Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  Fear sucked the words from her and all she managed was a weak, shaky nod. Still, there was a primitive rawness to him that roused terror. The fine layer of civility and politeness carried by one of his station had been stripped back to reveal the most primitive level of a human being.

  The triumphant gleam in the depths of the duke’s eye indicated he’d followed the precise path her terrified thoughts had wandered and that he delighted in it. “Just as I do not care about the child, Miss Benedict, nor do I care to have my orders gainsaid by anyone.” With that cold decree, he was every inch a Winters and she despised him for it.

  He limped off.

  The new duke might be a scarred, hurting shell of a person but there were levels of depravity and wrongness that could not be pardoned. “You are a vile, coldhearted monster.” As soon as the insolent words slipped past her lips, she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood as he turned back.

  The harsh, angular planes of his partly beautiful, partly horrific face settled into an inscrutable mask. “A monster?”

  At those flat, emotionless words, fear spiraled through her. Her mouth went dry. “I merely wished to discuss what expectations you have for her learning.” She angled her chin up a notch. “And a proper introduction.”

  “You’re here seeking an introduction?” He sneered. “You spoke of wanting security, but that is not altogether true, is it?” Even with the slight space between them, she strained to hear those lethally whispered words. “A woman who truly desired security and the post you foolishly fought for would not have defied the orders given by her master.”

  “My master?” His high-handed words sent her back up. “My goodness, would you liken me to a dog?”

  He continued over her as though she’d not spoken. “She would not have wandered halls she was expressly ordered to avoid.” Her fury slipped. He spoke in the past tense. His Grace paused and lowered his gravelly voice all the more. He drew back and then pointed a long, commanding finger to the opposite end of the hall. “I want you gone.

  Surely she’d heard him wrong? And yet, by the hard set to his face, and the icy glint in his eye, her ears had not proven faulty. Oh, God. “G-gone?” Fear continued to grow, spreading through her person and crushing her chest with the weight of her folly. But this was not dread brought by his snapping, snarling ways or the marks upon his face. This was the kind of dread that came from losing all the security and safety she’d found in the world.

  The duke eyed her dispassionately for a long moment and then turned on his heel once more. With the aid of his walking stick, he limped down the corridor. And each step that carried him away heightened the panic cloying at her.

  The same terror to grip her as a just sixteen-year-old girl put aboard a mail coach and sent to London came rushing back. The memory of that day lapped at her mind. Where would she go? Home… The promise of Carlisle whispered around her memory. The lush greenery. The rising mountains. Only the intoxicating promise of a place she’d given up hope of ever being welcomed back was quashed by the harsh, curt words that her father sent her off with.

  Her eyes slid closed at the rising swell of helplessness. What have I done? She might detest the Duke of Blackthorne. She might despise his treatment of her, his servants, the young girl who was his ward, but he was still her employer. Or he had been her employer. Tears clogged her throat and she damned the fine crystalline sheen that blurred his tall figure at the door.

  Your passionate nature is a sin before God… Her father’s words rang as clear if they’d only just been uttered. Only, that had been when she’d striven for daughterly obedience, when nothing but being approved by one’s parent mattered most. Life had taught her there was more than that.

  He turned and took several steps toward the opposite corridor, no doubt seeking his office. “You would send me away?” she called out, proud of herself for standing up to him.

  Then, anger made one stronger.

  Wasn’t the coldhearted duke, after all, proof of that? His Grace stopped. She drew a slow breath and then walked briskly toward him. “You’d send me away because I inquire about my responsibilities?” And she proved herself a coward, stopping with several paces between them. “Because I care about the ch—”

  He spun around so swiftly and with such effortless movement, she gasped. “You care about the child?” She winced at the slight, mocking emphasis. “You are a stranger and know even less about that child than I myself.” He peeled his lip in a mocking sneer. “No, you were quite clear, Miss Benedict. You came for employment. You would have taken anything,” he continued his relentless barrage upon her conscience. “The child was always a mere afterthought to you.”

