“Lily, my own precious darling!” he ground out, holding her tighter. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve searched for you?”
She broke away, putting her hand to her mouth, confused by both his words and her own reaction.
“Darling?” He frowned, extending both hands as if he had no idea what could have occasioned her behaviour. “Are you not glad to see me?”
“Teddy! I…I…” She barely knew what to say.
Capturing her hands once more in his, he squeezed them tightly. “I’ve taken you completely by surprise, I can see that. I’d have given you notice, if I hadn’t been so eager to find you the moment I learned you were not dead.”
“Dead?” Lily shook her head. Her mouth felt dry, and a painful tattoo was playing upon her heart. “No, I’m not dead, Teddy. But you are married,” she said softly.
“Married?” He looked surprised. “I’m not married. Lord, Lily, I told you I’d wait for you, didn’t I? I told you I’d get you out of that dreadful place. I’ve been trying for two years, thwarted at every turn. Until I got news that you were dead.”
His arms were about her again before he released her, bending to cup her face with his sensitive, long-fingered hands. “My, but you’re even more beautiful than I remembered. But Lily…” He straightened, frowning again as he obviously tried to make sense of their altered relationship. “How is it that you are here? You escaped from the maison, I can see that. But you did not come searching for me? I thought that after all the letters I’d sent you, it would be clear that I was on my way to whisk you to safety.”
Lily covered her face with her hands. “Letters? Teddy, I received not one letter from you. The man who took me from the maison made me think it was at your direction. But then he told me you were married! I work for him. That’s why I live here.” She indicated her surroundings with a sweep of her arm, adding hurriedly to dispel the suspicion in his expression, “I mean, I work as a…a spiritualist. It’s respectable and he’s never…” She swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.
Unable to gauge the true state of her heart.
Here was the man she’d loved, gazing at her as he had during the days of their wicked, wonderful, illicit relationship when he’d promised he’d rescue her from her overbearing husband.
Now he was here to make good that promise and, while Lily should feel only the profoundest relief that someone was going to help her, the truth was, she didn’t know what she felt.
“Of course! I don’t doubt that your behaviour is utterly beyond reproach. Not that I would judge,” he added, hastily. His warm brown eyes kindled as he raked his fingers through his pale blonde hair. Then, opening his arms wide, he drew her once more into his embrace, dropping his head and leaning in to kiss her.
It was a light kiss upon the lips, but as his enthusiasm grew, Lily was physically unable to draw away.
Teddy’s arms were exploring her body now, his kisses more heated as he walked her back to the sofa, his lips still upon hers.
“Teddy, please…no!”
He tried to place her upon the sofa as he loomed over her.
But she could not go there. Not again.
“Lily?” His look was more confused than reproachful as they remained standing, looking awkwardly at one another. He hesitated. “Is it this man…Mr Montpelier? I thought you said—”
She shook her head. “No. Not Mr Montpelier.”
“Who then?”
Lily closed her eyes. “It’s…no one,” she finished lamely. “I just need time, Teddy. This is so sudden.”
Time. She’d used that old excuse, but she had no choice. She couldn’t nip this in the bud and perhaps damn her chances of rescue forever when she had no one she could depend upon.
He sat down, slowly, his brow furrowed as he took Lily’s wrist and drew her onto his lap and rested his brow against her neck. She could feel his breathing, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the heat from his breath against her bare skin.
She tried to remember how she’d felt towards him in the past, but her heart was completely untouched.
If Teddy really were here to help her, could she change the way she felt? She had to when her survival depended on someone with influence.
After a long silence, she twisted her body and placed a kiss upon his cheek. “Thank you for rescuing me, Teddy,” she whispered.
“Have I, though?” He blinked, and Lily was shocked to see the tear that had lodged at the tip of his lashes scatter into a fine mist. “God, Lily, I’ve waited more than two years for this, and now that I’ve found you at last, I don’t know what to think.”
