“I am not doing this to you, Lily, I am doing this for you,” Brianna said, her voice even. “I just want to make sure you make a good decision in a husband.”
“But I have already made the decision.”
“You are right in the throes of this, Lily, and I know it is very exciting. But you need to spend time with Lord Bepton and Lord Rallager before a decision is made. That is the only way.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed at Brianna, her hand dropping from her mouth. Brianna braced herself.
“Why are you doing this to me, Bree? Again? How could you?”
“Lily—”
“No.” Birds scattered through the trees at the screech of the one word. Lily sneered, her mouth turning to spite. “You are only doing this because you have no heart left, Bree. None. No heart—you cannot even see what is in front of you.”
Lily’s finger pointed over Brianna’s shoulder. “This man—he adores you for no reason. No reason. You have done nothing to deserve it. Nothing.”
Brianna glanced back over her shoulder to see Sebastian standing behind her. She hadn’t even heard him approach. Her eyes swung back to her ranting sister.
“You got to marry him. It is not fair. You got to marry and I do not. I have someone that wants to adore me. Me. And now you are trying to take away what little happiness I am managing to scrape out after what you did to me. It is not fair, Bree. You are being cruel.”
Brianna’s palms went up, trying to reason. “Lily, my life has nothing to do with this—”
Lily swung, her arm knocking Brianna’s hands out of the air. “It has everything to do with it, Bree. You cannot love, and you know it, so you do not want me to have love—to have happiness.”
“You know that is not true, Lily.”
“It is. You are cold, Bree. Nothing but a cold stone that no one can touch, and I hate you for it. You refuse to let me live my life. You refuse to let me go and you are determined to drag me into your cold world. Make me like you.”
Lily stepped into Brianna, nose to nose, her voice vicious in bitterness. “Well, I will not become you, Bree. I will not. I will not become the sour, controlling woman you have collapsed into. You can have your cold heart, Bree. Just keep it away from my warm one.”
Lily whipped around, running off before Brianna could even react. Before she could even make sense of her sister’s words.
And then they hit her.
Every word.
Every truth she spewed.
They hit Brianna and doubled her over. She curled into herself, holding her stomach. If her sister had punched her in the gut, it would have hurt far less.
As much as she tried to hold them in, tears filled her eyes, spilling over, dropping to the ground in front of her.
“Brianna…” Sebastian’s hand landed gently on her shoulder.
She jerked away from him, hiding her face in her hands. “I have to go to her…I have to…” Her words choked off, her feet stumbling.
Sebastian did not let her go far, grabbing both of her shoulders from behind. His hands solid against the shaking of her body.
“Let me.” His fingers tightened on her shoulders. “I will go after her.”
Brianna could not answer him at first. She tried. She tried to lift one leg and then the other. But they were dead weight. She thought she could regain enough control to go after Lily, to make her feet move, but she could not.
Not at the moment.
Someone had to go after Lily.
Slow in defeat, she nodded.
Sebastian’s hands moved along her shoulders, and with one final squeeze to her neck, he left her standing by the stables.
~~~
Sebastian found Lily in a quiet alcove of the new gardens Wynne had designed alongside the castle’s east side. Not yet mature, the evergreens that denoted the paths and garden rooms only reached to Sebastian’s forehead, which had made it much easier to pinpoint the soft crying.
He stepped through the opening along an evergreen wall to find Lily sitting on a wrought iron bench with delicate scrolls curving in an elaborate dance along the back of it.
“I have noticed Brianna does like to make your decisions for you.” Sebastian dropped a white handkerchief in front of Lily’s downcast head. “But I do think she has your best interest at heart, Lily. It is something that I find curious about her.”
Startled, Lily looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed. She took the cloth.
“May I sit?”
Lily nodded.
Sebastian sat next to her, leaning forward to balance his forearms on his thighs, his eyes on the bright green grass. “I do not think Brianna makes these demands to hurt you, Lily.” He glanced at her. “She wants to keep you safe. Even in my limited time with her, I recognize that.”
“Yes, safe—too safe. It is just so frustrating how she now acts.” Lily wiped her eyes with the cloth, her breath quivering. She looked over to Sebastian. “She has not always been like this.”
“No? I imagined her cutting your food until you were sixteen.”
Lily chuckled through her frown. “You are so very wrong. Brianna would have been the very first person to be excited about my engagement. She would have been planning the wedding even before it was something to be planned.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
She nodded. “It is true. Bree used to be the exact opposite of what she is now. She always took care of me, of course, she is my older sister after all and our mother was dead. But we had the best times—so much fun, so much laughter. Our papa was the kindest man—he could weave the most incredible, funny, inappropriate stories for us. Our family, our life—with the viscount and his son, and Brianna and my father—the five of us were incredibly happy before the viscount died, and then…”
She shook her head, her chin dropping. Sebastian let her take a moment to wipe her eyes again.
“What happened to your father?”
Even with a view only of her profile, Sebastian could see Lily’s face darken considerably.
“He died,” she said, her head down.
“How?”
“He was killed. I do not know what happened. I only saw the aftermath.”
