Page 20 of Lady Be Good

Lilah woke from a nightmare of darkness into a world of blazing light. For a disoriented moment, she thought the room was on fire. Then her vision focused. Heavy walnut furniture, varnished by age. Cream wallpaper threaded with gold. Lamps everywhere. Sconces glowing along the walls. Candelabra flickering. Candlelight everywhere.

Somebody came off a nearby chair. Christian.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, reaching for her hand with great care. Earlier, he had ordered a bath for her. Left a dressing gown that enveloped her head to toe. Then he’d rebandaged her hand while he told her of what had transpired with Bolkhov.

He’d recited the tale calmly, while taking such tender care with her wound. She’d felt sure that he would join her in bed afterward. But the day had caught up to her, or the drug. When she’d yawned, he had insisted she rest for a while—alone.

And then he had come back to watch her while she slept.

She felt strangely tongue-tied as he stroked her wrist. How unlike her. A glance at the grandfather clock showed it to be half past two. “Do you think Catherine got home?” That was a safe avenue into conversation, she thought.

He laid her hand down atop the counterpane, smoothing the fabric around it as though to clear a safe perimeter. “Ashmore—he’s a friend of mine; you saw him tonight. He’ll have taken her home long ago.”

Ashmore. That was the Earl of Ashmore, she guessed. She had read his name in the newspapers. “I hope so,” she said. “She was asking very odd questions about my uncle. Almost as though . . .” She frowned. “Well, I don’t think I imagined it. She means to ask Nick for help.”

He frowned as well. “That is odd.” Then the frown faded into a half smile. “But who knows? You make a fine argument for looking to Whitechapel for any number of things. Help, hope, love . . .”

Her tongue felt suddenly clumsy. It took a moment to wrap around the words. “Do you think so?”

“I know so.” He reached past her to adjust the pillows. “Lie back again, Lily.”

That was the last thing she wished to do. Her heart was suddenly racing. “I’m not tired.”

“I know. But to see you here . . .” He cupped her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “There’s a comfort you cannot begin to imagine, seeing you here in my bed. Safe, with me. Where you belong.”

How could a girl resist that blandishment? She sank back onto the pillows, beneath the warmth of the heavy quilts. “Then here I’ll stay,” she said softly.

He smiled. Smoothed back her hair, then leaned down to kiss her temple. Very lightly, he touched the corner of her eye. The crest of her cheek. The slope of her jaw. Brushes as light as a breath.

They tickled. She wrinkled her nose. “What are you doing?”

“Counting your freckles,” he said. “You usually hide them beneath powder, don’t you?”

If he would only keep touching her like this . . . she would stay here forever. “Freckles aren’t ladylike.”

He laughed under his breath. “Oh, I beg to differ. Everything about you is ladylike, Lily.”

Her smile felt too wide for her mouth to contain. So much light in this room! She rolled over to see the full extent. Ten candelabra. A dozen more candlesticks besides. “Did you fetch all these candles?”

“You don’t like the dark.”

She looked back at him. “You shouldn’t humor me in that. It’s childish.” Why, it had almost gotten her killed today. A shiver moved through her.

Perhaps he saw it. The bed sagged; he lay down next to her, putting his arm around her waist and gathering her against him. “Be childish.” He spoke into her hair, his breath warming her nape. “You’re done with fear, Lily. I’ll light as many candles as the world can supply, if that’s what it takes.”

She relaxed, eyes closing. Was this love, then? To be so easily accepted. Cherished even for weaknesses. “It was never just the dark, you know. It was being trapped in it, alone.”

“I will never leave you alone in it again,” he said.

A lump clogged her throat. Such a proposition. It would take courage for a woman to accept such an offer, for she would come to depend on it, and if it was ever withdrawn . . . what would be left of her? Only broken pieces. “I want that promise,” she whispered. “But if you make it, you’d best mean to keep it. In the eyes of the law, even.”

For a moment, he did not reply. She waited, biting her lip hard. She wouldn’t take back those words. She was no lady, but she’d not settle for being treated as less than one. She wouldn’t live with him in sin.

His mouth touched her nape. The softest kiss. “Do you remember the dream I told you about? The dream of the tree, which I could not protect?”

“Yes,” she managed. “Of course.”

“That was all I wanted,” he said. “Never to be the hero. Not the title, not the applause. But something of my own. Something to protect and defend. And perhaps . . .” She felt the deep breath he drew against her skin. “More than that. When I ended him today . . . it could have kept going. That rage . . . it was burning me from the inside. Darkening the world. A bullet would not have ended it. Nothing I could have done to him would have ended it. But in that room today, as I aimed the gun . . . you were there with me. And there was no rage left, suddenly. No darkness. Only thoughts of you.