Lily stopped the sob that rose in her throat. “I’m just saying that I…I’m not ready to do the things we once did, Teddy. You remember what happened last time.”
His expression warmed. “How could I forget. You were so soft to hold, so willing, so…responsive.” He touched his lips to hers. “You wanted me, then, as much as I want you, now.”
“I don’t mean that, Teddy,” she whispered. “I meant…Robert. It was Robert’s rage that destroyed everything between us and sent me to that place. I can’t forget that…you delivered me there.”
He shook his head, his expression sorrowful. “No, Lily, it wasn’t Robert’s rage that sent you to that place.” His voice hitched. “It was you.” He hurried on. “Lily, we were both duped. I took you to a sanatorium for your health, your delicate nerves. Your…” He shrugged. “I don’t like to put it into words when I know how sensitive you are. But the laudanum…those terrible bouts of frenzy. I thought I was taking you to a place where I could retrieve you when Robert’s back was turned.” He buried his head in her bosom, and she felt the shudder that ran through him as he whispered raggedly, “But Robert was a step ahead of both of us. He knew exactly what he was about when he had both of us obligingly follow his directions. You know what he was like.”
“Oh, I know very well,” Lily said bitterly, stroking his hair as she gazed at a picture on the wall. “After five years of his cruelty, it was little wonder I was responsive to the first kindness a man had ever shown me.”
“But surely that’s not the only reason you came to me?”
Teddy sounded hurt, so she added quickly, “Of course I’d grown fond of you, coming so often to the house and attending both Robert and myself. It was hardly difficult to feel myself in love with you and…and doing what we did.” She pressed her lips together. “But I was wrong to have been unfaithful to him, even though I don’t believe he cared. He cared for his reputation, of course, so I understand why he was so angry.”
“Angry enough to cast you away from him forever and then tell the world that you were dead?” He sounded outraged.
“Dead?” Her voice sounded small to her ears. “Did he really? I heard a rumour that he had a new wife, but could find nothing in the newspapers or another source to verify it. How can it be true? When I am still very much alive?”
Teddy’s eyes bored into hers. “He told me you were dead, Lily,” he said slowly. “And then he told the world you were dead. You owe him nothing. Come away with me, I beg you.”
His words sounded shocking when once they’d have offered her the greatest comfort. “Come away with you?” she repeated. “Where, Teddy? Where could we possibly go? What about your work? Your standing in society? Your reputation? I’d be a millstone around your neck.”
“Don’t you want to be with me? Don’t you want the security I can offer you? A return to those wonderful days of endless loving?” He touched his heart. “I’ve relived those days every single moment of my life. I care nothing for society and my standing. Besides, I have a calling that would enable me to practise good anywhere in the world. With you by my side, think of the good we could do in Africa? In India? You’d be my wife in all but name only.”
“But if Robert were to find out—”
“He’d be the last to call attention to the lie. Not when he has so much at stake.” He gripped her hands. “Please, Lily. Tell m
e that I have not come here to woo you once again…in vain.”
Lily rose and began to pace in front of the fire. He truly was offering her the salvation she needed. Without an offer like this, what hope had she for anything other than life as one of Madame Chambon’s girls? Or in an asylum, helped there through Hamish’s well-meant efforts?
And Hamish?
She stifled a sob. He was shocked and horrified by the truth.
But Teddy knew everything about her. And he’d come looking for her. She couldn’t knock back this opportunity.
Haltingly, she said, “No, you’ve not come here in vain. I’m just in shock, that’s all.” She forced a smile. “I’ve just returned from a very strange evening trying to summon information regarding a man who may well have been murdered. My thoughts are all a jumble, and my nerves as disordered as they ever were when you saw me last, Teddy.” Closing the distance between them, she stroked his cheek. “The next time you come to me, Teddy, I shall be very much decided.”
He rose with obvious reluctance. “You will?”
