Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  But how many times had she been prey to rash, impulsive emotion? Twice before, she’d trusted gentlemen who’d promised her security and had ultimately taken everything from her. That recklessness had found her nothing but despair. Wanting Derek as she did, she could not be blinded by this need of him…for him.

  Lily stared blankly at her door handle and before her courage flagged, she opened the door and stepped outside. An eerie darkness served as her only companion this night.

  In the dead of night, the devil comes to play…

  Lily crept down the halls of Derek’s silent townhouse, that haunting warning given her and her siblings by their stern father seemed never more true. The lit sconces cast eerie shadows upon the wall and a shiver worked down her spine. Lily, however, had found the devil came in all shapes and forms, but was invariably a role filled by men. And never were her father’s words truer than they were on this day. Quickening her stride, she hurried down the hall and paused briefly at the servant’s stairs before continuing on. Her bare feet padded silently down the stairs, noiseless.

  This was the house she’d imagined entering. Quiet. Devoid of life. No servants underfoot. That was the home she’d imagined, but one that this impressive space had proven altogether untrue. For there was life in Derek and Flora, and servants, loyal and good to the lonely little girl who dwelled in this cheerless home.

  And she’d betray them all. Even after she’d bared her soul to him and he’d understood, she would commit this crime against him. Yet the truth remained. With his unquestioning support and forgiveness for her shameful actions all those years ago, he could never forgive what had brought her into this house. Not truly. His friendship with the Marquess of St. Cyr, a man he’d known for years and years, only to sever him from his life, was testament of that. Lily adjusted the box in her arms, the one containing letters of her past and bitter shame stung her throat. She carried about this box with the letters she’d written, as nothing more than a ruse to hide the item she’d steal.

  She reached the base of the stairs and shifted her burden. The chill of the hardwood floor stung her feet. Holdsworth’s promise of security and Derek’s visage warred for supremacy. Lily stood with her gaze trained on the door. If she did not do this thing, her life was forfeit.

  Lily shoved the door open and stepped out into the corridor. Soundless as the grave, she made her way through the halls. The eyes of his ancestors, memorialized in paintings, followed her with their accusatory, haughty stares. She cast periodic glances up at those bewigged, bejeweled former dukes and duchesses. How long she’d spent despising everyone who’d ever shared the blood of that late duke. Only to find that Derek and Flora were nothing like the two who’d tossed a bag of coin at her feet, without a worry about whether she’d live or die.

  Lily came to a stop outside a familiar door; one that had once roused terror. This time, a breathless anticipation ran through her; a hungering to see him. She rapped softly. Please be in there. Please be here when I need you to be more than ever. For if he was not, then her being in his private office was a violation of a place he sheltered himself away from hurt.

  Silence reigned.

  She knocked once more. Be there. Please… Except, there was no answer. It was as though the fates taunted her; mocked her with the equal part promise, equal part threat. Lily bit down hard on her lower lip.

  …My brother had a taste for fine things…

  Her body jerked reflexively as Derek’s whispered words called forth the vile remembrance of the man who’d set her on a path of ruin. Fingers shaking, Lily reached for the door and pressed the handle. Before her courage deserted her, she stepped inside. She quietly closed the door behind her.

  Lily blinked several times, giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the hauntingly dark space. She looked to the leather winged back chair and the now empty hearth. Her heart slipped at finding those folds empty of the man who so often occupied them. Setting her box down on the smooth surface of Derek’s desk, Lily cast a glance back at the closed door. Her heart thundered hard in her breast, as she braced for Derek to leap from the shadows with the word “Thief” on his lips. Silence served as her only company. With a deep breath, Lily approached the intricate, revolving case.

  I do not have to go forward with this. I could disappear and Derek will likely never remember I was ever here…

  A spasm of pain struck her heart. He will remember. He will remember because he let you inside, when he’d shut the whole world out. And you would betray that gift. She flinched. His opinions were formed of sugar with nothing more than a cold, London rain to take down that fabricated world. Lily gave her head a disgusted shake.

