Between yesterday’s disregard for the privacy he craved and today’s continued explorations, this woman could not stay. He wheeled around, prepared to send Lily Benedict, packing.
The feisty beauty planted her hands upon her hips and glared. “How dare you?”
Derek froze and looked about for the particular “who” in question but found the hall remarkably empty. “Are you speaking to me?” he whispered, returning his focus to the woman. This odd figure who at the same time, quaked in his presence and boldly challenged him.
“I am. With your snarling and snapping, you terrify the ch-child…” Her words trailed off as she stumbled away from his advancing form.
“I terrify the child? Or I terrify you both?” He hated that her answer mattered and yet—it did.
The rapid rise and fall of her chest supplied the woman’s answer. She continued backing up until she collided with the end of the corridor wall. Lily splayed her hands out behind her and pressed her palms to the surface. “You terrify us both.”
Her honesty jerked him to a halt. The only manner of sincerity he’d come to expect from people had been in their fearful gazes and repulsed glances. Then, he continued walking. “You should be terrified.”
The graceful column of her neck worked with the force of her swallow. “Sh-should I?”
“Oh, yes,” he whispered, coming to a stop before her so a mere hairsbreadth separated them. “You see, I warned you to stay away.”
“Fr-from the other corridor.”
“From this one,” he said on a lethal whisper. “I warned you what would happen were you to invade my sanctuary and you have defied my orders.”
She wetted her lips, that slight, seductive gesture alluding to her nervousness. Except a wave of potent lust slammed into him; a desire to claim her mouth under his and explore the hot, wet cavern until she was begging for his caress. What madness was this? He thrust aside those musings that surely came from being without a woman for too long, and when he had been possessed of a full face and charm, he’d certainly never gone about seducing members of his then father’s staff. “For a woman who so desires the post, you’ve not demonstrated as much with your actions.” It was why she had to go. Defiant, disobedient figures in his household would not do. He dipped his head close to her, shrinking the already infinitesimal space.
A strand of black hair tumbled over her forehead and, in a reflexive moment, Derek captured it between his fingers. Softer than satin. The lady’s breath caught audibly and she looked to him with some indefinable emotion in her eyes. Did she feel this hunger inside, as well? He froze, numbed by his body’s awareness of her; this dangerous need for another person. He’d spent years shutting himself away and building up defenses where words could not hurt and glances were expected, and he wanted and desired no one. For who could ever feel anything for a grotesque figure who belonged more in a nightmare than amongst the living? Yet, in less than two days, Lily Benedict had roused a hungering from within that reminded him he was very much alive—and he did not like it one fragmented bit. He suddenly released her curl and took a step back. “Mrs. Benedict?”
“Yes?” Her word emerged as a breathy whisper.
“Get out,” he rasped.
She held her palms up as though in supplication. “You cannot—”
“I can do anything I bloody well please.”
“—go about scaring Flora,” she continued over him.
“Flora?” He rocked back on his heels and stumbled for his shock. The lady had not intended to argue for her post?
“Your ward,” she snapped, misunderstanding the reason for his befuddlement. Gone were all traces of her earlier trepidation. “Your sister’s child.”
Once again, her dedication to a child she’d but just met took him aback. His mother had shown little affection for her children, beyond the purpose they served. The governesses who’d come into his household before had fled, without a backward thought for the girl. He furrowed his brow trying to make sense of her staunch defense. Lily’s devotion to Flor—the girl, could only be explained by her desire for the post of governess. “Ah, again, that touching devotion to that child you’ve only just met.”
A flicker of pain lit her eyes, but then as soon as it came, it was gone. Had he merely imagined that faint gleam in their aquamarine depths? The lady set her shoulders back. “She does matter,” she said quietly. “It is not Flora’s fault she finds herself here with you.” She paused and looked pointedly at the scarred portion of his face. “Neither is she responsible for the marks you bear.” He went stiff, unaccustomed to any bold statements about his disfigurement. The audacity of her words stunned him silent. “Furthermore, it would be wrong to send her through life holding her guilty for the crimes of others.”
