She was shaking her head in desperate denial. "No. Eugenia ran off. I did not know. She ran off. I thought she died--"
"She did die. Lily's entire family is gone now, except for you, that is," he added with disdain. "As much as you can call this sorry collection of selfish fools a 'family.'"
"Oh, I say," Lord Holt protested, but James ignored him, turning on Lilliana.
"And you," he said, fixing her with a glare. "You are a poor excuse for a daughter and poorer excuse for a sister. There is nothing on earth that would compel me to take you to wife after the events that have transpired since I was unlucky enough to make your acquaintance. For all I care they can send you back to your hapless husband and let you lie in the bed you made."
"Oh!" Lady Holt burst out. "But the shame, the scandal--"
"The shame is yours, and your daughter's. As for myself, I have had enough of falseness and guile to last a lifetime. I will not return to this house. Good day."
He turned his back on the shocked family and strode from the parlor, taking his coat and hat from the butler with a rough jerk. He spied his investigator in the foyer and beckoned him over.
"Mr. Gentle, if you would be so kind as to accompany me to my home. I am sure Lily will be grieved to hear the news about her family, but you may be needed to answer additional questions. Would you mind?"
"Of course not, sir. I would like to give her my condolences. It's a terrible tragedy, if I do say so. Just terrible."
"Yes it is," James replied, leading the man out to the carriage. Tragedy did not quite impart the depth of what had taken place. Her entire family, gone…
"Lord Ashbourne!"
James stopped at the door and turned to see young Claire hurrying toward him. She gazed up at him, placing a light hand on his arm. By God, she was sweet. It was a damn shame.
"I'm sorry, Lady Claire," he said. "I tried to protect you."
"I know, and I never got to thank you. It was so kind of you to pretend on my behalf. And I liked your Lily very much. I thought she was quite brave."
"Did you?" He considered the young girl. "You will have to be brave now too. When people talk, when people cut you, you will have to remember the scandal was not yours."
"I know, my lord. I will not have a care for what they say. Would you like to know a secret? I did not want a season anyway. I hoped for Sir Evenbright to offer for me, and he wished to, but my parents said he was not good enough."
Evenbright, Evenbright. James searched his mind and hit on the man, a fresh-faced and respectable young baronet. A minor peer with a struggling baronetcy, but an upstanding gentleman all the same. He saw the flush in the cheeks of the breathless girl before him.
"You care for this Evenbright? He is a worthy suitor?"
"Yes, very much. He is kind and courts me so patiently. I feared I must turn him off soon, but now, perhaps my parents will tolerate him as a prospect."
James smiled at yet another twist in the never-ending saga. It didn't escape his mind that he'd sacrificed so much for something she hadn't even wanted. "I suspect your parents will consider Sir Evenbright's petition now. I am happy for you. From what I know of him, he is the right sort of man to make a wife happy. I wish you both the best."
"Thank you, Lord Ashbourne."
"And should you ever need anything, I hope you will count me a friend."
"The same to you. You and yours will always be welcome at the Evenbrights," she said purposefully. Suddenly James was glad he'd tried so hard to defend this girl. She was proving herself worthy of his sacrifices.
"I must go," he said, squeezing her hand. "Enjoy the rest of your holidays…as much as you can."
Claire rolled her eyes in a most unladylike manner and waved him out the door. Mr. Gentle gave him a hand up into the carriage and James' thoughts returned at once to the tragedy of Lily's family. On the journey home, James tried to think of a way to break such crippling news to her. It had been months now. They had been lost all the way back in September. How on earth was she to endure such a thing?
All thoughts of his joyful marriage proposal fell away. This news of her family would destroy her and she would need time to mourn. And the rest of it! The knowledge that the family that had snubbed her was her mother's family, Lord and Lady Holt, her own uncle and aunt!
Too soon they arrived at his house on Regent Street, and he climbed the steps with a heavy heart. He went in search of her at once. The house was eerily quiet, the servants all gone off to spend Christmas with their families. "Lily," he called in the silence. He went up the stairs to the bedroom and found it empty as well. He was about to check in the adjoining bedroom when he noticed the notecard propped against the pillow. He scanned the words and cursed so loudly that Mr. Gentle bounded into the room.