  Before her courage deserted her, she fiddled with the hidden compartments revealed by Derek. Her fingers trembled so badly, she couldn’t free the inner latch. Then a faint click resonated about the room. The slight sound should have filled her with a sense of gratification. Instead, as she withdrew the magnificent bauble men had fought over, nothing but a hollow emptiness settled in her chest. Lily turned the piece over in her hands. So, this is what she’d sell her honor for…worth far more than those thirty pieces of silver earned by another shameful sinner. Even in the dark, the massive diamond glittered and shimmered.

  Lily closed her eyes a moment and then with swift movements, she closed the compartment and deposited the heirloom into her box where it settled with a noisy thump atop those unread letters. She stared emptily down at the notes and diamond. With a soft curse, she snapped the case closed.

  It was done.

  And yet… Lily lifted the lid once more. And yet, at the same time, nothing was certain.

  She didn’t know which man she served—Holdsworth, who’d ruin her for failing to help him or the duke, who’d proven himself to be one who’d not judge her for the mistakes she’d made? A man who’d kissed her with tenderness as though he found her special, when the marks on her soul proved she was anything but.

  With lines of right and wrong blurred and melded, she no longer knew what was truly of importance. For so long, she’d been sustained by revenge and survival. In all that time, she’d imagined nothing mattered more than survival. She’d muddled through the mess that was her life with the hope of escaping this cold, emotionless world where she was nothing more than a willing body to a powerful peer. But what life was worth living without honor?

  I will not do this….

  Lily reached for the diamond tucked inside her case, but froze. The neat stack of notes beside that box gave her pause. Diamond momentarily forgotten, she picked up an ivory note, and turned the thick, folded sheet over in her hands. She lingered a moment on the unfamiliar crest that hinted a powerful peer was the owner of those words. She’d really no place reading Derek’s private notes and, yet, a part deep inside craved information about the solitary man who’d shut himself away from the world. Lily ran her fingertips over the name marked in black ink; the strong, bold strokes belonging to a man. She stole another glance at the door and then shoving aside guilt, opened the note.

  Derek…

  I can owe you nothing more than my deepest regret for my inadequacy that resulted in the scars you carry. You were a friend to me, closer than a brother, and for all the times and ways you saved my worthless life in battle, you gave one of the greatest sacrifices. I would take all that pain if I could. Instead…

  Heart thundering, she hurriedly skimmed her gaze over the note, mouthing the words written by the Marquess of St. Cyr. “So that is what happened,” she whispered into the quiet. Society whispered about the person he’d become, but failed to honor what he’d done to be so transformed. For his protestations of the contrary, he was, in fact, a hero.

  “A woman who’d show up on my doorstep and demand the post of governess would take to snooping through my notes and not ask those questions herself?” The sound of a harsh, furious voice sounded from the doorway, snapping her attention up.

  Lily gasped. The note slipped from her fingers and sailed silent
ly to the stack. She spun about. Her heart picked up a frantic beat. Derek stood framed in the doorway. He shifted, leaning over his cane, and glared at her with such dark ferocity, that an unwitting terror stirred in her breast. This was not the gentle, caring man she’d come to care for, but rather a savage, fierce beast. The kind who’d take apart any person who’d wronged him. Her gaze flew to the damning case, open on his desk. With hasty movements, she snapped the lid closed. Oh, God. “You,” she breathed and backed away from that box, foolishly hoping he’d take chase and fail to note the piece that bore evidence of her thievery.

  He stood there, coolly unaffected, assessing her from under thick, dark lashes.

  “D-Derek,” she managed to force out that whisper. For in this moment, with austere fury emanating from his frame, this coldly aloof stranger bore no hint of the gentleman who’d gently claimed her lips and caressed her shoulders as she’d told him some of the darkest pieces of her story. In this moment, he was the feared, fabled Beast of Blackthorne and never more did she want to flee than she did just then. She eyed the open door contemplating escape, but with his broad, powerful frame between them, she’d never make it past. Nor could she leave that damning box behind.

