Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) (38 page)

At his silence, she raised her head. A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye-patch, in that telltale sign of the tension in his tightly leashed frame.
Please do not shut me out.
She wetted her lips. “My protector pledged to see me cared for so I’d never have to warm another man’s bed.” Shame turned her neck hot. “And it was a pledge he broke.” Just as all men gave those broken promises. A spasm of agony racked her heart. Except Derek. He’d never been anything but honorable, believing in her when no one else had. And in the end, she’d betrayed him.

“Why did you come here?” he asked, harshly.

“Mr. Holdsworth...I-I was never his lover.” Her teeth clattered loudly and her body shook with the force of her trembling. “S-surely you see that I could not betray you.” Her words shook with an entreaty as she willed him to see.

When in his silence it became apparent that he’d say nothing else, Lily continued to shake. “There is no excuse to pardon what brought me here,” she said, not knowing where she found the courage to speak the words spilling forth. “There is no justification, Derek,” she managed hoarsely, pressing her eyes closed. “Don’t you see? I could not do it.” A tear slid down her cheek, then another, and another. “I could not do it,” she whispered.
He is everything I’ve ever wanted and I’m going to lose him.
The inevitability of that truth knifed at her slowly breaking heart.

He leveled her with such a frigid black stare; all warmth left her so she thought she’d be cold forever. “And yet, it would seem you already have, madam.”

Her legs trembled under the force of loathing in his eyes. She could not lose him. He was everything she’d never known she needed. He completed her in ways she’d not known her life had been incomplete. “Don’t you see, I am still here? I’d already resolved to not go through with the theft, when you came upon me...”

A wry, mirthless grin formed on his hard lips. “So that is why you were so quick to defy my orders and explore my corridors.” A black curse slipped from his lips and she flinched.

“That was true, but only at first.”

He surged to his feet once more. “When did everything change, Lily? Did you see the poor, scarred, lonely monster and realize you could warm my bed and easily have whatever jewels your heart desired?”

His words speared her. “No,” the raspy word tore from her lungs. He was deserving of that ill-opinion and, yet, his words had the same effect as if he knifed her heart with a dull blade. “I only saw you,” she whispered. “That is why I could not do what he wished me to do.” Lily folded her hands and stared at the interlocked digits. “I convinced myself I could do this horrible thing. I was here but a handful of days before I realized I could not.”

He stood silent, unmoving for so long, that hope fanned in her breast. But then, his expression grew shuttered and, with wooden steps, he crossed the room and poured himself a brandy.

H
e was at sea, amidst a different battlefield, no less horrifying and painful than the ones of Toulouse. Unable to look at Lily, Derek fixed his gaze on the satin wallpaper. He could not stare at the face of the woman who’d made him love and laugh and believe again, only to yank his world apart with her deception. In one quick movement, he finished his drink in a single swallow, welcoming the fiery trail it blazed down his throat. He reached for the crystal decanter when she spoke, freezing him mid-movement. “Please, do not send me away.”
Not like the others
. The words were as true as if she’d roared them into existence. “I love you.”

Ah, God. The hope she’d stirred to life, fanned once more; powerful under her seductive pull. With every shred of the person he was, Derek wanted to cling to her words as truth. Nausea turned in his belly. She’d been the only person since his return who’d truly looked at him. One utterance away from becoming the snapping, snarling beast he’d been accused of being these years, Derek grabbed the nearest decanter and poured himself another glass. The muscles of his stomach clenched. Why
would
a beautiful, spirited woman like Lily Benedict come into his home? Why would she take him in her arms, the scarred ogre he was, if it hadn’t been born of another reason...

The floorboards creaked and the flutter of fabric filled the room, indicating Lily had moved. “Will you not say something?”

He closed his eye, destroyed in ways the fire that had scarred him hadn’t been able to. Derek gripped his cane reflexively, his mother’s words slamming into him like a kick to the gut.
...you came back this monster. Surely you do not expect you can go about Society looking so...?
“It was all a lie,” he whispered. He gripped the snifter so hard, the blood drained from his knuckles.

“No,” Lily positioned herself between him and the sideboard so close her breasts brushed his chest. She took his face in her delicate and perfect hands. “It is not true.”

He flinched as the satiny smoothness of her touch upon his bumped and raised flesh highlighted the absolute lie to her protestations. Derek shook his head, wishing to be the cold, heartless man he’d been before her so that her betrayal didn’t even now rouse this agonizing pressure in his chest. “That is enough,” Derek said, his words hoarse and weak.

The muscles of her throat bobbed. “I need you to understand. My reasons for being here changed.”

He gave his head a sad shake, dislodging her touch, and only feeling all the colder for that loss. “All along I believed you were here for freedom from the position you’d had as a mistress and I did not condemn you for the life you lived.” Her lower lip trembled and he shifted his focus away from that telltale sign of her misery or else risk becoming further lost in this deceptive masquerade she’d sucked him into, where reality was nothing more than a dressed up falsity. “But you were not here for anything other than revenge against my brother and a thirst for a diamond.”

“No,” she whispered. “I never wanted it.” Her eyes, windows into her soul, bled with regret and pain. Then, with a guilty glimmer in the endless depths, she slid her gaze away from his.

At last, it all made sense; the ease with which she’d defied his orders and wandered the halls of his house. All the times he’d found her in his empty office. It had never been about him. No. She’d been here for no other reason than to steal from him. The pain of that lanced his heart and he wanted to toss his head back and howl like a true, savage beast. “Get out,” he said in hushed tones.