"Will this day never end?" James shouted, waving the card at the investigator. "I'm afraid I've another job for you, and this one is quite pressing. We must find Lily at once."
At Mr. Gentle's recommendation, they took the time to harness the horses to the smaller chaise. London was still a mass of holiday traffic and the chaise turned out to be a boon. They rushed to Lily's old home. James knew, in her distress, she would have gone there first.
Of course they were too late. She was not there. They questioned the neighbors until they found one garrulous housewife who claimed she had indeed spoken to Lily about the death of her family. James' chest ached, imagining her dealing with that crushing blow when her heart was already broken. The housewife could not guess where Lily had gone after they'd spoken.
She was just gone, disappeared into the vast humanity of London, and she had left no trail.
* * * * *
Lily cried on the bed for a long time, long past the time she had any energy or tears left. She was reduced to dry, miserable heaves and hoarse grieving noises she didn't want anyone to hear. She could not move. She could not think. She let herself sink into a kind of trance because to think or feel anything was too painful. She was overwhelmed and alone. She was truly all alone in the world now.
When she'd seen the burned shell of her former home, she had grasped at hopeful possibilities. Perhaps they had not been at home. Perhaps her father had found other work and they had moved to another house in a completely different part of London. Those hopes were quashed by a neighbor who answered her questions with the words she hadn't wanted to hear. All of them, dead. The house too dry, the fire too difficult to contain in the unseasonable heat of September. Lily remembered that heat, how she and James had walked in the mornings to avoid it. "Why?" Lily had asked the woman, beside herself with grief and shock. "Why?"
And then Lily had realized the reason why with a guilty intuition that nearly sent her to her knees. She had always been the one to tend the hearth. She had always built the fires in the cookstove and managed the grates. With her gone, the chore had fallen to someone else and a fire had resulted. She knew it, and the pain of it had caused her to turn from the woman and stagger away in grief. Her fault, all her fault. She had wandered for hours in a haze as day turned to dusk, dragging her heavy valise behind her until her legs would go no farther and she was obliged to limp into the small inn across the street from where she stood. The kind proprietress had asked no questions, only showed her to a dim and sparsely furnished room.
Now here she lay, unable to move even to seek food or drink. She thought she might just lie there until she expired, and it would be a mercy.
The proprietress had other plans and roused her on the second day to come down for a bowl of soup and some conversation. Lily spilled the whole story of her family and told her she had lost her fiancé, a little lie that simplified a situation she could not reasonably describe. She let Mrs. Ream believe he had died as well, and the old woman took such pity on her that Lily was offered a position helping out with the inn's cooking and cleaning. Lily agreed, if only because the work would occupy her mind.
But at night she held on to the journal James had given her, cradled it against her
body in sleep. When boarders brought newspapers to the inn, she resisted looking within their pages for information. She did not want to know what had become of James and Lilliana. She clung to her memories and his words in the journal.
If my whole life was only the time I've had with you, it would be enough.
* * * * *
James had never known one month could feel as an eternity. As the last January winds swept in and chilled his body, his heart froze deeper into ice.
For a month now, a team of investigators had been searching for Lily in the area around her home. She was nowhere to be found. They looked farther afield, and still no word of her. It was as if she had simply disappeared from the face of the earth.
James had nightmares of her unmarked demise. He pictured her throwing herself into the Thames, her small body making nary a sound or splash that might alert someone to her tragic end. He imagined her diving in front of a barreling carriage, or being run down in the street while wandering in her grief. Mr. Gentle had checked at every precinct and assured James that no female matching Lily's description had turned up dead in recent weeks. But if that were true, where was she? If and when he ever found her again, he would shake her until her teeth rattled and secure her bodily to him so she could not leave him ever again.
