by Laura Landon
Jack looked up to see Russel Broadmoore charging toward him. His crazed face loomed behind the pistol he was raising toward Jack.
“You ruined it! You bastard! It was going to bring a fortune but you ruined it! You’re a dead man, cousin! A dead—”
A final shot rang out, and the outrage melted from Russell’s face as death overtook him. He crumpled slowly to the ground leaving Matthew Cleary standing over him, smoke trailing from the barrel of his gun.
Jack burned with fury as he drew Lily tightly in his arms and raced into the house.
“I love you,” she mumbled.
“You’re going to be fine, Lily. I’m not going to let you leave me.”
“I know,” she whispered, then closed her eyes.
“Get a doctor,” he bellowed as he took the stairs two at a time to reach her bedroom.
Jack placed Lily on the bed and before he stepped away from her, her personal maid and several of the staff surrounded her and began removing her clothes.
“You can wait in the hall until the doctor arrives, Mr. Broadmoore,” Lily’s maid Chelsea said in a voice that was eerily calm to Jack’s ear, as if she’d done this many times for her mistress.
He stepped out into the hallway to find Matthew Cleary waiting. There was a blistering look on his face.
“This is all my fault. I should have seen the bastard hiding across the street.”
“You couldn’t have known, Cleary. The man went berserk when I canceled the auction. He wanted to kill me, so I should have known better than to lead him right to Lily’s door.”
Jack turned to stare at Lily’s bedroom door. The sound of footsteps stopped him and he turned to see Lady Margaret running toward them.
“I heard gunshots. What’s happened?”
“Lily’s been shot.”
“No!”
Lady Margaret’s hands flew to her face. “Was it Russell?”
Jack nodded.
Her hands fell to clutch at her breast. “Is he dead?” she asked.
Jack answered her with a nod.
The lady responded with a nod of her own. She’d just lost her husband, but the only thing he saw in her eyes was relief that turned to worry as she enter Lily’s room.
Time moved with brutal stubbornness for Jack. Each second he waited for the doctor to appear seemed like a year. He only needed to know that she would be all right. He only needed to know that he wouldn’t lose her. If he did…
Jack raked his fingers through his hair, then turned and braced his hands on the banister and stared down at the foyer below.
When at last the doctor arrived it seemed like forever before Lily’s door opened and the doctor stepped out into the hall to tell him if she was alive or dead.
“She’ll be fine,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “She was particularly lucky. The bullet went clean through her shoulder without hitting anything vital. Whoever shot her was a bloody poor shot.”
Jack felt the ominous fear lift from his shoulders. His legs wanted to give out from beneath him and he leaned all his weight against the railing.
“Thank you,” he told the doctor, then handed him payment for saving Lily’s life. The man smiled when he looked down at the coins in his hand. It was a princely sum.
“Keep her in bed as long as you can. She doesn’t look like the kind of lady who follows orders too well, so do what you need to keep her quiet.”
Jack laughed. Lily would dictate her own recovery. He had no doubt of that.
The doctor left and Jack turned to Cleary. “Have you notified the authorities?”
“Not yet. I have two men tending to Broadmoore’s body. I thought I’d wait to notify the Met until things were wrapped up in here and I can speak with the man’s father.”
“That’s fine. Keep your men in place and go to Lily’s brother first. He needs to know. I doubt he’ll feel badly about Russell’s death. I certainly don’t. It’s no secret I didn’t have kind feelings for my cousin.”
“No one did, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Matthew Cleary turned to descend the stairs. “I’ll send Miss Lily’s brother right over.”
“Yes. Then tell me when the authorities arrive. I imagine they’ll want to talk to me.”
“To both of us, I’m sure.”
Jack agreed with a nod, then turned the knob and entered Lily’s room. Chelsea and Lady Margaret moved about with quiet efficiency, indicating that he should sit in a chair that had been moved close to the bed.
“She took the doctor’s prodding real good, sir,” Lily’s maid said. “Hardly a whimper.”
“As I would have expected,” Jack said with a smile.
“The doctor gave Miss Lily enough laudanum to keep her asleep for a while. He said it would help with the pain.”
Jack only nodded in response.
“Did you need me for anything, Mr. Broadmoore?”
“No, uhm…”
“Chelsea,” she answered.”
“No, Chelsea. Thank you. I’m just going to sit here until her brother and sister-in-law arrive.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll wait until they get here, then send up some tea, and something to eat.”
“Thank you.”
“If you don’t need me to stay with you,” Lady Margaret said, “I shall go and dress.” Her face was flushed with something more than the effort of looking after Lily. The lift of her brows and the way she bit at her lip conveyed her embarrassment at being seen in her gown and robe.
Jack focused for the first time on Russell’s wife. “Are you all right, my lady?”
“Yes, Mr. Broadmoore. I know I should at least feel some remorse that the man I was married to for five years is dead, but I don’t. I’m so ashamed to admit that what I feel is…relief!”
