“Mrs. Benedict?”
Lily shrieked and spun about. “Harris,” she greeted, a hand at her racing heart.
The butler flushed. “Forgive me,” he said as he came forward. “I did not mean to startle you. I merely sought you out to see whether I might be of assistance?”
She pulled her attention away from the portrait. “Yes. I am looking for Lady Flora. I had hoped to begin our lessons.”
Approval lit his brown eyes. “If you will?” He did not wait to see if she complied, but merely turned on his heel and started down the opposite corridor.
Lily hurried to catch up. She fell into step alongside him. They moved silently through the maze of halls. Their footfalls fell in a matched pattern; eerily quiet on the plush carpeted halls. “What is she like?” Lily asked at last.
At his silence, Lily cast a look up. Harris slowed his steps; his expression contemplative. “She is…adventurous, bold, curious,” he said by way of explanation. “Her life has not been an easy one with the passing of her parents, and His—” He snapped his mouth closed. The servant did not need to finish the thought for his meaning to be clear. The girl’s life could not be a pleasurable one stuck in these dark, lonely walls of the current Duke of Blackthorne’s townhouse.
Ah, so that is where the young lady, motherless and absent of any governess these weeks, spent her days—with members of the staff. The duke’s angry words about his ward and the burden he’d presented her were surely known by the girl. Sadness tugged at Lily’s heart. What a lonely life Lady Flora lived. “The poor child.”
Harris stole a sideways glance down at her. He gave a slow, approving nod. “I like you a good deal, Mrs. Benedict.”
She stumbled and the butler shot a hand out to steady her. Lily dropped her gaze to the carpet and murmured her thanks. People did not like her. They avoided her. Spoke ill of her, but never held any favorable opinion of the fallen woman she was. “You do not even know me,” she said, guilt pebbling in her belly once more. If he did, he’d have saved the duke the trouble by packing her off himself.
“I know enough about you, Mrs. Benedict.” They turned right at the end of the hall and then continued on to the staircase leading below stairs. “I know you were courageous enough to go toe-to-toe with His Grace—”
“You make more of it than it is,” she said, while the pebble grew to the size of a boulder. Nothing but her own selfish motives had brought her here.
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But I also know you’d not abandon the girl because of how the master looks and behaves.” How ready this servant was to welcome someone into the household, and for what purpose? To slay the demons that lived here and to save the cherished inhabitant of these walls? Unfortunately for them, Lily was not, nor would she ever be, that person.
They reached the main living quarters. “Do you wish to know the truth?” she asked Harris, not wanting the faultily placed praises he’d put upon her shoulders. “I am here because I have no other choice.”
“We always have a choice, Mrs. Benedict.”
She shifted her gaze away, unable to meet his kind-eyed, understanding stare.
…You will have a home. Security. Your freedom… Holdsworth’s coaxing promise slammed into her, and she blinked back a sheen of useless tears at the unwitting recollection of the day she’d sold her soul for stability.
Lily was never more grateful than when he stopped beside a closed door. “She enjoys the library immensely, Mrs. Benedict.” He pressed the handle and admitted her to another lavish space.
Sunlight streamed through the floor-length windows along the side of the room and drawn to the unexpected cheer and warmth, she stepped inside. She searched the room, dimly registering the closing door as Harris took his leave.
A high-pitched shriek split the quiet, and heart racing, Lily did a quick search of the room. Her gaze landed on Lady Flora, seated upon a leather button sofa with her skirts rucked about her knees. “Hullo,” she said gently.
Ignoring the greeting, the girl touched a hand to her chest. “You frightened me.” She dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I thought it was my uncle.”
No child should live with fear. That sentiment shouldn’t come until much later. Lily advanced deeper into the room. “Do you come to this room often?” This space, so very close to the guardian she clearly feared.
“I like to come here and read.” Flora swung her legs over the edge and pumped them vigorously back and forth. “The sunshine,” she gestured to the long row of floor-length windows, where glowing rays shone brightly through the crystal panes. “I would so greatly love to take my lessons outdoors,” she said in a wistful manner that tugged at Lily. It was a tug that opened up all the conflicted thoughts that continuously ran through Lily’s mind.
