Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) (12 page)

Lily surged to her feet. “Wait,” she called out. Except the child disappeared around the corridor, vanishing like the morning mist.

She stood there long after the small waif-like girl had gone; the child who’d been nothing more than the pawn that had brought Lily into this home in order to commit a theft upon the duke. The girl unwittingly represented Lily’s eventual salvation. Yet, with one whispered “hullo” and an urging to be brave, the child had become more than the means to an end of Lily’s years as a whore. The brown-haired girl was a stranger no more, but instead a person whose care she’d been charged with and, suddenly, the anger and hatred she’d carried for all who bore the Winters’ blood, dimmed.

Lily forced her legs to move and wandered inside her new rooms. With a deep sigh, she closed the door and leaned back against the wooden panel. She closed her eyes. She’d spent so many years only caring for and about herself that until this meeting outside her new rooms a handful of moments ago, she’d neglected the obvious truth. What had brought her into the beast’s lair was not revenge or Holdsworth’s diamond.

It was a child.

F
ollowing Lily’s corridor meeting with her charge, the girl had remained as elusive as a ghost. The next morning, Lily woke determined to begin her responsibilities as governess. The sooner she could locate that blasted diamond, the sooner she could be free of this cold, eerie home. Standing at the bevel mirror in her chambers, she pinched color into her cheeks and then, taking a deep steadying breath, left the safety of her rooms and ventured out in search of the duke’s ward. She glanced first left and then right, down the long, quiet halls. The hum of silence served as her only company.

“Now, how to go about finding a girl who does not wish to be found?” She nibbled her lower lip. Her experience as an older sibling had proven one certain fact—a child who did not wish to be found could hide like the very cleverest pygmy shrew.

With a sigh, Lily took the right hallway. In the years she’d been away from her younger siblings, she’d not allowed herself to think on them. The agony of missing them had eased with the passage of time. In the moments, she allowed them to slip into her thoughts, the agony of losing them from her life had ravaged her with the same vicious pain as when her father had tossed her aboard a mail coach and sent her off to London.

As such, she’d not allowed herself to think about all that made a child...well, a child. To think of those innocent, loving beings only roused thoughts of another babe who’d never be. Whores did not become mothers. Not mothers who were, in any way, respectable. Longing tightened painfully about her heart and she forcibly thrust aside foolish yearnings for what would never be.

Lily stopped beside a closed door. She pressed the handle and shoved it open. “Flora?” Skimming her gaze about the darkened room, she sighed and pulled the panel closed behind her. Since arriving in the duke’s household yesterday, she’d quickly learned that Flora was a spirited miss who reveled in her ability to hide in the shadows of this home.

She walked, her footsteps silent on the carpet-lined corridors, as she made her way through the maze-like home. Occasionally, she glanced at the paintings adorning the walls of the duke’s noble family who, by their dress and bewigged heads, were long-gone ancestors. With the great gulf between them, she and the duke may as well have belonged to two different universes.

He and his kind donned satins and silks and the finest fabrics. Hers had always been a respectable family, cut of religious cloth. Had her fifteen-year-old self seen this opulent home, surely even that naïve child would still not have been so foolish as to believe George’s intentions were honorable.

She continued walking, when out of the corner of her eye, she spied a particular portrait that brought her to a staggering halt. George, the late Duke of Blackthorne, with his condescending glint did not command her notice but rather the delicate woman at his side. Attired in a Grecian gown of white satin, the regal blonde woman evinced everything a duchess should be. Drawn forward, she stopped at the base of the painting. Lily’s gaze fixed on the obscenely large diamond about the woman’s delicate neck. Her stomach muscles knotted reflexively. So this was the piece that a man would have at all costs and that she would sell her soul for?

“Mrs. Benedict?”

Lily shrieked and spun about. “Harris,” she greeted, a hand at her racing heart.

The butler flushed. “Forgive me,” he said as he came forward. “I did not mean to startle you. I merely sought you out to see whether I might be of assistance?”

She pulled her attention away from the portrait. “Yes. I am looking for Lady Flora. I had hoped to begin our lessons.”

Approval lit his brown eyes. “If you will?” He did not wait to see if she complied, but merely turned on his heel and started down the opposite corridor.

