Her Secret Fantasy (36 page)

She prayed hard not to slip. By the time she gained the top of the trellis, her knees felt wobbly and her palms were slick with sweat. It didn’t make the climbing easy, especially with a greasy hambone shoved down her dress!

“Ow,” she muttered when she pricked herself on a rose’s thorn on her way down the wooden latticework.

Brutus suddenly noticed her coming.

Chain links jangled below as the dog lost interest in the crazed horses rushing free about the grounds and trotted over to the wall, where he began barking anew.

Lily whimpered as the dog leaped up at her, his powerful jaws snapping shut on thin air mere inches under her feet. How was she to go down there when this monster was already trying to eat her?

She shrieked when Brutus’s next attempt succeeded in tearing the long, graceful train of her riding habit. She held on tight to the trellis as the dog fell to earth again with a mouthful of fabric.

Hanging onto the trellis for dear life, she called to the dog in what she hoped sounded like a friendly tone. She slid the disgusting hambone out of her bodice and waved it toward the dog, making sure the black beast saw it.

Brutus stopped barking long enough to sniff the air.

With a frightened glance over her shoulder, Lily calculated exactly where to throw it—as far as the dog’s chain would reach in the opposite direction from where she needed to go.

Provided the monster took the bait at all, she’d probably have only seconds to jump down and escape the circumference of his leash.

What if the chain that held him broke? What would stop him then?
Nothing, she realized. If that happened, then she was dead. A bad way to go, too. But it wasn’t as bad as burning alive.

Derek. She had to think of Derek. She knew he was waiting. She could feel him in her heart. Every second counted now.

With one last terrified glance toward the stable, she held out the bone, making sure she had the fight dog’s attention. “B-Brutus! Here, boy! Look at this! This is for you! Yes! Easy now. There’s a good boy!”

The dog made another high vertical leap, but this time Brutus was aiming for the hambone rather than her.

“Good boy—go fetch!”

She hurled the bone.

The chain links clanked as Brutus raced after it.

With barely a glance, she jumped off the trellis, landed in a knee-jarring fall on the grass, picked herself up, and raced toward the stable. Instinctual dread cut off her breath at the sound of chain links rushing after her.

She stumbled, tripping on the torn hem of her skirts, and rolled ahead just to keep moving.

An ear-splitting bark rushed at her like a cannonball.

When she looked up through the tangle of her hair, she was on eye level with the dog. Brutus was almost upon her. He was coming straight at her, his slavering jaws wide. He seemed to think he was in the dogfight pit.

But a sudden jolt to his collar stopped Brutus cold. The chain pulled taut as the dog reached the end of his tether; his killer jaws slammed shut mere inches from Lily’s face.

The chain held.

Slowly, still terrified, she backed away.

Good Lord, how could I ever have thought about marrying a man who would keep such a pet?

As it sank in that she was still alive, that Brutus had not eaten her, Lily shoved herself to her feet and kept running toward the stables.

No one paid her any mind until she neared the burning entrance. Already she could feel the radiating heat from the towering flames. The thick smoke invaded her nostrils.

She could hear Edward’s booming voice before she spotted him. From behind the screen of billowing smoke, he sounded panicked. “Capture those horses before they run away! I’ll have your heads for this!” Through the shifting smoke, she caught a glimpse of him. He was pacing back and forth, his hands clapped to his head.

He stopped again to scream at his henchmen. “Put the water on there. There!” He pointed frantically to a section of the wall that had flames shooting out. “Faster, you useless bastards!”

Lily wanted at all costs to avoid him, but she would have to pass him to get into the stable. She pressed on, hoping to sneak past him, but suddenly, in the chaos, they nearly collided.

Edward stepped out of a billow of acrid smoke and grabbed her arm with a snarl every bit as vicious as his dog’s. “What are you doing out of your room?”

“Let go of me! Where’s Derek?”

“In Hell, for all I care!”

“He’s still in there, isn’t he?”

“Forget about him!”

Lily struggled to shake off his grasp. “Let me get him out!”

“He deserves to burn! Look at what he’s done to me!” Edward flung a furious gesture at the stable.

