Chapter 18

18

She's my friend. Lily kept hearing Andrew's words alongside all the confusion they'd set off in her, throughout the night. She pondered their meaning early the next morning, when she left with Andrew and Letta at the break of dawn on their way to Dover.

What did it mean, she mused, when they arrived at the train station and Andrew purchased tickets, for him to call her a friend minutes after bringing her to orgasm?

She'd made no progress on the question. By the time she and Letta had walked from the station in London, through shops coming to life and houses where the servants were beginning to stir, she still did not know the answer.

She did not know as they waited down the street, watching the address that Alan had gave them. Sure enough, just as he had said: a team of dappled horses arrived, and a broad-shouldered man alit from the carriage they pulled.

She and Letta waited seven minutes before they approached. Lily kept back, carrying the bulk of the tools—shears, cloth, thread, and needles—as a mere under-seamstress might do. Letta, by contrast, held the note they'd crafted, armed with the information Alan had given them before he'd left for Eton.

With that, the women gained entrance.

Lily kept her head bowed as she entered the dark solicitor's office in London. Nobody would think anything of it; a girl in her situation would keep her eyes down, lest she be thought impudent. That was particularly true when meeting so prominent a customer as a solicitor who worked for nobility.

From behind her hood, she saw Mr. Wells, Alan's solicitor, frowning at the two of them. She could recognize him by the grayness of his beard and the dark of his eyes.

The solicitor's office was spacious and bright. A window looked out on a teeming Mayfair street. The walls were lined with the kind of leather-bound books Lily had seen in the Brothers Tallant printer's shop—accounts and journals and legalistic texts. The tables were full of stacks of paper folded twice over and bound with red tapes.

"But I have not asked for any mending to be done," Mr. Wells said, folding his arms and glaring at them.

"No, sir, I'm sure you haven't," Letta said. "But we've already been paid. Your sister, Mrs. Abbot, sent me. She said the upholstery on the chairs in your waiting area needed looking after."

"Did she." He sounded disgruntled. "Rose, Rose. Still can't keep meddling after all these years. Thus is the life of a widower. Get rid of one woman—that is to say, may my beloved wife rest in peace—and still be plagued by all the rest. I suppose she means well."

Lily stared fixedly at the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see another man in the office behind them—a large and lanky form that she'd shivered to see when they first entered. This was the man who'd likely ordered the logbook stolen: Alan's uncle.

"So you're going to mend my upholstery," he said with a put-upon sigh. "At my sister's orders. And if I send you away, I suppose you'll go straight to her and inform on me, and then there will be no peace."

"Sir." Letta made a placating little gesture. "I would never inform on anyone, but I would be obliged to tell the truth to the one who hired me. And you know how it is." She tilted a head toward Lily.

"Ah?"

Letta leaned in and spoke over loudly. "My girl's good with a needle," Letta confided, "but nobody wants to work any longer. If she gets a little relief in the middle of the day, it will be impossible to make her start again."

"Oh, yes." This was said with far too much alacrity. "After my wife passed, it seems impossible to get the household staff to do anything properly."

Maybe, Lily thought snippily, he should have valued her while she was here.

But now was not the time to argue with people who looked down on women for doing what they supposed was nothing, until they discovered that they couldn't do it themselves.

"I see I've been left no option." He gestured. "My things are over there."

Lily and Letta quickly went to work. Lily, of course, had no real skill in mending—nothing like Letta had—but she could at least lay a basic darning stitch for Letta to work on. That let her take the chairs near the offices so that she could press her ear to the wall without being suspicious and make out what was being said.

"The problem," Alan's uncle was saying, "is that the little brat thinks he can do as he pleases."

"Now, now." Mr. Wells had the patience of a man who was used to calming testy clients. "We've kept him doing the right thing for this long; we shan't fail now. Boys his age are always coming up with some kind of mischief."

"We didn't work this long and this hard for matters to become muddled at the end."

"Mr. Sallet, I still suggest patience," Mr. Wells said. "Everyone gets into a little buggery at Eton."

"And I've told him that," his uncle growled out. "But he thinks he's special. He thinks it means something. He doesn't understand that he's just a man with normal, healthy urges, and all he need do is apply them in the right direction. I offered to take him to a brothel, but no . He is the most stubborn child imaginable."

"Poor boy," Mr. Wells mused. "He's always been a little sensitive."

"Sensitive I don't mind. Sensitive is easily molded into the shape we need. But this goes beyond mere sensitivity. It is recalcitrance."

Letta cleared her throat behind Lily, and Lily looked down. She'd threaded her darning stitch through the entire cushion.

"Sorry, ma'am," she muttered, in case anyone were to come into the room.

