Lily. He loathed the name on this dandy’s lips. “Miss Hargrove, to you,” Alec snapped.
Hawkins was already beyond the name. “I never would have recognized you. They say you’re big, but I would have thought you could have found a tailor with your fortune. The cut of that coat—it’s abominable.” Hawkins shrugged and straightened his sleeve with a disdainful laugh.
“Do you wish the money or not?”
“You think spotting me the funds for cards will buy you a masterpiece?” Hawkins’s chest puffed out with pride and misplaced certainty. “It’s a work of genius. Not that I expect a man cut from your cloth to understand what that means.” He paused, somehow looking up at Alec and also down his nose. “It will steal breath for the rest of time.”
Alec took a step toward him. “I shall show you what it is like to lose your breath.”
“Warnick.” King again. Alec heard the rest of the warning.
Don’t make it worse.
The men nearby had tripled in number, smelling a fight in the air.
He took a deep breath. “Ten thousand.”
The number was outrageous. More than the painting could possibly be worth.
Something flashed in Hawkins’s eyes. Something like greed. “It is not for sale.”
“Everything is for sale,” Alec said. He knew it better than anything. “Twenty thousand.”
A collective gasp rose from the men assembled. Twenty thousand pounds would keep Hawkins for years. For the rest of his life.
But the offer was a mistake. It revealed too much of Alec’s desire. Too much of his willingness to save the girl. It put Hawkins in power, dammit.
The artist smirked. “If only you had been here a year earlier, think of what your misplaced sense of responsibility might have prevented.”
Alec did not move. Refused to rise to the bait. Refused to pluck the dandy’s head from his shoulders as he deserved.
Hawkins continued. “If only you were different, Duke. You might have saved her.”
Hawkins couldn’t have known the words would set Alec off. Couldn’t have predicted their power. His fists clenched, every muscle tightening, threatening to attack. Desperate to do so. “From your actions, you mean.”
Light came into Hawkins’s eyes. “I assure you, Your Grace, she was party to it,” he said, the words filled with foul suggestion. “She was desperate for it.”
The men surrounding them hooted and jeered at the words, at their summary destruction of Lillian. The chortles and shouts turning into gasps when Alec moved, a dog loosed from his chain.
He lifted Hawkins from his feet by the collar of his elaborate topcoat as though he weighed nothing. “That was a mistake.”
“Put me down,” Hawkins squeaked, his hands clawing at Alec’s fist.
West rose. “Not here, Warnick. Not in front of the world.”
Alec tossed the vermin to the ground. Looming over Hawkins, he said, once more, “How much?”
Hawkins scrambled to his feet. “You can’t just manhandle me. I am—”
“I don’t care one bit who you are. How much for the picture?”
“You’ll never get it,” Hawkins spat, high-pitched and terrified, filled with false bravado. “I wouldn’t take your money if you offered ten times as much, you Scottish thug. You’re a perfect match. As cheap as she is. Just luckier.”
The words reminded Alec of his intentions, that there had been a time when he’d actually planned to force this bastard to marry Lily.
As though he’d ever let him near her again.
As though he’d ever allow him to breathe the same air as her.
“I have been more than polite,” he said, stalking Hawkins back as the men assembled chattered and grumbled.
A voice rose over the crowd. “Twenty pounds on the Scot!”
Alec ignored it. “I was willing to pay you for the painting. A fair price. More than fair.”
“No one will take that wager. Look at him! Fists the size of hams!”
Those fists clenched and unclenched.
“I’d pay just to see the fight!”
“I don’t put it past him to force Hawkins to the altar!”
“Ten quid on that!”
Hawkins could not keep his mouth shut. “As though I’d take lowborn, lonely, sad Lillian Hargrove. As though a genius marries a muse. I could have anyone. I could have royalty.”
“Take ’im to the ring, Warnick! Show ’im your displeasure!”
“I don’t need the ring.” Alec wasn’t displeased. He was murderous. “Listen to me and listen well,” he said, low and barely discernible through his angry brogue. “Commit my words to memory. Because I want you to spend the next two weeks wondering how I’m going to do it.”
“Do what?” Hawkins was terrified.
“Destroy you.”
Hawkins blinked, and Alec saw his throat working, as though he was considering a reply. Finally, he shook his head, turned on his heel, and ran—straight through the curtain that marked the doorway to the club, and out into the London night, chased by the laughter and jeers of the rest of the membership of the gaming hell.
After several long seconds, King appeared at Alec’s shoulder. “It seems he is not an imbecile after all. Running was a good choice.”
I plan to run.
Lily’s words echoed through him, full of desolation, reminding him of another who had run and been destroyed.
He shook his head. “That man drives her from London over my decaying corpse.”
West joined them. “Then you no longer intend him to wed the girl?”
The words summoned an image of Lily in Hawkins’s arms, her hair spilling down her back, tangled in his fingers. Her lips on his. And Alec wanted to upend the nearest card table.
He settled on, “Not for all the blunt in London.”
“What then?”
“It is no matter who she marries. Only that she does.”
King and West looked to each other, then back to Alec, now firmly resolved in his modified plan. He waited for one of them to speak. When they did not, he said, “What of it?”
After a long moment, West replied. “Nothing. It sounds an excellent plan.”
King raised a brow. “I cannot imagine how it could possibly go wrong.”
Alec heard the sarcasm in the other man’s tone, and in scathing Gaelic, told him precisely what he could do with himself, before turning on his heel and heading for the club’s boxing ring.