“Not much at all,” he answered with a laugh. “To the despair of my father. I left Oxford last year and have been adrift ever since.”
“What does your father want you to do, then?”
“Go into the church or, failing that, the army. But he prefers the church, as he has a rather valuable living to bestow and it would get me out of the way.”
Lily laughed at the image of this obviously rakish young man giving a sermon in black robes. His female parishioners would be wildly distracted, fainting in the aisle and cornering him in the vestibule. “You? A vicar?”
“Exactly so. You see, we have only just met, and you see the folly of such a scheme. My father is harder to persuade.”
Lily shook her head. “The church is a most respectable profession.”
“And as such, it deserves a respectable practitioner.”
“And that isn’t you?”
“Certainly not. I also have the chance to try my hand at some business in the West Indies, which would probably suit me much better.”
His choices were the church or the tropics? Lily kicked at the hem of her costume as she thought about the
suffocating expectations of other people, of the world at large. How they pressed in on all sides, no matter if you lived in a palace or a hovel.
“What would you do if you could do anything at all?” she asked.
He studied her closely, and for just a moment his careless, rakish demeanor fell away, and he looked older and far more serious. His blue eyes darkened.
“I would write plays, I suppose,” he said.
Lily was surprised. She didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. “Write plays?”
His smile came back, like a mask dropping back into place. “You’re astonished.”
“Of course not. I completely understand anyone falling in love with the theater.” She thought again of all her hopes for the stage—and the way they crashed down around her. “It just doesn’t always love you back.”
She suddenly felt a gentle touch on her hand and looked down to see his fingers against hers, his hand large and dark on her pale skin, his fingers long and elegant. She usually didn’t like men touching her; it brought back the old, terrible memories. But with him, she didn’t want to pull away at all.
“It was only your first night,” he said. “I’m sure even Richard Burbage suffered stage fright at his debut. Who wouldn’t when faced with Shakespeare? The next time will be very different.”
Lily shook her head. Her cheeks burned to think that he, of all people, witnessed tonight’s debacle. And now he tried to comfort her! “There won’t be a next time, not for me. At least you will not have to speak your lines right there in front of everyone once you have written them.”
“But I would have to give them into the hands of others and let them go,” he said. “I’m not sure I have that much trust in me.”
“I’m quite sure I wouldn’t,” Lily said. “It is very hard for me to trust at all.”
“Yet you’ve talked to me, a stranger, tonight.”
She smiled up at him. “You’re rather easy to talk to. Maybe it’s because you’re a stranger.”
“Odd. I was thinking the same about you… Juliet.” He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to the back of her fingers.
His lips were warm, soft and hard at the same time, and their touch made a strange, sparkling haze drop over her. As she watched, fascinated, he turned her hand over in his and pressed an openmouthed kiss at the center of her palm. The tip of his tongue then touched the pulse that beat at her wrist, and she shivered.
Lily laid her other hand on his bent head and felt the rough silk of his hair under her touch. If she had to marry Harry Nichols, to spend her life in the real world of shops and streets and housework, didn’t she deserve this one moment out of time? This one kiss with a sinfully handsome stranger who seemed to banish her fears with just a touch?
He took her in his arms and drew her close, until there was not even a particle of light between them. “Juliet,” he whispered, and his mouth met hers in a hungry kiss.
Lily met him eagerly, holding tightly to his shoulders to keep from falling. His kiss made her feel just like that, as if she were tumbling through the night sky among the flashing stars.
His tongue pressed past her lips to touch and tangle
with hers. He tasted of brandy and mint, hot and delicious, and he was such a
good
kisser. Lily had never been kissed like this, never felt like this before. She curled her hands into the front of his coat and felt his heart pounding against her.
He groaned, a deep, echoing sound, and his lips slid from hers to press against the side of her neck. He kissed that soft, sensitive spot just below her ear, nipping it lightly with his teeth and then soothing it with the touch of his tongue. His breath brushed warmly over her skin.
“Lily!” someone called out, pulling her abruptly back down to the hard, cold earth. “Lily, are you out here?”
