there was nothing for him. His heart would cease to function.
“Your Grace?” Dr. Carlson prodded.
He folded the page and stuffed it into the front of his jacket. His skin burned with the intensity of the men’s stares. “Carlson, we are finished here for the day. Harris,” he said quietly. “Will you have a mount readied?”
The man hesitated. He exchanged a look with the doctor and then returned his attention to Derek. “Your mount, sir?” he whispered.
Sweat beaded on his brow; the perspiration having nothing to do with his earlier exertions and everything to do with the terror churning through him.
He’d not climbed astride a horse since Toulouse. Were the muscles of his legs even capable of those old movements?
“You are strong enough,” Carlson murmured, correctly interpreting the path his thoughts had traveled.
He managed a nod. “I also require something from my office.” The servant with full use of his legs could accomplish both tasks far quicker than Derek could ever hope to. God, how he hated those old battle wounds more than ever. As Derek instructed him where to find the cursed diamond, Harris furrowed his brow. “Go, Harris,” he urged.
The man raced off. His footsteps echoed from the walls of the silent corridors.
With a fast-building dread, Derek limped across the room and retrieved his jacket and cane. He shrugged into the garment and then, with his doctor at his side, he made his way through his house to the foyer. His breath came hard and fast, though he no longer knew if it was the fear pounding at his chest or the exertions of the pace he’d set. How in blazes was he, an invalid without use of his leg, a man who’d exited his home but a handful of times in the past seven years, capable of going out and saving anyone? The days of his battlefield heroics had died a quick, fiery death and yet... He narrowed his eye into a hard slit, focused on the end of the corridor. Yet the same warrior’s bloodlust that had raged in the thick of battle filled his mouth so all he saw, tasted, or heard was the death of the man who’d dared touch Lily and Flora.
As Derek’s cane clacked noisily upon the hardwood floor, silence otherwise reigned throughout his household. A household devoid of cheer and sound and life, not even two weeks prior. And yet, it now felt more a home than the one he’d known even as a boy, unscarred and unmarked by life.
He and Carlson reached the foyer when the other man suddenly stopped. He held a hand up. “Your Grace, you do know I am the soul of discretion. If there is anything you require?”
He managed a jerky nod. “Thank you,” he said, his tone gruff. For the miserable bugger he’d been to Carlson through the years, the man had shown him a loyalty and friendship he’d never been deserving of.
Carlson sketched a bow.
Derek paused at the threshold of the corridor and eyed the marble foyer. More specifically, the door. The door outside. The door that led out into peering eyes, and rabid stares, and disgusted looks. The door that would thrust him back into a world where all remembered the man he’d once been and the beast he now was. Through the fabric of his gloves, his palms moistened and fear sucked the moisture from his mouth. He did not leave these doors. He’d not done so since he’d destroyed another man’s life. Or attempted to. Ultimately, love prevailed.
Love was also the reason Derek even now stood prepared to exit those doors and reenter the living. Drawing forth a steadying breath, he limped forward. His butler stood patiently in wait, with Derek’s cloak and hat in his hands. He took the hat from the servant and then allowed him to assist him into his cloak.
“You have—?”
“Here, Your Grace.” Harris reached into the front of his jacket and withdrew the weighty diamond.
Derek stared at the jewel fought over by so many families. An empty, cold, lifeless stone. As he accepted it and stuffed it inside his jacket, Derek’s throat seized. Lily and Flora’s life hung in the balance for this meaningless bauble. By God, he’d see that bastard in hell before he let him harm either of the people he loved. He looked briefly to his butler; a man who’d been more patient than Derek had ever deserved. “Thank you, Harris,” he said, his voice hoarsened by emotion.
“You are quite welcome, Your Grace. Please bring both young ladies back,” he said as he pulled open the front door.
Derek swallowed hard. How loyal his servants were to her. Because they’d seen what Derek, blinded by his own hurt, had failed to note. She was all that was good and honorable, who’d been reduced to desperate acts in order to survive. Never again. When he brought her back, she would be his duchess and never know struggle or suffering again.
He made to take a step forward and then froze. After years of being shut away, stepping out into the world riddled him with a mind-numbing terror of the like he’d not even known upon the fields of battle. I cannot do this. He’d been closeted away so long, a recluse for so many years. His one foray into the light had only brought more darkness. Dusting his trembling hand against the side of his leg, he tried to make his limbs move.
For them I can do anything.
“You are ready.”
He blinked. Did those words belong to him?
“It is time.”
Derek turned back to where Dr. Carlson stood. The other man gave him a slight smile and then notched his chin at the entrance. And Derek stepped outside into the light.
Chapter 25
Were anyone to enter the cozy, modestly decorated cottage, the persons assembled could have been taken as a bucolic family amidst a country setting.