Lily hurried to catch up. She fell into step alongside him. They moved silently through the maze of halls. Their footfalls fell in a matched pattern; eerily quiet on the plush carpeted halls. “What is she like?” Lily asked at last.

At his silence, Lily cast a look up. Harris slowed his steps; his expression contemplative. “She is...adventurous, bold, curious,” he said by way of explanation. “Her life has not been an easy one with the passing of her parents, and His—” He snapped his mouth closed. The servant did not need to finish the thought for his meaning to be clear. The girl’s life could not be a pleasurable one stuck in these dark, lonely walls of the current Duke of Blackthorne’s townhouse.

Ah, so that is where the young lady, motherless and absent of any governess these weeks, spent her days—with members of the staff. The duke’s angry words about his ward and the burden he’d presented her were surely known by the girl. Sadness tugged at Lily’s heart. What a lonely life Lady Flora lived. “The poor child.”

Harris stole a sideways glance down at her. He gave a slow, approving nod. “I like you a good deal, Mrs. Benedict.”

She stumbled and the butler shot a hand out to steady her. Lily dropped her gaze to the carpet and murmured her thanks. People did not like her. They avoided her. Spoke ill of her, but never held any favorable opinion of the fallen woman she was. “You do not even know me,” she said, guilt pebbling in her belly once more. If he did, he’d have saved the duke the trouble by packing her off himself.

“I know enough about you, Mrs. Benedict.” They turned right at the end of the hall and then continued on to the staircase leading below stairs. “I know you were courageous enough to go toe-to-toe with His Grace—”

“You make more of it than it is,” she said, while the pebble grew to the size of a boulder. Nothing but her own selfish motives had brought her here.

“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But I also know you’d not abandon the girl because of how the master looks and behaves.” How ready this servant was to welcome someone into the household, and for what purpose? To slay the demons that lived here and to save the cherished inhabitant of these walls? Unfortunately for them, Lily was not, nor would she ever be, that person.

They reached the main living quarters. “Do you wish to know the truth?” she asked Harris, not wanting the faultily placed praises he’d put upon her shoulders. “I am here because I have no other choice.”

“We always have a choice, Mrs. Benedict.”

She shifted her gaze away, unable to meet his kind-eyed, understanding stare.

...
You will have a home. Security. Your freedom
... Holdsworth’s coaxing promise slammed into her, and she blinked back a sheen of useless tears at the unwitting recollection of the day she’d sold her soul for stability.

Lily was never more grateful than when he stopped beside a closed door. “She enjoys the library immensely, Mrs. Benedict.” He pressed the handle and admitted her to another lavish space.

Sunlight streamed through the floor-length windows along the side of the room and drawn to the unexpected cheer and warmth, she stepped inside. She searched the room, dimly registering the closing door as Harris took his leave.

A high-pitched shriek split the quiet, and heart racing, Lily did a quick search of the room. Her gaze landed on Lady Flora, seated upon a leather button sofa with her skirts rucked about her knees. “Hullo,” she said gently.

Ignoring the greeting, the girl touched a hand to her chest. “You frightened me.” She dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I thought it was my uncle.”

No child should live with fear. That sentiment shouldn’t come until much later. Lily advanced deeper into the room. “Do you come to this room often?” This space, so very close to the guardian she clearly feared.

“I like to come here and read.” Flora swung her legs over the edge and pumped them vigorously back and forth. “The sunshine,” she gestured to the long row of floor-length windows, where glowing rays shone brightly through the crystal panes. “I would so greatly love to take my lessons outdoors,” she said in a wistful manner that tugged at Lily. It was a tug that opened up all the conflicted thoughts that continuously ran through Lily’s mind.

She is not your concern. Your freedom. Your safety. Your security...
Lily needed all those things. But whose concern should the little girl be? “When the weather permits, we will take your lessons in Hyde Park,” she said, unable to call the words back and as tangible joy lit the girl’s eyes, she found she didn’t want to.

“Truly?”

Lily nodded. “Truly.” She walked over and slid into the vacant mahogany-caned library chair nearest the girl. She’d been gone so long from her own younger siblings she forgot the absolute lack of artifice. Not yet jaded by life, a child of this age did not have the ability to distinguish sarcasm. She took in the pile of books littered at the girl’s feet and strewn about the sofa. “I thought you were unafraid of the duke?” she asked gently.

