“I should probably go in alone,” she said.
Aidan slowly nodded, that frown flickering over his face again. “When can I see you again?”
It was the same question he asked her when they left the cafe, and again it was not what she expected. He wanted to see her again? Him, the handsome son of a rich duke? It was astonishing.
But did she want to see him again? She feared she did, far more than was good for her. She knew she should push him away now, once and for all, but she simply found it impossible. “Write to me soon,” she said. Later, in the light of day, faced with a letter instead of his warm, living, all-too-attractive presence, she would be able to think rationally.
She started to turn away, but he caught her hand and raised it to his lips for a quick kiss, his mouth hot through her glove. “You won’t escape me that easily, Lily,” he whispered. Then he let her go, and she dashed into the salon.
“Mrs. Nichols!” a breathless footman cried. “There is something in the ballroom that requires your attention right away….”
Lily spent the rest of the night seeing to one small crisis after another as their patrons got drunker and rowdier, and between rescues, she avoided her brothers and tried to forget what she had done with Aidan.
But his voice kept whispering in her mind, deep, rough, and alluring:
“You won’t escape me…”
A
idan slowly tapped the end of his pencil against the warped edge of the coffeehouse table. He frowned down at the scribbled lines in his notebook and crossed out a few words before scratching in others.
He was vaguely aware of the room around him, the murmur of low voices, the smell of rich coffee and the tang of pipe smoke, the serving girl’s interested glances at his corner table, and the fact that Freddy Bassington was late for their meeting. But he was far away from it. He was deep in the action of the scene he was writing, the words and images rushing into his mind, tumbling over each other. It had been this way ever since he saw Lily St. Claire at the Devil’s Fancy. The inspiration was right there at his fingertips, because of her.
Lily.
Aidan closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Had it really been a week since their encounter? It felt like a year. At night, he could close his eyes and see her face, so pale in the moonlight, her lips parted as she gasped his name. He could feel her soft skin under his hands, taste her nipple in his mouth, so sweet. Her legs tight around his hips as she arched into him. He could feel
the wet heat of her even through their clothes, and hot lust urged him to tear the cloth away and thrust into her.
He had gone to his favorite brothel one night, looking for release, for something to make him forget Lily. Mrs. Bronson ran a luxurious house with the most beautiful and skilled of girls, and she always seemed to have what he wanted. But even the blond, buxom Swenson twins could not distract him. He didn’t need their ample charms. He needed Lily’s dark slenderness, her mysteriousness, her wariness that drove him to want to uncover all of her secrets.
So, like a callow schoolboy, he went home and came into his own hand while he imagined it was Lily’s mouth.
Aidan laughed at himself and threw his pencil to the table. He was acting like a fool, a boy with his first infatuation. He knew she was attracted to him; he could see it in her eyes and feel it in her kiss. He should go to her, give her no chance to think, make her his and get her out of his mind.
Yet something held him back. He remembered the flash of fear when she turned away from him that night, the delicate wariness that made him think of an exotic bird, fluttering away from a predator that swooped down from the sky. She would run from him if he wasn’t careful. He had to play the game just right, to chase and chase hard when he wasn’t accustomed to pursuing. One minute, Lily seemed confident and sophisticated, and the next frightened.
So he had sent flowers, violets like her perfume, and brief notes. He was a patient man when the reward was great enough. He could take the time to make his plans.
If only he could get his manhood to be patient too. It wanted Lily, and it wanted her now.
Aidan smiled ruefully and closed his notebook. He just had to pour his urges into his writing right now. The new play was going well, especially now he had his inspiration for the heroine.
The bell over the door rang as someone stepped into the coffeehouse. Aidan glanced up and saw it was Freddy at last. He slipped the notebook into his coat pocket and waved his friend over.
The impression he had had the last time he ran into Freddy—that his friend was in some kind of turmoil—was even stronger now. Freddy Bassington was the most lighthearted of Aidan’s friends, the kindest and most generous if not the most intelligent. Freddy always laughingly proclaimed himself to be “thick as a plank.”