“I’m sure of it,” she said.
Hoping against hope that the truth was as firm as the conviction with which she’d uttered the words.
Chapter 23
“Why so glum, Hamish?” Lucy sent him a concerned look across the breakfast table. “Until a few days ago, I thought I’d got my old, carefree brother back again. Are you missing Mrs Eustace? Maybe you should go and see her again.”
He ignored her blatant dig for information, saying instead, “I have to see Father today, in case you’d forgotten.”
“Oh, goodness. Do, please, keep me out of the conversation.” Lucy pressed her lips together, her expression worried. “And don’t say anything about my unsuitable suitor.”
“If Mr Myers is worth his salt, he will be patient and win your hand by proving to me that he is worthy of you.” Hamish sent her a reassuring smile. “But, of course I’ll say nothing. I have only your best interests at heart.”
“Just as I have only yours at heart.” She took another sip of tea. “That’s why I think you and I should go and see Mrs Eustace perform at Lord Lambton’s séance tonight.”
“I hardly think Father would approve of that, Lucy.” Though it was not their father Hamish was worried about. It was his own susceptibility. Lily Eustac—eor, rather, Lady Bradden—was the antithesis of the kind of woman he needed in his life. Yet, the moment she was within his orbit, it was his heart that ruled his head.
Glancing down, she stirred her tea thoughtfully. “You took on your responsibilities with the business far more seriously than I expected you would, Hamish. I never thought you would agree to take up the reins where he left off. I thought you were going to go off in your own direction after you came home from France, and you agreed to take up the editorship. You seemed so…” She sought for the right words. “Well, so full of wonderful and exciting ideas that really were so different from Father’s.”
Hamish found it hard to meet her eye. She wanted to quiz him about his relationship with their father and how it might affect her. He knew Lucy lived in terror of being returned to her overbearing parents. Meanwhile, Hamish could barely keep his mind off his disappointment over his recent brutal discovery.
Everything stood in the way of any kind of relationship between him and Lily.
Lady Bradden. Even the social divide.
He should, of course, just bow out gracefully and leave her to her fate. He was surely not in so deep that a graceful retreat would not be excusable?
“Father said he’d pay a visit to the office.” She pretended unconcern as she buttered her toast. “Are you worried?”
Would he be honest with her? She was so much younger than he. Barely twenty, and yet, despite her liveliness, so full of intelligence and perception.
“Father doesn’t control my every decision, Lucy. I’m not so under his thumb,” he said softly.
“I think you are, more than you like to admit it,” she countered. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to only have to see him once a quarter in order to make a full accounting of my sins, but he makes it very clear that he is the one who cracks the whip, and that one whisper of wrongdoing would see me marched down the aisle with the first suitable offer.” She looked up at Hamish, puzzled. “How does Father have so much influence when he’s been mostly bedridden all these years and has so few good days?” She dropped her eyes. “It’s as if his ghost is always there, hovering over us.”
Hamish reached across to put his hand over hers. “Appearances are deceptive, Lucy. Father is not as hard a man as you believe. I don’t expect you to understand.” In truth, Hamish was only spouting platitudes. Their father was a hard man. But he couldn’t keep his mind off his own emotional turmoil.
“Good lord, you’ve never sounded so condescending, Hamish!” Lucy cried. “As if I didn’t understand that nothing is as it seems, and that there’s something between you and Father that I’ll probably never know. And since you won’t tell me, I’ll naturally suspect the worst—that you’ve done something terrible that gives Father a hold over you, and makes you financially beholden to him.” She focused troubled eyes upon him. “It all started when you came back from France. You were so happy when you left, ready to explore the world.” She paused, significantly, before adding, “Now that you were free of Father, and free to go your own way. And, what’s more, that he had willingly released you. Your letters home made me wonder if you would ever return, you were so filled with life and energy.”
