She stifled a groan. “A woman is always certain about these things, my lord.”
He leaned forward abruptly. “Men, however, are never certain. Lily, tell me the truth.”
So, I’m Lily again?
“Are you calling me a liar?”
He reached for her hand; she pulled away. He leaned back into his seat. “So I am to understand that ‘No further action is needed’?”
“As I wrote, my lord,” she said. “Was it not clear?”
“Will there be other repercussions? When you marry, that is?”
At least the damned man didn’t say “if.”
“My marriage prospects are my concern. I need nothing from you. I expect nothing from you. I want nothing from you.”
Glenaire—oh hell, Richard—glowers like no other man I ever met. It is enough to strip the bark off a tree. She refused to wilt under it or look away in the long minutes that followed in silence.
“In the matter of your father, Miss Thornton, you do have concerns,” he began. Her heart began to race. He went on before she could ask. “In matters of that sort, no news is often literally the best news, and we have heard nothing. I’ve sent men to watch every port between here and Copenhagen. If he is delayed again, or if Volkov’s agents appear, I will hear. When I do, you will know.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Has Volkov tried to contact you?”
“What do your spies tell you?”
“That he hasn’t. He had someone watching, but we put a stop to it.”
The dratted man doesn’t even try to deny that he spies on me. Volkov too—good God!
“They are correct. I have seen and heard nothing.”
She insisted on walking him to the door. I want to shut the door on him, shut the door on the entire episode of the Marble Marquess in my life.
“Good day, Miss Thornton. You will hear from me.”
“Do send a message if you hear anything,” she replied. Send a message—don’t come here again.
She shut the door firmly behind him, turned, and deposited her sparse luncheon and tea into a potted palm, retching painfully for a few moments.
Ugh, but I hate that. Please, dear God, let this be something I ate. She clung to hope but found it harder to doubt every day.
I think, Lily dear, you are about to face the consequences of what happened among the sheep. She felt her marriage hopes die with sinking heart. What will I do? she wondered with rising panic. I will have to leave London for certain. How can I do that until my father is here? Papa, where are you?
A maid hurried to clean her mess. Lily thanked her, suggested they leave Aunt Marianne to her nap, and began to climb the stairs to her room, weary beyond speech.
Pregnant, Lily? What in God’s name will you do now?
Lily spent two days tossing about for a solution to her problem, with no results. Confiding in Aunt Marianne, her father’s ineffective spinster sister would be no help. She needed a distraction badly. Three evenings after the miserable visit from Glenaire, Lily judged herself well enough to go out. The Mallet’s literary evening, she believed, would do nicely.
Lady Georgiana Mallet hosted a literary salon, noted for the quality of its speakers, who were as interesting as they were brief, and for the delectable refreshments prepared by the best French chef in England, on the second Thursday of every month. Her brother Richard never came. Lily felt safe attending.
She walked a few short blocks to the Mallets’ townhouse, a discreet footman in tow, and skirted the British Museum. Living close to that institution gave Lily joy; it often provided hours of engrossed fascination when she could forget about her father, about Volkov, about the fear of impending motherhood.
Any approach to unmarried motherhood she considered so far required that she leave London. She felt that loss keenly.
I will miss the museum and its library, she thought. I will miss the squares of Bloomsbury. She crossed into Bedford Square; the small patches of green surrounded by neat townhouses suited her.
She preferred the formal gardens of St. Petersburg or Vienna to wilder places, even the English countryside. I will hate languishing in some obscure cottage in the wilds of Yorkshire or wherever I find refuge.
The little fountain in the center of the square gurgled cheerfully as she passed.
If I married Glenaire, I could have London. The thought floated in unbidden, and she quickly pushed that temptation away. Duty made a poor foundation for a happy union. Marriage to a controlling and arrogant marquess, especially one who looked down his nose on her origins, meant a long life of purgatory. There has to be another way.
For now Lily had Bedford Square and its carefully tended flowerbeds. She would have it until her father arrived. She crossed onto Bedford Street west of the square.
Should I confide in Georgiana or in Catherine? She quickly dismissed that idea also. However much they may care for me, Glenaire is one of them. He commands their first loyalty. Involvement with her problems would put them in an awkward position at best. It would empower the marquess to bully her at worst.
A few short steps and she stood under the great curved door to the Mallet townhouse. Evening closed in and the windows above lit up with candlelight. The sound of happy conversation drifted down when the footman knocked. Lily smiled in anticipation.
Georgiana’s salon never fails to distract me.
“Miss Lily Thornton,” her servant told the butler. He stepped aside. The man would wait to accompany her home.
Weariness threatened her when she followed the butler upstairs to the drawing room. She gripped the railing and hesitated before stepping into the first floor hall.
She smiled wanly at the butler when he looked ready to catch her if she slipped.
Perhaps I should not have come.