But today his red hair stood on end, and his freckles were dark on chalk-white skin. He needed a shave, and his cravat was tied crookedly.
“Blimey, Freddy,” Aidan said, pushing a chair back for his friend. “You look as if you need something stronger than coffee.”
Freddy shook his head and dropped heavily into his seat. “My head hurts enough already.”
Aidan gestured to the serving girl for more coffee. As she brought it over, he leaned his forearms on the table and studied Freddy in concern. “What is happening, Freddy? I know you said you don’t need money, but if you do…”
Freddy gulped down the strong brew and shook his head. “I don’t. At least not yet. Not until I know what she’ll do.”
She.
“Ah.” Aidan sat back in his chair and almost laughed. Of course it was a woman who had Freddy tied up in knots. It always was. Wasn’t he going crazy himself,
all because of Lily St. Claire? “And who is she, then? A friend of your sister who refused your proposal? An opera dancer who sent back your gifts?”
“Nothing like that.” Freddy finished his coffee and took a deep breath. He seemed a little steadier and gave Aidan a sheepish smile. “She’s not a society debutante
or
a whore. I… well, I thought I was in love with her.”
“Thought you were?”
“She… well, damn it all, she’s not like any other woman I’ve ever met.” Freddy shook his head again. “I misread things with her. I’m always doing that.”
Aidan knew the feeling well. His attempts to read Lily were obviously going nowhere. Maybe hearing someone else’s romantic woes would make him feel better. “Where did you meet her?”
“I went to a dinner at the Majestic Theater a few months ago, when you were in the West Indies.”
“The Majestic? You met her there?” Aidan sat up straight. The Majestic was the St. Claires’ theater.
“I sat next to her. Mrs. Lily Nichols. She smiled at me, talked to me like I wasn’t thick or dull. And she had such pretty dark eyes. I thought…”
He had thought she was different. Special. Aidan knew what Freddy had thought and felt when he looked at Lily St. Claire, because Aidan felt it himself. He wanted to be the one to discover her secrets, to delve behind the mystery. But he wasn’t the only one.
“You wrote her letters?” Aidan asked tightly.
Freddy groaned and buried his face in his hands. “With poems and everything. I thought I could convince her to feel the same way I did, to see how much I cared for her. But she turned me away.”
Aidan could envision it. Lily’s dark eyes hardening, her face like marble as she pushed away what she didn’t want to see. Her heart closed. “Did she laugh at you?” he asked, though he couldn’t picture Lily laughing at anyone at all.
Freddy shook his head. “She tried to be kind, I think. She told me she intended never to marry again. But she kept my letters, and I don’t know what she intends to do with them. You remember what happened to Arthur Collins, don’t you?”
Aidan nodded brusquely. Arthur Collins was another old school friend of theirs, who was nearly ruined when his mistress took him to court in a breach of promise suit. She had used his letters begging her to marry him as evidence, even though those letters were obviously written when he was completely foxed. “Never say Mrs. Nichols is taking you to court.”
“I don’t know what she intends to do! She hasn’t said anything. I’m just afraid of what my mother would say if she ever found out how foolish I’ve been.”
Aidan studied his friend’s gaunt face and his eyes so full of despair. “I will get the letters back for you, Freddy,” he said gently.
Freddy almost sobbed in relief. “Would you, Aidan? I knew I could count on you. You always have such a way with ladies.”
Aidan nodded. It was time for a trip to the theater.
D
uring Aidan’s years in the West Indies, he had missed many things. The cool, soft rain of an English springtime. The brandy at his club. The conversation of his friends. But what he had missed most was the theater. Amateur theatricals in someone’s drawing room or a touring company from New York, which was the fare available in the tropics, just wasn’t the same as a real London theater.
He hadn’t been in the Majestic since that night he first met Lily, and it hadn’t changed. He focused his opera glasses on the stage and studied the elaborate gold and crimson velvet curtains, the frescoes above the proscenium that depicted the Muses. Gold boxes rose to either side, as elaborate as wedding cakes with their fashionable inhabitants in black evening suits and bright satin gowns. The excited sound of laughter and conversation hung in the perfume-scented air, along with the flutter of programs and the faint hiss of the gaslights.
