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 ma
nacle-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 was 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.”
She frowned. In what context did they speak of Mr. Davies’s vile words? The part of her that had met and liked Harris hoped he, too, was not so very cruel to disparage a man so. Am I truly any better than Mr. Davies? Have I not entered his home and spoken ill of him and his family behind his back? “That is altogether different.” The words burst from her. She slapped a hand over her mouth, praying the girl would not notice.
Flora furrowed her brow. “What is altogether different?”
Of course her own younger siblings, even all those years ago, had shown her that children missed very little. “I am sure what Harris and Alcott say is not cruel and impolite like Mr. Davies.”
The girl nodded. “No, I do believe you are right. But Mr. Davies and the footman, Thomas are horrid. You shall see. Uncle has all the governesses deal with Mr. Davies.”
If she kept her post after shamelessly nearly spreading her legs for the duke, she’d have to deal with such an odious, reprehensible man. A faithless man, no less, who’d speak ill of his employer. The irony of her own disgust was not lost on her.
Flora dropped her voice to a low, haunting whisper. “Everyone fears him.” With her expressive eyes, the girl urged Lily to ask the question. Why did she cease fearing the duke? How could a person not become more and more drawn into the terror of this labyrinth with each passing day? Such questions, however, were not fit for a child, any child, but particularly not the ward of a man known as The Beast of Blackthorne. When Lily said nothing, Flora’s crestfallen expression marked her disappointment. She walked over to the door and then stopped at the threshold. “I think we will get on well, Mrs. Benedict.”
Warmth filled her heart, and with it, that old, never buried ache for a family of her own.
A knock sounded at the door and, together, they looked to the entrance of the room. Lily’s heart pounded. “E-enter,” she called out.
A white-faced Harris pushed open the heavy panel. “Y-You have been summoned by Mr. Davies.” His throat bobbed. “He is waiting for you in the White Parlor.”
Of course. It was the summons she’d been expecting. Even so it left her motionless, incapable of words. The servant continued to stare and it was Flora who broke the silence. “What does he want?”
Harris’ cheeks flamed red.
Snapped to the moment, Lily cleared her throat. “Flora, why do you not go with Harris? I expect he’ll entertain you until I return to see to your lessons.” If she wasn’t thrown out with her valise just as she’d been years earlier. She looked to Harris who held his hand out, motioning the girl forward.
“Very well,” Flora said, skipping with the ease of an innocent child.
He nodded and then rushed from the room.
Lily waited until he’d closed the door and then ran wary hands down her face. For the bond shared between her and Flora, there were vast differences between them. Flora still believed herself indomitable. She’d not yet learned the sorry truth life had taught Lily. Oft times a person, no matter how much control they sought over their life, was powerless in all the ways that mattered.
And now Lily was truly powerless, about to be sacked for kissing the Duke of Blackthorne with wild abandon.
Chapter 10
Blessed quiet.
With his ever-proper man-of-affairs now gone, Derek limped over to his sideboard. Resting his cane on the edge of the wide mahogany piece, he set to work making himself a brandy. The only sound was the soothing splash of liquid hitting crystal. He grabbed his cane and made his way to his leather chair.
Shrugging out of his jacket, Derek slid into the seat, and sank into the comfortable leather. He closed his eyes.
Quiet. There was no monotone Davies with his thinly veiled disgust, running through his reports. There was no small girl determined to make a nuisance of herself. And more importantly, there was no tart-mouthed Lily Benedict challenging him one moment and enticing him the next. At bloody l—
A knock sounded at the door. “Your Grace?” There was a strident note to Harris’ usually hesitant tone.
He forced his eye open. Of course. “First Lily Benedict,” he mumbled under his breath. “Then the girl, and now—”
“Your Grace, there is a matter I’d speak with you on. It is of some urgency.”
“Now you, Harris, bloody invading my hall again.” Lily Benedict was a witch. There was no other accounting for how a woman could turn his entire household on its ear so quickly and bring bloody confusion to his thoughts with a mere kiss. What was next, his brave butler entering Derek’s office without permission?
As if on cue, the man jiggl
ed the handle.
“Bloody hell.” Perhaps, he’d be better off sacking her after all. “This goddamn house better be ablaze,” he thundered. His cane was resting against the side of a nearby side table. Derek grabbed it and used it as leverage to heave himself up. He limped across the room just as Harris tried the handle once more.
The man tumbled unceremoniously into the room. “Thank goodness,” he breathed. Harris picked up the tray and note and then climbed quickly to his feet, with agility Derek himself had once possessed in abundance.
Regret coursed through him with a powerful force. “What do you want, Harris?” he snapped, annoyance churning through him.
The servant opened his mouth. And then closed it. And then opened it again. He spoke with the wonder of the man who’d discovered the New World. “You called me Harris.”
Derek started. Well, Christ, he had. He’d studiously avoided knowing people by name and referring to them in any context. To do so only created a bond, even if a small one, that he no longer wanted with anyone. That isn’t true, a voice jeered at the back of his mind. You used Lily’s name and commanded her to use yours. Then there had been that searing kiss. He glowered at the butler. “Is that what was so important you’d knock my door down, Harris?” That exhale emerged as a slow, lethal hiss. “To discuss my—”
“It is Mrs. Benedict.”
Mrs. Benedict? He frowned. “What of her?” Before the brave, but foolish, man could reply, he gave his head a shake. He’d already turned over all responsibilities of the lady to Davies. Let the stiff, proper solicitor see to her and her blasted responsibilities so he could get on with trying to forget how perfect she’d felt in his arms. “Never mind,” he snapped out when Harris made to speak again. “All questions or inquiries about the lady,” you should be nice to the lady, “are to be directed to Davies.” Dismissing the man, Derek started to turn.
“But it is about Mr. Davies.” The butler’s agitated words froze him. He shot a look at Harris who stood ringing his hands together. “I just escorted Mrs. Benedict to her meeting with him.”
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 15
