"I would like many grandbabies." She turned to Lily with a smile. "I do so pray that you love children. I think you must, for you seem a very kind soul."
"I--I love children. I am-- I am quite certain-- That is--"
"If Lily falls pregnant, you will be the first to know, Mother," James cut in with a smile. "But for now I believe you've embarrassed her enough. We are expected back at Regent Street for luncheon. Will you call on us soon?"
"Certainly. This is quite a busy time of year with my charity projects, but I suppose I must get my visits in now before you run off to the country again."
"Come and see us any time," he said, kissing her forehead. After another smothering hug for Lily, she led them to the door and saw them off with merry farewells. By the time they started back down the street, Lily felt her head was spinning, and could not really think of a coherent comment to sum up the meeting. James laughed and tilted his head to hers.
"I know what you're feeling. She has that effect on people."
"She is such an engaging woman. I only hope I am as happy and energetic as she when I am her age."
"I hope so too," James replied in a quiet voice.
Back at Lord Ashbourne's townhome, the butler presented James with a tray of twenty or so note cards. James glanced over at her with an exasperated look.
"What are those?" Lily asked.
"Calling cards," he replied shortly. "Lilliana was a very popular woman here in town, and obviously word is getting around that she's back. After our visit to the Holt house this evening, I'm afraid we may need to put it about that you are ill. Otherwise the callers will descend in an avalanche."
"Oh," said Lily, feeling more woebegone than ever. "That would be a muddle, wouldn't it?"
He held out his hand to her. "You look tired, dearest. Perhaps after luncheon we had better rest a bit upstairs."
* * * * *
They spent the time after luncheon in bed, but to Lily's delight, did little resting. About the closest she came to resting were the times James let her catch her breath between couplings and pleasuring her with his mouth. She lay limp, adored, sated, replete, and yet his fingers and lips would trail over her and bring her to arousal again. But it was not in her power to tell him no, to tell him to stop and let her regain her senses. He sustained a focused assault she was helpless to resist.
At last he sat up in bed beside her, looking deliciously rumpled and sated himself. He gave her a wolfish grin and caressed her hip.
"I suppose we must bathe before we make our way to the Holts. What do you think, dearest?"
"I think we would probably offend them less if we did," Lily giggled. "You are quite disheveled and I'm sure I look even worse than you."
"You are always enchanting." He leaned to kiss her lightly. His tentative peck turned deeper and more demanding, but then he pushed away. "The Holts," he said with a sigh.
They rode in the closed coach, as promised. Safely hidden from prying eyes, James went over last minute things she needed to know. This time, at least, she would not need to play a role. The Holts would be well aware she was not who she pretended to be. Upon their arrival, she did contrive to turn her head and ignore the servants, lest they notice she was not the Lilliana they knew. She supposed it was something the real Lilliana would have done anyway.
She followed James down an impossibly high and ornate hallway into a parlor that was pure spectacle. Ashbourne Hall was grand, but not outré like the Holt residence. The parlor practically shimmered with gilt and crystal. The walls were covered ceiling to floor in various paintings and tapestries. Some of the paintings were of Lady Lilliana. When Lord and Lady Holt entered the parlor a few minutes later, Lily tried to stand and appear as regal as Lilliana did in her paintings.
Lord and Lady Holt's haughty regard told her that her posturing was in vain. James performed cursory introductions that had a decidedly icy feel. Then she and James were reseated and a smiling maid brought tea.
As Lady Holt stared at her across the low table between them, Lily got the feeling she would send out for the cleaners once Lily vacated the house. James sat next to her, but not near. He left a distance which Lily suspected had something to do with the scowl on Lady Holt's face. Lord Holt frowned and narrowed his eyes as he stared at her.
"Hm. Well. You were right, Ashbourne. The resemblance is astonishing."
Lady Holt sniffed over her teacup. "Mayhap she is one of your by-blows, Gerald."
Lord Holt laughed, but Lily sensed James stiffen beside her.
