A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean
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.”
“There is something you should know, Lily.”
And through the happiness, she heard the name he’d never called her. The name she called herself—the one she’d shared with Derek. The one he’d shared with the scandal sheets he enjoyed so much.
The one that had become Lovely Lily. Lonely Lily.
Her gaze snapped to his.
There was a catch.
“As you remain unmarried, you receive the money at my discretion.” He paused, and she loathed him in the moment, hearing the words before he said them. “And I require you to marry.”
Chapter 5
LOVELY LILY LIVID . . . DEFIES DUKE! DISAPPEARS!
“You cannot force me to marry.”
It was the sixth time she’d said it. It seemed Lily had a knack for repeating herself when she was frustrated. What was more, it seemed that she had a knack for ignoring him when she was frustrated.
Which was likely for the best, because the fury on her face when he’d presented her with the terms of his guardianship and his plan to get her married made it very clear that she would have happily knocked him to the ground if she’d thought she could.
She might still try to do just that, which was why he was keeping his distance, watching her pace the room. He’d taken enough of a beating in the ring the night before.
She hesitated at the far edge of the room, staring out the large window that opened onto the house’s handsome back gardens. Angus and Hardy had taken up watch by the fireplace, lying with their large grey heads on their paws, eyes following the hem of her skirts. Alec watched as her hand worked the fabric of those skirts before she turned back to him, her anger returned. “You—” She stopped herself. Took a deep breath.
Alec would have wagered his entire fortune that she wanted to say something utterly unladylike. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he was impressed or disappointed when she looked back to the gardens and said, “You can’t.”
He didn’t even know the woman. He shouldn’t care how this situation made her feel. Indeed, it shouldn’t matter how she felt. It should only matter that he was one step closer to being gone from England.
Damn England.
The only place in the world where this kind of idiocy mattered.
He took pity on her nonetheless. “According to Settlesworth, you’re right. I cannot make you marry.”
She spun around to look at him. “I knew it!”
She would marry, nevertheless. He crossed his arms and leaning back against the hearth. “How old were you when your parents died?”
She came toward him, as though she could force him to return to the topic at hand, but seemed to collect herself once more. “My mother died when I was barely one year of age. In childbirth with a babe who did not survive.”
He saw the sadness in her eyes. The regret. The desire for something that would never be. He was drawn to that familiar emotion like a pup on a string. He stepped toward her. “I am sorry. I know what it is to spend a childhood alone.”
“Your parents?”
He shook his head. “Barely present. Better absent.”
“I thought you had a sister?”
He could not hide his smile as he thought of Cate. “Half sister, sixteen years younger, born while I was . . .” He hesitated on the memory. Cleared his throat. “While I was at school. We did not know each other until I was eighteen and my father died and I returned home to care for her.”
“I am sorry. For your father,” she said.
He replied with the truth. “I am not.”
She blinked at the honest answer, and he immediately moved to change the topic. “Cate is as troublesome as if we shared full blood.”
Her eyes were grey as the North Sea when she replied, “I wouldn’t know how troublesome that is, as it has always been me, alone.” Before he could find a reply, she said, “At least, since I lost my father. I was eleven.”
The words reminded him of the purpose of his question. He nodded. “Well, he took good care of you.”
Better care of her than his father had cared for him. He’d always been a memory of his mother. And, for his mother, he’d always been a reminder of what she might have had.
She laughed, the sound void of humor. “He left me in the care of a family that was not my own. That was so far above me in station that . . .”
She trailed off, but Alec did not need to hear the words. “How did he know the duke?”
“He worked for him. As land steward. Apparently he was quite good at it, as the then duke agreed to assume my care. A pity that the now duke does not feel similarly.” She looked away, the grey morning casting her in ethereal light. Christ, she was beautiful. Alec had no doubt that Hawkins’s painting was the masterpiece he claimed it to be.
The thought of the painting shook him from his reverie. He tried his best to sound kind. Comforting. Like a guardian. “I am, you know. Caring for you. Taking responsibility for you. I am attempting to give you the life you wish, Lily.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not for you,” she said.
It was not for Hawkins, either, and still he used it.
He resisted the urge to say the words. She was not wrong. The name was all too familiar. She was at best Lillian to him, even as she should be Miss Hargrove. She shouldn’t be Lily.
