Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) (16 page)

“Did not see me?” he bit out. “Perhaps you are the one who is blind, madam.” He rose to his feet.

She took in his slow, awkward movements. The slight whitening at the corners of his lips and a faint grimace hinted at the pain he was in. Her heart softened at the sign of his suffering. Lily took a step toward him, but he fixed a black scowl on her that pinned her to the floor.

The duke took another step and his jerky movement sprung her into action. She retreated until her back knocked against the opposite wall. Her throat worked with a nervous dread as he limped over to his serpent-headed cane and took slow, threatening steps over to her. “You were ordered to stay away, Miss Benedict.”
Thump-thump-thump
. The heel of his walking stick beat a staccato rhythm upon the carpet.

Lily pressed her palms against the wall and walked sideways, away from him. “
Mrs
. Benedict.”

“Come,” he scoffed. “You’re no more a Mrs. than I am a dashing, charming gentleman.” But once he had been. Something in his tone and the flash of regret in his eye spoke volumes. Whereas, she’d never been anything but a vicar’s daughter-turned-whore. “Surely you’ll not maintain the pretense of a married widow for my benefit?”

Shame slapped her. For his aloofness, the duke had accurately surmised her worth. He possessed a keen intelligence she’d not thought a titled lord capable of.

“Nothing to say?” he taunted.

Her fingers twitched with the desire to slap him in his condescending face. “S-surely you’ll n-not maintain the role of nasty beast all to k-keep people out.” The faint quiver to her words ruined all attempt at false bravado.

His body went taut. “I warned you to stay away,” he said on a lethal whisper that fueled the rapidly rising nervousness in her belly.

Do not stir The Beast.
“Y-yes.” She wet her lips. “B-but—”

“There is no but or questions or words required on your part, Miss Benedict. Were my demands not clear?”

Lily wanted to be brave and equally impressive in her fury. “Th-they were, Your Grace.” Instead, she proved herself the weak, fearful creature she’d been since her father had cast her out. She didn’t want to be that woman. Not anymore. That was the whole reason for her being here in this man’s household in the first place. Weak-willed women never found freedom. Rather, they were owned, possessed, and destroyed by powerful lords. She gave a toss of her curls and he narrowed his eye into a thin slit of hidden emotion.
Do not be afraid
. “I am here about the child.”

He stuck his face close to hers and she saw the snapping flecks of silver in his blue eye. “The child, you say?” Lily recoiled, but did not run as he surely wished her to. “What brought you here was a desire to abandon your post as a nobleman’s plaything.” At the unerringly accurate charge, heat singed her cheeks. Hadn’t her own father said she’d been born with the mark of whore upon her person? She curled her fingers into tight balls when he pushed his scarred visage ever closer. “But after a couple of days you are so very devoted to that same child, a girl you’ve just met, that you’d defy my orders?”

Fear sucked the words from her and all she managed was a weak, shaky nod. Still, there was a primitive rawness to him that roused terror. The fine layer of civility and politeness carried by one of his station had been stripped back to reveal the most primitive level of a human being.

The triumphant gleam in the depths of the duke’s eye indicated he’d followed the precise path her terrified thoughts had wandered and that he delighted in it. “Just as I do not care about the child, Miss Benedict, nor do I care to have my orders gainsaid by anyone.” With that cold decree, he was every inch a Winters and she despised him for it.

He limped off.

The new duke might be a scarred, hurting shell of a person but there were levels of depravity and wrongness that could not be pardoned. “You are a vile, coldhearted monster.” As soon as the insolent words slipped past her lips, she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood as he turned back.

The harsh, angular planes of his partly beautiful, partly horrific face settled into an inscrutable mask. “A monster?”

At those flat, emotionless words, fear spiraled through her. Her mouth went dry. “I merely wished to discuss what expectations you have for her learning.” She angled her chin up a notch. “And a
proper
introduction.”

“You’re here seeking an introduction?” He sneered. “You spoke of wanting security, but that is not altogether true, is it?” Even with the slight space between them, she strained to hear those lethally whispered words. “A woman who truly desired security and the post you foolishly fought for would not have defied the orders given by her master.”