It was her mother, her voice filled with worry. And she was getting closer.
Lily tore herself out of the stranger’s arms and leaped to her feet. She swayed dizzily, but when he reached out for her again, she stumbled back. “I… I have to go,” she whispered.
He stood up beside her, not trying to touch her again. His blue eyes glowed in the shadows. “Where can I find you?” he said hoarsely.
She shook her head. He was a dream—and she had to wake up now. She whirled around and ran away from him, lifting her skirts to flee once again.
“Wait! Please,” he called after her. But she didn’t dare look back.
London, Three Years Later
“Y
ou see, Lily, it’s the perfect place for sin.”
Lily St. Claire Nichols leaned back on the seat of the open carriage as it came to a halt, staring up at the building from under the brim of her fashionable satin and net bonnet. It was a very handsome structure, to be sure, four stories elegantly built in the uniform white stone of Mayfair. Polished marble front steps led up to a glossy black-painted door, and there were lots of gleaming windows to reflect the pearl-gray London sky behind their discreet velvet draperies. It blended perfectly with its genteel neighbors.
But
sinful
? She had seen lots of places much better suited to that.
“If you say so, Dominic,” she said with a laugh. “But I would have thought it the perfect place for drinking tea and playing the pianoforte.”
“Ah, sister dear, as usual you have no imagination,” Dominic said. As he leaped down from the carriage to the flagstone walkway, two passing young ladies paused
to watch him, giggling and blushing under their fringed parasols.
Lily bit her lip to keep from laughing. It was always thus with Dominic—his golden, Apollo-like good looks, combined with the natural flamboyance of the St. Claires made it utterly impossible to look away from him. He always exuded energy and good cheer, a glow that drew people in, just as their famous parents and her siblings did. When the St. Claires were all together, they nearly obliterated the sun.
Where Lily, only an adopted St. Claire, contented herself with her brown hair, a sensible nature that kept her wilder siblings from too much trouble, and their reflected glory. Someone had to be a practical Athena to their Dionysian revels, to keep track of the accounts and organize their businesses. She liked keeping to the shadows, especially after her one disastrous moment in the theatrical sun three years ago.
She was done with the spotlight. Now she had a new task—to help her brother Dominic with his latest venture: a fashionable, luxurious gambling club right in the heart of Mayfair. It seemed a good plan. Aristocrats often had deep pockets and longed for decadent but discreet ways to empty them. The St. Claires were good at helping them with that task.
It seemed like a good place for Lily to start over too. Her husband had been dead for a year now. It was time to move on, to forget the past.
“Thanks to you, Dominic, I have plenty of imagination,” she said as he helped her alight from the carriage. She looped her gloved hand through his arm and went with him up the gleaming steps. Despite her caution, she
felt a bright spark of excitement deep inside. She had a good feeling about this place.
“It’s a very pretty house in a fine neighborhood,” she went on. “But how will anyone even know to come here and gamble their money away? It’s not the most obvious.”
“That’s the very point! If we want to attract dukes and earls, we have to be discreet and very exclusive. They won’t want the queen to know what they’re up to.” Dominic drew a shining brass key from inside his fine, blue wool coat. “We will have a small brass sign here on the door along with a demon’s head knocker. ‘The Devil’s Fancy—Members Only.’ And, of course, there will be a very strict and respectable butler to man the door.”
“I’m glad you’ve thought of everything, even a dramatic name,” Lily said, stepping inside. She blinked at the sudden, dark shadows after the bright day. “And where will these members, these dukes and earls, come from?”
“Nothing easier, Lily, as you well know. You’re the one with the brain for accounting, after all. Our investors will drop hints among their friends. The word will spread through the ballrooms and the gentlemen’s clubs. Everyone will want to join.”
Lily untied her bonnet and swept it off to get a better look at the surroundings. She had to admit it was impressive. The foyer, with white and gold walls and elaborate wedding-cake plasterwork, soared upward to a domed ceiling painted with a fresco of a classical gods’ feast against a bright, blue sky. A winding staircase with a fine wrought-iron balustrade led to the public rooms above, while just beyond she glimpsed a small room that could be the office of that stern butler.