It didn’t matter that he wanted her to be.
And he certainly had no right to want her to be anything. She was his ward, and in that capacity, responsibility and problems and nothing else.
Fine. He could play the English guardian, cold and callous and lacking in feeling. God knew he loathed it enough to be familiar with the part. He began anew. “The terms of your guardianship include the factors of which you are aware. You are not allowed to marry without the express approval of the dukedom and, though you receive funds on your twenty-fourth birthday, it was clearly assumed that you would be married, because the terms indicate tha
It was his turn to trail off.
She wouldn’t allow it. “Should you think me what?”
“Irresponsible.”
A wash of red came over her cheeks. “Which, of course, you do.”
“No,” he said, without entirely thinking the response through.
“You do, though. After all, what guardian wouldn’t after his ward experienced such a disastrous scandal?” There it was again, in her tone. The humiliation.
He should have murdered Derek Hawkins when he had the chance.
“I don’t think you irresponsible. But I think your desire to run unreasonable.”
She cast him a withering look. “But marriage to a man I do not know seems more reasonable?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Choose a man you know. Choose anyone you like.”
She lost her temper. “I don’t know any other men. Believe it or not, I do not make a practice of knowing men. I know Derek. And now I know you. And excuse me, Your Grace, but you’re rather much of a muchness when it comes to desirability in a husband, with the singular difference that he covers his legs when he dresses.”
Singular difference. Alec could not resist responding to the madwoman. “Ah, but he dresses like an albino peacock, in my experience, so in that, I’d say you’re best off with the tartan, lass.”
She scowled her irritation at him, and he pressed on, unable to stop himself. “Shall I enumerate the other ways in which we differ?”
“I do not pretend to believe I can stop you, Your Grace.”
She was not simply mad. She was also maddening. “Well, I might begin with the obvious. I did not make your acquaintance with the goal of ruining you in front of all London.”
“Did you not?”
The question came quick and simple and utterly unsettling, “What does that mean?”
She did not reply, instead setting her jaw determinedly, as though she might remain silent forevermore.
He huffed his frustration. “Either way, Lillian, I have not proposed.”
“And thank heavens for that,” she said.
He bit his tongue at the words. She meant them to sting, but could not know how much they did, coming on a wave of memory. Of shame. Of desire for women for whom he would never be high enough. Never proper enough. Never good enough.
Lily would have a man good enough. “We go in circles,” he said. “You marry.”
“And if I don’t wish to marry the man you choose?”
“I cannot force you.”
She shook her head. “That might be the law, but everyone knows that forced marriages—”
“You don’t understand. I cannot force it because it is a separate condition of your guardianship that you are able to choose your husband for yourself, and that you remain under the care of the dukedom until such time as you marry.”
Her mouth opened, then closed.
“You see, Lillian? Your father did care for you.” Her eyes went liquid at the words, and he was struck with a keen desire to pull her close and care for her himself. Which would not do. And so, instead, he said, “That, I might add, is why you are the oldest ward in Christendom and somehow, remain my problem.”
The words worked. The tears disappeared, unshed, replaced by a narrow gaze. “I would happily become my own problem if you would give me my freedom, Duke. I did not ask to be a burden any more than you asked to shoulder me.”
And the irony of it was that if he did that—gave the girl the money and sent her away, he’d be on the road back to Scotland at that precise moment.
Except he couldn’t. Because it wouldn’t be enough.
“Why?” she interrupted his thoughts, the question making him wonder if he’d spoken aloud.
He looked to her. “Why?”
“Why do you insist I marry?”
Because she was ruined if she did not. Because he had a sister six years younger than she, and just as impetuous, whom he could easily imagine falling victim to a bastard like Hawkins. Because he would lay down his life for Catherine in the same situation. And, though he found himself more than able to turn his back on the rest of the London bits of the dukedom, he would not turn his back on Lillian.
“Marriage—it’s what women do.”
Her brows rose. “It’s what men do, as well, and I don’t see you rushing to the altar.”
“It’s not what men do,” he replied.
“No? So all these women marching down the aisle, whom are they marrying?”
She was irritating. “It’s not the same.”
That laugh again, the one without humor. “It never is.”