  As though he’d followed the cowardly direction of her thoughts, never removing his gaze from her, Derek shoved the door closed with the bottom of his cane. She jumped at the soft click and backed up a step. “Y-you are awake.” As soon as the words escaped her lips, she flinched at the damning quality of that statement.

  “I told you, Lily, I never sleep.”

  She bit down on her inner cheek hard unable to make anything of his eerily quiet tone. Yes, he had said as much, but she’d still known from her time in his household that in the early morn hours, when the black night sky reigned, he sought out his own chambers. She’d just failed to know he actually returned to his offices. Lily cursed her folly in entering these rooms. “I-I find myself s-struggling to sleep as well.” Those were the truest words she’d given him since he’d discovered her this night. Though with him here, she couldn’t dredge forth a thought of Holdsworth’s plan or that cursed diamond…but rather Derek. Even terrifying as he was, she desired him, still. She grimaced. What hold did he have over her?

  His cane thumped a terrifying rhythm as he limped purposefully forward. “And so you thought you would come into my office and go through my personal notes.”

  Lily gripped the fabric of her night-rail hard. His was no question. It was a lethal-edged statement that dried her mouth with terror. This was a man who’d never pardon one who’d lied to him, deceived him—even if her reasons for being here were driven by the need to survive. No, he was not a man who took to interlopers in his world and she’d invaded his refuge yet again—and this time, in the dead of night, like a thief from the Dials.

  “You’ve nothing to say?” he asked, closing the space between them. Her body thrummed with an awareness of the heat pouring off his powerful frame. He came around the desk and unnerved by her response to him, she retreated, too late. Her back knocked against the wall.

  “I did not know there was a question there.” She wetted her lips. “Furthermore, I expected if they were of a deeply personal nature,” which they clearly were from the pieces revealed on that page, “you would keep them tucked away.” As she did her own notes.

  God, the chit was brave. What other man, woman, or child could be caught snooping through those intimate pages, and then stand so proudly before him with her shoulders back and her chin tipped at a mutinous angle?

  Panicky tension thrummed inside him; a sense of being exposed and wanting to run. Of wanting to retreat and roar all at the same time. In reading those notes sent ’round by St. Cyr and Maxwell, she’d uncovered a piece of him he’d never shared with others, pieces he’d never intended to share with anyone. Instead, through her own curiosity, she’d stolen that and he didn’t know what to do with that truth.

  He was torn between tossing her out on her arse and taking her lips under his in a fiery explosion of passion and he hated that she should rouse feelings of anything in his deadened chest. Derek lowered his head. “Do you think I am amused by your presence here?” He stretched that inquiry out on a steely whisper.

  Her breath caught loudly and the faint puffs of nervous air caressed the scarred portion of his face. “N-no.”

  His neck went hot at those secret parts she now knew of him. The men he’d called friends whom he’d gone off to fight Boney’s forces with were men he’d consigned to the grave that was the battlefield of Toulouse. He did not speak of them and they’d ceased to exist. Now, her knowing of them and that day, made it impossible to forever bury that. “Do you think I care to have my personal notes read?” He felt exposed. Splayed open in ways he despised.

  “N-no, I did not m—”

  “What do you want?” he demanded. Wanting her answer to be—

  “You,” she said quietly.

  He shot his eyebrows up, as with her quiet admission, the fury went out of him. “Lily,” he began, his voice garbled.

  And Lily leaned up on tiptoe and kissed him. He stiffened. The cane slipped from his fingers and he shot his arms out, not knowing what to do with the malleable, pliant body pressed to his. She moved her mouth over his with the hunger and desire of a woman who wanted him, in all his flawed ugliness. She twined her fingers into his hair and drew his head closer, making love to his mouth in a way that no one had even before the war. As though she wanted to taste him, and lose herself forever in his kiss and this explosive exchange of want. It was the homecoming he’d been denied years earlier, found now in her arms.