Impossible girl, to simply run off because Lilliana showed her conniving face again. Sweet Lily Kendall, of the Knox lineage. He shook his head and rolled over in bed with a groan. During the previous weeks, he had wrested an acknowledgement of Lily from Evangeline, and a generous allowance to come from the Duke of Blandon's fortune, legally executed. It had been all he could think to do to distract himself. Now that was settled and situated, so he had nothing to do but mope in his house or go out looking for her, or bear another one of his mother's calls. Her tender attempts to draw him from his black mood were appreciated but fruitless.
He would go out, now, before dusk. He walked into the less genteel areas of London and made enquiries at inns and boarding houses. He had not yet ventured into the south end of the city. He couldn't bear to think she was there in that morass of filth and degeneracy. Not his Lily flower. She would leave London before she would sink to those depths. What if she had left London? It would mean more searching, more investigators. No matter. He would not give up.
He put on a dark coat and trousers, never wanting to draw attention in the places he looked for her. He took the chaise past Holden Street and then sent it home with the driver, thinking to duck inside one of the gentlemen's clubs for a quick drink to fortify himself. He brooded over his whisky, noting that most of his acquaintances had taken to avoiding him in his dark moods. What did it matter? Let them leave him alone. He was on his way out within a few moments, declining an invitation to cards, and felt himself jostled by a half-drunk gent by the door.
"Beg pardon, chap," the thick fellow muttered. James turned his gaze on him and his lips hardened into a line.
"Lord Horace?"
The dissipated Halstead son squinted at him through bleary eyes. "Ashbourne, innit? Haven't seen you in a blooming--"
The man's words cut off as James' fist connected with his mouth. He lurched backward, then lunged with a sloppy answering punch as the gentlemen around them scattered.
"Ashbourne, you ass. What the--oof!"
James landed another blow to the underside of his jaw, followed by a punch to the man's flabby belly. Horace doubled over with a curse and charged James with a groan. James ducked away, letting Horace go barreling past into a thick oak table. Drinks and cards scattered. The proprietor raised an indignant voice above the noise of the scuffle as the men locked again.
"Here now! This is a gentlemen's club! There'll be no fisticuffs in my establishment! Ye rogues had better take this outside before I call in the law!"
With a nod of agreement, James charged Horace as he righted himself, and flung him toward the door. The two combatants surged through as the proprietor opened it to the street. A handful of spectators spilled out behind them, placing bets on the outcome--bets James was heartened to hear greatly favored him. He threw another punch, connecting with Horace's nose and resulting in a satisfying crack and gush of blood.
"Oy! What's thish about, you madman!" Horace howled, backing away and pressing a rumpled handkerchief to his nose. "What have I done to the liksh of you?"
"Not me, you cursed milksop," James snarled in a ragged whisper. "A certain lady of my acquaintance. A Miss Lily Kendall, whom you wronged most grievously."
"Lily Kendall?" Horace snorted, pushing him back. "You'll beat up a gentleman over that common piece of--"
"One more word, and I cannot guarantee you'll survive the next quarter hour." Horace lunged at him with a grunt and James tackled him when he came, kneeling over him and giving him a sound blow to the side of the head before grasping him by the hair.
"I loved her, and now she's gone"--James gave his head a good knock against the curb--"and if you don't start spouting some apologies or at least show some remorse on that bloody hideous face of yours--"
"Gone? I just saw that bit o' skirt yesterday."
James hauled him up and flung him against the brick wall, his bloodied shirt grasped in shaking hands. "You will tell me where this instant," he said in a voice like cold steel.
Horace started to sneer, but the pure unmitigated fury in James' expression and the clenching of his fists must have made him reconsider. "She's up to Market Street. I was up there visiting a lady I know and she was sweeping off the porch of the inn across the street. I know it was her. She practically grew up at Halstead."
James yanked him forward and pushed him toward a hack at the curb. "Come on."
"Come on where? I'm not going anywhere with you, you bleeding lunatic."
"Oh, but you are going one more place."