"See that you keep your eyes on what you're doing."

Lily carefully picked the thread out and continued eavesdropping.

"He'll come by…when had you scheduled our talk?" Lily could hear paper shuffling. "Ah, I see. Tuesday next. Mr. Sallet, it is perhaps unkind of me to say this, but your brother-in-law is the most stubborn man on the planet. Who takes four years to perish?"

"You know how it is. It's going to happen, and as much as I wish for him to get on with it, there's too much risk in trying to hasten it on."

"I'll bring my niece by when young Viscount Elton is here for the appointment?"

"Hm. Leave them together for a few minutes, I think. Tell her to make eyes and look easy."

"Not too easy. Nothing should happen for now," Mr. Wells cautioned. "A little tease is all it will take. Tell her she needs to wait. A few years, and she'll be a countess. It doesn't matter how we have to make it happen; we'll make it happen."

Lily bit back a gasp. Her darning thread went awry again, and she picked it out.

"And if he keeps up with his little nancy ways…" Alan's uncle spoke on a growl.

"He won't," Mr. Wells assured the man. "Viscount Elton has many flaws; his largest one is that he's far too kind. He'd never hurt a fly. In the end, he'll agree. And if he chooses to fight, the easier it becomes for us to have him quietly committed."

Committed? Lily felt her hands trembling.

"That's the point of this all—to keep the guardianship going as long as we can. Let him get married; secure the succession, dispose of him. That will buy us another twenty years, and hopefully a more malleable subject." The man sniffed. "That log was actually a godsend; the next heir is unlikely to be foolishly willing to renounce a title. We'll keep a leash on the earldom for decades to come."

"Ah, well." The solicitor stretched. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. We must take it one step at a time. Now that I have the logbook in my possession, it's all simple from here. We wait for the earl to die. We install the pitiful boy; and from there on out, we take control."

Andrew found himself pacing the rooms he'd taken in London. The house was in Limehouse, a few streets from the river Thames—the kind of area where merchantmen crews were paid off and discharged from ship duty. The gentry called the area rough, if they chose to use a euphemism. If someone from that class had the misfortune to happen upon such an area, they would shut the windows to their carriages, reach for their valuables and hold them tight to their chest.

Andrew was not cut out to be gentry, let alone nobility. For him, this was the only place in London where Andrew felt safe. There were families who hearkened from India, Africa, and China living in every home, packed in tiny rooms and speaking a thousand tongues. It wasn't any of those people, ungenteel though they might be labeled by those who called themselves their betters, who made him worry for the safety of his womenfolk.

And worry Andrew did. He worried the way he usually did: he made soup and warmed bread and purchased butter.

The sun was past its zenith before he saw the two women on the street.

With a sigh of relief, he ran to greet them.

"Lily." He took her arm. "Letta. You're both safe."

Lily looked exhausted. Her face was pale, her eyes shadowed by dark circles. Still, she was the loveliest woman he'd ever seen.

She gave him a tired smile. "And we have much to report."

"I'm sorry it took so long," Letta said. "The upholstery was a mess. It took longer than expected to complete. I had to do a creditable job, or he might have suspected something."

"There's a light repast waiting." Andrew ushered them inside. "Here." There was a cramped kitchen and a long wooden table, made to suit large families packed into small spaces. A small, black stove that was sufficient to heat water perched at the end, leaking smoke into the room.

They fell to; they were both ravenous. Andrew could feel his nerves rising.

After her second bowl of soup, Mrs. Grimsley spoke. "I know I'm not supposed to know what's happening, but I did hear some of what the men spoke about when they left the office."

Lily shook her head.

"It was enough for me to know this." Mrs. Grimsley met Andrew's eyes. "Whatever you're doing to stop this can't come soon enough. And I want nothing more to do with it. I had enough of that kind of thing with my husband. Do you have somewhere I can rest?"

"Upstairs," Andrew said. "First door on the right." He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a key.

Lily waited until Letta's footsteps receded up the stairs. Then she reached out and took Andrew's hand. "First, and most importantly: the logbook is in the solicitor's office, and he's planning on keeping it. It's in the desk. There's a drawer with a false bottom. At least, that's what I believe I heard Mr. Wells demonstrate to Mr. Sallet."

This was going to require breaking and entering. "Easy enough to get back, I suppose."

She shook her head. "Andrew, I don't think this is going to work like you think it will."

"What do you mean? Is there a dog? A lock?"

"Yes," she said, "to the latter, and no, to the former, but… Alan's uncle is awful."

"That's no surprise."

She clicked her tongue. "The sense I had between those two men is that they've been running the estate for years, and they don't intend to stop."