“So you’re not simply the woman I want to protect,” he said softly. “You protect me. I walked out of that room free, because of you. And when I told you I wanted to bring you here, tonight . . . I called this place my home. But it only feels so when you’re here with me.”

She opened her eyes to stare at a branch of candles. The flames blurred. “I would always protect you,” she said, very low. “That’s what I do, for me and mine.”

“Yes,” he said. “What a great good fortune it is, to be yours.”

“Even though I’m . . . who I am?” She wouldn’t speak low of herself. There was no shame in being from White-chapel. Maybe not even shame in being Nick’s niece. That look of admiration on Catherine’s face tonight—what a pity that she’d had to see it in somebody else before acknowledging it in herself. “The niece of the King of Diamonds. For I don’t mean to cut him off, Christian. I won’t do his bidding any longer, but he’ll always be family. I won’t turn away from him, that way.”

“I would not ask you to,” he said after a pause. “I’ll be damned if he uses you again. But he took you in as a child. I wasn’t there to protect you then. But he was. And he played a role in making the woman you’ve become. The woman I want at my back, for as long as I live. I will never ask you to deny him.”

Her eyes closed. There was too much beauty in the world. She’d never realized that. It could overwhelm a person, once she knew.

“May I speak to you of a future together?” he asked slowly. “Or would you prefer that I wait?”

“Are you mad?” She turned so quickly that he laughed and caught her by the shoulders.

“Mind your hand,” he said.

She tucked it between her breasts for safekeeping. How her heart was pounding. “Speak,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Smiling, he smoothed her hair from her eyes. “Susseby will be rebuilt. From the ground up. Now, I confess, I’ve no notion of what it will require, or how long it will take. But I’ve an idea for a specific room—mirrored in glass. The countryside gets so dark, you see. But in this room, the light of a single candle will illuminate the whole. A music room, I think—always filled with light, no matter the hour.”

Wonder prickled over her. She sat up, and he pushed himself up on one elbow, smiling at her. In the wash of light he’d created for her, he looked dipped in gold: his hair, his eyes, his bronzed skin.

Indeed, he looked very cocksure now. “Tell me,” she said, unable to resist poking him, “who would want a room so gaudy?”

The dimple appeared in his cheek. “The woman who designs the rest of it. I warn you, she has odd taste in houses. If she can admire a pile like Buckley Hall, then God knows what she’ll make of Susseby. But however it turns out, it will be hers.” Very gently he stroked her hair. “And, one hopes, her children’s, and her children’s children, and the seven or eight or hundred generations to follow.”

She tried to smile, but her lips were trembling too hard to hold the shape. “You told me once that you were a rogue. Remember?”

He blinked—and then laughed, a startled puff of air. “The first night we met. In that hallway at Everleigh’s.”

“Yes.” She smirked. “Looks like I’ve ruined you.”

He kissed her forehead hard. “So you have. My days of roving may be over. Of course, that depends on your answer.”

She caught her breath. “To what?”

He threaded his fingers through her hair. “I love you, Lily Monroe. Will you be my wife? Or will you risk England’s wrath by spurning a war hero?”

“No!” Then, just to be clear, she put it differently: “Yes! That is—I’ll marry you. God save your soul, you poor toff.”

Such radiance in his grin. He leaned forward to kiss her. But they had skipped something, which made her hold him off with one finger laid over his mouth. “Don’t you wish to know if I love you? Perhaps I only mean to con you into marriage, then rob you blind.”

He took her finger between his teeth. Curled his tongue down the fleshy pad, then sucked it deeper, raising a quickening pulse in her belly. How hot his gaze was. “It sounds a fair bargain,” he said huskily, “for how busy I mean to keep you.”

She wet her lips. “A good thing I do love you, then.”

His lids dropped. She saw his nostrils flare. “Once your hand is healed—”

She bit down on her smile. “Distraction is the best medicine for pain. The French are very good at it, I hear.” Then, letting her smile bloom, she sank back down into the sheets.

He came over her, grinning like a tiger as he took her hand and placed it carefully above her. “As a patriot and a hero, I cannot allow that insult to stand.”

She laughed up at him. “Show me how the English Irish do it, then.”

He pounced, devouring her mouth. But after a moment, she started laughing. This joy had to be let out. “Kit’s charge,” she said. “I’ve just seen it for myself.”

He smiled against her lips. “Let the battle begin.”

She gripped his face, to keep him just where she wanted. “The war is over, love. We won.”