The bullied man was silent as they made their way to Market Street in the gathering gloom. For his part, James sat still and stiff, staring out at the passing buildings. If he looked half as bad as Horace, he would give Lily a fright. He was sorry for it, but on the chance Horace was right, he would not wait another moment to go and fetch her. He rubbed one swollen eye and tried to put his neckcloth and hair back to some semblance of order. Horace snorted and stuck one leg out, rubbing his ribs.
"Don't know as I didn't deserve a bit of a drubbing, Ashbourne," he muttered. "But never knew a fellow who cared so bad for a girl."
"You cared for her," James replied in clipped tones. "Enough to rape her in your father's garden."
Horace didn't reply to that, just turned and stared off in the other direction. What a picture they must make, James thought. Two disheveled gentlemen sharing a hackney cab into the west side of London. James felt a strange calm as they neared the wide street, and he clasped his bruised knuckles together in the lap of his dirt-stained trousers. As the hack pulled to a stop, he reached up to straighten his hat, only to discover he had forgotten it. Kicked aside and crushed somewhere alongside Holden Street, no doubt.
"Eh, the inn's over there, you madman." Horace pointed to a small but respectable-looking house across the thoroughfare.
"Come on."
"I've got no more business with you. You'd best leave me now."
"You'll come, or I'll drag you over there by your stones. You won't enjoy it."
Horace looked at the set, somber face of the gentleman before him, then heaved a great sigh and climbed down.
* * * * *
Lily heard the commotion below--a banging and a thump that sounded like someone stumbling.
"Lily!" Mrs. Ream's voice rose, high-pitched and hysterical. "Miss Lily. Ye've got visitors, but I'm not sure--"
Lily closed her journal and hurried to the door. When she opened it, Mrs. Ream stammered an apology. "I'm sorry, miss. I tried but I couldn't turn them off. This gentleman here says he needs to speak to you right away."
In the dimness of the narrow hallway, Lily saw mussed-up chestnut hair and broad shoulders of a shape she remembered precisely.
She nodded to Mrs. Ream, finding herself speechless. "You're sure it's all right, miss?" Mrs. Ream asked. "I'll have out Jed to toss them streetside, just say the word."
"No, Mrs. Ream. Thank you. It is… It is an old friend."
The proprietress went away, leaving Lily to face him. James. He came closer, into the faint light cast by her room's windows, and she gasped. "Oh, James. What happened to you?"
He moved forward with a pinched frown. "The other man looks worse."
To Lily's consternation, he pulled forward a second gentleman quite beaten about the face, holding a balled-up kerchief to his nose. It took a moment before she realized it was Lord Horace. James flung him to the floor, extracting an alarmed gasp from Lily.
"Apologize to the lady," he growled. "Make it good."
Horace looked up at her from his knees, one eye nearly swollen shut and his nose a mangled mess. "Lily--" James gave him a sharp nudge with the toe of one leather boot and he amended himself with a groan. "Miss Kendall, I'm sorry. I am most sorry that I wronged you. Please accept my humblest apologies."
James looked at Lily, an unfathomable gaze. "Are you satisfied?"
"James! You have done this violence to him on my behalf?"
"Yes. Are you satisfied? Or shall I pummel him further?"
"No…please. I am satisfied. I would be satisfied for him to simply go away and stop…stop bleeding on Mrs. Ream's floor. She keeps a very tidy house."
With those words, James hauled Horace up and thrust him out the door, slamming it behind him. A blunt crash, a kick perhaps, resounded on the other side of the barrier, then Lily was relieved to hear him retreat down the stairs. But there, before her, James stood like a sullied angel, staring at her in silence. Oh, he was so close, right there! She wanted to throw herself into his arms and feel the solid warmth of him again, if only for a moment, but his stance was not welcoming. Lily wrung her hands in the skirt of her sensible dress and moved to the door.
"James…Lord Ashbourne… I'll get some warm water and cloths to tend to your injuries. Mrs. Ream always keeps water heating." She ducked her head and tried to scoot past him. He closed his fingers on her upper arm in a grip that precluded further movement. She gazed up into his eyes, one rapidly swelling red and purple. A smudge of blood had dried on his cheek.
Lily Mine Page 17