She is not your concern. Your freedom. Your safety. Your security… Lily needed all those things. But whose concern should the little girl be? “When the weather permits, we will take your lessons in Hyde Park,” she said, unable to call the words back and as tangible joy lit the girl’s eyes, she found she didn’t want to.
“Truly?”
Lily nodded. “Truly.” She walked over and slid into the vacant mahogany-caned library chair nearest the girl. She’d been gone so long from her own younger siblings she forgot the absolute lack of artifice. Not yet jaded by life, a child of this age did not have the ability to distinguish sarcasm. She took in the pile of books littered at the girl’s feet and strewn about the sofa. “I thought you were unafraid of the duke?” she asked gently.
Flora grabbed the book at the top of the pile. “It is hard not to be afraid of him.” She fanned the pages, all the while directing her words to the leather volume. “He does yell.”
His thunderous roar as he’d ordered her from his office echoed around her mind. “Yes, he does yell a lot.” Lily studied the top of the girl’s brown curls. As stern as her father had been, wholly devoted to rising to that esteemed position of vicar, her childhood had been filled with laughter. What was this girl’s life to be like? Pain stabbed at her in thinking of the sad, solitary existence Flora would know.
Flora stopped her distracted movements and picked her head up. “But you aren’t afraid of his yelling? You’ll not leave simply because you are afraid.” Emotion filled her breast at the trusting look shot her way.
She drew in a ragged breath. No, she would leave after she’d committed the greatest theft against the duke. A painful vise squeezed tight about her heart. And now, this child. She turned a question on Flora. “When I first met with the duke, were you not laughing while he yelled?”
“Oh, yes.” Flora nodded. “But I laugh when I’m scared.” She stared intently at the gold lettering of the book’s title. “I didn’t always. Not when my mama and papa were alive. Then they…” Lily took in the girl’s white-knuckled grip. “They…” Died. They died. When presented with this innocent girl’s suffering, all the unholy glee she had found in George’s family’s suffering faded, leaving her with a humbled shame for not considering that not all of George’s kin were vile, heartless fiends. Flora raised grief-filled eyes to hers. “So you see, sometimes I laugh when I am not supposed to.”
Yes, sorrow and fear elicited all manner of peculiar reactions in a person. “When I…” Was cast out of my family, “…came to London,” she settled for. “I missed my family very much.”
Flora scrambled forward to the edge of her seat. “Did your mama and papa die, too?”
It was Lily’s turn to hesitate. She dusted her palms together and studied her gloved fingers. From the moment she’d been discovered by the town gossip, wrapped in the young duke’s arms, her fate had been sealed. “They are lost,” she said firmly. “They are not dead.” Flora slid her fingers over Lily’s and gave a gentle squeeze. At that innocent, tender gesture of support, emotion balled in Lily’s throat and she cleared it. “When I came to London I began talking to myself.”
The girl’s little lips twitched. “Talking to yourself?”
“It is quite bothersome, I assure you.” Fortunately, for the lonely mistress of a bored nobleman, there’d been few around to hear Lily’s mutterings.
The room filled with Flora’s giggles. “That is bothersome.”
“Oh, undoubtedly.” Lily waggled her eyebrows. “Particularly when you are attending Sunday sermons.” As soon as her paltry attempt at a jest left her mouth, she registered what she’d said. She’d not stepped foot in a church since she’d left Carlisle.
Flora spoke, bringing them round to their previous subject matter. “Are you afraid of him?”
Something in that halting question said that Lily’s answer was very important for reasons that went beyond the mere topic of a yelling, angry duke. “When I was a girl, younger than you are now, my brother found a pup wandering the countryside.” The memory pulled at her and, with her telling, sucked her back to Carlisle, to the place she’d called home.
Ever the duke’s niece, Flora sat in patience waiting, all the while her eyes urged Lily to continue in her telling. “His name was Pup.”