Lady Margaret turned and fled the room. Jack heard the door close behind her, but for a long time he didn’t move. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lily as she lay sleeping, her face so white against the embroidered pillowcase. The fact that the doctor assured him she would be all right in time didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had put her in such danger. That she could have been killed because of him.
He leaned back.
What mattered was that she had said yes.
BEHOLD THE THIEF by Laura Landon
Chapter Twenty-One
It had been a week since Lily had been shot, and other than a few uncomfortable days, even the doctor couldn’t believe how quickly she was healing. Thankfully, the doctor told Jack a change of scenery would do Lily good. He finally agreed to allow her to get out of bed and leave her room. She’d taken full advantage of his absence today and was sitting in the small drawing room—her favorite room in the house.
Lily opened her eyes when Chelsea entered softly with a rug for her lap.
“You have a visitor, Miss Lily. The dowager Duchess of Camden and—”
“Oh,” Lily said. “Send her in.”
Lily was pleased. This would be the second time the dowager duchess had come to see her since she’d been wounded. And Lily so enjoyed their conversation. The regal woman had a wealth of knowledge, and appreciated art as much as Lily did.
The door opened and Chelsea announced the dowager duchess.
“Don’t you attempt to rise, Lily. That’s not necessary.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you came. I’m desperately in need of companion—”
Lily stopped with her sentence unfinished. She hadn’t noticed until then that the dowager duchess wasn’t alone. She had someone with her.
“Ah, Lily. I brought someone I want you to meet.”
Lily’s blood turned to ice and she was helpless to soften her expression as she stared at the woman. She didn’t know her name, nor did she want to. But Lily knew who she was. Lily looked at her and knew this was what she would look like in twenty years. It was supremely unfair for the dowager duchess to have placed her in this awkward, discomfiting position.
“I see you recognize the similarities,” the dow
ager duchess said as she watched Lily assess her guest. “I knew you would. I can also see by your expression that you are not prepared to meet your mother. But, I think that after all this time it is important that you do so.”
Lily struggled to find her voice that had been robbed from her by the shock of meeting a woman who had consumed her dreams. And her nightmares.
“I’m not certain I agree, Your Grace,” Lily said without shifting her glare away from the woman whose blood flowed in her own veins.
“Then please humor me, my dear. Allow me to present your mother, the dowager Countess of Eversley, Lady Evangeline Stillwell. Lady Evangeline, your daughter, Lily McGregor.”
“Hello, Lily,” the woman said, her voice equally as strained as Lily’s. “What a great pleasure it is to meet you at last.”
How very strange it was to hear such mundane words from the woman whose abandonment had ordained Lily’s own unconventional upbringing.
“I wish I could say the same. My lady.” Lily answered without regret for her sharp tongue.
“Lily, please,” the dowager duchess said in a reprimanding tone.
For the first time, Lily looked away from her mother and focused on the dowager duchess.
“May we sit?” the dowager duchess asked with an understanding expression on her face. Lily knew she was trying to alter the mood in the room.
“Of course,” Lily said. “Forgive me, Your Grace.”
The dowager countess helped the dowager duchess to a chair, but before she could sit, a maid entered with a tea tray and set it on the table in front of the three of them. “Please,” the dowager countess said with a gracious smile. “Allow me to pour.”
She didn’t wait for Lily to agree, but poured Lily and the dowager duchess each a cup of tea.
Lily watched the woman’s hands. They were steady, without a trace of a tremor when she served the tea. Lily had to admire her self-assurance. One could almost believe that the woman in front of her didn’t realize she wasn’t welcome in Lily’s home.
The very air in the room felt chill. Lily’s mother couldn’t help but know how much Lily objected to her presence. And how much she wanted to order her out of her house. Yet, after she’d poured herself a cup of tea she sat in her chair with all the grace and regal confidence of the queen herself.
“I’m sure you are surprised at my appearance in your life after all this time,” the dowager countess said after they’d all had time to take a sip of their tea.
“Yes, I am,” Lily said. “Although I have to admit it’s not a welcome surprise.”
The woman who was her mother only smiled. “I’m sure it’s not. I have not been a mother to you your entire life, but I cannot reject my obligation to be your mother now. Nor do I wish to.”
Lily’s mother focused her sky-blue eyes on Lily, making Lily feel as though she were looking into a mirror. The woman’s hair was the same golden-blonde and her face had the same oval shape as Lily’s. She even had the same wayward ringlets on the right side of her head where her hair refused to go the same direction as the rest.
There was no doubt that the woman before her was her mother, but that didn’t mean Lily wanted or needed a mother after all these years.
“Why would that be?” Lily asked with as much sarcasm as she thought she could get away with. “Why would you wish to be a mother to me now?”
“Oh, Lily. Need you ask? Do you really want me to list the reasons?”
When Lily didn’t respond, her mother placed the cup soundlessly on its saucer and rested it on the table in front of her. The smallest telltale flutter of nervousness tremored across her fingers as she returned her hands to her lap.
“The first and most important reason is for your future happiness.”
“I’m sorry, Lady Eversley, but I would have preferred that a certain seven-year-old girl had heard those words,” Lily snapped.