“I’m not going to let you kill him.”

“Hold still, damn you!”

There wasn’t time to fight—and with Derek’s life at stake, there certainly wasn’t time to fight honorably. Lily drew back and kicked Edward in the groin as hard as she could.

He let go of her arm with a garbled roar, dropping to his knees and hunching over his nether regions. Lily pulled free and ran into the burning stable.

Another newly freed horse came charging out of the smoke, nearly trampling her in the middle of the stable’s main aisle, but Lily dodged out of the way. Then she moved on, using her sleeve to try to filter the air, veiling her nose and mouth from the choking smoke as best she could.

“Derek!
Derek!
” She screamed his name repeatedly. She could only see a few feet ahead through the smoke and was already perspiring in the radiating heat. “Derek! Where are you? Can you hear me?”

Then, over the crackle and hiss of the fire, she noticed a rhythmic banging sound deeper in the stable—a powerful clash of metal banging.

Derek.

Thank God he was conscious—and fighting like hell to kick out the door to his cage, by the sound of it.

“Derek, I’m coming!”

“Lily?” The banging stopped. She heard the sound of coughing. “Lily!”

As she pushed on deeper into the burning stable, she could start to make out the square silhouette of the cage in the middle of the aisle ahead. Fury poured through her for what they had done to him, but she forged on, absolutely determined to get him out.

She spotted a moving shape in the smoke ahead, down near the floor. Through the haze of gray smoke, the picture came clearer with her every step. He had paused in his assault on the cage’s door and had crouched down low to catch a few breaths of the better air nearer the ground.

“Lily!” He straightened up as best he could in the too-short cage as she ran to him, closing the distance between them.

Behind the grid of the cage’s bars, he looked appalled to see her. “What are you doing in here?”

“Rescuing you!”

“You’ve got to get out!”

“Not without you!”

“It’s too dangerous! Watch—the bars are hot,” he warned as she started to reach toward him. His chiseled face was drenched in sweat as he searched her eyes fiercely, his own red-rimmed. “Look up. Lily—the ceiling’s on fire. Any second now, the roof is going to cave in. I want you out of here. Now.”

She ignored him, glancing around. “I don’t suppose they left the key?”

He shook his head. “No. Sweetheart,” he said in a softer tone, stopping her. She was astonished by how calm he was. He swallowed hard. “There may be no way out of this for me. You need to go.”

“No,” she uttered, shaking her head. “No.”

“Please.” He reached carefully through the bars and touched her hand. “Just save yourself—”

“No!” she repeated more forcefully. “I’m going to get you out of here! I’m going to prove to you that I didn’t lure you to that ambush to betray you—”

“I would never think that. I knew it wasn’t your fault.”

“You did?”

“Of course, right away. Now listen to me. You need to go.”

“I will not leave you—”

“Lily,” he whispered, staring at her, “I love you.”

She drew in her breath and turned to him in amazement. “Derek.” Tears rose in her eyes. She reached her hand carefully through the bars and took his hand. “I love you, too.”

New resolve flooded her as she stared at him. By God, she was not going to let the man she loved die while there was breath left in her body—especially not like this. It was too unfair. He had not survived so many battles to die here, trapped like an animal.

“I am not going to let this happen to you,” she ground out so fiercely that he looked startled.

Clenching her jaw, she pulled away from him and ran into the smoke, infused with wild new courage.

“Lily, look out!”

She glanced up at Derek’s warning, her gaze homing in on a burning beam overhead. She leaped out of the way just as it came crashing down.

“Are you all right?” Derek called in a shaky tone.

Her pulse pounding, Lily nodded. “Fine!” She knew she had to think of something fast. The stable was coming down around them. Time was running out. “Keep working on the door, all right?”

“I’m not sure there’s any point.” When she glanced over at him, Derek held her gaze with a soulful stare. “Please—”

“Don’t even tell me to go!” she retorted before he could give the intolerable order. “Whatever happens,” she vowed, “I am not leaving you.”

She knew what it was like to be left behind when you needed someone the most. With that, she rushed into the billow of smoke ahead…

And came back a moment later wielding a long-handled shovel that she had found lying amid the rubble.