He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way it set him back. The way it made him feel that he was losing in whatever battle they fought.
“Alec,” she said, his name another blow of sorts—soft and quiet and tempting as hell on her pretty lips. “Let me go. Let me leave London. Let them have the damn painting and let me go.” She might have convinced him. It was not an impossibility, until she said, soft and desperate, “It’s the only way I’ll survive it.”
It’s the only way I’ll survive.
He inhaled sharply at the words—words he’d heard before. Spoken by a different woman but with the same unbearable conviction.
I must go, his mother had said, his narrow shoulders in her hands. I hate it here. It will kill me.
She’d left. And died anyway.
Alec couldn’t stop it from happening.
But he could stop it from happening again, dammit.
“There is no outrunning it, Lillian.” Her brow furrowed in confusion, and he pressed on. “The painting—it is to be the centerpiece of the Royal Exhibition’s traveling show.”
She tilted her head. “What does that mean?”
“It will travel throughout Britain, and then onto the rest of the world. Paris. Rome. New York. Boston. You’ll never escape it. You think you are known now? Just wait. Wherever you go, if they’ve access to news and interest in salacious gossip—which is everywhere I have ever been, I might add—you shall be recognized.”
“No one will care.” She stood straight as an arrow, but her tone betrayed her. She knew it wasn’t true.
“Everyone will care.”
“No one will recognize me.” He could hear the desperation in the words.
Christ, she was beautiful. Tall and lithe and utterly perfect, as though the heavens had opened and the Creator himself had set her down here, in this place, doomed to be soiled. The idea that no one would notice her, that no one would recognize her, it was preposterous. He softened his reply. “Everyone will recognize you, lass.” He shook his head. “Even if I doubled the funds. If I gave you ten times as much, the damn painting would follow you.”
Those straight shoulders fell, just enough for him to see her weakening. “It is to be my shame.”
“It is your error in judgment,” he corrected.
She smirked. “A pretty euphemism.”
“We have all made them,” he said, wishing for some idiot reason that he could make her feel better.
She met his gaze. “You? Have you made such an error?”
More than he could count.
“I am king of them,” he said.
She watched him for a long moment. “But men don’t carry the shame forever.”
Alec did not look away from her, from the words that so many believed true. He lied. “No. We don’t.”
She nodded, and he saw the tears threaten. He resisted the urge to reach for her, knowing instinctively that touching her would change everything.
He hated himself for not reaching for her when she turned away, for the door. “And you think you shall find a man who will choose to marry me. What nonsense that is.”
“I’ve given you a dowry, Lillian.”
She paused, putting her hand to the door handle, but not turning it.
He took the stillness as indication th
She spoke to the closed door. “That is a massive amount of money.”
More than she needed to catch a husband.
She could catch a husband with nothing.
“We shall find a man,” he said, suddenly consumed with distaste at having to buy her a future. It had seemed such an easy solution the night before. But now, in the room with her, he felt the whole thing slipping away from him. “We shall find a man,” he repeated. “A good one.”
Alec would carry him to the altar if necessary.
“We have nine days,” he said.
“To convince a man to take a risk on my scandal before all the world has truly witnessed it.”
“To convince a man that you are prize enough to ignore it.”
Lily turned, grey eyes flashing. “Prize.”
“Beauty and money. Things that make the world go round.” Not just those things, he wanted to say. More.
She nodded. “Before the painting is revealed. Not after.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but did not have a good answer. Of course before. Once she was nude in front of the world, she would be—
“Before my shame is thoroughly public,” she said, softly. With conviction. “Not after.”
He ignored the topic, instead saying, “Marriage gives you everything you wish for, lass.”
“How do you know that for which I wish?”
“I know what a woman wants out of life.” He found himself unable to meet her gaze. “It is marriage. Not money.”
She gave a little huff of laughter. “Well, any woman worth her salt wants both.”
He had her. “You’ll get both. Just as you wanted.”
“I wanted to marry for love.”
He recoiled from the very idea. Love was a ridiculous goal—one that was not only implausible but nonexistent. He knew that better than anyone. But Alec had a sister, and so he knew a thing or two about women—and knew, without question, that they believed in the great fallacy of the heart. So he lied to her. “Then we shall find you someone to love.”