“Aftermath?”
Lily took several deep breaths before she had steadied herself enough to look up to him. But her voice still shook. “I swore to Bree I would never speak of that time again.”
“You do not have to tell me, Lily.”
“But I do. You are her husband. So I do. Someone needs to.” She paused, wiping her eyes once more. “I found them…in the abandoned abbey on the viscount’s estate. Papa was dead, his throat slashed. Brianna was tied to a chair. Blood all over her. I thought she was dead as well. She lived.”
Lily took a shuddered breath, twisting the handkerchief in her hands. “But what happened…it killed her. Who she was. Who she had always been. Easy and bright and spontaneous and funny—someone you just wanted to be around because she shined. She would have been the darling in London…she would have. She truly shined.” Lily’s eyes glassed over with fresh tears.
Instant rage at the scene Lily described flooded Sebastian’s veins. That someone had dared to hurt Brianna. That she had watched her father die.
He swallowed the fury in his throat. “Who did it? What happened to Brianna in that abbey?”
“I do not know. I have asked her a hundred times over, but she has never told me.” Lily’s blue eyes, exact replicas of Brianna’s, saddened even further. “And then I just stopped asking.”
“You know nothing?”
Lily shrugged, her head shaking. “Only the horror of what I saw. And the only word I heard her say in that bloody room was ‘Gregory.’ And just once. I could have misheard her, for all the terror in those moments. Papa was dead, she was fighting for life, I was screaming—panicked—I do not know.”
“Who is Gregory?”
Her eyes snapped to him, instant distress invading her features. “I have said too much.”
Lily
turned from him, starting to her feet.
Sebastian grabbed her forearm, stopping her. “No, please, tell me. I need to know. Who is Gregory?”
She shook her head.
“Please, Lily. I am her husband. I need to know.”
Lily looked at him for a hard moment and then sat on the bench with a heavy sigh. “I do not wish to be rude or cause offense to your current situation…but she loved him, Gregory. He was the one I spoke of. She was so different then—she knew how to love once—she truly did. She was set on marrying Gregory. They were engaged—weeks away from the wedding. But then he just disappeared.”
“Right after your father died?”
Lily tilted her head, thinking. “I believe so. Maybe he felt guilty for not saving her from what happened—maybe he could not face her—I do not know. I am trying to remember if he was at the funeral…it was all such a blur. Brianna was in so much pain, and then the funeral, and then her wounds gave her a fever—she almost died twice after that first day.”
Tears escaped Lily’s eyes. Her head dropped, and she quickly wiped away fat droplets. “I apologize. I try not to think of those times. So when I do…they make me sad, that is all. All that was lost on that day.”
“I understand. It could not have been easy for Brianna. Nor for you.” His hand went lightly to her shoulder. “All wounds are not physical, Lily.”
Lily nodded softly, her head down, eyes closed. It took several moments before her breathing evened and she looked to him. “It is why I let Brianna control everything. She needs the control more than I need her not to have it. So I let her be and love her, because I will always see her exactly as she used to be. Warm and kind and funny and adoring me. Not just my sister—my mother, my confidante, my dearest friend—my everything. And she will always be that person. I refuse to give up that filter. Because I know—I saw how what happened that day stripped her of everything she was and left her as she is now.”
A warm smile spread across her face. “I hope one day I will not need the filter. That she will be all those things to me again. I truly think she can be.”
“Yet just now, you were harsh with her.”
The smile evaporated from Lily’s face, her voice turning somber. “Yes, I was. Sometimes I think that is the only way I can reach her. She will forgive me.”
“Will she? Is it that easy?”
“Yes. She always does. As I will forgive her.” Lily wiped her cheeks once more, then began to offer the handkerchief back to Sebastian before thinking the better of it and crumbling it into her fist. She stood from the bench. “We are sisters, brother-in-law—do not underestimate that bond.”
Lily walked out of the evergreen alcove, leaving Sebastian on the bench.
He leaned back, eyes going to the puffy clouds dotting the sky.
A name. Now he had a name. Gregory.
But more importantly, now he had proof that the beliefs he had about Brianna—about who she really was—were founded.
Proof that he hadn’t just made the biggest mistake in his life.
~~~
“So easy it was. You believe, deep down, that you deserve love. That it was coming for you. That it was yours by right. Such a silly girl. I did not even have to work at making you believe I loved you. But you are unlovable, Brianna. Completely unlovable. Absolutely nothing special about you. There is not one word you uttered to me that did not bore me. It is a wonder your very own family can stand you.”
The creak of the door made Brianna look up, yanking her from the cruelty filling her head.
“Brianna, I apologize. I was looking for Wynne.” The duke stood in the open doorway of the painting studio by the stables. “Have you seen her?”
Lily and Sebastian had only been gone a few minutes and Brianna couldn’t speak, not yet. She had come into the studio for refuge, to cry, hidden. Shaking her head in answer to the duke’s question, she hoped it would be enough to make him leave.
“What are you doing in the studio? It is unnaturally stuffy in here—suffocating.” He walked in, going to the side windows to pull the drapes wide and open the windows. “At least open a window and let some light and air in here.”
