He should marry Lily.
He could make it right with the world he wanted for Rose. Just give people enough time to adjust, and then when a fresher scandal arrived, his marrying her would just be another oddity about him.
He could marry Lily.
And then he could garb her in his nightshirts all he wanted, and have the very distinct pleasure of stripping them off her, and sharing a bed with her, and maybe even bringing other little children into the world with her.
He would marry Lily.
Suddenly, he needed to leave, to be out of this house and on his way home, to speak to her, to tell her how he’d solved the problem in one easy solution.
She cared for him, or at least she liked being kissed by him—and she would not hesitate to argue with him if he were doing something that would be harmful to Rose. To their family.
She was the perfect wife.
A duke should utilize all of his available resources when in pursuit of a ducal goal. Not just his financial ones, although those may also be utilized. He should employ his position, his eminence, and most importantly, his eyebrows, to achieve what requires achieving.
—THE DUKE’S GUIDE TO CORRECT BEHAVIOR
Chapter 27
Lily stepped out of the agency, closing the door behind her. She had just enough time, she’d figured, to go to the apothecary and purchase the condoms. That had been one of her duties at the brothel, in addition to reviewing the accounts and, for some reason, handling the purchase of tea.
Her job skills when she left were balancing ledgers, knowing where to buy items for the prevention of pregnancy, and how much tea an establishment catering to a vast amount of men would go through in a month.
Not exactly skills for which she would be immediately hired.
Another reason to be grateful for the agency’s formation. She was on her way to utilizing at least two out of the three skills. It only was left for a haberdasher or gentleman’s tailor to hire her for her tea-gauging skills.
Something to look forward to, at least.
She rounded the corner to the shop, the memory of the last time she’d gone there fresh in her mind. By then she’d become a regular customer, so the owner of the shop knew to take her into the back office and conduct the transaction there. At first, when she went to the apothecary she had been heckled, not only by the shop’s customers but by the assistants. The owner, Mr. Davies, knew the brothel was a good source of income, so he and Lily had swiftly worked out how they could best work together without embarrassment on either side.
A lady could not just go buying such things on her own, not without a lot of difficulty. Never mind the injustice that if a lady did not take care, she could find herself abandoned and with child. Men were the ones who were considered best able to purchase birth control, even though they were the sex less damaged by not having it.
She knew if she thought about it too much, she’d end up grouchy, and she didn’t want that. Not when she had so many other things occupying her mind.
She opened the door and stepped inside, breathing in the aromas of the shop—camphor, turpentine, and the other smells from the various potions the apothecary carried. There were only a few people in the shop, and her eye was caught by a container with the words Cold Cream of Roses on it. She smiled, and took it down from the shelf, then headed to the counter.
Mr. Davies’s back was turned to Lily as he reached up to a bottle with some green liquid inside. He placed it on the table in front of him before turning around, then his eyes widened in surprise, and old instinct, no doubt, made him glance to either side of her to ensure discretion.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Davies,” she said. “It has been a while.” Nearly two years, in fact. She was grateful to find him here after all that time.
“Good afternoon, miss,” he said in a quiet voice. “Are you—”
She shook her head. “No, I am no longer employed there, but I do wish to purchase some items,” she said, equally quiet. “And this,” she added, holding up the jar of cold cream. Rose would be delighted to have something with her name on it, and Lily did like the smell of roses, if not that of her namesake flower.
“Of course,” Mr. Davies said. He turned to one of his workers nearby and told him, “I am taking this customer to the office for a moment, please stay here.”
“Yes, sir,” the assistant replied, his expression unchanged. Not for the first time she reflected that Mr. Davies must have instructed his employees to maintain the utmost discretion, regardless of what was transacted in the shop.
Lily walked around to the side of the counter, waiting as Mr. Davies pulled out a large set of keys and jiggled the right one out. He unlocked the door, then held it open for her to step through.
It was more of a storeroom than an office, boxes and papers everywhere, filed in a way that only Mr. Davies, presumably, could figure out. He gestured to indicate she should sit in the only chair not filled with something, and she picked her way through the boxes, hoping she wouldn’t accidentally knock something over. Especially not a box of condoms, because she knew she would blush so much she might accidentally catch on fire.
“Just over here, I think,” Mr. Davies mumbled. “How many?”
Lily drew the money from her pocket. “As many as this will buy me. Plus the cold cream,” she said, holding the bills in her hand.
He assessed what she held, nodded, and began rifling through one of the boxes. “Four, then,” he said.
He turned back around, holding four condom packets in his hand. “I am glad to see you, miss, I was hoping you were doing well. It appears you are, and for that, I am glad.” He sounded sincere, and it warmed her heart. She had left her position unexpectedly when her mother finally succumbed to her illness, the one that required expensive medicines, and she hadn’t thought to let anyone beside her employer know where she went.
Another reminder, so soon on the last one, that she had friends and acquaintances who would help her and who cared for her. She felt her eyes start to tear up again, and had to immediately squelch the urge to cry.
