Her Secret Fantasy (32 page)

Mrs. Lundy had left a heaping of affectionate advice on how her boy must take care of himself properly while she was gone. Get his rest. Eat his vegetables. Lily couldn’t help but lift an eyebrow. The feared Edward Lundy might look like a ruffian, but there was a side of him that was nothing but an overgrown mama’s boy. Twirling the mysterious key in thought as she read on, Lily came to a paragraph that made her wonder…

You must have faith and be strong until I return. Do your best not to worry overmuch, but take comfort in knowing that I, of all people, will not fail you. When that weasel of a solicitor hears that I’m on my way to oversee this matter personally on your behalf, he will not dare trifle with us a moment longer. You just keep your cards close to the chest, my dear, and keep them all busy in London. Never fear. I will be on my way back to you as soon as the sale is complete, and then Sinclair can go to the devil. I promise you, all will be well…

Lily frowned in puzzlement.
I thought she went to Jamaica for her gout.
But this would seem to hint at a completely different explanation. The rest of the letter contained nothing but more mother-hen fussing.

Finished reading it, Lily quickly tucked it back under the desk pad. Making sure she had put everything back on Edward’s desk the way she had found it, she glanced around and realized the next logical thing to check was Edward’s filing system of ledger books.

A daunting task. She suppressed a dull sigh, put the tiny key down on the corner of the desk, and went over to the cabinet. She reached for the small wooden knob on the glassed door, but as she opened it, the knob pulled right off in her hand.
Broken!
She stifled a curse as the tiny metal screw that was supposed to have held the knob in place fell to the hardwood floor with a small clatter.

“Blast,” she whispered, bending down to catch it as it rolled away toward the base of the nearest bookcase. She glanced toward the door to Edward’s study, praying no one had heard the small noise.

As she reached down to retrieve the stray piece, the collection of books arrayed on the low shelf at her current eye-level brought a wry smirk to her lips, for she noticed that the titles were in Latin.
Well, that is the height of pretension.
Edward hadn’t a word of the Classical tongues. She doubted he had ever read an actual book in his life.

Suddenly, she frowned. Something looked weird about those books. They were too…perfect. She reached to take one off the shelf and gasped as she discovered it wasn’t a real book at all. The unobtrusive row of seeming Latin titles were in fact only an artfully crafted plaster concealment.

Her jaw dropped when she gave the row of fake books a tug and they popped forward, then glided up on a metal arm, revealing a metal safe within, long and narrow, fashioned to fit the shape of the hidden compartment.
Why, Edward, you devil!
Noting the keyhole in the middle of the safe, she snorted, got up, and hurried back to the desk, retrieving the tiny key she had found.

A perfect fit.

What she found inside the secret safe were more files. The
real
ledger books, she suspected. At first glance, they appeared identical to the ones on display so transparently in the glass case, but their contents must have been considerably more hazardous to have warranted this disguise.

She pulled out the first folio labeled “A–B” and set it on her lap, untying the ribbon. Opening the slim leather case, she began hastily riffling through the collection of loose papers and old correspondence. Nervous about her trespass and beginning to feel a bit desperate—after all, she didn’t even know for certain what she ought to be looking for—she came to the end of the A’s, started flipping through the start of the B’s, and stopped cold.

Balfour, Lily.

She pulled a neatly fastened set of papers out of the file and stared at it, barely able to believe her eyes. Edward had hired a private investigator to look into her background!

Her mouth went dry. Her hands began to shake, and she rushed through the pages in stunned disbelief.

Good God, there were dates and details not just on her, but on her grandfather, his holdings, his date of death, the date of her parents’ marriage, the church where she had been christened—even the name of her first governess!

Lily was horrified.

She knew the practice of investigating one’s prospective spouse was not unheard of among the wealthy and the powerful, but being the subject of such an inquest herself was appalling to a private woman…with secrets to hide.

But slowly, her pulse slowed back to normal and her terror began to ease. By some miracle, there was no mention of Lord Owen Masters in the investigator’s report. Her family’s code of icy silence must have worked to guard her reputation even from a professional sneak.

