Chapter 9

Nine

T he world had shrunk, and time had spun backward as everything Lucy had known to be true over the past few months unraveled and restitched itself.

Lies and manipulations.

The man she'd started to fall in love with was the very sort of man she hated most. Titled. Clueless. Dangerous. Titled. The Marquess of Rainsly.

Outside, night had begun to bow before dawn, the velvet-blue sky softening as the stars winked out. Purples and pinks bled like ink on paper across the horizon. Like blood over linen.

Yet night still pressed in on Lucy, dark and heavy. Its sharp teeth ripped at her suddenly sensitive skin. She wanted to cry.

A soft touch on her shoulder. "Are you well?" Alex asked.

Lucy rubbed her cheek. "You should not be worrying over me. Are you well?"

Alex bit her lip, a paltry attempt to stop its trembling. "I don't know."

"Time for tea," Mrs. Beckett said, sweeping past them.

"Or something stronger," Mr. Beckett mumbled, following his wife down the stairs.

Lucy and Alex followed, too, arm in arm with weary limbs and sore hearts, all the way to the drawing room. Mr. Beckett pulled out a bottle of brandy from a cabinet, and Mrs. Beckett called for tea before gesturing for Lucy and Alex to sit with her. No one spoke until the tea had arrived and all had been fortified by a heavy swallow of something or other.

"My, my, my," Mr. Beckett said. "What a night. Never yet experienced the like."

"Nor me." Mrs. Beckett rested her cup on her leg. "Did either of you know? That these… men were about?"

"No." Said together.

Lucy, like her mother before her, had been tricked, seduced by a charming grin and a mouth that said the right things, made promises the heart had no intention of keeping. The disappointment in her mother's eyes when she found out…

Damn that lying scoundrel.

Damn herself .

Mrs. Beckett tapped a finger on her shoulder. "And you truly believe your brother, Lady Alexandra?"

Alex had stopped trembling, and she stared out the window at the lightening sky. "I do. And I do not think Lord Finley meant any harm, either. He simply wanted to know where I was. He was… worried. I perhaps overreacted. The last time I saw him… It is not a good memory." She picked at one fingernail, the skin around it raw and angry. "We will send him away, and he will be silent."

"Are you absolutely sure?" Mr. Beckett asked.

Alex nodded.

"Well, then." Mrs. Beckett pulled herself up tall. "We'll throw them out."

"I must dress and speak with Mr. Sacks," Mr. Beckett said. "He allowed this to happen."

After he left, Mrs. Beckett refilled their cups and considered them in silence. She need give no reprimand. Lucy's bones wailed. She'd been cocky and careless. A bit like how Alex had described Keats.

Lord Rainsly.

Lucy stood. "You need say nothing, Mrs. Beckett. I know this is my fault. You told me what would happen. I put every woman in this house in danger, every child, you and Mr. Beckett. Mr. Sacks will lose his position because of me. I—" She'd hurt herself as well, letting the stable hand with a cocky grin much too close and trusting him with her heart. That organ had gone silent, hardly seemed to even beat.

The natural consequence of loving. Then losing.

She made for the door, every limb screaming the pain she could not voice.

"Where are you going, dear?" Mrs. Beckett asked.

"Home." More lies. She took all the stairs to the attic and stared down Pat and Fred.

"Can't let you beyond this point, miss," Pat said.

"For yer own good," Fred added.

"I appreciate your concern, but I will enter. He has lied to me, and I will have my say."

They shared a look, then shuffled away from the door.

She swept inside, and Keats's gaze hit her like a wall of flames, his shocked gasp of her name an arrow to her heart. Lucy faced the door and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She hated this. Hated him. Hated herself.

"Don't cry, angel."

Her eyes flew open, and she swung around to face him. Keats—no, Rainsly—stood across the room, hands slouched into pockets, his face pale in the early morning light. He rocked toward her.

"Stop right there." She held out a flat palm, a shield.

He froze. "You're angry."

She threw her head back and laughed. "I want to rip your lying throat out."

"That should not arouse me, but here we are."

"You dare to?—"

He dared to step closer. Just one step. She could smell him now—hay and horse and man, and he prowled toward her with ease, stopping close enough to touch. But not touching. "Your scent is still on my tongue. Your scent sunk deep into every inch of me. Yes, arousal . Because I will not soon forget the sight of you spread before me in the moonlight."

"Do not speak of that ever again." She clenched her fist to keep from slapping him. "I trusted you. We all did. Yet you led the type of man most dangerous to us right to our doorstep." She laughed, a lost sort of sound, distant and empty. " You are the sort of man most dangerous to us. And I led you to our doorstep. Mr. and Mrs. Beckett were right."

"It's not your fault. Griff will tell no one. I won't breathe a word."

"I cannot believe you." All her fault if Hawthorne House crumbled. She'd been warned, but she'd thought herself clever enough to succeed anyway. She'd been wrong. "I came only to demand your silence."

"Yet you refuse to believe me."

"And to say what doesn't need saying."

He tilted his head to the side. "And that is?"

"I will not be marrying you. It was barely an agreement. You can't hold me to a nod. I agreed to marry a stable hand, not a marquess."

"Yet you originally intended to marry a peer. For duty's sake. Do your intentions remain the same?"

Her plan. In shambles now. Could it be saved? Now more than ever she deserved the punishment of a cold marriage bed. "Not every woman is as lucky as I. As my mother was in having loving parents."

"You're punishing yourself."

She scoffed. "How absurd."

"It's true. You punish yourself for being loved. For being safe. Because you feel guilty."