Flora furrowed her small brow. “That isn’t a very clever name for a dog.”
“I quite agree.” Lily smiled in fond remembrance of the unoriginal name settled upon him by her siblings. “He had three legs.”
The girl’s eyes went round. “Three legs?” Then she narrowed them suspiciously. “Are you making light of me?”
Lily shook her head. “Not at all. When Shel—,” she coughed into her hand. She’d not allowed herself to speak aloud the names of her parents or siblings since she’d left. “When my brother discovered him, Pup was hungry and scared.” Her arms ached to hold that mongrel pup with the same hungering she did to hold her siblings once more. He’d been a faltering, deaf, white-whiskered dog the day she’d left. He’d be long gone now. Odd, the loss of that loving canine should elicit the same gut-wrenching pain as being cut off from her family.
Flora squeezed her hand, bringing her back to the moment. “What happened to him?”
“The villager who set Pup free into the wild did not want him because he was…injured.” The duke’s scarred, chiseled cheeks flashed to her mind. He might be an odious, snarling beast, but her heart twisted anyway with the pain he’d known. “He barked and growled,” not unlike the duke’s thunderous roars, “quite ferociously at my brother and anyone who came near him.”
“Did he bite you?”
Lily shook her head. “He did not.” A brown curl tumbled over Flora’s brow and Lily brushed it behind the girl’s ear. “It did not mean I didn’t fear him every time he barked and snarled.”
Flora wrinkled her mouth contemplatively as she seemed to consider her words. “I don’t understand.”
She gave Flora a gentle smile. “Well, you see, your uncle is like Pup.”
The little girl’s mouth fell agape. “The duke is like Pup.” Another giggle burst from her lips. She slapped a hand to her mouth but laughter escaped. “You are saying my uncle is like a dog? And dogs go outside. Uncle does not leave this house.” She paused. “Ever.”
He never left this dark, miserable house? Thinking of the duke shut away from the world, living in shadows, and never knowing the feel of the sun on his skin, sadness stabbed at her heart. Aware of Flora eying her curiously, Lily continued. “Er…well, the duke is not like a dog. But the dog.” Altogether different. Story now told, she admitted that anyone who heard such a comparison would have been scandalized with the analogy between the duke and an injured pup. She lowered her voice. “And yes, your uncle is like Pup,” she clarified. It was fortunate the duke did not leave his office and wander down these halls. For if he happened upon this conversation where she likened him to a dog, she’d be sacked for sure.
In the sprawling townhouse he now called home, Derek sought out but three rooms; his chambers, his office, and his library. The sole halls he used were the ones that led to one of the respective spaces. He’d embraced the solitude of his office and was quite content to bury himself away in the privacy of his own company. Derek drummed his fingers on the smooth surface of his rosewood desk. So how was he to explain this restless energy running through him to abandon the sanctuary of this very room? He slid his gaze over to the closed door.
It is her…
He ceased his tapping. “Do not be preposterous,” he said under his breath. After all, what reason could he truly have to want to see Mrs. Lily Benedict? The lady was a mouthy spitfire with fury in her eyes, when he’d always preferred his women with soft eyes and an enticing smile. The muscles of his belly clenched and unclenched with the unnecessary reminder that the days of being viewed as anything other than an oddity at a Piccadilly Circus were over. The burns and scars on the left portion of his face marked him a monster for all.
Except, the young lady who’d stormed his fortress and demanded an audience, and then a position in his household, had not stared upon him with horror. Derek sat back and drummed his fingertips along the arms of his chair. Oh, there had been, of course, the inevitable shock, but that had faded so that for their entire exchange, he might as well have been, once again—human.
With a growl, Derek grabbed the cane resting against his chair and surged to his feet. His need to exit these rooms had nothing to do with the memory of her spirited display in this very room. Nothing. Abandoning his ledgers, he now shuffled down the halls, on to the library, which had come to represent his one escape from hell and loneliness. He continued limping through the halls, when a muffled giggle brought him to a bumbling stop outside his library.