“Good!” Derek exclaimed, coughing, waving her over. “Give it to me and get the hell out of here.”

Lily marched back to the door of the cage and just looked at him. “Stand aside!”

“Lily—”

Crash!

“Jesus,” Derek muttered, backing up a bit.

Swinging the long-handled shovel again with all her strength, she bashed the metal edge of it against the cage door.

The door jumped, but the lock still held.

She banged it again.

Derek watched her in grim silence, no longer protesting. Perhaps he realized that he wouldn’t have been able to get a good arc with it anyway inside the small, constricted space. But he was probably praying as hard as she was.

Lily struck the locked door of the cage again and again—harder, faster, more furiously—and still it held, until she let out a scream of sheer fury and blasted it one more time with all she had left.

The metal hinges gave way with a groan.

She threw the shovel aside as Derek kicked the door open and rushed out into her arms.

“Let’s get out of here,” he murmured. Lily nodded as she realized she was shaking. Holding onto each other, they started toward the stable’s main exit, but the way was blocked. Derek glanced around, his eyes narrowed against the smoke.

She still could not believe how calm he was, but then, with his vocation, he was probably quite used to smoke-filled scenes of chaos and destruction.

“There.” He pointed through the smoke. The blaze had not yet reached the last stall in the aisle, emptied like all the rest now that the horses had been rescued.

The open window offered them their best and probably last hope of escape.

Racing through the stable, they ran to the end box stall. Derek threw the door open. They sped across the hay-strewn floor to the horse’s window. Then he lifted her easily up onto the broad window sill.

Lily jumped down onto the grass just a few feet below. Derek was right behind her, leaping out of the window, grabbing her hand.

With the whole of Edward’s property in chaos behind them, they fled into the darkness.

CHAPTER

         
SEVENTEEN
         

“T
hey’re shooting at us!” Lily cried, glancing over her shoulder when a mighty cracking sound ripped through the night.

“Get down!” Derek shielded her with his body as they continued running across the manicured grounds of Edward’s estate. “Keep going. We should be out of range soon.”

Hunching down a little, they pressed on, racing toward the high wrought-iron fence that girded Edward’s property.

Edward’s fine horses were careening around the park, zigzagging this way and that, some of them bunched into a loose herd, others following their own paths. Not far ahead, a ghostly gray leaped over a clump of azaleas and galloped on.

“I could catch one of these horses to get us out of here,” he murmured.

“No need; the sorrel mare is tethered in the woods. Besides, there’s a fence.”

“All right. Come on, sweet,” he urged her as Lily coughed, her lungs still aching from the smoke.

When another clipped report rang out, the top ball of a boxwood topiary near them burst into a shower of leaves.

“Climb!” he ordered, cupping his hands to give her a leg up as they reached the wrought-iron fence.

Wasting no time, she stepped into the makeshift stirrup of his hands and grasped the bars, pulling herself up. Gingerly scaling it, she made sure her long skirts weren’t hooked on the blunt spikes that lined the top of the fence before landing none too gracefully on the other side.

“You wouldn’t have brought a water canteen, would you?” Derek asked as he climbed over the fence as smoothly as though he did this sort of thing every day.

“Afraid not,” she murmured, watching him in wonder as he jumped down with the stealthy grace of a big cat. “You must be parched.”

“I’ll live. Let’s find your horse.”

“This way, I think…”

They hurried through the woods by the side of the road. In the darkness, along with her memory being somewhat blurred by the wild events of this day, it was hard to remember exactly where she had tethered Mary Nonesuch.

Derek stalked beside her in patient silence. Now and then he called softly to his former patient. Lily could feel the protectiveness fairly emanating from him.

“There she is,” Derek said suddenly, pointing to a large shadow among the trees.

They rushed over to the docile mare. Though she had pulled free of her tether, she hadn’t gone far. The placid horse whickered and came toward them.

Derek tightened the girth and lifted Lily into the saddle. “Now, go.”

“What?”

“She’s not strong enough to carry us both very far.”

“Yes, she is!”