“But I did return home.” Lucy’s pleas that her brother protect her from a harsh and violent father had coincided with Hamish’s own heartbreak. His first heartbreak. He didn’t want to think too much on which was the reason that most influenced him, though of course he wanted to believe that it was the nobler—his concerns for Lucy.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “It was because you are too good to see someone you care for come to harm. I know you came home for me.”
His breath left him in an exhalation of guilt. Lucy was seeing the very best in him when he wasn’t sure he deserved it.
He’d been barely older than his sister when he’d become passionately involved in a love affair with a Frenchwoman, a deserted farmer’s wife who had employed him before her jealous husband had returned and beaten his wife for her faithlessness.
Madeleine was long dead, now, but her spirit was often with him. A distraught Hamish had left the district, and he heard she’d died of a fever shortly afterwards. Now Lucy’s words needled him.
Hamish hadn’t come home for his sister. He’d come home because there was nothing left for him in France.
Because he’d been young, and naïve, and unable to help the woman he loved.
“Yes, you returned home, sad and changed.” Lucy’s expression was so full of sympathy it tugged at his conscience when she added, “Whatever happened in France—and I always suspected it was because you fell in love—made you bitter, and too ready to agree to Father’s proposal that you take over the magazine, with Father retaining full editorial control.” She gave an eloquent shrug. “That’s not like you, Hamish! To bow down to Father without a fight.”
Hamish blinked. Is that how she saw the matter? Did it appear to her, like that, in such simplistic terms?
He pushed back his chair. “We all make decisions based on what seems best at the time. I’m sorry, Lucy.” He pulled back her chair for her. “But at least you share a roof with me, and not Father, now.”
“I’d have run away a long time ago if that were not the case.” She glanced up at him as he escorted her to the door. “Will I still have a place under your roof if I have not made a match before you, Hamish?”
He started. “Good lord, what makes you think I’ll make a match anytime soon?”
“I think your heart is engaged. I think you’d like to marry Mrs Eustace. There, I said it.” She looked triumphant. “She’s a beautiful widow, and the two of you clearly like one another very much. What’s
stopping you from being happy? I hope it’s not guilt, or some misguided romantic notion that you must be forever loyal to your long-lost French love.”
He was glad she didn’t see his face before she left him.
Otherwise she’d have read guilt written all over it, as clearly as she thought she’d correctly read the situation between their father and himself.
* * *
His visit to his father was as predictable as he’d expected. He was lambasted for allowing the tone of the publication to drop by printing the photograph Lucy and Archie had pressed him to publish.
Mrs Eustace, the spiritualist.
“Look at her! Temptress! Charlatan! And to think this filth ousted Reverend Snell’s Talk at the Temperance Society’s monthly meeting. You are a weak-minded young man if you think you know better than I do how this magazine should be run.” His father had tried to rise, but his legs would not support him and, in frustration, he’d snatched up his walking stick and flung it at Hamish.
It reminded Hamish of why he’d made a bad bargain to keep Lucy safe under his own roof.
“I don’t want to see any more wasted inches of print devoted to this woman. Or any spiritualist.”
“With due respect, Father, the public are interested. Other magazines have covered the story of Bernard Renquist’s disappearance. Furthermore, Lord Lambton’s séances to speak to his dead daughter are well attended. There’s supposedly not a dry eye in the room.”
“You’ve been to them, have you?”
Hamish shook his head.
“Then you have no idea what you’re talking about. Lambton has always been a tough nut to crack. Not a man I’d want to cross in business and not a fond parent. Well, if you want a story, go and print one about his crocodile tears. That’s an order! Do you hear? Go and reveal that Eustace woman for the fraud she is. And old Lambton’s tears for the glycerine water they no doubt are!”
Chapter 24
For weeks Hamish had resisted, but now he was here. In Mrs Moore’s parlour, attending a séance on his father’s orders.
Loving Lily: Fair Cyprians of London: a Steamy Victorian Romantic Mystery Page 16