"Truly, my dear, you are obnoxious," Lord Holt replied drolly.
Lily put her cup down and clasped her hands in her lap. How dare they jest and speak about her as if she weren't even there? Disparage her mother's honor as if their own daughter wasn't the worst type of dishonest wanton? "My mother loved my father very much," Lily said with a bit of temper. "She never stepped out on him. She was faithful."
James put a hand on hers. "It was a joke, Lily. A rude one. Do not distress yourself."
Lord Holt cleared his throat and scowled. "Yes, well. Certainly. Just a jest, my dear. God bless your sainted mother, I'm sure."
James stood with an air of impatience and paced to the window. "So you have heard nothing of Lilliana?"
"Nothing. My men are all over France but she and her…paramour seem to have simply disappeared."
"How is it possible that no one can turn them up?"
"Oh, there have been leads. They have been tracked here and there," said Lord Holt, waving his hands. "But as soon as we know where they are, they fly posthaste. Surely this 'husband' of hers knows there will be hell to pay when I catch up with him." He looked over at Lily, who was listening quite closely. It rather upset her that James seemed frustrated Lilliana was still missing. For her part, Lily never wanted her to be found. She never wanted her to come home. She'd had no idea the woman's parents had been actively searching for her all this time. Then it occurred to her that James could very well have men searching too.
Lady Holt was staring at her with narrowed eyes. Perhaps she read her mind. Perhaps it was written all over her face, that she didn't wish Lilliana to be found--ever. She looked down into her cup but it was too late.
"Must she be privy to this conversation? It offends me that she sits there in her satin gown and ribbons impersonating my daughter and offers no sympathies at all for our loss."
Lily raised her chin. "I am sorry, ma'am, that your daughter made a bigamist of herself at Lord Ashbourne's expense, and then ran off to France with a tradesman."
"Oh!" Lord and Lady Holt both gasped, although Lily was nearly certain she heard a muffled guffaw from James. "Well, of all the impertinent and ungrateful little--" Lady Holt blustered.
"Do not say another word. Lily is right," James said. "It is not her fault that your daughter behaved badly. We are in Lily's debt. Without her help, scandalous gossip would have devastated your family and mine, and condemned Claire's chances at a season. So I would not begrudge her the satin gowns and ribbons. She has put her life on hold to play a woman she does not even know."
"And why does she do it?" Lady Holt said, her voice trembling with rage. "Because she gets to play the high countess and have fine things. Because she gets to fawn about on Lord Ashbourne's arm--"
Her voice broke off at the furious look on James' face. Lily bit her lip and stayed silent. In that moment she knew that Lady Holt sensed all. She sensed everything Lily felt and thought, and she sensed, too, that Lord Ashbourne was not just playacting the husband. The cavernous and ornate parlor suddenly seemed far too small and stultifying.
"My dear," Lord Holt murmured gently to his wife, placing a hand on her shoulder, and then Lily knew that he knew too. Only James stood still and calm without revealing any emotion. It was the same look he'd had the first evening she met him, when he'd stood across from her gripping the back of the divan, the only clue to his feelings the whitening knuckles of his hand.
"Lord and Lady Holt, we thank you for
your hospitality." He said hospitality as if it were an epithet. He crossed to Lily and helped her up from the sofa. "But we really must take our leave. I know that it's difficult to be reminded of Lilliana. I had the same reaction of unbalance when first I saw her."
"But no longer," snapped Lady Holt. "That's not how you feel about her now."
"Evangeline!" Lord Holt silenced his wife and turned to James with a curt bow. "Please pardon my wife. This entire situation has been simply devastating to us. Surely you understand."
"No one understands as well as I," James said. "But Lily is not to blame, and I will not allow her to be excoriated for the actions of another."
Lily wasn't sure if he was talking about Lilliana's actions or his own. Suddenly, here in Lilliana's parents' parlor, their private, enchanting love affair seemed terribly tawdry and poor in taste.