Mr. Davies would likely be far more embarrassed to have a crying female in his office than to sell condoms to her.
He put them into a plain, discreet sack and handed it to her as he took the bills. He gave her some change, then went to the door and waited for her to follow.
“Thank you, Mr. Davies.”
“Thank you, miss. Your custom is always welcome here,” he said. He opened the door and Lily stepped through, holding her purchases close to her chest.
And saw Mr. Haughton’s face, his expression changing to one of startled recognition as she walked around the counter.
“Miss Lily,” Mr. Haughton said, his tone not nearly as polite as it had been when he first met her.
“Mr. Haughton,” she replied, clutching her package tighter. As though he would take it from her.
He smirked at seeing that, and in narrowing his eyes Lily knew what he was probably thinking—that he knew what she was clutching. As he opened his mouth to speak, she felt her heart fluttering against her ribs. Was this what she’d feared?
“I knew I’d recognized you when we met before, only I couldn’t recall where. Now I do.” Well, at least he got straight to the point. “And you have the charge of the duke’s ward?” And he stuck to his point, she had to give him that. “And you have been in company with my daughters and nieces?” His tone was outraged. “Does the duke know? Is that why he hired you? So you could be his—his—” With his voice rising, the growing panic in her chest blossomed into full-blown panic.
“No, of course he doesn’t know,” she interrupted.
Mr. Haughton straightened himself up as he stepped closer to Lily, who had to remind herself not to step back.
“Listen, young woman,” he said, his jaw tight. “I do not wish to cause a scandal for the duke, especially since . . .” He paused, and Lily could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he figured out how to phrase it. “.
. . since he has just entered society and he is very properly looking for a wife.” A wife who, if Mr. Haughton could manage it, would be Miss Blake. “So if you leave his employ within the next twenty-four hours, I will pretend you never existed.”
Lily swallowed as she absorbed the import of his words. She could threaten him with exposure as well—after all, if he’d recognized her from the brothel, that meant he had been in the brothel as well—but somehow she knew that the damage would be done to her, no matter how others reacted to Mr. Haughton. She could threaten him, but a powerful man in Society would be able to damage her reputation, her future, the agency’s future, far more than his brief moment in the sun of scandal.
Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours to disappear. From proper society, at least; she didn’t think Mr. Haughton would care what she did, as long as she was no longer in his world.
“Well?” His tone was impatient, clearly irked at having to wait for a reply from someone so worthy of contempt. And she was ruminating again, wasn’t she? She didn’t have time to think.
She bit her lip and nodded. “Yes,” she said in a whisper.
And darted around him and out the door before bursting into tears.
Of course, it was one thing to decide one was going straight home to propose to one’s daughter’s governess immediately, and another to actually do it.
First of all, she was not there. That was his first impediment. It was generally assumed that the person to whom you wished to propose should actually be in the vicinity for the proposal to occur.
Second, now that he was home, he wasn’t sure what he should say.
Third was that she was not home yet. It had been at least five minutes since the last time he looked at the clock.
Couldn’t she sense that he needed her here? That he wanted to change her life irrevocably, for the better?
Again, not that he knew what he was going to say.
A knock on the door interrupted his— Well, he wasn’t thinking of anything at all, so perhaps it was interrupting nothing. “Come in,” he said, straightening in his chair. If it was her, he still had no idea what to say.
Thompson opened the door and stepped inside. “Your Grace, Miss Rose has woken. Etta said you asked to be informed.” Thompson accompanied his words with a bow, and then left, shutting the door behind him.
“Yes, thank you,” Marcus said to the closed door.
He stood and stretched, feeling the slight soreness from having earlier crouched in a hiding position for over ten minutes. He hadn’t been able to figure out if Rose knew where he was and was just extending the game or if she really could not see a six-foot-tall man hunched near a tree.
It was fun, no matter what. He hadn’t played many games as a child, and so he was looking forward—probably more than most parents—to playing games with his daughter. To hearing her shrieks of delight as they played together.
And he’d shared his past with her, as well. That had been another new experience. He didn’t speak about his parents, or Joseph, with anyone he was close to. In fact, he wasn’t close to many people anyway. Except now he could say he was close to Lily. To Rose. Even to Smithfield.
So much had changed in his life. So much was about to change.
And all for the better.
He was smiling as he walked out of the library and leapt up the stairs to see his daughter.
Lily’s steps slowed as she walked toward the duke’s mansion. Her mind had been in a tumult since leaving Mr. Davies’s establishment. Not only would she have to leave the duke’s employ, and therefore him, but she would have to leave Rose. That would hurt her as well as Rose, who had suffered enough abandonment already. How would she tell the girl that she had to leave? She knew what she would say to him—she owed him the truth, difficult though it would be to tell him—but how could she tell Rose that not only was she not going to take care of her anymore, she was going to be gone within a day?
And how would she tell Caroline and Annabelle that their brilliant future was going to be jeopardized by her past? It was what they had always feared happening. That didn’t make it any easier.