She needed the distraction of friends. The door to the expansive drawing room lay open. The butler gestured her toward it. Andrew and Georgiana Mallet stood on little ceremony and required no announcement.
Lily fixed her smile in place and paused just inside. Georgiana, on a settee by the windows and already deep in conversation with one of the curators of antiquities from the museum, glanced up at Lily with a swift grin but didn’t rush to her side.
Georgiana’s husband Andrew approached unimpeded by his slight limp; his scarred face lit in welcome. War had left his body damaged, but his brilliant mind and kind heart intact.
I envy the Mallets their marriage, she thought. Her heart sank. That door may be closed to me forever.
“Don’t look so sad,” her host greeted her. “Come, help Winston defend his contention that the Russians are not so backward as some in this country maintain.”
Lily looked toward Henry Winston, one of Cambridge’s leading scholars on the Slavic nations who spoke to someone with his back to her.
Andrew led her in that direction.
“Andrew, come set this fusty man straight,” Georgiana called across the room. He shrugged at Lily, gestured her forward, and turned to answer his wife’s summons.
Lily took a step toward Winston. The man’s companion turned, and she looked up into the penetrating black eyes of Konstantin Volkov. His lip curled in a cynical mockery of a smile.
“Miss Thornton,” he said, “It has been far too long since we spoke.”
Lily froze in place.
“You know our Miss Thornton?” Winston asked.
“I know her very well,” Volkov said, his tone implying all the intimacy Lily hated. “We met in St. Petersburg. Miss Thornton loves Russia and all things there. Don’t you, Miss Thornton?” the swine went on.
“All things there.” Does he know Papa left? The pulse in her throat pounded.
“When last we met, we discussed your”—Volkov hesitated—�
��health. I trust you are well?” He looked at her as if she were a very tasty rabbit cowering before his vulpine jaws.
Lily opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and then opened again to say, “You will excuse me please, gentlemen.”
She walked swiftly to the hallway, leaned against one wall, and gasped for breath.
Oh God. He has gotten to me.
The lights faded into darkness, and Lily slipped to the floor in a dead faint.
Chapter 12
“Where is the bastard?” Richard demanded.
“Not so loud, you’ll wake her,” his sister cautioned.
“Andrew, where is he?” he asked more quietly.
“Gone. Did you expect us to thrash him, bind him, and toss him in the dungeon? We had neither the means nor the authority to detain a foreign national. He had done nothing,” his brother-in-law answered.
“Lily collapsed in a dead faint, and I’m supposed to believe he did nothing?”
“She walked out into the hallway and fainted. Volkov—along with the rest of our visitors—expressed concern and left politely. Why didn’t you warn us about him?” Andrew demanded.
Richard forced his expression into bland control. “Volkov is a Russian agent we have watched. We have Lily protected. How could I expect him to find his way into my sister’s drawing room? Why did you invite him?”
“We didn’t invite him,” Georgiana told him. “Our gatherings are informal. He came with Winston. Shall we warn him away—or warn Winston in any case?”
Richard gave it a moment’s thought. “I think not,” he replied. “Invite Roger Heaton. I’ll make sure he attends every one of your salons.”
He looked closely at his sister. “Better yet, cancel your gatherings. Should you be entertaining in your interesting condition?”
“Don’t be a snob, Richard. I’m with child, not languishing with ague. Our gatherings continue,” she replied tartly.
“In that case, invite Jamie while you’re at it.”
“Jamie?” Georgiana laughed. “Academic conversation is hardly his bailiwick.”
“No, but he knows what to do in a crisis,” Richard said. A slight smile failed to light his eyes. “Besides, he loves your chef’s brilliant pastries.”
Andrew agreed. “Jamie is a good man to have at our back. Why do you think Volkov came?”
“To frighten Lily, to remind her of his threats. My men can handle him.” If they noticed his use of her Christian name, they didn’t mention it.
“Apparently your watchers lost track of him today,” Andrew scoffed. “Are you sure of them?”
Richard glared down his nose at his friend. “My men know their duty and do it well,” he said. But they are damn well going to account for this lapse.
Andrew knew better than to contradict his brother-in-law directly. “Do let us know what you expect of us mere mortals in the meantime. We live to serve.” He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“I’ll see her now,” Richard said.
“You will not,” his sister retorted. “She’s resting. With luck she’s asleep.”
“I said I would see her, not molest her.”
Georgiana gave in. She opened the bedroom door on silent hinges to reveal Lily lying still under a coverlet by the light of a single candle.
Too pale. She looks frail.
He reached out to brush a lock of hair from her face, remembered his good sense, and pulled back. Lily didn’t stir.
Leaning close, he could smell roses and the subtler scent of woman. The urge to protect gutted him. Too frail. Lily Thornton strides through life, a force of nature, she does not faint.
“Miss Thornton,” he whispered to his sister who stood just behind him, determined to keep this discussion formal, “doesn’t strike me as a female who makes a habit of swooning. Odd, don’t you think?” He turned to look carefully at Georgiana, robust and rosy in spite of advanced pregnancy, her second.