  Oh, God. He was correct. She pressed her eyes closed a moment. She hated him for being accurate and, more, hated herself for having been reduced to someone who’d put her own thoughts, security, and future before that of an innocent child. She’d fallen lower than Eve in this land of Eden. She managed to move her thickened tongue. “You are wrong,” she said, her tone hollow. For was he truly?

  Over the satin fabric of his black patch, he arced his eyebrow upward. “Am I?” he asked, echoing her own silent question. Had his inquiry been delivered as taunting, with that icy edge she’d come to expect, it would be easier than this matter-of-factness. “You come here making charges on the manner of guardian and person I am.” He stalked over with surprising agility. Rage made people do powerful things. The duke stopped before her. “I spare the child from having to see a living monster.” She winced at the cruel words she’d leveled at him a short while ago. For just that, he said more than he had since their first meeting. “But you,” he went on. “You would come into this household and place your own desires,” he wrapped that word in a silken tone that caused an odd fluttering in her belly, “before what is best for that child you so care about.” A cold, mirthless smile played on his lips. “Now tell me, which of us is truly thinking of the child’s best interests?”

  She froze and stared unblinking at him. His charge ran through her, shocking her with the accuracy of it. Guilt unfurled in her belly. Lily slid her eyes closed a moment. “You are, indeed, correct,” she whispered. This great, hulking bear of a man who yelled at his servants and hid away in his office, in this was far more honorable, far more decent than her.

  He came closer and then stopped so a hairsbreadth of space separated them. His towering, broad-muscled frame sucked the breath from her lungs. At his body’s nearness, a slow heat spread through her body, and befuddled her mind. So that she wanted to know more of this warmth, and not the cold chill to have filled her since she’d entered his dark halls. “I should send you away,” he said with a gravelly roughness to his tone better suited to a cutthroat in the Dials than a man who could command entrance into any ballroom; a man just shy of royalty. “I expressly forbade you from entering my halls.” Power emanated from his well-muscled frame.

  “Th-they are all your halls.” Her gaze dipped to the whorl of black hair matting his chest and her mouth went dry. Should I not fear him? If she were wise, surely she would. But I do not. Not in this moment of charged energy between them. Of its own volition, her hand came up, and she braced her palm on his chest.

  The duke went still.

  She blinked and then swiftly dropped her arm to her side. “I…” He’d quite muddled her thoughts. “Forgive me.”

  With his broad, well-muscled chest and powerful form, he was nothing like Sir Henry, who’d grown increasingly heavier through the years. Nor was the duke shaped in any way like his lean, late brother. This man was a broad bear of a figure who conjured knights of old brandishing their broadswords and eternally braced for battle; easily vanquishing all memory of others. Lily wanted to once again brush her hands over him, to steal the heat that penetrated the fabric of his shirt.

  “And will you do it again?”

  She would gladly do it again if… Lily blinked rapidly. “Do what again?” she blurted.

  In a move
surely meant to intimidate, he leaned down and stuck his face close to hers. “Is there something wrong with your mind or your hearing?”

  She rather thought there was something wrong with both in this instance; for how else to explain the maddening control this man now possessed of her senses?

  “Miss Benedict?” he barked, startling her from the haze of desire he’d cast over her.

  So she was to be Miss Benedict again. Like a bucket of Thames water dropped upon her head, he doused the thick haze of passion cloaking her senses. She angled her neck back to meet his gaze squarely. “There is nothing wrong with, either.” Only my mind. With her height, she’d been able to meet the eyes of most men she’d ever conversed with. With his broad, towering frame, the duke was more bear than man. He somehow managed to make her feel like one of those diminutive young women always clamored for by the men in her father’s parish. She struggled to draw forth the question he’d put to her.

  They stood so close she detected the flecks dancing in his blue eye. “If I allow you to remain, Will. You. Enter. My. Halls. Again?”