"That's not… that's not—" Was it? Hadn't she just thought that very word— the punishment of a cold marriage bed .

"You think that marrying for guilt and duty instead of love will even out the unfair hands fate has played to you and others."

"No." But her hands had become fists, and her jaw ticked with more than irritation.

He reached for her, and she flinched back, but he would not be stopped, and the door at her back offered few options for escape. When his fingertips finally brushed against her skin, she closed her eyes, hating how much his touch soothed her, how much she wanted to melt into it. He smoothed his thumbs up and down the mountains of her knuckles. Still she clutched anger in her palms.

"I know I am right," he said, "because I've felt much the same since discovering Hawthorne House." He gave a huff of laughter. "What a blow. To realize a woman you were supposedly protecting intended to run from you. To realize you don't know a damn thing about kindness and love. I was not merely ignorant. I had never even tried to learn. After my mother's death, women began to feel so very… temporary. Here to blaze with brief life and color, populate the earth, and die. My father didn't care. No one cared. But me. The unfairness of it crawled in my skin like ants across a picnic blanket. So I ignored it. Until I couldn't any longer. Then I lied to make amends. I think you're lying to make amends, too."

"I'm not lying."

"The lie is that you must be unhappy to make life fairer for those born without your privileges. But you can have both happiness and duty, countess. If you marry me?—"

She ripped away. The hubris of this man! Proposing marriage. Again . After she'd just refused his proposal given in lies. "Marry you? Why would I?"

"Because you'd have a husband who knew what you were up to. And wouldn't care. You wouldn't have to live a lie. And you'd have a husband dedicated to making your every waking hour a pleasure."

She snorted.

"It's true. I'd make you come right now, if you let me. I'd throw Griff off that bed and toss you atop it, then I'd drop to my knees before you and?—"

"Well now, that's quite enough, thank you!" The rustle of cloth and squeak of a bed accompanied the masculine objection.

Lucy yelped. There on a bed in the corner, indignant and flustered and half hidden by a curtain—the Earl of Finley. She'd quite forgotten about him. Heat flaming across her cheeks, she strode to the window and threw it open, gulped in fresh air.

"Ignore him," Keats said, much too closer and whispering in her ear. "As I was saying, I'd drop to my knees before you. Because you deserve adoration. You deserve?—"

"You lied." The words bigger than her rib cage, choking her.

"Only about my name, countess, about why I was here."

She mouthed the word countess , trying to say it around a throat quickly closing up. "You kept calling me that because you are… were… an earl ." She groaned. "I should have known. Your voice, your bearing. But I chose to believe that Banbury tale about your London employer's absurd requirements. I'm such a fool."

"You're not. Marry me." Still he hovered oh-so close.

Still her body enjoyed the hovering.

"No!" She swung away from him.

"Likely the wisest decision, Miss Jones." From the bed, Griff flipped through an old, dusty book, not even looking up as he spoke. "He's a bounder."

"I may be a bounder, but I'll make you happy." No matter where she fled, Keats pursued, his eyes cold yet wild at the same time. "But you insist on sacrificing yourself to duty! What about you , Lucy?"

"What about me? The only good I can do in life is to make the world safe for other women. I've been given so much. A family who loves me and protects me. Wealth and, if the ton will have me, status. Why should I not give all of it away? Use it all to atone."

He lifted his hands as if to touch her. No, to grasp her, clasp her, hug their bodies together. His arms hung heavy, charged with electricity in the air between them. And then he dropped them once more to his sides. "Because you are human. A good one, at that. And you deserve some happiness, too."

Oh, how an hour could change everything. "Exactly something a man like you would say."

"A man like me?" The knife edge back in his voice.

"Yes."

His jaw clenched and unclenched. "You will not marry some stranger and sacrifice your happiness."

"I do not follow your orders, no matter your name or title."

He jerked downward, as if he might kiss her, claim her. She would let him. God help her, she would let him, earl in the room or not. No matter the lies that lay between them.

When he stepped back instead, running a hand through his hair and biting out a muffled curse, she should have felt relief. She felt, only, a little cold. And alone. Nothing left to say now. She eased the door open and slipped through.

Tried to.

His hand banded around her upper arm, pulling her back inside and pressing her against the door to close it.

"Miss Jones?" Fred asked from the other side of the door, his deep voice muffled and concerned. "Do you need help?"

"N-no. I need no help," Lucy called, her gaze never leaving her lying lover's face.

Keats leaned closer, one forearm braced on the wall above her head, and his lips, his warm breath, whispered against her ear. "Please, Lucy. Please marry me."

She tugged, but he held her tight. Yet gentle. He would leave no bruise. A contradiction. He was what she hated and what she wanted at the same time. Infuriating.

"If you must marry for duty," he whispered, "marry me ."

Ice flushed through her veins. No man told Lucy Jones what to do.

Not even this one.

When she jerked her arm away this time, he released her, and when she stepped into the hall, she didn't even look back. She barely felt the stairs beneath her feet as she descended and left Hawthorne House. The warmth of the rising sun did not heat her skin as she crossed the wide, morning-fogged field.

Only when a dark shape appeared on the horizon did she blink back into the world.

"Ophelia?" She ran to meet up with the woman clutching her bonnet to her head. She quickened her pace as her sister-in-law's face came into view—pale, worried. "What has happened?"

Ophelia stopped and doubled over, breathing hard. "Hades… Hades is… Pudding, let me catch my breath." She straightened and looked to the sky. "Hades is at the inn in Dorking. There is an older man there, a viscount. And his son. They are looking for Lady Alexandra."