“Don’t argue with me. Ride on. They’re going to come after you, and I’m going to stay here and stop them. Go to Gabriel—”

“No! I came too close to losing you already. Come with me. Damn it, Derek, you’re hurt, you’re unarmed, and you’re ridiculously outnumbered—”

“Lily, I can—”

“I know you can! But I don’t want you to. You have nothing to prove to me! I just want you with me. Please, Derek. I can’t lose you.”

He glanced at the sky, the moonlight silvering the elegant line of his throat. “Lily, if he forced himself on you, he’s got to die—”

“No. It didn’t happen.”

Slowly, he leveled a piercing gaze on her face. “Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes.” She admitted in a shaky tone, “He pushed me around a bit and made some threats, but I got out of there before anything worse happened. Derek, please. You have to come with me or I shall go mad. We’ve got to get out of here—together.”

He looked at her in exasperation. “We’re not going to get very far together, Lily. The horse is too weak.”

“Then we’ll get as far away as she can manage to take us and hide: Give her a chance, Derek. She’s stronger than you know. She might just surprise you. Now, for heaven’s sake, I saved your bloody life—get on this horse!”

He gave her a sardonic look, then shrugged off his protests and relented, springing up onto the mare’s back behind her. Reaching around Lily, he took the reins with one arm hooked around her waist, holding her securely. Wasting no more time, he urged the mare on quickly through the woods until they came out onto the road.

“Come on, girl. Let’s just hope you’re faster than you look.” He nudged Mary Nonesuch into a swift canter, and they were off, sweeping down the country lane.

The sorrel mare seemed to sense their desperation, and, as if ignoring the still-healing sores on her back, she strove heroically to give them all she could, stretching out her canter to an all-out gallop through the darkness.

Frankly, Lily was more worried about Derek. “How’s your head? Your eyes?”

His answer was a noncommittal grunt. “So, you thought you’d break into Lundy’s office,” he said in soft, terse displeasure by her ear. “Not one of your better ideas, darling.”

“Well, I know that now, don’t I? But before you scold me, I learned a few things that you’ll want to know.”

“Like what?”

“Mainly, that you were right. Edward’s in deep financial trouble—and I discovered why. He speculated away three hundred thousand pounds in some canal-building scheme.”

“Canals?” he echoed, mulling this. “Well done, Lily.”

“There’s more. Mrs. Lundy did not go to Jamaica for her gout. I found a cryptic letter from her in Edward’s office that hinted at some sort of trouble with his plantations there.”

“The plantations. Of course.” Derek paused. “Lundy must be selling them. You see, once he thought he had me down, he admitted he took the money. But he claimed he had already taken measures to replace what he had ‘borrowed.’ Sending his mother off to sell his plantations quickly and quietly would have been a good start at replacing the sum.”

“It would certainly draw less attention than if he began selling off his properties here. Everyone would soon know he was in dun territory, and then whatever social rank he’d gained would have been lost.”

“Don’t forget, he also had changed his marriage plans, choosing Bess Kingsley and her dowry over you.”

“Right,” Lily answered grimly.

“He was selling off some jewelry, too,” Derek murmured. “Probably hoping he could keep himself afloat until his mother came back and his marriage went through. Thus the wild-goose chase he sent me on.”

“Hm?”

Derek snorted in disgust. “He kept trying to point me toward every man on the committee other than himself.”

“Well, that fire at the stable will have been his undoing,” Lily said. “I saw him back there. He kept groaning he was ruined.”

“Then that means he’s at his most dangerous right now,” Derek murmured. “His back is to the wall. He’s got nothing left to lose.”

“God, you could have died.” Leaning back against him a little, she reached up and touched his face. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

“Thanks to you.” He kissed her fingers as she caressed him. “I can’t believe you saved my life,” he whispered.

“I’m just happy I succeeded.”

“You were astoundingly brave in that stable tonight, do you know that?”

She smiled.

He kissed her cheek as they rode on. “I meant what I said back there, Lily,” he whispered. “I love you.”

She rested her head against his cheek, nestling against him. “I love you, too. And I know you meant it. You always say exactly what you mean, don’t you?”