  She wet her lips wanting to give him the answer that would secure her future. Being born a vicar’s daughter, the lesson on not sinning with lies on her lips had been ingrained into her with her father’s birch rod. All of those lessons had been shoved aside for the sake of survival. “I…” She slid her gaze away from his, thinking about the carved box that contained all links to her previous life, upon the vanity. Tell him what he wishes to hear… Lily closed her eyes a moment. She was a whore. A woman without a family. And now, a would-be-thief. Liar. For in this moment, it was not about the diamond. You are thinking of nothing now but him. She looked to him once more. “You have hired me in the post of nursery governess,” she began, faintly breathless. He stared at her with a remote expression, silently daring her to continue. “If I am to serve in that capacity, it will, at the very least, be my responsibility to speak to you if there are matters of concern pertaining to Lady Flora.”

  “Who?”

  “Your niece, Lady Flora.” What was it that prevented him from speaking the girl’s name? That aversion to a person’s name—hers, Harris, Flora’s. Did he fear a connection to people? The hint of that possibility softened the shrewish words on her tongue and fueled her resolve. She angled her chin up a notch. “I should also be clear, Your Grace. I will continue to visit the library and other parts of your household, for this is also Lady Flora’s household and, as such, she should not be a prisoner in her home.”

  Without the faintest hint of shame at failing to note so much as the name of the girl whose care he’d been tasked with, the duke continued on. “I should sack you now then.” He spoke more to himself, with his words laced with bewilderment and frustration.

  She placed her palms on his chest. “Do not send me away.” Her words emerged as a breathless whisper that would feed any person’s lowest opinion of her as a harlot. And yet, her body responded to him of its own accord. In a way, that defied logic and common sense.

  He stiffened and, for an instant, she thought he’d pull away. Instead, he remained rooted to the floor as though the same madness that had besieged her mind had overtaken him. His gaze moved once more to her lips. A flare of desire sparked in his eye.

  That flicker of emotion she recognized. She’d cursed all signs of it from her last protector, which had indicated he intended a visit to her bed. Hadn’t known what to make of it with the cad who’d deceived her. Now she did. And this man, this hard stranger with an inexplicable power, warmed her from the inside out. How could she account for the maddening heat he roused inside her? In a world where she’d made nothing but mistakes, he represented folly. So why did she not flee? Why could she not draw forth his treacherous brother’s face?

  The duke dipped his head and her lashes fluttered. She tipped her head back to receive his kiss, despising herself for her weakness. “Are you attempting to seduce me into maintaining your post, Lily?”

  His gruffly spoken question brought her eyes open. “Y-Your Grace?” She hated that his words should sting like dull needles being stuck into her skin. Only, she had no right to this hurt or resentment. By her actions in the past, she’d proven herself a whore.

  “Derek,” he commanded.

  Yes, in this they’d moved past the formality of titles and proper forms of address. His name evoked power and strength and was perfectly suited to one of his strength. “What would you say if I told you I was not?” Her voice emerged hoarse with her awareness of him.

  Passion darkened his gaze. “I would call you a bloody liar,” he whispered and then claimed her lips under his.

  At the heated burn of his mouth upon hers, she went still. This man who kissed her now with such hunger was the brother of the man who’d tricked her out of her virtue, and for that truth, there was surely a sin in this act. And yet George had brushed his wet lips over hers but twice and never had she felt this eddy of desire that threatened to consume her. It drove back all memory of those insignificant, fleeting embraces.

  For all of Society’s opinions of her as a whore, she’d been with but two men. Neither of them had truly taken the time to kiss her lips. Through the importance they’d placed on their own self-gratification, she’d been deemed unworthy of that intimate caress. This dark, angry stranger kissed her mouth as though he were memorizing the shape of her lips. In all of the clumsy gropings and painful exchanges she’d known, not once in all these years had either of those men ever liquefied her the way this stranger’s touch did. The duke slanted his mouth over hers, laying siege to her mouth, possessing her in a way she’d never been possessed, and she shut out all others, and turned herself over to him.