She managed to hold her tears in the carriage, but back at James' townhome she ran to hide in the bedroom. She threw herself facedown on the bed where she'd shaken in ecstasy earlier, and sobbed with all her heart. A moment later, she felt the bed dip beside her and heard James' soft soothing whispers. She shook her head and pushed him away.
Patiently, he took her face in his hands and kissed her damp cheeks. "Please do not weep so. You're breaking my heart. I'm so sorry. They should not have spoken so to you. None of this is your fault."
She listened to his words but she didn't believe. It was her fault. At the very least she was a willing participant. Even now she let him hold her, let him caress her.
"All these tears," he whispered. "My poor girl. Let me love you. Let me make it better for now."
"For now," she repeated bitterly. A great sob tore from her throat. "Until she returns, or until they drag her home. And then you will take her back even though you profess to love me."
"I do love you. I don't simply profess it, I truly do."
"You will take her back!"
"The scandal... It would touch so many. I have no choice. I wish it were otherwise."
She pulled away and crossed her arms over her chest. "And you will live with her forever, not loving her, and I'll live alone!"
He took her arms and nearly shook her. "No, I'll live alone too. I'll be no less alone because she's with me. You know that."
"Well, do not think to come and haunt my door after she's back. When you're married to her in truth, even after what she did to you." Oh, she hated Lilliana. Hated her for getting the man Lily wanted, the man Lily loved, when she was so foolish not to want him. "I will not take another woman's husband to my bed!"
Lily ducked her head and fled his arms, seeking the solace of her own private room. She felt as if she were falling apart, torn to pieces by the reality both of them had pushed away for so many blissful weeks.
"Do not. Do not leave me, Lily." His ragged plea arrested her. She froze with her hand on the door, reeling from the pain in his voice. "Do not run away from me," he whispered. "Please, not you too."
She leaned against the door as he approached her, the smooth wood cool against her forehead. She felt his hand on her nape, felt it tighten in her hair. His voice was hot and hoarse against her ear. "Please do not leave me. Not yet."
"But they will know," she said. "I will be made a fool. All those calling cards. How are we to perpetuate this--this--stupid ruse!"
"You needn't see anyone if you don't want to. We will contrive to avoid everyone. We'll put it about that you're ill."
"All this to protect her horrible family. To protect her! Horrible Lilliana!"
"To protect Claire, who never asked for any of this! And to protect my family's name. My mother's charity work. Nor do I want to look the fool!"
"No, only me! Only I must be foolish and an object of scorn. I am not so important as you, not so rich and fine and upstanding." Lily pushed away from him again and crossed through the door, retreating to the far side of her bedroom. Tears fell and her head ached. James' expression was beyond bearing, indignant and tortured. But she could not summon tact now. She had played the helpful and docile helpmeet well enough, but now she had seen the truth of what she was reflected clearly in Lady Holt's eyes. A pretender and a slut. An opportunist. Lily buried her face in her hands and turned to the wall when he approached her again.
"No…" She half-turned as his arms came around her. She didn't know if she meant no, don't do this, or if she meant no, never let me go. He nuzzled her, tracing her jaw, her mouth and nose with trembling fingertips.
"You will always be the only one for me. My love. My heart." He pressed his forehead to hers. "I need you, whether or not it makes us both fools. Do you believe me?"
"I don't know what to believe," she said miserably. "I don't know what to feel anymore. You say that you need me, that you love me. But a match between you and me--it is not the way the world works. I think they are the pretty words of a gentleman and--and nothing more." She clutched her hands before her chest, feeling a pain like her heart was breaking. "No matter how lovely they sound, your words are nothing but fantasy. In the end you will be a proper gentleman and do what the ton requires."
She was silenced by his kiss. His mouth took hers with punishing force, with hot frustration and anger. She pushed him away, refusing to be bespelled again.
He gazed at her through narrowed eyes. "You may think of me what you will, Lily. But I am no slave to conformity and expectation. Do not presume to know what I will and will not do."