Andrew frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"Mr. Sallet plans to force Alan into marriage the moment he is able. He intends to keep himself as Alan's guardian by any means necessary, and I suspect, once he has the next earl in hand, he'll find some way to push Alan to the side. He mentioned a mental institution. I'm sure he'll consider other alternatives."

This news landed like a lead lump in Andrew's throat. It wasn't a surprise—the man had shoved a pregnant woman down a flight of stairs, after all, and nothing about him should surprise Andrew any longer. It nonetheless felt like an awakening. Of course, the man was terrible. Not just to Andrew's mother, a perceived threat, but to his own family as well. Andrew had known this; he just hadn't comprehended how it would play out.

"I suspect," Lily said, "the two of them have a scheme and they're robbing the estate blind."

Andrew rubbed his temples. "Of course."

He'd been speaking with his younger brother for two years. Two years, and they'd been bickering about the earldom. Andrew had thought that Alan was merely youthfully recalcitrant, that he'd eventually warm to the idea.

"I know what they did to my mother," Andrew said slowly. "That he'd be so callous to his own flesh and blood, though…"

It did not surprise Andrew in the least, not now that he had been told. Had not Alan begged? Had he not used words like evil to describe his family?

Alan may not have known the particulars, but one didn't need to know specifics to feel a sense of imminent danger.

Andrew stood and paced. The kitchen was maybe five feet across; there wasn't room. He paced back. It felt like a cage.

"So, you're saying…" Andrew could feel his nostrils flare. "My little brother." Had he ever said those words aloud? He wasn't sure. "Is in danger. Real danger."

"Yes."

Andrew's first response was reflexive. Don't give in. Hold firm. Steal the log and destroy it; preserve himself and his mother's wellbeing and damn anyone else.

Put like that, it sounded like something his father's family would say. And Andrew had promised to protect his brother.

He tried. "The solution is not that I be the earl." Andrew tested the words aloud. "It is that Alan will stand up to them."

Her nose wrinkled. She didn't even have to argue; the words created their own obvious counterpoint.

Alan wasn't particularly skilled at standing up to small dogs, let alone actual human beings who held his legal guardianship. Even if he were, he wasn't an adult. He was not in control of his own life. How was he to stand up? With what support? And what if they just used what he did as proof that he must be put away?

Andrew shook his head. "There is a solution. I need to solve this. Alan has to become the earl, because the alternative is that I must do it."

She just looked at him.

"I can't be the earl." He could feel himself panicking. "It's not just a question of what they might do to me. I can't be the earl."

Set aside the extremely important question of whether Alan's uncle would dispatch him if he caught wind of the truth. If the duties of the earldom fell to Andrew, if all England's eyes fell on Wedgeford for good…

It could destroy the entire town. Wedgeford would stop being a little technicality; it would start being the source for foreigners taking over the empire from the inside. Any power the earldom granted Andrew would be immediately balanced out by the sheer terror people would have at the thought of being overrun.

The alternative was leaving his brother to the wolves.

"You're not saying anything," Andrew pointed out. "You could say something. I'm sure you have an idea, some way that we can make this work."

"I'm thinking," Lily replied softly.

"Damn it." He paced his few paces and stopped short once again, face-to-face with the aging wallpaper. "I must keep my mother safe. I must keep Alan safe. We need to get the logbook back. And…"

"And Alan needs a new guardian," Lily said.

Andrew exhaled. " That's impossible."

"Is it? It sounds as if his uncle is sure of the guardianship because he is Alan's closest living relation. But he isn't, is he?"

"What do you mean?"

"Alan," Lily said slowly, "has a brother. He might be given the guardianship instead."

"How?" Andrew slumped into a chair. "It all seems impossible."

Lily looked at him. "Have you eaten at all? You didn't just now. You just served us."

"How could I eat?" Andrew paced back across the room, pulling just short of barking his shins against the stove. "You were there, at risk, and I was sitting back here, waiting—safely, stupidly. I couldn't possibly."

"You're so used to helping everyone," Lily said with a shake of her head, "that you cannot stand having someone help you."

"What? I don't help everyone."

"Let me help you for a change." She stood and brushed by him. Her nose twitched when she opened the pot of soup, but she poured what was left in a bowl and cut him a thick slice of bread. "You must be ravenous."

"No, I can scarcely stand to—" His stomach interrupted his denial with a loud rumble.

Lily raised an eyebrow at him.

"Very well. Have it your way." He picked up the bowl of soup and drank. He'd thought about what to make while they were off; what flavors to meld, what would work in London without soy sauce or spices. He'd made it as delicious as possible under the circumstances. It tasted like nothing as he downed it. He ripped off a chunk of the bread and put it into his mouth. It might as well have been Portland cement for all he could tell. Still, he made himself chew until he could manage to swallow the dry mass.