“Lily,” the dowager duchess interjected a second time. The warning was clear.
“No, Your Grace,” Lily’s mother said. “Lily is correct. Not once in her entire life did I appear to think about her happiness. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t concerned. I thought about you every day.”
“Then why did you abandon me?”
The dowager Countess of Eversley released a heavy sigh. “Please, try to understand, Lily. I was barely eighteen years old when you were born. I had always been a head-strong girl, accustomed to getting what I wanted, and for one of the only times in my life, my father had made a decision that I couldn’t live with. He expected me to marry. But I wasn’t ready. Although, in hind sight, that also was a mistake. The second in a long line of foolish mistakes I made.”
Lily couldn’t help but be curious. “What were the others, my lady? What other mistakes did you make?”
She thought she caught Lady Eversley trying to relax her tense jaw.
“Abandoning you and walking away from a child to whom I’d given life. That was the most terrible mistake I made.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I was frightened to death. I was young and immature, and I had my whole life before me. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I wasn’t prepared to be a mother. And, I say this with the most regret of any words I could ever speak. I didn’t want you. I considered you the one obstacle that could ruin the rest of my life. And I chose to give you up for my own happiness.”
It was a brutally chastising statement which, from the looks of it, had pained the countess as much as if Lily herself had spoken the words.
For nearly twenty-five years Lily had wanted to hear her mother admit how wrong she’d been to leave her baby and walk away. Yet, hearing her say the words didn’t make the difference Lily thought it would. Nevertheless, seeing the tears glisten in her mother’s eyes affected Lily in ways she didn’t expect. Watching those tears stream down the woman’s cheeks cracked the wall of resentment that had always surrounded and guarded her heart.
A softening of her feelings for her mother crept across her. But, as she’d done her entire life, Lily refused to forgive the woman for abandoning her, even though a part of her wanted to.
“I know you can’t forgive me for what I did all those years ago, but please, Lily, let me help you now, as I should have done then.”
Lily straightened in her chair. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I don’t need your help.”
“You may not need your mother’s help,” the dowager duchess interjected with a firm tone, “but Jack does.”
Lily felt each of the dowager duchess’s words splash like punishing drops of cold water against her face. She was a selfish chit to have been thinking only of herself, and if she had half the spine she thought she had, she’d say as much. Lily opened her mouth to speak, but no words materialized.
“Do you love Mr. Broadmoore?” Lily’s mother asked.
“What does it matter if I love him, or if he loves me? We both know that a marriage between us would ruin him.”
“You should have thought of that before you so salaciously embraced him on your front step and Russell Broadmoore tried to kill him. People are making all sorts of wild conjecture, even though it’s been more than a week.”
Lily lowered her gaze. While she’d been lying in her sickbed the world beyond her window had been turning the whole thing into a ridiculous bit of tittle tattle.
Lily lifted her gaze and stared at her mother and the dowager Duchess of Camden. “What can I do to save Jack’s reputation and his livelihood?”
“Do you love him?” Lily’s mother asked again.
“Yes. I love him,” Lily admitted without hesitation. “More than I thought it was possible to love someone. And I’m afraid I won’t survive without him.”
“Then we will start planning a wedding,” her mother said.
“Preceded by a magnificent ball,” the dowager duchess said.
“No,” Lily cried, stopping their conversation. “You weren’t at Jack’s auction when they turned their backs on me. You didn’t see
the venom in their gazes or hear the disgust in their words. Why would you give them two more opportunities to shame me?”
“Did I do such a thing?”
Lily raised her eyes, preparing her retort. But the duchess was right. “No. Of course not.”
“Did your mother?”
Lily sighed. “No.”
“There are enemies in every strata of life, Lily dear. And there are friends.” Her mother leaned forward, lending importance to her words. “Painting us all with your broad brush is a disservice. A painful disservice.”
The duchess joined in. “You didn’t have your mother or me at your side, Lily. You tried to face them down on your own. Of course you didn’t win. They wouldn’t allow you to win when you stood up to them by yourself.”
“But you think you can help?”
“We both think it’s worth a try,” the dowager duchess said. “If we fail, Jack fails.”
That statement shook Lily to her core. She and Jack loved each other, that much was undeniable. But what would happen if Jack lost Broadmoore’s Treasures? What would happen if he could no longer earn his living doing the one thing he loved?
Lily tried to tell herself she wasn’t obligated to follow her mother’s plan to have a wedding, or the dowager duchess’s plan to have a ball. But she was wrong. She knew she was. And she couldn’t risk Jack’s future by defying them.
She would do this for Jack. But not for her mother.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll face them with you.”
The two ladies rose as if to leave, clearly satisfied with the success of their mission. Lily rose with them and moved to a small chest that sat atop her writing desk.
“One moment before you go, Lady Eversley.”
She drew out a small black velvet jewel case and crossed to the two dowagers.
“These are yours,” she said as she opened the box. Inside lay the two diamond and ruby brooches that had celebrated the birth of a daughter the woman had never wished to have.
“I no longer want them.”