A frown formed on his lips. With the burden his sister had thrust upon him, and through that burden, another burden in the form of Mrs. Lily Benedict, not even his library belonged to him anymore. Derek turned to go.
“…The duke is like Pup?”
The muted words belonging to the girl jerked him to a stop. Ignoring the ache in his thigh, caused by those quick movements, he fixed a glower on the door. What in blazes? Surely the damned governess or nursemaid or whatever the hell she was would not compare him to—?
“Yes, your uncle is like Pup.”
Bloody hell, she had. His ward’s hilarity spilled past the wooden panel. A low rumble of fury built in his chest and climbed his throat. He tossed the door open so hard it bounced off the back of the wall. Derek cursed and thrust his cane out to keep the panel from closing in his face.
Two startled shrieks met his undignified entrance. With lurching steps, he stumbled further into the room. All the while his furious gaze remained fixed on the woman who was more bothersome than the rodents seeking out their survival on the battlefields of France. “What are you doing here?”
His sister’s daughter slid behind her governess. Fury raced through him. Her goddamned temporary governess. The woman gave no hint of that same fear. She stood unrepentant with her head tossed back and fire in her eyes. “Your Grace,” she greeted and then dipped a, by his way of thinking, insolent curtsy. Despite himself, a grudging respect filled him. “We were speaking, and,” she motioned with one hand to the stack of books littered about his sofa. “Reading as part of our studies.”
Derek dipped his focus and his gaze caught on Lily’s fingers tucked behind her back, locked with the girl’s. Did she seek to comfort the child? Or did she seek courage for herself? Or was it really a combination of the both? He narrowed his eyes, hating that he should care, either way. “Speaking, you say?” He dipped his voice to a low, deliberate whisper.
She gave a stiff nod.
“You were instructed to not enter these halls.”
The lady motioned with her other hand toward the hall. “No, I was instructed to not wander down those corridors.” She paused. “Which I did not.
The vexing Lily Benedict would drive a vicar to drink during Sunday sermons. He jammed the heel of his palm into his eye. The child’s need for a governess be damned, Lily Benedict brought with her more trouble than a bloody hurricane. Derek dropped his arm back to his side. He took another s
tep toward the quaking pair. Their feet in harmony, they backed away from him. “Those corridors run down this hall, madam.”
“Ohhh…” Lily drew out that questioning syllable and then stopped. She chewed her lower lip, drawing his gaze to that subtle movement—and that plump flesh. Since his disfigurement, he’d not known the pleasure of a woman’s body. He’d been foolish enough to try just once in the early days of his return. Visiting a seedy club in the Dials, not even the desperate whores there would lie with him. “Do they?” His years of celibacy no doubt accounted for the lust raging through him. Over a goddamned lip.
He forced himself to recall her earlier question. “Do they what?” he snapped.
“Does that hall run down this hall?” She gestured with her hand. “I would say that as there is another intersecting corridor, this one qualifies as an altogether different hall.”
By God in Heaven, she’d so blatantly challenge him? A growl worked its way up his chest; an animalistic sound that stuck in his throat.
The girl at Lily Benedict’s back buried her face into the woman’s skirts momentarily calling his attention downward. He lifted his gaze back to the fiery-eyed governess who glowered in return. Not taking her eyes from Derek, she leaned down and whispered something to the child. Those hushed words penetrated some of the girl’s terror for she nodded in response.
“Curtsy to His Grace,” Lily murmured.
The girl snapped her eyes open. She managed a rusty curtsy and then with a look from her governess, her very temporary governess, the governess who led her to the doorway where the girl then raced down the hall.
Derek stared after her a moment. Hmm, how very odd. This spirited governess had captivated the girl, as well. The child had formed an attachment with this woman so quickly? It spoke volumes to the child’s loneliness. A sensation feeling very like pain needled at his chest, and on the heel of that was a comforting fury with this interloper, with the child, with himself for feeling anything when he was content to live a numbed, solitary life.
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 57