  With a groan of surrender, he met her kiss with the same hungry intensity that had dogged him from the moment she’d stuck her foot inside his office door and refused to be turned away. He thrust his tongue deep in her mouth and she boldly met it. Their tongues danced and twisted in an erotic rhythm that sent heat rushing to his shaft and it throbbed to life.

  It had been so long since he’d had a warm, desirous woman in his arms. But this passion between them was about more than two bodies meeting and it was all the more terrifying for it. Derek drew his lips away and she cried out in protest. “We should not do this,” he rasped. “You are a member of my staff.”

  “I will die if you stop.” Her breath came in gasping pants. She twisted her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth back to hers. Then abruptly, he pulled away and she cried out, but he shifted his attention down to the soft skin of her neck, sucking at the flush until her legs buckled. Effortlessly, Derek caught her to him and then guided her to the edge of his desk. Whimpering, Lily braced her palms on his chest.

  “You are a siren, Lily Benedict,” he whispered against her mouth. In one fluid movement, he stretched her arms over her head and guided her down atop the surface.

  She looked at him through thick, black lashes. Passion clouded her aquamarine eyes, momentarily freezing him with the evidence of her wanting. “I…” His chest tightened. “Want you, Derek,” she whispered.

  What was to account for this inexplicable rush of disappointment? Tamping down the fool, irrational sentiment. Did he think she would speak words of love? Derek dragged his mouth down the long curve of her neck, lower. He loosened the ties of her wrap and cursed the tremble to his fingers that made a muck of his efforts.

  “Here,” she whispered. Lily reached between them and easily freed the neat tie. She shrugged out of the modest garment.

  Derek drew back, wanting to worship the view of her in this way, as he’d longed to since she’d first proven herself unafraid of the monster and desirous of the man. The generous swell of her breasts pressed against the white fabric and the cool night air pebbled the tips of those perfect mounds. Mouth dry, he palmed one of those generous swells.

  Her lashes fluttered wildly as he cupped and caressed her right breast. He toyed with the peak. A shuddery moan slipped past Lily’s lips and desire coursed through him once more. Driven by the breathy sounds of her l
onging, Derek shoved the fabric down her frame, baring her naked breasts to his gaze. The engorged pink tips beckoned and on a groan, he lowered his head and claimed that taut bud between his lips. He drew it deep and sucked.

  Lily cried out and clenched and unclenched her fingers in his hair, anchoring him close. “Do not stop,” she pleaded.

  He could not if the earth’s movement depended upon him stopping. “Never,” he pledged. There was an added thrill of masculine satisfaction in knowing that his scars did not matter and that he could bring her to a keening woman, aflame for him. He shoved her night-rail further down her body until she lay bare before him. Their chests rose in tandem, as they assessed one another. Never before had he damned his lost vision more than he did just now. Even with the veil of night and one missing eye, the resplendent beauty of Lily in her naked form sucked at him. Derek cupped her breast once more and then continued his quest, downward, skimming her flat, smooth belly, and then he palmed the thatch of black curls that shielded her femininity.

  Lily cried out and she lifted her hips to meet his touch.

  “You are perfection,” he whispered, his tone ragged, when everything in her words and body and tone were soft and gentle.

  “I-I am not,” she rasped, as he slid a finger into her wet channel, her skin the smooth cream white that men wrote sonnets over and worshiped with words. Had he been that man from long ago, he would have had all those words to give her. He was a shell of the man he’d been, and yet, with her, for the first time in years, he felt alive—because of her.

  Lily pushed herself upright. “I want to see you,” she whispered, running her fingers along his jaw and then gripping the lapels of his jacket.

  Derek swiftly wrapped his hands about her wrists, wringing a gasp from her. He gave his head a terse shake. Even in the heat of passion, with his body aching to claim her, he could not. “I am…” His throat constricted.