“I thought you did not read your correspondence.”
“Be careful, Lillian,” he said. “You do not wish for me to ignore this particular missive.”
Her heart began to pound. “Why?”
He set it aside, far enough away that she could not see it. “I wrote to Settlesworth after you apprised me of your plans.”
She caught her breath. “My funds.”
“My funds, if we’re being honest.”
She cut him a look. “For nine days.”
He sat back in his chair. “Have you never heard of catching more flies with honey?”
“I’ve never understood why one need catch a fly,” she said, deliberately pasting a wide, winning smile on her face. “But it is done, then. I shall hereafter think of you as a very large insect.” She pointed to the papers. “Why are my funds of interest?”
He set a hand on the stack. “At first, it was just that. Interest.”
Her gaze lingered on that great, bronzed hand on the document that somehow seemed to feel more important than anything in the world. That document that clarified her plans for freedom. She was so distracted by the promise of that paper that she nearly didn’t hear it. The past tense.
Her attention snapped to him, to his brown eyes, watching her carefully, unsettlingly. “And then what?”
He made a show of feeding a piece of toast to one of the dogs. Hardy, she thought. No. Angus. It didn’t matter. “I met a man last evening. Pompous and arrogant and obnoxious beyond words.”
Her heart pounded with devastating speed. “Are you certain you were not looking into a mirror?”
He cut her a look. “No, I was looking at Derek Hawkins.”
Her heart stopped.
Luckily, she did not have to speak, because he continued, “I went looking for him.”
Which meant he knew. About everything. About her idiocy. About her desperation. About her willingness to do whatever a man asked of her. About her naiveté.
She went hot with shame, hating herself.
Hating him for resurrecting it.
She swallowed. “Why?”
“Believe it or not,” he said, and she could hear the surprise in his tone, “I intended to force him to marry you.”
What had he said?
She was certain she’d misheard him. Panic rose. Was he mad? “You didn’t!”
“I did not, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Once I met the man, I realized that there was no way on green earth that I would allow you to cleave yourself to him.”
Cleave. She hated the word. Hated the roughness of it. The way it seemed rife with desperation. With obsession. With unpleasant, simpering longing.
You said you loved me.
The shame came again, flooding in on the memory of the words, high and nasal and desperate. In front of all London, punctuated by their mocking laughter. With his.
And now Alec Stuart, twenty-first Duke of Warnick, the only man in London who had not known the circumstances of her shame, knew them. And worse, thought to save her.
Panic rose. “I never asked to be cleaved to him.”
“I am told you did, lass. Quite publicly.”
She closed her eyes at the words, as though if she could not see him, she could not hear the truth. He knew. Knew everything about what had happened with Derek. But somehow, he couldn’t see the truth of it. That everything she’d ever desired, everything for which she’d ever dreamed . . . it was all impossible now.
She’d made it so.
Her fists clenched at her side and she opened her eyes to find him staring at her, as though he could see right into her soul. She looked away, immediately. “You would be surprised what ruination in front of all of London will do to one’s desires.”
There was a long moment as he waited for her to look at him again.
She could not do it.
Finally, he let out a long breath and said, “For what it is worth, Lillian, Hawkins is possibly the most loathsome man I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.”
She looked to him, willing him to believe her. “I do not wish Hawkins. Nor do I wish your help. Indeed, all I wish is to have a life that is my own. And free of—”
Scandal. Shame.
She shook her head, unwilling to say the words aloud. “All of it.”
She would run. She would start fresh. And someday, she would forget that for which she’d always dreamed. The marriage, the family, the belonging.
Thankfully, she did not have to explain it to the Duke of Warnick, who lifted the papers from the table and said, “I intend to give you that life, Lillian.”
Relief flooded, deep and nearly unbearable. He had put the idea of marrying her off from his head. She smiled, unable to contain her joy at the words. She could begin anew. She could forget Derek Hawkins and his manipulation. His pretty lies. “Alec Stuart, you are the world’s greatest guardian.”
It seemed she could catch flies, after all.
He stood then, his chair balancing on two legs before returning to the floor with a thud, punctuated by the sudden sensation of sawdust in her mouth, as she witnessed the plaid in all its glory, falling in perfect pleats to his knees, below which perfect, muscled calves, the likes she had never before seen, curved and tightened.
Good God. The man was Herculean.
No wonder the ladies adored him.
Her gaze traveled to the edge of the fabric, drinking in the curves and dips of his knees. She swallowed, the act a challenge, wondering how it was she’d never noticed the precise shape of a knee.
She shook her head. How ridiculous. She didn’t care about knees. Not when her freedom was on the table.
“My money.”
He leaned against the table and looked down at his papers. “From what I understand, you receive five thousand pounds on your twenty-fourth birthday.”
Blood rushed through her, making it difficult to think, and she let out a long breath, and laughed, relief coming light and beautiful, making her happier than she’d been in a long time.
Happier than she’d ever been.
Bless his great Scots heart.
It was enough to leave London. To buy a cottage somewhere. To start anew. “In nine days.”
“The same day the painting shall be revealed,” he said.
“At once, a welcome birthday gift and a wicked one,” she replied with a little self-deprecating laugh. “An irony, as I cannot remember the last birthday I received a present at all.”