Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  Davies opened his mouth to speak.

  “Now, this meeting is concluded. Get the hell out of my sight.”

  The servant dropped his gaze to the spectacles in his hands, but not before Derek caught the heavy dose of antipathy spilling from his eyes. “Very well, Your Grace,” he said between tense lips. As he stood, he placed his meticulous wire-rimmed frames on the bridge of his nose and then, with his rescued folios, took his leave.

  Derek stared after him a moment. His faithful man-of-affairs was no different than any other servant or peer who’d looked upon him with derision. His loyalty to the late dukes was to be commended and, he wagered, the reason he braved employment in his new master’s employ. The only certainty was that Davies cared about the whole damned ducal title and what went with it more than Derek did, or ever would. He’d never wanted it. He wanted it even less now, as it required him to deal, in some way, with the living.

  He strode over to the corner of the room where the curtains were tightly drawn. Involuntarily, he gripped the fabric and pulled it back. Sunlight streamed into the room and with a curse, he dropped the material. In an attempt to blot out the white dots dancing in his vision, he pressed a hand to his eye. For all the time in which he’d inhabited his brother’s townhouse, he’d left the dark walls but once. That one time to carry out an act of evil retribution.

  Memories flitted in of St. Cyr’s agonized expression. Derek violently thrust back all thought of that day. No, he no longer cared to venture out into the living. What was there for him outside these halls?

  Nothing.

  And yet, neither was there anything within them.

  Chapter 9

  With her employer’s raspy breathing echoing around her mind, Lily raced through the halls of his townhouse and finally reached her chambers. Gasping for breath, she flung the door open and rushed inside. Yet, no amount of running could drive back what she’d done. Nay, what they had done. She collapsed against the door and borrowed strength from it. Her chest rose and fell under the force of her rapidly indrawn breaths.

  Oh, God, she’d kissed Derek, the Duke of Blackthorne. She slid her eyes closed. And more, she’d wanted him to continue kissing her and exploring her skin and stirring that warm heat in her belly she’d not believed herself capable of.

  …You shameful harlot…

  Lily opened her eyes. Knots twisted in her belly and she moved on stiff legs to her bed and sat on the edge. All those vile, ugly, hurtful, and, ultimately, true accusations leveled by her father long ago had never proven truer than they did in this moment. She did not think of her future security dangled by Holdsworth, or the fact that she’d expressly gainsaid her employer’s orders. No. She thought of him. Not the duke. Not His Grace. Not even George’s brother. Rather, Derek. Now, knowing his name, nay having the right to use it, made him real in ways he’d not been prior to this moment.

  With fingers that trembled, Lily touched her swollen lips. Instead of worrying for her future and security, she sat here, dreaming of his kiss. “Do you believe he is even now thinking of you?” she whispered into the silent room. Lily let her quavering hand fall to her side. She’d seen the hard glint in his eye and knew the moment he’d ordered her from the hall that the inevitable, ultimate dismissal awaited. Her thoughts really should be trained on the very fact.

  The twisting and turning in her belly foretold disaster. There would be no leniency from Holdsworth. He did not care about her beyond his own dire financial circumstances and the security represented by that diamond. Now, her impulsivity had led to her ruin. Again. Lily flopped back on the bed and tossed her arms wide upon the white satin coverlet. She stared up the white plaster ceiling and willed her pounding heart to calm. Her efforts proved futile. For, with one rash decision to enter the forbidden halls of a man aptly called The Beast, she’d thrust herself back into that same uncertain world of seven years ago. She was that same, scared, panicked girl boarding a mail coach to London.

  Where would she go now? The options were once again, the same—starve on the streets of London and play whore in the street. Or become some wealthy nobleman’s fancy piece. “I will not be that woman,” she whispered into the quiet. “Not again.” I should have thought of that before I put demands to a duke. A fine mist blurred her eyes and she blinked, trying to clear vision. How did she account for those useless, salty mementos? The last tears she’d shed had been the day her father had called her a whore and sent her from her family.