He turned back to her and then stopped. “Have you been crying, Brianna?”
Quickly wiping her cheeks, Brianna shrugged, averting her eyes as she leaned on the arm of the wooden chair she sat in. “It is nothing.”
The duke walked over to her, planting himself in front of her and leaning casually back on Wynne’s large wooden working table. His eyes studied her for a moment. “What is it? Seb?”
Brianna forced a breath down deep into her lungs. “No. Lily. Lord Newdale has asked for her hand in marriage.”
“But that is good news, no? Lily is quite enamored with him—more so than the other two—or so Wynne tells me.”
“I told her no.”
“You what? Why?”
“I do not know if he is the right man for my sister.”
The duke didn’t answer right away, instead, crossing his arms over his chest as he contemplated her. “Forgive me if I say this bluntly, Brianna, but do you get to make that decision?”
“I do if it means saving Lily from a wastrel of a husband.”
“Do you know something of Lord Newdale, Brianna? If so, you need to tell me, and I will ensure the man exits Notlund immediately. With a harsh kick in the backside, if necessary.”
Brianna waved her hand. “No—I do not want to overreact—I just wanted to give Lily more time with Lord Bepton and Lord Rallager. More time to make a decision this momentous. I did not mean to ban her from Lord Newdale completely—I just need to discover more about him.”
The duke’s shoulders relaxed. “What do you mean, discover?”
She shrugged, sighing. “You may as well be informed—now that Seb knows, I imagine he will tell you regardless. I hired a bow street runner to investigate Lord Newdale—all of Lily’s suitors, actually. The other two do not concern me, but Lord Newdale, he is the one I still have questions about. So I told Lily she could not commit to him right away, merely to gain some time.”
The duke nodded slowly, hand on his chin, and Brianna could see his mind working. “And what is it in particular that gives you pause for concern?”
“His revenue comes from a failing mine, so I am, of course, concerned he sees Lily more as a bank than a wife.” Brianna frowned, wondering if she should continue. But again, Sebastian already knew, so he would tell the duke regardless. “And the man visits brothels. A number of them.”
The duke coughed, rubbing his forehead until he stumbled out some words. “What…why…why would you need to know more about that?”
And now the duke knew of her depravity. Brianna eyed him, her voice beaten. “I did not wish to investigate him in this particular area, but I need to know if his…intentions in that realm of life include vices he cannot control. That he does not have unusual tastes that may harm Lily.”
The duke shook his head, his mouth opening and closing several times with no words escaping.
Brianna would not have thought him the skittish type when it came to the topic of sex. But one never knew what was really going on in another’s mind. Which was exactly why she needed to investigate Lord Newdale so thoroughly.
The duke found his voice. “I can help you with the mine. Learn how viable it is long term, or what other options he has for his land. And the brothel part—I cannot believe I am even saying this, but I will make some discreet inquiries. I want as much as you to find Lily a good match. And if your concerns are warranted, I will back you in dissuading her from Lord Newdale. I will also see if Wynne can dissuade Lily from hastily answering Lord Newdale’s proposal. That should give us some time to get proper answers.”
Brianna knew she had been handling the investigation as well as anyone could have, but a mountain of relief still lifted from her shoulders. That the duke had the same information and could also wield his influence over Lily—it would be a tremendous help.
“Thank you, your grace. I appreciate anything you can discover of Lord Newdale.”
He nodded. “Now tell me about this runner you hired. How did Seb discover him?”
“I met with the man this morning near Pepperton. Seb followed me.”
The duke chuckled. “So that is where you have been disappearing to in the mornings?”
Brianna blinked hard at him, surprised. “You know I am gone in the mornings?”
“I know every single horse that comes and goes from the stables.”
“But you have never asked about it.”
“I did not think I needed to,” the duke said. “You could have asked for my help earlier, Brianna. I would have been happy to assist you. And it would have saved you from sneaking about. It is no wonder Seb went out after you.”
“To invade my privacy? He cannot respect me as you do?”
“I have never asked you where you went because you return safely, and I trust you will not put yourself in harm’s way, Brianna. But that does not mean it has not taken me a while to get used to the idea of your solitary morning jaunts.”
The duke relaxed his arms, resting his palms on the table. “Seb, on the other hand, is new at this. He is now your husband. So of course he followed you. Which is actually a relief to me—I do not have to worry about you if I know he is following.”
“You were worried about me?”
“Of course. How could I not be?”
“I apologize, your grace. I did not intend to worry you.”
The duke shrugged. “It was my choice to worry instead of trail you. But Seb is learning to trust you as well. He wants to know you, Brianna. Wants to make a life with you.”
“He told you that?”
“He does not need to. I know him. We have been friends for a very long time.”
Brianna’s eyes dropped, resting on the duke’s dark boots. Apparently, everyone but her had recognized Sebastian’s obvious sentiment for her.
So why had she missed it? Why did she not believe it?
A lump formed in her chest. She knew exactly why she did not believe it. The very thing that would continue to keep her from believing it.
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