Derek searched about his black soul for a jeering response but came up—empty. He eyed her with a sudden wariness. This woman with her bold scoldings and her unerringly accurate pronouncements terrified him worse than the damned French on the battlefield ever had. He needed her gone. “Get out,” he repeated quietly. Please.
Part of him that had come to expect her spirited rebuttals braced for her bold defiance of those orders, just as she’d done from the moment she’d entered his home. Except, as she dropped a polite curtsy, and then walked stiffly down the hall, an unexpected disappointment swirled through him wishing that this time she’d stayed.
Chapter 6
After his exchange with the spirited beauty yesterday morn, Derek attempted to thrust the thought of Mrs. Lily Benedict into the darkened recesses of his mind where other memories went to die. Except, the memory of her too-full lower lip and her lean, lithe frame proved how ineffectual his efforts truly were.
I wanted to kiss her. And for a moment of madness, in her eyes, he’d believed she wanted that kiss, too.
As such, he’d decided to torture himself in other ways by seeing to the routine his bloody fool of a doctor had tasked him with. How could massaging the muscles and walking on the blasted leg ever help heal the old wound? After languishing in bed for two years, nearly dead of his burns, he’d struggled out of bed, and attempted to wrestle use and movement into the useless limbs. The daily exercises gave him a daily purpose—even if just a small one. Now, however, his body would not allow him to wallow in the truth of his failings.
Instead, Mrs. Benedict with her black hair and aquamarine eyes commanded his whole body’s interest. Or it had.
After too many minutes of painful movements, Derek gritted his teeth and walked the length of the corridor outside of his office. With each agonizing step, lustful musings of the bold woman were replaced with the throbbing pain that radiated up his entire leg. He trained his eye on the portrait of a young man at the far end of the hall. Why did it never become easier? Why would the pain never go away? And more, why did he persist?
Because I hope. I still hold on to the tantalizing dream that through my efforts, I’ll somehow become unbroken. Fool. To believe anyone could love him? Even his mother hadn’t had that warm emotion in her heart.
“Your Grace, there is no need to walk so briskly,” his doctor called out from the opposite end of the hall. “That is not the purpose of the—”
“Shut your goddamn mouth.” Derek did not break his stride. Instead, he continued to glare down the uniform-clad soldier in the painting. A handsome youth. Unscarred. His face gloriously perfect. Unmarred by life and war. A fool who’d believed in the gloriousness of the cause and the grandiosity of adventure. What had his efforts brought him other than scorn and pain?
“It is more a matter of practicing the movements. The stretches. The—”
“I practice the bloody movements daily,” he shouted.
“And I told you,” the man put in gently, “you no longer need to see me weekly.” He’d been working with Carlson after more than two years of languishing in his bed, forgotten by the world. And now, of course even he was eager to be done with Derek. Why should he remain? You’re a bastard to the only man
to show you kindness. “You do not even need to exercise weekly,” the doctor reminded him once more.
Derek tripped, but quickly caught himself. “Are you telling me this is the best I’ll ever achieve?” he thundered.
“If you insist on remaining locked inside your townhouse, then yes,” Dr. Carlson said matter-of-factly.
Perspiration beaded on his brow and self-hatred twisted inside. Gone was the man who’d expertly fenced and waltzed ladies about the dance floors of Europe. After years of retraining his muscles, he still couldn’t even walk the length of his damned hall. Derek squeezed his eye tight a moment, as shame scorched his belly. “What is the point of it?” he asked, tiredly. What was the point of any of it?
“It is about properly exercising your muscles, Your Grace.” The doctor spoke with a casualness that should have grated. “Until you leave this townhouse and partake in actual—”
“I am not leaving,” he cut in brusquely. Occasionally, the determined doctor would get it into his mind to debate Derek on his self-imposed exile, as he termed it.
With a sigh, the fool doctor removed his spectacles and dusted the lenses with his crisp, white handkerchief. “You are too harsh on yourself. You have made immeasurable progress.”