It was bad enough that Edward’s private investigator had managed to learn about the drunken duel of honor in which her hotheaded cousin, David, Pamela’s younger brother, had thrown away his life. If poor Davy had not been so wild, he’d have inherited the title after Grandfather. But chasing his own destruction in the grand manner of the luckless Balfours, the lusty lad had called the wrong man a cheat at cards and had wound up dead, maiming his opponent, in turn.

Reading the account of her last male cousin’s demise cast a cloud of darkness over her heart. If there had been more time, she would have pored over the Balfour file in detail, but then a new thought suddenly gripped her.

At once, she replaced the papers in the ledger book, retied its black ribbon, and hurried to put the folio away. Skipping over the other letters, she went straight for the “K–L” folio.
What if Edward, in his paranoia, had commissioned a similar report on Derek?

After all, Derek was not the friend to Edward that he was pretending to be, a fact he had revealed to Lily outside the Bull’s Head Inn. But did Edward know this, too?

If Edward was just playing along, aware that Derek was actually his foe, then that could spell trouble for the major. On the other hand, Lily’s motives in checking for a file on Derek were not solely born of a noble desire to protect him.

She had been duped by a handsome liar once before, and after last night, finding Derek that way at the tavern, all of her scarred vulnerability in this area was on full alert. It was a slight detour from her purpose in coming here, but if Derek was a liar, it was best to face it now.

Edward’s paranoia had provided her with a chance she might never get again, to discover any secrets about Derek that he might not have wanted her to find out…

She opened the K–L folio across her lap and turned through the entries.

Kane, Phillip.
The first file in the ledger book was a thick one, full of financial-looking papers…

She turned past it.

Kingsley, Miss Elizabeth.
Well! It seemed Edward really was considering marrying Bess, if he had gone to the trouble of having her investigated, too. Somewhat mollified that at least Bess had been subjected to the same indignity, Lily skipped the opportunity to peruse the private details of Bess Kingsley’s life.

She turned another page and stopped.

Knight, Major D.

Gathering up her courage, she swallowed hard and opened his file. She did not know what sort of horrible thing she had been half expecting, but as her gaze traveled swiftly over the few pages collected, a quick account of his impressive military career and his various family connections, her eyes filled with tears.

Because it all matched exactly what he’d told her.

There were no lies here.

Even the story of his and Gabriel’s battle against the royal guards at the maharajah’s palace was there, unvarnished. The only thing he hadn’t told her was just how steep the odds had been against him and his brother, which in turn led her to see what a very deadly warrior he must be when he was in his element. She blinked away her tears, smiling from her very heart, for she never would have thought of accusing Derek Knight of too much modesty.

Preparing to put the “K–L” folio away, she turned back to the first file and smoothed the pages to make sure it all looked neat and undisturbed, and it was then that the large sums of money noted on the entry under her hand drew her attention.

What is this?
She narrowed her gaze and started more closely scanning the pages under
Kane, Phillip.
As the moments passed, her initial curiosity turned to rising disbelief. The file kept an account of enormous sums of money that had been paid out incrementally month after month to a firm called Warwickshire Canals & Co. The total came to more than 300,000 pounds.

Several letters from a Mr. Phillip Kane, President, described in long, tedious detail the progress being made on this extensive and apparently very ill-fated construction project. A quick glimpse at Mr. Kane’s correspondence recounted an endless litany of problems that had come up along the way in the building of these canals—a flood, a spike in the cost of timber, a key engineer who dropped dead of a bad heart.

Lily shook her head, entirely taken aback to learn that Edward had engaged in this sort of long-odds speculation.

She knew he was experienced in matters of trade, but still, three hundred thousand pounds!

Not even the profligate Regent could snap his fingers at that kind of sum. She was obviously no expert in finance, but she could not imagine why or how Edward could have sunk such a fortune into these dubious canals and still have a roof over his head. A large roof, at that.