Having cajoled him into untying their bindings earlier, Lily sat beside Flora on the chintz sofa; the girl curled against her side, while the gentleman at the window stood with his back presented to them. Hands clasped loosely behind him, he stared out, as he had been staring for the better part of the morning.
Another tremor shook the girl’s frame and Lily made a soothing noise, patting the top of her brown curls. “It is going to be all right,” she whispered close to her ear, unsure of whether she sought to reassure the child...or herself. For the reality was, after being closeted away all morning in this miserable cottage she’d called home for six years, Lily knew not what twisted purpose her late protector’s son had with her.
Bait...I am the fat bait, no different than the fish I hooked as a girl.
Flora cast wide, fearful eyes up at her. “I miss Uncle Derek.”
Her chest tightened painfully. “I do, too, poppet.” To provide a useless distraction, Lily grabbed for the book resting on the side table and popped it open. “What if I read to you a bit more, would you care for that?”
Flora managed a nod and as Lily shuffled through the pages of the book, Holdsworth whistled an eerie tune that in its cheer belied the thick tension blanketing this room.
“You know, you really should have just given me what I required, Miss Bennett.”
Lily paused mid-movement and looked up from the small, leather volume. The little girl at her side shook like a leaf in the midst of a violent storm and Lily forced her next words into a semblance of calm. “You want the diamond, Mr. Holdsworth, and it is not mine to give.”
The man pursed his lips like a frowning Society matron. “It was my diamond, Miss Bennett, and I’ll not explain my need of it.”
She flared her eyes and took in those details she’d previously missed about the man; his threadbare clothes, the condition of this aged little cottage. Why, the man was in dun territory and saw that diamond as the answer to his financial salvation. “Do you expect you might simply take the Duke of Blackthorne’s niece and not be held accountable for it?”
His mouth tightened all the more and as fury snapped to life in his cruel eyes, Lily jumped to her feet and moved away from the girl, deliberately putting distance between herself and this tiny target he’d absconded with. “I expect he’ll exchange something that I care very deeply for, in return for two somethings he cares very deeply for.”
A shudder ran along her spine at the emotionless delivery of his plans. Why, this man had abducted her and Derek’s niece all with the intentions of forcing the return of that coveted diamond. Madness. The man was utterly mad.
“You think I am mad, do you?”
Lily stitched her eyebrows together.
“You spoke aloud, miss,” Flora whispered at her back.
Holdsworth relinquished his place at the window and strode over. As he approached, Lily retreated until she collided with the opposite wall. “You think you are so different than me, do you? Hmm?” he needled. “You would call me a madman because I would have retribution for the theft committed against my family. Tell me, Miss Bennett.” He folded his arm
s. “How was your or Claudia’s willingness to enter the duke’s home any different than my own?”
Claudia? Her mind turned slowly. “Claudia?” she asked, fishing about for an answer as to how a trusted maid in Derek’s small but loyal contingent of servants had so deceived.
Holdsworth chuckled. “Come, surely you don’t believe you are the only young woman wronged by the late, powerful Duke of Blackthorne.”
...The world is not a kind place, is it, ma’am...? Claudia’s words filtered around her memory.
She’d looked upon the young woman and seen a figure of innocence, devoid of Lily’s own inner ugliness. How quick they all were to see the façade they so desperately needed—an honorable protector, a trustworthy governess, a loyal, innocent maid.
“Yes, you are no different than me,” Holdsworth taunted. “You are as easily a thief.” He flicked a hard gaze over her. “The only difference, Miss Bennett, is that my family was the rightful owner of that piece, where you, well, your actions against Blackthorne were driven by nothing more than a matter of revenge.”
Nausea turned in her belly. The fact Holdsworth wasn’t entirely wrong shamed her and she looked over to the girl, seated on the sofa, taking in the entire exchange with wide eyes. Would any innocence remain if...nay when, Flora escaped Holdsworth’s clutches? Or would she at last see the world through lenses jaded by life. I did this... I visited this evil upon Flora and Derek... Unable to meet the girl’s eyes, she looked away.
As though bored, Holdsworth tugged out his watchfob and consulted the time.
“Let her go.” Lily tried once more as he stuffed the piece back into the front of his jacket. In a flurry of skirts, she rushed over to him. “Your actions against the ward of a duke and the daughter of a former marquess will never be forgiven, but your actions against me,” a vicar’s daughter, turned mistress, “they can be explained away.”
Her words gave him pause. Fear danced in his eyes. The man was not entirely stupid. He knew he played with a hangman’s noose by his actions here. Lily grasped at that fear and twisted it. “What good will a diamond or wealth be, when you are discovered?” She paused. “Which you will be.” She let that truth sink in and then continued. “But if you release her now, no one will know.” No one except the equally black souls—Claudia, her, Thomas....
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 31