  Lily twined her fingers in the luxuriant silken tresses of his unfashionably long hair and angled him closer, wanting to further know what this pleasure was. He slid his tongue into her mouth and then found hers. A soft, keening moan escaped her.

  “Say my name, Lily,” he demanded, commanding with that gravelly tone, roughened by passion.

  “D-Derek,” she rasped.

  As though that utterance drove him to a frenzy, he increased the thrust and parry of his tongue. Lily boldly met those strokes. In a bid to be closer to the blazing heat pouring from his frame, she pressed herself against the hard wall of his chest. How was it possible for a man dripping ice, to possess such fiery warmth within?

  Derek drew back and she cried out in protest, but he moved his attention to the sensitive skin of her neck. Lily’s legs buckled and she gripped his hard forearms to keep from falling. In that moment, with her body afire for him, she proved all those harsh, ugly words true—she was nothing more than a wanton harlot. And yet, she could not care. All she was capable of was feeling. Derek dragged his mouth down the column of her throat and then he trailed kisses over her décolletage.

  A broken gasp escaped her, and she slid her fingers into his hair, anchoring him close to her chest. She slid her eyes closed and gave herself over to the sensation of his caress and the hot sensation fanning out in her belly. She wanted to uncover all his secrets and know the man he was. To peel back his snarl and see his smile. And his touch. She wanted it to go on forever.

  “Your body does not lie in your desire for me,” he rasped out, those words directed more to himself.

  “N-no, it does not.” Derek ran his palm over her flat belly and she bit her lip hard wanting his touch at her aching core, wanting him to tug her gown up and slide his fingers inside to the wicked heat he’d created. What was this need for him?

  “What power do you have?” It was as though he’d looked within her mind and plucked out her turbulent thoughts. Derek palmed her breast and caressed the stiff peak of her nipple through the thin fabric of her gown. She arched into his hand, as a wet heat settled heavy between her thighs, filling her with an aching need to know the feel of him between her legs.

  He stiffened and made to pull away. She tangled her hands about his neck. “Do not stop,” she pleaded against his
mouth. He broke the kiss so suddenly, that she silently mourned the loss of him; this feeling of closeness and desire. Her heart pounded wildly. His kiss, their embrace, had been the singularly most erotic, beautiful moment of her life. Never had she known even a hint of the passion she’d known in his arms.

  “Lily?”

  Her lashes fluttered. Kiss me again. Kiss me so that I know there is more than ugly shame and pain in the joining with a man’s body. She forced her eyes open. “Y-yes?”

  “Forgive me,” he said, his tone gruff, but otherwise devoid of emotion. “I am not a man to go abusing servants in my employ.” His chest moved hard and fast, belying the calmness in his words. “And you, madam, are a servant in my employ,” he said in clipped tones that chilled. He didn’t sack me? He alluded to it, but even now, his words promised her the post and his respect. “That should have never happened.”

  “O-of course.” Horror slapped her and her throat went thick with shame. “M-My apologies, Y-Your Grace.” Those words emerged garbled.

  Dimly, she registered the sound of footsteps. The rhythmic boot steps cut across the tense quiet. Derek looked beyond her shoulder and his gaze narrowed imperceptibly. Lily followed his stare and blanched. Down the opposite hall, the butler ushered an older man with a shock of white hair into the duke’s office, but not before he leveled her with a look of loathing.

  “Get out,” Derek said quietly.

  Embarrassment brought her eyes closed with the muted horror of not only being in Derek’s arms, but being spied acting the wanton harlot she was. Servants would talk. They would all correctly assume she was, indeed, a whore.

  “I said go.” That three-word utterance emerged on a long, harsh whisper that promptly sent her into flight.

  Lily tore down corridors, her skin burning with the feel of Derek’s gaze on her.