  A soft rap on the door filled the quiet and, thankfully, cut across the tidal wave of panic threatening to pull her under. She shoved herself to a seated position and dangled her legs over the bed. Perhaps she’d merely imagined the—Knock-knock-knock.

  Lily dashed a hand over her face. Who was seeking her out? As soon as the thought slid in, cold, hard reality crashed down. She was being turned out. She cast a frantic glance around the room. Whoever was charged with the firing of His Grace’s insufficient staff didn’t necessarily know that Lily was even now in her chambers. In this labyrinth of a home, she could quite easily hide herself in the empty rooms and hallways until… Knock-knock-knock. She swallowed down the ball of fear threatening to choke her. There was no hiding. A person, no matter how obscure they wished to make themselves, was ultimately found.

  Lily rose slowly and walked on stiff legs to the door. Knock-knock-knock. Before her courage deserted her, she pulled the door quickly open and in spilled a tiny, white skirt-wearing child. She shot her hands out and immediately caught the girl.

  “I did not believe you would ever open the door,” the child said with a disapproving frown on her lips.

  Grateful for the innocent diversion presented by her charge, or rather the girl who was to have been her charge if she’d been able to follow simple commands, Lily closed the door behind her. “My lady,” she greeted, mustering a proper smile for Flora’s benefit.

  The little girl giggled, as all her earlier displeasure faded. “I am just Flora.”

  “And what a beautiful name it is,” she returned, oddly calmed by this small child.

  The girl, perceptive for her tender years, became more serious. Flora folded her arms and eyed her. “Are you still my governess?”

  Ah, so the clever child knew the precariousness of Lily’s place in this household.

  “Yes.” For in this instant, she still was, and would remain so until she was tossed on her ear for being caught kissing the duke.

  “I say….” She took a step closer and peered up at Lily. “I like you more than all the others.” Warmth burst in Lily’s heart at those simple, but powerful, words from this child’s lips. “Do you know that you are older than my other nursemaids? Much older than the others before you.” She felt older than her three and twenty years.

  “How many nursemaids have you had?”

  “Nursemaids and governesses?” the girl rejoined.

  “Uh—yes.”

  “One nursemaid.” She ticked off on her hand. “And three nursery governesses.” Flora sniffed several times as if she’d picked up a foul scent. “Cowards, all of them.” Ah, so in their weakness, they’d failed to see anything beyond the scarred surface of the Duke of Blackthorne.

  “Three you say?”

  “Four if you include the nursemaid,” Flora reminded her.

  Flora was better off without all those shallow creatures who’d be cowed by their fear of Derek’s grumblings. A sigh escaped Lily. There had been four before her? And with her dismissal, there would now be a fifth. In a month’s time. No child should know such instability.

  She stared at Flora a moment, allowing the distant dream she’d once carried to slip to the surface. “And how old are you, Flora?”

  “Seven, but I’m nearly eight. Very nearly,” the girl said with a nod, as though in saying it twice made it true.

  As she stared at the pure girl without a hint of artifice to her, emotion clogged Lily’s throat. In all she’d lost with her rash decision those seven years ago, she’d mourned
the loss of her family and her own bright-eyed optimism in the world. But she’d lost so much more. Dreams that would never belong to her. A child of her own. A person to love who in turn loved with unconditional abandon. Grief threatened to pull her into a vortex of long buried regret.

  “You wanted to talk about me with Uncle Derek.”

  Lily tried desperately to follow along the conversation trail this girl now guided her down.

  “It is why you went to his forbidden halls when he expressly forbade you to enter them,” the girl clarified.

  Guilt ate away at her. That precious diamond is what had brought her into his halls. “Yes, but…” Her words trailed off under the horrifying possibility… Oh, God, did she see me kissing Derek? Heat suffused her cheeks. “How did you know as much?” Of course, a child who’d urged her to be brave would steal down whatever corridor she desired, whenever she desired.