"Used to helping everyone." He shook his head. "Ha. Is that what you think of me?"

"You've helped me."

He'd done the opposite of that. He'd lied to her. He tore the crust of the bread and scowled at it.

"You have always helped me," Lily said, "in the ways that matter: you've helped me do what I want, and not do what I don't. Before I left England?—"

"No." Andrew threw the crust ball he'd made on the table. "I am not going to agree that I ‘helped' you by having sex with you. That was not ‘helping' you. I was entirely motivated by my own desire and want. It was the most selfish thing I've ever done, and don't you dare think that I was looking out for you. I would do it again."

Lily grew very still. She swallowed, then carefully darted a glance up at him, then away.

Andrew replayed what he'd said— I would do it again —and considered smashing the loaf of bread into his forehead. What a thing to admit.

"I mean," he said, clearing his throat. "I, um, mean?—"

"Don't tell me what you mean unless you are telling the truth. Did you mean that?" she asked.

What was he supposed to say? "Yes."

"Well." She looked away, examining her hands. "You might have noticed this before. But I would like that."

"Lily." He wasn't sure he could say no, not now, not when he felt so uncertain. "I don't know what the future holds. But there is no path I see any longer, not one where I believe I can be the simple son of Wedgeford I want to be."

She looked back up with a flash of determination. "It doesn't have to be about the future." Her jaw set. "It can be about the past. About what we have meant to each other. About how we have been friends."

"Dearest friends." He swallowed.

"And more," she said. "Because I think we both know that in any other circumstances, we would be so much more."

Andrew had practiced restraint for so long it felt like second nature. It wasn't. He let it slip a tiny fraction, and perhaps some of what he wanted came through in his expression.

Lily gasped. She took a step forward, and that was all he needed to discard the last remnants of his resolve.

He kissed her. He didn't try to be gentle about it, either; their lips came together with an almost bruising force. He kissed her with everything he had, because now was the only time he could give it to her.

"Last time," he said, pulling away, "last time, you said it was just as friends—just as a favor—so I never told you what I was really thinking."

She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"I held back everything I wanted."

"I did as well." Her voice was small.

"If this is going to be the last time?—"

She froze in place.

"And it is." His voice, thankfully, did not break. "If this is going to be the last time, I am going to say it. Lily, I want you. I care for you. If I could have anyone for the rest of my life, it would be you."

He should savor the moment, he knew. But he could not, not with her eyes bright and sparkling with tears.

"It has always been you," Lily replied. He took her face in his hands and drew her to him.

The kiss seemed eternal from the moment it started—mouths exploring the depths of each other because there might be no other chance. He kissed her again and again, treasuring the feel of her lips, the rise and fall of her chest against his. He could feel himself growing hard with a want he'd never be able to extinguish. In the end, he wasn't sure if she moved first, or if he lifted her; one moment, she was pressed against him; the next, she was on the table while he stood between her spread legs. Her skirts hiked up in pools of fabric. Her ankles twined around his thighs, and their pelvises pressed together. His hard member twitched, close to the heat at her center. She must have been able to feel it, because she gasped and lifted her hips, pressing against him. Pleasure sparked down his spine.

"Lily." He gasped the word, trying to hold himself back from thrusting against her.

She took his hand in hers and brought it to her breast. "Here." How she could sound so steady, Andrew would never know. "Touch me here."

He set his palm over the fabric of her gown.

"No." She pulled away, and his apology was on the tip of his tongue when she simply began undoing the row of buttons starting at her neck. He watched her do the first two before she raised her head with a query. "Aren't you going to help me?"

"Oh." When put that way, there was only one answer. "Yes. Absolutely yes."

His hands trembled beneath hers, starting from her waist and traveling up, revealing a brown shift, a front-laced tea-colored corset. He swallowed. "Lily."

"Yes?" She looked up at him.

"How do I… Or, rather, do I…"

She finished her section of the buttons and shrugged out of the gown, letting it slip down to puddle at her hips. "It's a fairly simple knot."

"Yes."

She pulled the bow through. "There. Just loosen the lacing, and we can get it off."

He was trying to be gentle, but his heart was racing. This was Lily, and this mattered. The laces eventually gave way to his now-clumsy fingers; she wriggled and writhed to escape it; finally, they were able to set the garment on the table next to Lily. After that, it was a simple matter to slide his hands up her legs, up her thighs. To catch her fabric of her chemise and bring it up over her, revealing her body to him.