“My master?” His high-handed words sent her back up. “My goodness, would you liken me to a dog?”

He continued over her as though she’d not spoken. “She would not have wandered halls she was expressly ordered to avoid.” Her fury slipped. He spoke in the past tense. His Grace paused and lowered his gravelly voice all the more. He drew back and then pointed a long, commanding finger to the opposite end of the hall. “I want you gone.

Surely she’d heard him wrong? And yet, by the hard set to his face, and the icy glint in his eye, her ears had not proven faulty. Oh, God. “G-gone?” Fear continued to grow, spreading through her person and crushing her chest with the weight of her folly. But this was not dread brought by his snapping, snarling ways or the marks upon his face. This was the kind of dread that came from losing all the security and safety she’d found in the world.

The duke eyed her dispassionately for a long moment and then turned on his heel once more. With the aid of his walking stick, he limped down the corridor. And each step that carried him away heightened the panic cloying at her.

The same terror to grip her as a just sixteen-year-old girl put aboard a mail coach and sent to London came rushing back. The memory of that day lapped at her mind. Where would she go?
Home
... The promise of Carlisle whispered around her memory. The lush greenery. The rising mountains. Only the intoxicating promise of a place she’d given up hope of ever being welcomed back was quashed by the harsh, curt words that her father sent her off with.

Her eyes slid closed at the rising swell of helplessness.
What have I done?
She might detest the Duke of Blackthorne. She might despise his treatment of her, his servants, the young girl who was his ward, but he was still her employer. Or he had been her employer. Tears clogged her throat and she damned the fine crystalline sheen that blurred his tall figure at the door.

Your passionate nature is a sin before God...
Her father’s words rang as clear if they’d only just been uttered. Only, that had been when she’d striven for daughterly obedience, when nothing but being approved by one’s parent mattered most. Life had taught her there was more than that.

He turned and took several steps toward the opposite corridor, no doubt seeking his office. “You would send me away?” she called out, proud of herself for standing up to him.

Then, anger made one stronger.

Wasn’t the coldhearted duke, after all, proof of that? His Grace stopped. She drew a slow breath and then walked briskly toward him. “You’d send me away because I inquire about my responsibilities?” And she proved herself a coward, stopping with several paces between them. “Because I care about the ch—”

He spun around so swiftly and with such effortless movement, she gasped. “You
care
about the child?” She winced at the slight, mocking emphasis. “You are a stranger and know even less about that child than I myself.” He peeled his lip in a mocking sneer. “No, you were quite clear, Miss Benedict. You came for employment. You would have taken anything,” he continued his relentless barrage upon her conscience. “The child was always a mere afterthought to you.”

Oh, God. He was correct. She pressed her eyes closed a moment. She hated him for being accurate and, more, hated herself for having been reduced to someone who’d put her own thoughts, security, and future before that of an innocent child. She’d fallen lower than Eve in this land of Eden. She managed to move her thickened tongue. “You are wrong,” she said, her tone hollow. For was he truly?

Over the satin fabric of his black patch, he arced his eyebrow upward. “Am I?” he asked, echoing her own silent question. Had his inquiry been delivered as taunting, with that icy edge she’d come to expect, it would be easier than this matter-of-factness. “You come here making charges on the manner of guardian and person I am.” He stalked over with surprising agility. Rage made people do powerful things. The duke stopped before her. “I spare the child from having to see a living monster.” She winced at the cruel words she’d leveled at him a short while ago. For just that, he said more than he had since their first meeting. “But you,” he went on. “You would come into this household and place your own desires,” he wrapped that word in a silken tone that caused an odd fluttering in her belly, “before what is best for that child you so
care
about.” A cold, mirthless smile played on his lips. “Now tell me, which of us is truly thinking of the child’s best interests?”

She froze and stared unblinking at him. His charge ran through her, shocking her with the accuracy of it. Guilt unfurled in her belly. Lily slid her eyes closed a moment. “You are, indeed, correct,” she whispered. This great, hulking bear of a man who yelled at his servants and hid away in his office, in this was far more honorable, far more decent than her.