  The girl wandered over to the vanity and inspected Lily’s box. Her skin heated at the personal contents contained within—those damning pages and trinkets that served as her only link to her parents and siblings.

  Flora stole a sideways glance at Lily, surely ascertaining whether her governess would note her ruffling through her personal belongings. She jerked her guilty gaze away from the wooden box. “I heard you speaking to him.” No, the duke in all his seething, dragon-like fury stood little chance in keeping this inquisitive young girl out of those halls he sought to protect. In fact, by the curiosity in her blue eyes, the forbidden corners of this dark and lonely household were all the more enticing.

  She did not pretend to misunderstand. “Did you?”

  “He was not at all nice.”

  “No,” she agreed. With his cruel words and harsh tone, one might believe the Duke of Blackthorne didn’t know the meaning of the word. “He was not.” Yet…he’d granted her an honorable post when no other nobleman would have. And there was emotion in his impenetrable gaze that drew at her, burned her with the need to know more of him. She recalled Derek as he’d been sprawled on the floor, hurling hateful, angry epithets at himself. He couldn’t spare a hint of civility for even himself. Belatedly realizing she’d inadvertently offended the girl’s uncle, she cleared her throat. “I was not where I should have been. He’d expressly forbid me to disturb him.”

  Flora slid into the vanity seat and inched closer to that box. At the girl’s less than covert attempt, Lily’s lips twitched with her first real humor in longer than she could remember. “And yet you went there anyway.”

  Flora’s words were more a statement than anything else. “And yet, I went there, anyway.”

  “For me.” Flora ran her palms over the roses etched along the top of that wood box. “No one really thinks of me,” she murmured.

  Guilt pulled at Lily and she turned hot with shame. For she’d not truly thought of the girl beyond the means of her own security and safety, and with Derek’s kiss, she’d thought of nothing but him. How was it possible to both fear and hunger for a man, who was more stranger than anything?

  Flora tilted her head back and Lily quickly schooled her features to conceal that nagging shame. “Harris thinks of me. And Alcott.” Lily looked at her in confusion. “Cook,” Flora went on to clarify. Her smile dipped and with a beleaguered sigh, she propped her elbows on the surface of the vanity. “But only because they feel badly for me.”

  The weight of her growing remorse pressed on her chest and made it difficult to form words. “It is better to have people care for you in any way, than not at all,” she said at last. After all, whom did Lily have? She’d learned to embrace kindness where she could find it.

  “Perhaps.” Flora lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “But I do not want people,” her uncle, “to care because they pity me. I want them to care because they care for me.”

  Admiration for the girl swirled through her. Older than her seven, almost eight years, the girl recognized the sentiment of pity and wanted nothing to do with it for herself. “I care about you,” she said, shocked by the truth of that.

  The child looked at her skeptically. “You have only just met me.”

  “Yes,” Lily conceded, stroking her hand over the top of the girl’s head. “We may have only just recently met, but I can tell you are brave and proud and strong,” she said softly, “and it is hard not to care about such a person.” That revelation came with a heavy dose of shock. She had spent the better part of seven years hating all those connected by blood to the late Duke of Blackthorne. Yet in being with Flora, she saw none of the late duke’s vileness, but rather the innocent goodness that still existed on this earth.

  Flora’s beaming smile reached her eyes. A kindred connection with this little person filled her and she’d not felt any true bond to anyone since her younger siblings and mother. They had both known loss. Two vastly different types of it…but losses, nonetheless. Then the girl’s unfettered grin dipped. “You will leave,” she said on an eerie whisper. “They always leave.”

  “I will not.” The lie left her lips so easily because, for a fragment of a moment, she’d forgotten what brought her here and what would take her away. Her blasted impulsivity and her wanton reaction to Derek. Mayhap he’d not send her away. Hope stirred in her breast. Mayhap he’d not sack her. Mayhap she could stay and be one constant for this little girl.