There was nothing quite like a night at the theater, Aidan thought as he watched the audience file into the stalls below his box. The anticipation of escaping into another world, of living another life just for a few hours.
Those moments just before the curtain rose and a new world was revealed. It was this way every time he went to the theater; it was one of the things that kept drawing him back.
But tonight felt somehow different. Tonight he kept thinking about Lily and wondering if he would see her. Was she behind that curtain? He could picture her there backstage, the very image of cool efficiency as she had been at the Devil’s Fancy, overseeing everything with her brown eyes. Her somber gown and sleek coiffure belying what was hidden inside of her, a fire that had nearly burned him when he dared to touch her. To kiss her.
To want her.
Aidan lowered his glass and frowned as he studied the laughing party in the box across the way. He
did
want Lily, with a raw passion that had caught him by surprise. It threatened to make him forget everything else but when he could see her again. But he had told Freddy he would find his blasted letters, and for that he needed a cool head.
He turned back to the stage and suddenly noticed a man standing in the shadows of the wings, watching him. Aidan couldn’t make out his features, just the gleam of light-colored hair in the darkness and the intensity of his stare.
Such a glare seemed to speak of anger and brawls, but Aidan couldn’t think of anyone he could have offended so deeply in the short time since he returned from the West Indies. Especially no one in the theater. It was unsettling, and he could feel his muscles tense as if he was prepared to fight.
But then the gaslights flickered, and the audience grew quiet in anticipation of the play beginning. Aidan glanced
over to see the curtain sway, and when he turned back, the man in the wings was gone.
Aidan laughed ruefully. He was becoming infected with Freddy’s paranoia, seeing danger where there was none. He needed to focus on his task, not on fighting imagined foes. And definitely
not
on alluring dark-haired women in gambling clubs…
“What is
he
doing here, the blighter?”
Lily could hear the barely leashed fury in Dominic’s voice, but she was too busy lacing up one of the actress’s gowns to turn around and look at him. “Who is here?” she murmured. She tied off the ribbons and sent the woman hurrying off to make her entrance. The first night of a play was always frantic; the last thing she needed was one of her brothers in a temper.
But Dominic didn’t seem to be calming down. He paced to the end of the dressing room, the black cloak that was part of his costume swirling around him. “That Aidan Huntington, of course. First he’s at the club and now here at the theater? What’s his game?”
Aidan was here? Against Lily’s will, her heart suddenly pounded, and her mouth went dry. Could he possibly be here to see her? Or was Dominic right and there was some darker purpose to him showing up everywhere so suddenly? Her old distrust of people always seemed to be there, simmering under the surface, but she couldn’t imagine what nefarious reason Aidan could have for being here.
“Oh, Dominic,” she said. She turned her back on his watchful stare and picked up a discarded costume. “He
probably just wants to see the play. His mother sometimes comes here, doesn’t she? Why do you suspect everyone of evil motives?”
“Not everyone—just a Huntington. The man just came back to London. Why would he want to hang about here?”
Lily dearly wanted to know that too. Why was he suddenly here, disrupting her peace of mind? Making her think about him far more than she should…
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your entrance?” she said, carefully folding the costume. “You’ll be off your game if you worry too much about who is in the audience.”
Dominic gave a humorless laugh. “When have I ever been off my game onstage? But when the play is over…”
Lily spun around to face him, her arms crossed over her chest. “When it’s over, you’ll let him leave. The last thing we need at the beginning of a new season is you causing a scandal fighting a duke’s son. You and Brendan both need to leave him alone.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly is going on with you and Huntington, Lily?”
“Nothing! I barely know the man. I’m just trying to keep you from getting us all into trouble.” A bell rang in the corridor. “You need to get ready for your entrance.”
Dominic gave a short nod. The door slammed behind him as he left, and Lily slumped down into a chair. Once Dominic had something in his mind, he wouldn’t let it go. She just had to figure out a way to head him off.