Flora grabbed the book at the top of the pile. “It is hard not to be afraid of him.” She fanned the pages, all the while directing her words to the leather volume. “He does yell.”

His thunderous roar as he’d ordered her from his office echoed around her mind. “Yes, he does yell a lot.” Lily studied the top of the girl’s brown curls. As stern as her father had been, wholly devoted to rising to that esteemed position of vicar, her childhood had been filled with laughter. What was this girl’s life to be like? Pain stabbed at her in thinking of the sad, solitary existence Flora would know.

Flora stopped her distracted movements and picked her head up. “But you aren’t afraid of his yelling? You’ll not leave simply because you are afraid.” Emotion filled her breast at the trusting look shot her way.

She drew in a ragged breath. No, she would leave after she’d committed the greatest theft against the duke. A painful vise squeezed tight about her heart. And now, this child. She turned a question on Flora. “When I first met with the duke, were you not laughing while he yelled?”

“Oh, yes.” Flora nodded. “But I laugh when I’m scared.” She stared intently at the gold lettering of the book’s title. “I didn’t always. Not when my mama and papa were alive. Then they...” Lily took in the girl’s white-knuckled grip. “They...” Died. They died. When presented with this innocent girl’s suffering, all the unholy glee she had found in George’s family’s suffering faded, leaving her with a humbled shame for not considering that not all of George’s kin were vile, heartless fiends. Flora raised grief-filled eyes to hers. “So you see, sometimes I laugh when I am not supposed to.”

Yes, sorrow and fear elicited all manner of peculiar reactions in a person. “When I...”
Was cast out of my family
, “...came to London,” she settled for. “I missed my family very much.”

Flora scrambled forward to the edge of her seat. “Did your mama and papa die, too?”

It was Lily’s turn to hesitate. She dusted her palms together and studied her gloved fingers. From the moment she’d been discovered by the town gossip, wrapped in the young duke’s arms, her fate had been sealed. “They are lost,” she said firmly. “They are not dead.” Flora slid her fingers over Lily’s and gave a gentle squeeze. At that innocent, tender gesture of support, emotion balled in Lily’s throat and she cleared it. “When I came to London I began talking to myself.”

The girl’s little lips twitched. “Talking to yourself?”

“It is quite bothersome, I assure you.” Fortunately, for the lonely mistress of a bored nobleman, there’d been few around to hear Lily’s mutterings.

The room filled with Flora’s giggles. “That
is
bothersome.”

“Oh, undoubtedly.” Lily waggled her eyebrows. “Particularly when you are attending Sunday sermons.” As soon as her paltry attempt at a jest left her mouth, she registered what she’d said. She’d not stepped foot in a church since she’d left Carlisle.

Flora spoke, bringing them round to their previous subject matter. “
Are
you afraid of him?”

Something in that halting question said that Lily’s answer was very important for reasons that went beyond the mere topic of a yelling, angry duke. “When I was a girl, younger than you are now, my brother found a pup wandering the countryside.” The memory pulled at her and, with her telling, sucked her back to Carlisle, to the place she’d called home.

Ever the duke’s niece, Flora sat in patience waiting, all the while her eyes urged Lily to continue in her telling. “His name was Pup.”

Flora furrowed her small brow. “That isn’t a very clever name for a dog.”

“I quite agree.” Lily smiled in fond remembrance of the unoriginal name settled upon him by her siblings. “He had three legs.”

The girl’s eyes went round. “Three legs?” Then she narrowed them suspiciously. “Are you making light of me?”

Lily shook her head. “Not at all. When Shel—,” she coughed into her hand. She’d not allowed herself to speak aloud the names of her parents or siblings since she’d left. “When my brother discovered him, Pup was hungry and scared.” Her arms ached to hold that mongrel pup with the same hungering she did to hold her siblings once more. He’d been a faltering, deaf, white-whiskered dog the day she’d left. He’d be long gone now. Odd, the loss of that loving canine should elicit the same gut-wrenching pain as being cut off from her family.