As she turned another page, she came down to the final entry, dated almost exactly one year ago—and winced, for there was nothing whatsoever to show for Edward’s investment, nor much of an explanation from company president Phillip Kane.

The payments had simply stopped.

Hmm.
She knew one thing for certain: Derek would want to see this.

All of a sudden, the sound of heavy, clomping footfalls in the corridor outside the office broke into her thoughts.

Lily looked up with a low gasp.

She froze, still holding the Phillip Kane papers. Someone was coming! The color drained from her face.
Edward!
A grouchy bellow to a servant removed any doubt who it was. He had come home!

In the blink of an eye, Lily folded the Kane papers and shoved them into the bodice of her neatly tailored riding habit. Scrambling to put the “K–L” folio back in its proper place, she closed the safe, locked the door, pulled down the false front of the books, and ran to the desk to put the key back under the tray of drying sand.

Then she whirled around, scanning the office with her heart in her throat, making sure everything else was in order. But how was she going to get out of here? There was only one door, no other exit, no place to hide.

She might be able to jump out one of the windows, but she realized there was no time to try. He would be upon her in an instant. Every second, the footsteps grew louder. Dear God, having discovered his theft, his treason, stealing from the Crown, Lily knew Edward might kill her if she did not think of something fast. She’d had no idea she was getting into something so far over her head.

Abruptly remembering that she had locked the door, she raced over and unlocked it to avoid raising Edward’s suspicions when he walked in. Meanwhile, she concluded in a flash that her only hope of getting out of this unscathed was to fall back on the one strategy that, with years of practice, had become her forte.

She would put on her frostiest mask and hide in plain view.

When he opened the door, she was sitting on his desk in a pretty pose, her arms braced behind her, her legs crossed, the impatient swing of her top foot stirring the brown drapery of her riding habit.

She gave him an arch look when he hesitated in the doorway, his groggy and ill-tempered look turning to obvious bafflement to see her. “Lily!”

“So,” she clipped out. “There you are. At last.”

He cleared his throat a tad guiltily at her tone of wifely reproach. “What are you, er, doing here, my dear?”

“Waiting for you, of course!” she retorted with a chilly smile.

“Oh. Did you, uh, miss me?”

“Not in the least.”

He cleared his throat and came slouching into the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Did you have fun on your
business
trip? Really, Edward. I am disappointed in you.”

“How did you find out?” he mumbled, his head down.

“Word travels fast in the ton. But I had to see you for myself to confirm that these rumors were true. Well. It seems I have my answer. I shall be going now.” She jumped off his desk and strode past him, making her way to the door with her nose in the air.

“Aw, Lily—don’t go storming off.” He reached out and grabbed her arm, halting her forward motion.

Damn! She had just missed making a clean getaway! She flicked a quelling glance down at the beefy fingers grasping her elbow. “Let go of my arm. You’re going to give me a bruise.” It took all her effort to maintain her high-handed façade, but she knew her ladylike aura of aristocratic frost was her best weapon in helping to keep his baser nature in check. Still, as her fear deepened, the disguise was wearing thin.

“Come, we don’t get much chance to be alone,” he wheedled her. “Stay and chat.”

“I can’t. I have to go.” She pulled away in disgust, but he would not release her.

“Don’t I get a kiss good-bye, at least?”

“Absolutely not.” He leaned closer, and she grimaced at the smell. “You need a bath.”

“Maybe you should join me.”

“Edward! How dare you?” She let out a sudden gasp with astonished understanding. “You’re still drunk!”

“Nay! Well, maybe just a bit!” His wheezing laughter confirmed her suspicions. “Give me one kiss and I’ll let you go home,” he teased, but a glint of lust had sparked to life in his eyes.

I’ve got to get out of here.
This was getting extremely dangerous.

“Look at you, my haughty princess. I’m so pleased you came to see me. I think you really want to stay.” Without warning, he slung his other arm around her waist and bent lower, inhaling the scent of her. “So lovely. Admit it, Lady Lily. You picked me for a reason. All the fine, lordly gentl’men you could’ve had. I think you fancy a bit o’ the rough.”