“Afraid so.”

“It’s one of your loveliest qualities.”

“Then in that case, you won’t mind my asking why you smell like ham?”

She let out a wry snort. “Never you mind it, you rogue! It’s the price I had to pay to save your hide.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It just gives me one more reason to want to eat you.”

“You are such a nasty man.”

“It’s one of my ‘loveliest’ qualities.” With a wicked laugh, he urged their flagging horse on. “Come on, girl. No slowing down yet.”

“Keep going, Mary. We need you.”

“She can’t keep up this pace much longer. We have to get off the road now,” Derek said. His voice turned grim. “They’re coming.”

“Can you see them?” Lily asked with a fresh wave of fear, craning her neck for an anxious look behind them.

“No, but Mary can hear them,” Derek answered, nodding at the horse’s ears. Lily marveled at his ability to read the animal’s subtlest cues, but then, he was used to relying on a horse to save his life in all of those cavalry charges. “Hold on.”

Derek pulled on the reins, letting their blowing mount slow to a bumpy trot. Turning the horse off the road, he urged the animal down the embankment and into the cover of the trees.

Lily did not know whose property they were on, but for several moments more, Derek guided Mary Nonesuch through the rolling countryside, moonlit meadows interspersed with thickly shadowed groves.

Derek hurried the mare over the next rise, then, a few hundred yards from the road, they sought cover in amongst a stand of trees. Derek slipped down from the saddle and beckoned to Lily to crouch lower over the mare’s withers. He went forward to hold the bridle and keep their horse quiet and still.

Holding her breath, Lily waited, watching the road. She was nervous, but Derek’s nearness made her feel safe. He reached over and laid a comforting hand atop hers as Edward’s men came thundering into view on the section of road that they had just evacuated.

There were four of them, racing closer, coming around the bend. But while Derek and Lily watched in tense silence from their little grove, the brutes never paused.

Instead, they went barreling on toward Town, kicking up a great cloud of dust in their wake.

Lily did not exhale until Edward’s henchmen were well out of sight.
That was too close.

Derek was also silent as he watched them pass. He waited a couple of moments more, making sure they showed no signs of coming back. At length, he turned to her with a rueful smile.

“I think we’re in the clear.” Releasing the horse’s bridle, he approached her. “I think we could all three do with a bit of a respite before we move on?”

As Lily nodded in fervent agreement, a raucous flurry of quacking reached them from the wooded area across the field. They both turned to look, then exchanged a puzzled glance.

“That sounded like a duck,” Lily said.

“Ducks mean water,” Derek answered with a wily smile. “Come on.”

Lily jumped down off the horse and walked beside him as they left the grove and crossed the moonlit field. Derek glanced back at the road, but there was nobody on it. Lily was glad to put more distance between it and them. The farther they could get away from Edward’s men, the better.

He was right, she thought. They could both use a break to sit and rest a little, hopefully find some water to drink after that torturous fire, and regroup before figuring out their next move.

With the trusty Mary Nonesuch between them, they walked up a gentle rise, and when they went down the other side of it, they could no longer see the road at all. It was now perhaps a quarter-mile behind them.

Before long, they entered cautiously into the woods. Lily took Derek’s hand, letting him lead her through the darkness. Overhead the swaying branches creaked, but in moments, they came to a clearing.

“Those are ducks, all right,” Derek murmured.

Lily and he exchanged a fond smile, and then both paused, staring at the huge, tranquil lake before them.

A large, disgruntled clan of ducks was indeed in residence, trying to bed down for the night among the clumps of pussy willows around the grassy banks, only they couldn’t stop bickering long enough to settle down.

Farther out on the water, however, all was serene. Starlight sparkled on its dark, glassy surface, beckoning to them. After the ordeal of smoke and flames, the cool lake looked like heaven.

“Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than that?” Lily whispered, watching the ripples passing over the shimmering water, driven on by the playful night breeze.

“Yes.”

When she glanced over at Derek, he was gazing at her.

She smiled at him with a blush rising in her cheeks.

He smiled back. But the lake was more temptation than Derek could resist after nearly being roasted alive.