She was slim, her skin burnished. Her breasts were the size that perfectly fit his hand; her nipples were a dark rose brown. He leaned down and tasted one.

"Andrew." She brought her ankle around his thigh again, pulling him closer. "Yes. Please."

A fury rose in him, a storm demanding to rage. He sucked harder, and when she threw her head back, he kissed up her neck to her chin. She was bare beneath him, and it suddenly became imperative that she not grow cold.

He fumbled with the buttons of his trousers, then pushed them and his underthings down in a single motion, before fitting himself on top of her, around her. The tip of his cock brushed her pelvis, sliding in the heat of her before thrusting into her curls. He wrapped his arms around her.

"Lily," he murmured. "Lily, dearest. You're so?—"

Her legs spread wider, and she tilted her pelvis. The tip of his cock, pulled back for one thrust along her, caught at the edge of her entrance.

He shouldn't. He shouldn't?—

It happened so automatically that he wasn't sure who did it—who changed the angle, who righted the alignment, so that instead of feeling the heat of her vulva against him, he was slipping into the tight heat of her passage. Every nerve in his cock fired all at once. It felt good, so good.

He leaned down to fasten his mouth around her breast again, and she gave a little cry. He could feel the pleasure he was giving her—feel it in the squeeze of her passage around him, feel it in the little pulsing motion of her hips. He could feel the bud of her nipple hardening further, tightening.

He stroked into her once and then again, until their bodies seemed endlessly joined, until he was so hazy with want that the only thing holding him back was the need to see her reach her climax alongside him.

"Wait." She brought one hand between them. He could feel the pressure she was applying, touching him as he stroked in and out of her.

"Yes." He could feel her contracting around him now, spurring him on. "Yes, Lily. God, yes. Whatever you need. Take it. Take me."

He could feel the exact moment she came—a rush of heat and pulsating tension, every muscle in her clenching—and then he couldn't think of anything but his own need, full to bursting. It came upon him hard. He stilled, feeling himself come in an absolute rapture.

His first few breaths in the aftermath seemed like fire, burnt with the heat of what they had done. Lily nuzzled up against him.

"Andy." Her voice was soft. "I love you."

He kissed her forehead, then pulled up on his arms to look down at her.

They were still joined. He'd spilled inside her—probably not the wisest choice. He winced. This was their second time doing this. It had to be their last. They could not do this any longer. He was going to have to say goodbye.

"I love you," he echoed. "I told you: I'm selfish."

She gave him a little crooked smile that made him want to kiss her mouth again. "Please be selfish anytime."

He pulled away from her finally. The air in the room seemed cool, and in the aftermath of what they'd done, for the first time, it felt like he could see clearly.

"Here is what I have to do," Andrew said. "I will not be the earl. I cannot be the earl. That means it must be Alan."

She did not say anything to that.

"You are right," Andrew said. "Not only must I steal the logbook, I will have to get Alan's guardianship. How that is to be done, I have no idea. I don't know about guardianing. I am not versed in legalities. But if I've learned anything in the last days, it's this. I cannot solve this alone. There is only one thing to be done."

She considered this. "Hire a solicitor?"

"Ask Alan how to make it happen. He is the future earl. He has, however he protests, been trained to know about things."

"None of this makes you selfish," Lily said gently. "You're trying to look out for both of you. That's not wrong."

"This is the part that makes me selfish." He looked at her. "When I am awarded Alan's guardianship…" He did not say if. He had to make it happen. " When that happens, they may figure out who I am. Who else could I be? We'll steal the logbook and destroy it, but the risk remains. And I will need to stay with my ward, assisting him. That means I…won't be in Wedgeford." He looked down. "You need to understand. I cannot marry you."

"Skip that part. When you say ‘steal the logbook,'" Lily said, "you mean ‘steal all the related account books,' too, right? They're robbing the estate. Maybe we need proof."

"We can't risk it. The logbook, if you are correct, is in a drawer with a false bottom. If we steal it, they might not notice for months. The account books are out in the open; if we take them, it will be obvious they've been stolen. They must not know that anything is happening until the guardianship has been awarded, and we cannot risk them finding out."

"Well, I wasn't proposing that we leave large, empty holes on the shelves," Lily said. "I have a much better idea."

"What?"

"Remember how you asked me what the point of carrying dozens of books across the world was? Remember how you demanded to know what possible purpose it could serve?"

Andrew stared at her.

"One of us already has to go back to Wedgeford tonight to cover your long beans." Lily smiled at him triumphantly. "I suppose it will have to be me. I might as well get my extra books while I'm there. You never know when a beautifully bound volume containing a well-translated story focusing on a women's pleasure will come in handy."