Damn lackwit. The only reason Derek even tolerated his bespectacled, ever-optimistic presence was because he’d been the only damned doctor in the whole of the kingdom called in by him who’d said he would walk again. The man had, at least, been correct in that regard.
He tightened his mouth. What the man had failed to mention was that even with his efforts, Derek would never be anything more than a cripple; a weak, pathetic fool who struggled to climb stairs and who couldn’t move through a day without knowing pain. As if the fates were mocking him, Derek stumbled. He cursed and caught himself before he pitched forward and made a total arse of himself.
The doctor raced over with smooth, effortless strides. He reached a hand out. “Your Grace, please let me—”
“Get the hell away from me, Carlson.” Derek snarled. “I am bloody fine.” The man pursed his lips, likely one utterance away from calling him a liar. And then he’d be forced to sack the one person who’d not given up on him when his own mother and brother had. Edeline did not. She was loyal and loving, and you turned your own sister away… “You are done here for the day. So go,” he hissed.
Carlson also happened to be the only person unaffected by Derek’s shows of black temper. Though that isn’t true. There is a raven-haired, spirited beauty…
“There is still a good deal of time left, Your Grace.” Then, the other man had tended him from those early days when Derek crawled out of bed, limping and crying through those excruciating exercises. It was surely hard to fear a man who’d sobbed and screamed in his presence.
“Carlson,” he growled.
“Very well.” The doctor consulted his timepiece. “Perhaps we will conclude for the day.” Perhaps? Did Carlson truly think he’d be the one to determine the start and end of this session? “I advise you to rest for the afternoon, Your Grace.”
Derek made a crude gesture to show him exactly what he thought of his highhanded orders. “I said go, Carlson.”
“As you wish, Your Grace,” he said with a cheerful smile that grated on Derek’s every last nerve.
With Carlson gone, he focused on the same canvas that pulled at him every day since he’d made this hell his residence. Derek continued his march over to the portrait at the end of the hall and then stopped—he ran a hateful gaze over the last image ever captured of himself as human.
The grinning youth in his crimson uniform with gold epaulets stared back; foolishly optimistic and bloody arrogant in his seeming infallibility. Derek bent and fished a knife out of his boot. With loathing coursing through his veins, he drew his arm back with gleeful relish to slash the happy visage of that boy. The silver tip of the blade kissed the canvas. He closed his eye a moment and then, with a curse, he awkwardly bent, thrust the blade back into his boot and started his familiar walk back down the hall. The moment that memory was destroyed, all that remained was the monster and coward as he was. That, he could not bear.
With Dr. Carlson’s urging to quit for the day echoing around his mind, Derek hardened his mouth and increased his stride. The muscles of his thigh screamed in agonized protest and he dragged his left heel along the carpeted floor. The sudden, jarring movement sent him pitching forward.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered as he came down hard on the heels of his hands. He welcomed the pain that shot from his palms and up his arms, for it spared him from focusing on the burning agony of his useless leg and hideously scarred face. His breath came hard and fast as he stared at the red carpet. Where the crimson shade usually put him in mind of battlefields slicked with blood, now the hue conjured a pair of soft, eager lips. Lips that hadn’t demanded his kiss or attention, but rather a post in his employ. With the throbbing ache in his damned thigh, instead of fighting back the lady’s image, he let the thoughts of a determined Mrs. Benedict slip in. This hunger for her temporarily distracted him from the physical pain made worse by his exertions this day and he welcomed that diversion.
Tall, with generously curved hips and ample breasts, the woman was a mighty Aphrodite. Her mouth roused the memories of all the wicked ways in which he’d enjoyed a lady’s full lips upon his person. But Mrs. Benedict had an altogether different mouth. Lush, with her bottom flesh fuller than her upper, narrower lip, her mouth fairly begged to be kissed. A mouth that, if he were still the damned youth in the portrait, he would have kissed, and she would have pleaded for more.
She’d look upon him as though he were a man to be desired. Derek struggled into a standing position. It didn’t matter a bloody damn from now to Sunday what Mrs. Bennett or Mrs. Benedict or whatever the hell her blasted name was, thought of him.