Lily jerked as though she’d been struck but, with a hasty curtsy, grabbed her box and bolted for the door. “Of course.” Her barely there whisper came so faint he strained to hear. She stumbled over herself in her haste to back away from him. She reached the front of the room and paused with her fingers on the handle. “It was not a lie,” she said, not taking her gaze from the wood panel. “I have been a whore and a liar and d-d...” Her voice cracked and he squeezed his eye shut, pain ripping at his insides, shredding him. “And done a number of things I wish I could undo, but I cannot. Those are sins I will always carry with me. I came here intending to steal from you.” She drew in a shuddering sigh and the aching sadness of that sound brought his eye open. She faced him once more.

The muscles of his stomach contracted and he gripped the edge of his sideboard.

Do not let her deceive you... do not let her have you play the fool once again...

“I never wanted to be another man’s whore, Derek. I wanted so desperately to disappear and carve out a new life where no one knew who I was.” She sucked in a slow breath. “
What
I was,” she amended. “I didn’t believe there could be more for me.” She held his gaze squarely. “Until I met you, and you made me feel, made me see there was more. There was you, and Flora...”

The muscles of his throat worked.
Ah, stop, or I will be completely and irrevocably lost.

“I came here intending to steal from you, but you were the one who stole something. You stole my heart, and whether you wish it or not, it will always belong—to you.” She turned to go, when her gaze lingered upon his well-worn leather winged back seat, and then she looked about the room. This office had been the first place he’d seen her. How very fitting that this should also be the last.

“Lily,” he said quietly, when she again made to leave. “Was any of it real?”

“Everything...” she said, her voice cracking.

More lies.
He cursed roundly and her cheeks flushed red.

“I will have my belongings packed,” she said quietly and made to leave once more.

That was it? She would leave so easily, so effortlessly without any further compunction? Did you expect anything else? She’d only been here for one thing, after all. Derek growled. “Halt.”

She turned back. “Your Grace?”

Something about that grating use of his title set his teeth on edge. By God, he was The Beast and His Grace, to all. With her, she’d been different.
Or I wanted her to be.
Pain squeezed so hard at his heart, how was there not a mark of blood upon his chest? She was no different... but she was still no less useful. Her purpose still no less necessary. “You are not leaving.”

She tipped her head at an endearing angle. A black curl slipped from her artful arrangement and tumbled down her shoulder. Which only put him with reminders of her as she’d been with those luxuriant tresses draped about them. Lust slammed into him and he focused on that safe, empty desiring for her body; that was safer than the stirrings inside his chest.

He folded his arms and passed a glance over her. That up and down scrutiny brought her shoulders back. God, she was magnificent in her indignation, a regality to rival the proudest of queens. “I still have not decided what I am to do with you.” For when she was gone, the last glimmer of light in his otherwise dark world would be forever extinguished. He rolled his shoulders.

Lily pursed her lips and, for a long moment, he expected her to launch into a familiar scolding. “You would keep me a prisoner here, then?”

Derek propped his hip on the sideboard. “Would you find Newgate preferable?”

The color leeched from her cheeks. She sucked in her breath and agony sluiced through him. Even with her lies and deception, God help him, he loved her so.
Madness
. His judgment was as faulty as his vision. For he could no sooner send the lady off to Newgate than he could carve out his remaining eye.

“We are through here for now, Miss Benedict.” Now and forever.

Tears filled her eyes. “Derek,” she whispered, pulling that damning box closer to her chest. “I—”

Swallowing a curse, he shoved away from her. “You are dismissed.”

Lily hesitated and, for one sliver of a broken heartbeat, he thought she would issue protestations; thought she would vow her love and explain away the damning evidence in that bloody box she carried so close.

Instead, she dropped her gaze to the floor and walked from the room, leaving him as he’d been for a long time before her—alone.

E
arly the next morning, Lily lay abed staring up at that imperfect ceiling. By Derek’s discovery last night and his very clear threats of Newgate, she should be filled with suitable terror over her fate. She rolled onto her side and looked to the floor-length window. The crimson and burnt orange rays of the early morning sun penetrated the thin crack in the curtains, spilling into the room with a fiery glow.

Yet, where self-preservation and security had driven her into this very household, now there was nothing but a hollow emptiness. For so many years, she’d lived for no one but herself and thoughts of her own future. But what was a future with no one in it? What were security or safety and fine cottages tucked on the edge of the world if there was no one to share that world with?

Her lips twisted. How ironic to realize as much, too late. With a frustrated sigh, she sprawled backward on her bed and it groaned in protest.

A faint knock sounded once at the door. Lily looked across the room at the ormolu clock atop the mantel. She squinted in the dimly lit space to bring those numbers into focus. Five o’clock. She looked to the door once more. No doubt she’d merely imagined—

Rap
. Another muffled knock split the morning quiet.

Who would have need of her at this hour? Who, other than... Her breath caught on a sharp gasp. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and jumped to her feet. Fluttering a hand about her heart, she stared at that wooden panel. Movements fueled by hope, Lily raced across the room. She yanked the door open with such force the figure on the other side of that door toppled into the room.

“Forgive me, ma’am,” the young maid said breathlessly, righting herself.

Lily shot a hand out to help steady the girl. “Claudia,” she said, regret tingeing her words.

“Ma’am,” the girl repeated. She cleared her throat. A blush stained her cheeks and she averted her gaze. “I’ve been sent to assist you.” Lily hovered at the doorway and then pushed the door closed as Claudia advanced further into the room. “Quite early.” She hummed to herself. “Quite early, indeed,” she paused mid-song to repeat. With precise movements, she made her way to the armoire positioned at the center of the room.