She walked up the steps to the no longer intimidating door, feeling as though her feet weighed as much as ten of those massive books on farming the duke had been reading.
The door swung open before she could raise the knocker, and Thompson poked his head out. “Miss Rose is awake, and she and the duke are asking for you. Come in,” he said, in nearly a friendly way.
And she would have to leave Thompson, too, although that didn’t sting quite as much. But still. She liked this house and the people who lived and worked in it. She didn’t want to go.
But she had to.
She felt as though she was thinking in circles, starting with Mr. Haughton’s accusatory tone, then cycling through all the people she would be disappointing, and back to Mr. Haughton.
She put her package under her arm, resisting Thompson’s move to take it (because it seemed that would make her currently horrible situation even worse), and took her cloak off, allowing him to take that, at least.
“Miss Rose and the duke are upstairs?”
“Yes, miss.”
She ascended the staircase, her feet now only feeling as though they weighed the same as five of the duke’s farming books. She would get to see him, to see Rose, one last time. One last evening before she had to leave.
“Good night, Miss Rose.” Lily tucked the covers around the little girl, feeling her throat tighten. As it had all evening, every time she thought about what was to come.
But she wouldn’t waste her last few precious hours here with throat-tightening or chest-constricting or any other of the physical signs of duress.
She’d decided what she had to do, it was now just a question if she would be bold enough to do it. And if when he heard, the duke was so shocked that he wished to immediately relieve her of her position—well, it wasn’t as though that would be a problem.
Rose turned onto her side and let out a soft sigh, the one that indicated she was more than halfway asleep already. Lily bent down to kiss her forehead, and smoothed a few tendrils of hair away from the girl’s face.
And then returned to her room to prepare.
Marcus had spent an enjoyable if frustrating evening. He still couldn’t figure out what to say, and then there was how to get her alone to say it—he didn’t want to summon her to his library, as he usually did, because he didn’t want to order her anywhere, even though she was his employee. He didn’t wish to treat her as one.
So at the end of the night he was alone, in his bedroom, totally perplexed as to what to do. Go knock on her door? Slip a note into her room asking her to meet him somewhere? Wait until he blurted out some words or another, no matter where they were or what they were doing?
The last option seemed like the most likely one.
He was halfway through shrugging out of his coat when he heard the knock at the door. “Come in,” he growled, resisting the urge to bite Miller’s head off when he came in. He’d told Miller he would see to himself this evening—the last thing he wanted was company for his foul mood—so he didn’t see why the—
The door opened and she stood there. Wrapped in a dressing gown, her hair undone and falling over her shoulders. Her arms were folded over her chest and she held something, some sort of package.
Her expression was—well, he couldn’t read it at all. It appeared to be a mix of anticipation and anxiety. Likely other words that began with an A as well, such as agony, appreciation, and approachable.
Imagine if he allowed himself the rest of the alphabet.
She stepped in and closed the door behind her. “You have not yet proposed marriage to anyone, have you?” she asked, biting her lip.
Dear Lord, he had not. And had no idea how to. “No,” he replied.
“Good,” she said, before he could open his mouth to force out words he didn’t know how to say. “Because I am here to return your nightshirt.” And sh
e dropped the package she was carrying on the chair next to the door, opened her dressing gown and shrugged it off, all the while continuing to meet his gaze.
She was, indeed, wearing his nightshirt and nothing more. The fabric reached nearly to her ankles, and he wished he were shorter so the nightshirt would be shorter on her. He really wished he could see more of her legs; he supposed they were likely fine legs, nothing much out of the ordinary, suitable for walking and dancing and all sorts of things, but they were hers, and they were right there emerging from his nightshirt, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so deliciously erotic in his life.
Forget being able to ask her anything—he wasn’t certain he could remember his own name.
“Marcus,” she said in a low voice, “I want this.” She stepped forward and placed her hands on his shoulders and tilted her face up to his. And then kissed him, sliding her fingers into his hair and tugging him to her.
Her mouth was so delicious. She was so delicious, only he didn’t know that for certain, did he? He would have to taste her. Everywhere.
She opened her mouth and licked his lips, then her tongue dove into his mouth and tangled with his, licking and sucking and plundering.
He grasped her arms and then pulled her flush against him, her breasts pressed against him, his cock straining against his trousers. Dear Lord. This felt better than anything he’d ever had, and there were still a few layers of fabric separating him. The exhilaration of her being here, having come here as though he’d summoned her with his thoughts, sent his mind whirling.
Perhaps he didn’t need to say anything. Which was likely a good thing, since his mouth was currently occupied kissing her and he didn’t think he could speak anyway.
She drew back, a lazy, sensual smile on her face. “I am not wrong in presuming you want this, too?”
Marcus nodded his head, his wiser-than-he-was-at-the-moment hands moving to cup her beautiful breasts. And he would find out for himself, even though he already knew, that they were beautiful breasts.
The Duke's Guide to Correct Behavior Page 22