He cursed roundly and poured himself back into his efforts. “Bloody walking,” he spat. His pathetic efforts. As though it mattered if he ever had proper use of his leg. He would still be the monster whispered about and feared. Hell, he could not even stomach the sight of his own hideous visage. He increased the speed of his stride. The heel of his boot dragged along the carpet and he stumbled. He sprawled face first into the corridor with his austere ancestors looking on in mocking disapproval.
Derek cursed again and shoved himself up. He sat sprawled in the corridor and rubbed his aching muscles; muscles which hadn’t been, nor would ever be fully healed and restored to rights after the French bayonet that had slashed repeatedly through his ligaments when he’d laid on the battlefield, his face burning from one fool’s misfired volley. His younger self grinned on with that roguish charm he’d been noted for.
“Would you still be grinning, you bloody lackwit, if you could see yourself now?” he shot over to the unaging version of himself. Derek made to stand and his leg crumpled from underneath him.
Raining down a string of vile words that would have shocked a street thief in the Dials, he sank back upon the floor. Not unlike the moment he’d received that wound, with slow, clumsy movements, he dragged himself to the wall and borrowed support from the plaster surface. His chest rose and fell in a heavy rhythm, a combination of his exertions and the tortured remembrances of Toulouse. The bloody French city that had stolen all from him.
He gritted his teeth. Nay, it hadn’t been a city, but rather a man. A former friend, at that. For back before he’d been turned into a beast, Derek had friends closer than brothers. Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr and Tristan, the Earl of Maxwell. The bond between them had been so strong that he’d allowed St. Cyr to convince him of the glory and adventure to be had in battle.
He swiveled his head and stared down the hall at the canvas. In the end, it hadn’t been some French soldier who’d seen Derek laid low in battle, but St. Cyr, who’d misfired and set him afire.
Bile burned Derek’s throat and he sucked in slow, steadying breaths. The acrid taste of burning flesh permeated his senses until
he wanted to cast the contents of his stomach up. He fed his hatred for the man responsible for this beast he’d become. Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr, a failure of a soldier had proven an even greater failure as a friend.
He pressed his eye shut.
A sweaty lock of hair tumbled over his brow. He dabbed at the moisture. What fools they’d all been. Then, up until that bloody day of fighting when his life had been irrevocably altered, Derek, too, had been that heroic fool believing in a war, in his own self-worth and capabilities.
Derek opened his eye and stared blankly at the cheerful robin’s egg blue satin wallpaper of the opposite wall. Sweat dripped into his eye and blurred his vision. “I should be dead,” he whispered.
For really, what was the purpose of this? This empty house that had belonged to his father, and then brother. A ducal obligation that should have never been his. A child to care for when he didn’t want to care for anyone or anything. Yet, the fates in a cruel twist had spared him, and killed his brother, and taken his sister. Then, perhaps the devil had exacted his due on both him and George for the indolent, self-serving lives they’d both lived. But there was no explaining how the only good person he knew in the world—his sister—had also been taken.
He yanked out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. The memory of Mrs. Lily Benedict flitted in once more. Not the sultry quality of her contralto speaking voice or her smoky black lashes, but rather the bold tilt to her chin as she’d challenged him. In fact, if he’d called her Miss Bennett once more, Derek suspected the lady would have choked him with his own expertly folded cravat for the deliberate insult. He’d grown so accustomed to women who fled him in horror that he didn’t know what to make of this undaunted stranger.
He stuffed the wrinkled kerchief back into his front pocket. Derek shoved himself to his feet. A groan escaped him when he put his full weight upon his weak leg. He shot a hand out and caught the wall. The woman’s presence served one purpose here—to care for his sister’s child, so he could be free of the responsibility of her. He wouldn’t have to be bothered with speaking to his family’s ancient man-of-affairs about a suitable replacement. Any day he was spared a visit from Davies, the better off his life was—quiet, empty, just as he preferred it.
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 58