He turned and stalked away. At the door he turned back again, his eyes dark, fathomless blue in the waning firelight. "I have more faith in love than you, I think. God knows why, but I do. If only you were equally faithful." And with those cruel words, he turned and shut the door, leaving her alone.
Chapter Nine: I Need You
The next day the few callers who braved the wretched weather were turned away with news that Lady Ashbourne was feeling poorly and would not be able to take company for some time. Typical of London, the gossip spread from household to household, and in a matter of hours the salons were filling up with flowers and gifts of sympathy for Lilliana's illness. By teatime, his mother descended upon them with hot buns and chicken broth. James watched all of this and thought the farce of it would kill him. Lily stayed in her room without comment and stared out at the endless winter rain.
Three, four, five days ticked by, and while she continued to play his wife in front of the servants and at table, she didn't deign to share his bed. He understood, although he missed her and lay awake long past the hour he normally slept. He thought of going to her, of seducing her back into his arms. He knew he could do it, but he also knew he shouldn't.
Instead he made tentative overtures of apology to repair the uneasy rift between them. She accepted them well enough, but with no more of the openness that had characterized their past interactions. She said nothing else of her frustration or heartbreak. By the sixth day he began to wish she would--it would be preferable to the equivocal politeness she gave him now. He much preferred her sobbing and raging because at least then he knew she cared.
But in the end he had to admit her assessment had been brutally lucid and on point. It was his own pride that stood in the way of their happiness. For all his lofty exclamations, there was nothing preventing him from turning his back on the Holts, leaving Claire to fend for herself, and taking Lily, his true love, to wife. There were no laws against such a thing, and no mortal danger to anyone involved in the scandal and secrecy.
There would only be the vicious backlash of the ton's inevitable disdain, which would chase them into the fringes of society forevermore. Not just them, but the Holt family, and his mother with all her society projects, and any offspring he and Lily might produce. The taint and ridicule would follow them all, the whispers behind fans, the bruising snubs and setdowns. He knew the London upper class was unfair and prejudicial and unforgivably rude, but that did nothing to change the basic fact of it. Most of all, he could not bear for her to be the object of that ridicule, his precious Lily. Be
cause no matter what he did, it would all be placed at her feet. She would be labeled a whore, a schemer, a too-proud commoner, all those things she wasn't.
So he put things off. He denied, he delayed. He was protecting her. It was not purely selfish, he told himself. It was not. But each morning some stubborn part of him thought, you could marry her this very day. Each evening as he went to his empty bed he thought he was nothing but a coward and a fool.
To silence the endless prickings of his conscience, he busied himself with work and called on a man he knew to look into the welfare of Lily's family. With that task done, James sat at his desk and considered the alarming stack of calling cards and correspondence addressed to Lilliana. He had never realized the extent to which the ton had loved her. What a horrific misstep, to bring Lily here and think he could play her off as Lilliana by showing up at a few poorly attended gatherings and hiding on the fringes. They would need to depend on her feigned illness until he put a few matters in order and then, as soon as possible after Christmas, they would retreat to Lilyvale. He could think of nothing beyond that, only the need to return to Lilyvale and hide, and try to restore some of the love and closeness they'd shared there.
After a week of torturous division between them, James heard a soft knock on his door. It was near midnight, and his exhalation of surprise caused the candle on the side table to flicker. He went to the door adjoining their rooms and swung it open to find her lurking beyond the doorjamb in her night rail and robe.
"Lily." He took in her pale, tense regard. "What is it? Are you unwell?"
"Yes. I am unwell. At least, I cannot sleep. May I… May I come in?"
He could barely find voice to answer. He only nodded, stood back from the door and gestured her inside. She turned to him, her expression a puzzle he could not quite interpret yet. He was dressed in his robe and nothing more. He put his hands before him to hide his body's undisciplined reaction to her nearness, pretending to adjust the tie at his waist. But when he looked up, he could see she was well aware of his ardor for her. "I have not slept soundly these many days that you've left me alone," he said.
Lily Mine Page 14