He came closer and then stopped so a hairsbreadth of space separated them. His towering, broad-muscled frame sucked the breath from her lungs. At his body’s nearness, a slow heat spread through her body, and befuddled her mind. So that she wanted to know more of this warmth, and not the cold chill to have filled her since she’d entered his dark halls. “I should send you away,” he said with a gravelly roughness to his tone better suited to a cutthroat in the Dials than a man who could command entrance into any ballroom; a man just shy of royalty. “I expressly forbade you from entering my halls.” Power emanated from his well-muscled frame.

“Th-they are all your halls.” Her gaze dipped to the whorl of black hair matting his chest and her mouth went dry.
Should I not fear him?
If she were wise, surely she would.
But I do not.
Not in this moment of charged energy between them. Of its own volition, her hand came up, and she braced her palm on his chest.

The duke went still.

She blinked and then swiftly dropped her arm to her side. “I...” He’d quite muddled her thoughts. “Forgive me.”

With his broad, well-muscled chest and powerful form, he was nothing like Sir Henry, who’d grown increasingly heavier through the years. Nor was the duke shaped in any way like his lean, late brother. This man was a broad bear of a figure who conjured knights of old brandishing their broadswords and eternally braced for battle; easily vanquishing all memory of others. Lily wanted to once again brush her hands over him, to steal the heat that penetrated the fabric of his shirt.

“And will you do it again?”

She would gladly do it again if... Lily blinked rapidly. “Do what again?” she blurted.

In a move surely meant to intimidate, he leaned down and stuck his face close to hers. “Is there something wrong with your mind or your hearing?”

She rather thought there was something wrong with both in this instance; for how else to explain the maddening control this man now possessed of her senses?

“Miss Benedict?” he barked, startling her from the haze of desire he’d cast over her.

So she was to be Miss Benedict again. Like a bucket of Thames water dropped upon her head, he doused the thick haze of passion cloaking her senses. She angled her neck back to meet his gaze squarely. “There is nothing wrong with, either.”
Only my mind.
With her height, she’d been able to meet the eyes of most men she’d ever conversed with. With his broad, towering frame, the duke was more bear than man. He somehow managed to make her feel like one of those diminutive young women always clamored for by the men in her father’s parish. She struggled to draw forth the question he’d put to her.

They stood so close she detected the flecks dancing in his blue eye. “If I allow you to remain, Will. You. Enter. My. Halls. Again?”

She wet her lips wanting to give him the answer that would secure her future. Being born a vicar’s daughter, the lesson on not sinning with lies on her lips had been ingrained into her with her father’s birch rod. All of those lessons had been shoved aside for the sake of survival. “I...” She slid her gaze away from his, thinking about the carved box that contained all links to her previous life, upon the vanity.
Tell him what he wishes to hear
... Lily closed her eyes a moment. She was a whore. A woman without a family. And now, a would-be-thief.
Liar.
For in this moment, it was not about the diamond.
You are thinking of nothing now but him.
She looked to him once more. “You have hired me in the post of nursery governess,” she began, faintly breathless. He stared at her with a remote expression, silently daring her to continue. “If I am to serve in that capacity, it will, at the very least, be my responsibility to speak to you if there are matters of concern pertaining to Lady Flora.”

“Who?”

“Your niece, Lady Flora.” What was it that prevented him from speaking the girl’s name? That aversion to a person’s name—hers, Harris, Flora’s. Did he fear a connection to people? The hint of that possibility softened the shrewish words on her tongue and fueled her resolve. She angled her chin up a notch. “I should also be clear, Your Grace. I will continue to visit the library and other parts of your household, for this is also
Lady Flora’s
household and, as such, she should not be a prisoner in her home.”

Without the faintest hint of shame at failing to note so much as the name of the girl whose care he’d been tasked with, the duke continued on. “I
should
sack you now then.” He spoke more to himself, with his words laced with bewilderment and frustration.