  Revenge had brought her into this household and yet, perhaps there was something good she could do, something she could provide for the limited time she was here—companionship for the lonely little girl. That hopeful glint in the girl’s eyes turned the blade of guilt all the deeper. For how could she pretend his embrace had never happened? How could Lily go through her daily responsibilities to Flora not remembering the singularly most passionate moment of her life? “Well, someday I shall have to leave,” she altered. Likely within the next hour, for her earlier transgression. “But only when I must.” That was the closest to the truth she could come.

  In the vanity mirror, Flora caught Lily’s gaze. “Everyone leaves because they are afraid of him, but you are not.”

  The Duke of Blackthorne roused an unholy fear inside Lily that even now, closeted away in a distant corner of the vast townhouse, still maintained a manacle-like hold upon her rational thoughts. What would such a powerful, commanding figure do to the woman who’d entered his home under false pretenses and committed a theft against him? He would see her kiss as nothing but a lie. A spasm racked her heart. For that kiss was the single, truest thing between them.

  Flora hopped to her feet. “I am not afraid,” she said as she wandered past Lily. The slight hesitancy in those handful of words, hinted at the lie there. “I was,” she conceded. She looked up and held Lily’s gaze. “When m-my…” Her lower lip trembled and she sucked in a broken breath. With a strength and resilience not shown by most grown men, the girl squared her shoulders. “When my parents left,” she finished. Left. The child still clung to the hope that her parents lost at sea would, in fact, return. That truth was there in her telling words. “I was horribly sad.” Her blue eyes reflected pools of unhappiness that wrenched at Lily’s heart. “And very lonely. I’d heard the whispers about the duke.” It didn’t escape her notice the girl didn’t refer to him with that familial title. “When Papa was still alive, he and my grandma would speak of him.” Hatred gripped her for that vile, now dead, duchess. Her ugly cruelty had extended beyond Lily, to include her son? Lily closed her mouth tightly to keep from pressing the child for all the thousand questions on the edge of her tongue. “My papa said he was a monster.”

  “Did he?” she forced emotion from that question. What a hateful man her father had been. Then, should she truly be surprised by the cruelty of any of those pompous, powerful lords?

  “My mama told Papa he should not say those things because my uncle was a hero.”

  A hero. She’d relegated Derek to the role of monster by rank of his birth. It had never had anything to do with the marks upon his person. Yet, for the veneer of cold upon him, he wa
s a man who could have easily sent Flora from his home, but allowed her to remain. And he was a man who did not see her, a servant in his employ, there for his pleasures, but who’d instead spoken of the wrongness of their embrace. Even as she herself had wanted it, and wanted it still. She would have given herself to him, but he had stopped. Stopped when any other man would have taken his own pleasures. “Your mama would be right,” she said softly. This child’s words forced Lily to confront the honorable things the new Duke of Blackthorne had done. That unwelcome revelation only caused the pit of guilt in her belly to grow.

  “I hear Alcott and Harris whisper about him.”

  All who knew the Duke of Blackthorne surely did. How could a commanding, dominating figure such as him not earn looks and whispers?

  “His man-of-affairs, Mr. Davies, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “He speaks ill of Uncle Derek. He says he should have died and that my other uncle should have lived instead.”

  Shock ran through her. “Whyever would he say such a thing?” Before a child, no less.

  Flora shrugged. “He comes and speaks to my governesses and the staff.” And how did those vile words fit into any discourse, proper or improper? “He always says,” she cleared her throat and then, in a high-nasally voice that Lily suspected was a rendition of the man, said, “monster or beast, the man is still a duke with coin to pay. He should have died but he did not, so take his bloody coin and keep your post.”

  Lily gasped. “Surely not.”

  “Oh, surely.” Flora said with an emphatic nod. “Harris and Alcott speak of it quite frequently, repeating it back.”