“He gave her a fright,” Georgiana whispered back. “She also told me she had missed her tea. That could have made her prone to fainting.”
Would she even tell me if she thought Lily was increasing?
“Is that all?” he probed.
His sister gave an unladylike shrug and a shrewd look. “That’s all Lily shared with me,” she said.
He stood for several long moments watching the woman on the bed, breathing her in, willing her to be well. When he finally turned, his sister and her husband eyed him keenly.
Georgiana shut the door behind him. “The best thing we can do is let her sleep,” she said.
“That dotty aunt of hers offers no protection,” Richard growled. “I doubt if she even knows about the threats.”
“You have a guard on her house?” Andrew asked.
“On the whole of Gilbert Street, but we can’t watch her everywhere. She would be safer at Sudbury House.” The Duke of Sudbury’s mansion in Mayfair boasted a thick stone wall and sufficient beefy footmen to guard every door.
“Mother would eat her alive,” Georgiana said, “assuming she didn’t cut you to pieces for moving a single young woman—and one she would consider of less than desirable lineage at that—into the sacred family compound.”
Richard did not often have what he considered a foolish thought, but moving Lily Thornton into his mother’s house qualified as one of his rare ones.
Lily drives me to insanity. So does my mother.
“Can you keep her here?” He looked at Andrew. She should be housed in a home with a competent male in charge. That aunt of hers is worthless.
Andrew appeared to consider the consequences. Georgiana didn’t wait. “We could if she permitted it, which she will not do. Lily values her independence fiercely. I admire that in her.”
“Increase your guard,” Andrew said. “Assign an escort.”
“She’s been eluding Roger Heaton for a week. I’ll have to try another,” he said.
“She’ll hate that,” Georgiana said.
“She won’t know. An escort will serve. Miss Thornton will have to put up with it.”
Miss Thornton what?
Outrage pulled Lily from the dejection that had weighed her down since her humiliating collapse in the Mallets’ hallway. Young men she had considered admirers spied for Glenaire. Disappointment piled on discouragement.
She had felt his presence by the bed. She knew when he leaned in close. For moments, she felt safe and protected, but then she heard his voice—his toplofty, commanding voice.
Damn his arrogant hide.
She sat abruptly and began to look for her slippers, grateful for the sound of retreating footsteps.
I’ll go home as soon as the high and mighty Glenaire leaves. I’ll go home and—. And what Lily? Wait for Volkov to attack? Drat them all! She scooped up one slipper and began fastening the ties around her calf.
What difference does it make, Lily? You aren’t exactly marriage material in your current state. Go home and stay there. Let them all cool their heels in Gilbert Street.
Her resolution lasted ten days before boredom drove her to accept Walter Stewart’s escort to view Sir George Beaumont’s collection of Flemish paintings. Soon she shopped with Roger Heaton, ate ices with Stewart, and attended theatre with Heaton, on alternating occasions. Neither man ever positioned himself farther than ten feet from her. Neither mentioned orders. Neither acted particularly lover-like either, to her relief. Once or twice the even less lover-like Jamie Heyworth escorted her.
At the end of a month, over ice at Gunther’s, she lost patience with the pretense.
“Has Glenaire had news of my father?” she blurted to Heaton, her escort du jour. She had no sympathy with his stricken look nor respect for his inarticulate reply.
“Come, come.
You know we should have heard by now. What does the marquess say?”
“We continue to hope that no news means all is well. Repairs can drag on,” Heaton said.
Lily knew that to be true. Once they had put up on Malta for four months waiting for repairs so they could complete a journey to Rome. Her mother had been alive then, and the time had been happily spent. Not this time.
“Waiting batters one’s spirits,” she sighed.
“I know. Your desire to see your father is natural,” Heaton said.
Do you know how frightened I am? Has he told you what Volkov threatens?
Every passing week put her in greater jeopardy of discovery. Discovery of her condition by the gossips would ruin her socially. Discovery by Glenaire would destroy her life.
They finished their ices in awkward silence. Heaton helped her to her feet and walked her to their waiting carriage.
“Don’t worry about your father, Miss Thornton,” he told her. “If you know we are watching for Volkov, then you know we will take care of you.” He said it with smug confidence. Lily didn’t share it.
“Thank you, Mr. Heaton. You’re doing your best, I am sure.” Her escort preened.
Glenaire assumes his good intentions are enough also. If Papa suffers, I hope the marquess finds the well-known end point on the road of good intentions. I hope he rests in hell.
That thought steeled her nerves all the way home. When the pompous young man handed her from the carriage in front of her Aunt’s townhouse, a worse thought struck her.
If Glenaire’s efforts don’t bear fruit soon, I may be forced to leave London before Papa arrives. Where will I go then?
Dangerous Weakness Page 8