She could picture liveried footmen greeting their guests
with glasses of champagne, could hear the rustle of lacy crinoline skirts, laughter, and chatter floating along those stairs. The whir of a roulette wheel, the clink of coins.
“You have investors, then?” she said. “Rich ones?”
“You always do get right to the point, don’t you, Lily?”
Certainly she did. The stink of the streets, where she spent her childhood picking pockets and scrounging to survive until the St. Claires rescued her, was never far enough away. Even here in elegant Mayfair.
“Investors?” she said again.
“Of course, with Brendan’s help.” Their brother Brendan was magical with people—they could never say no to him. Odd, since he always seemed the strong, silent type, the sort of man no one could fathom. So different from Dominic. “Just a few so far, but very desirable ones. Viscount Brownville. Sir Archibald Overton. Lady Smythe. Even a duke’s nephew, perhaps. Brendan was a bit secretive about that one.”
“All those? How did Brendan reel them in?”
“They know a good investment when they see one.” Dominic propped his booted foot on the lowest marble step, his handsome, smiling face suddenly darkening. “Maybe with one duke, we could lure Carston to invest here as well. Take a chunk of his ill-gotten gains.”
The Duke of Carston.
The Huntington family. It always came back to them. That high-in-the-instep ducal family always darkened every St. Claire moment of triumph. They hung over everything due to the old legend of the way they once ruined the St. Claires.
Lily gently laid her hand on Dominic’s arm. She wasn’t about to let Carston, or anyone, ruin this, her new beginning. “Show me the upstairs rooms.”
He nodded and led her up the stairs, their footsteps echoing in the luxurious, empty space. Off the landing were three beautiful salons, shimmering with more white and gold. There were vast, elaborately carved marble fireplaces and tall windows draped in pale yellow brocade and velvet trimmed in heavy tassels and fringe.
“This can be the main gaming salon,” Dominic said eagerly, his dark mood seemingly forgotten. “And over there a ballroom and a dining room.”
Lily laughed. “Dining and dancing too?”
“Of course! A French chef, a fine orchestra���”
“It’s a good thing we have rich investors, then.”
“And we’ll soon have more. Our investment will be returned many times over, Lily. You’ll see.” Dominic strode through the empty rooms, throwing back the draperies to let in the daylight. “I will order all the gaming supplies, but you must be in charge of hiring the staff and buying the furnishings. The most fashionable of everything.”
Even as she calculated exactly how much “the most fashionable of everything” would cost, Lily couldn’t deny that her brother’s excitement was infectious. It would certainly be a splendid establishment. And with dukes and viscounts as their customers, leading the way for London’s elite to come trooping to their doors, their fortune would be made.
Lily eased back one of the draperies to peer down at the street below. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass pane, a ghostly reflection of her pale face against the satin bow that tied her jacket collar. She sighed at the sight.
Despite her fine, blue velvet jacket and plaid silk skirt,
she was surely nothing out of the ordinary. A pigeon among the golden St. Claire peacocks, with brown hair and eyes, of middling height, and too thin for fashion.
“It’s a good thing you can afford fine clothes,” she murmured wryly. And that she had a stylish mother to help her choose them. Katherine St. Claire was known as one of the most fashionable women in London, and she loved advising her daughters. It helped Lily pretend, for a while at least, that she belonged here.
Lily unlatched the window and threw it open so she wouldn’t have to look at herself any longer. The cool, fresh breeze of clean air, untainted by the smoke and muck of poorer neighborhoods, carried away the stale stuffiness of the salon. The prospect outside was as pretty as the one inside, with a green, shady park across the tidy street. Well-dressed people strolled there, ladies in crinolines and feathered bonnets on the arms of men in frock coats and gleaming silk hats, children with their hoops and wagons ushered by starchy black-clad nannies. Their laughter and bright clothes were like beacons in the gray day.
How pretty it all was, how fine and hopeful. How different from where she grew up on the streets of Whitechapel…