Page 3 of Lie Down With a Lyon (The Lyon’s Den)
Richmond on Thames
April 21, 1805
B lanche Rivers, who had introduced herself to Dáire as Miss Delacourt, sat atop her horse calm and graceful as the river flowing next to her. She waited as she always had, at the bend in the river where they’d first met six weeks ago—and where they had continued to meet every Monday and Tuesday since then. He grinned at her beauty.
To her, he was simply Mr. Dillon. Not O’Neill. God, no. But a talkative, affable, yet mysterious fellow who had shared little about himself. He ran a business, aye. He had men who worked for him, aye. But that was all. He was not the man her father hated. Not a gang leader, not really. But her friend. Her friend who ached to be more. To be her lover. Hers.
Spurring his horse on, he winced at that dream. He did not care to lie, either, but for what precious minutes he had of her, he would do anything.
He tore himself from his self-criticism. As he approached, he smiled at the gorgeous sight before him.
He was late today. Business matters in London had kept him from her.
But he was here now. Eager and sad.
Their visits were brief. But informative. They did not discuss the weather. Why would they? It was springtime in England and the clouds were required to rain down to nourish all below. Luckily, each time they had met, the sun had blessed them with bright and shining minutes.
“But I like showers,” she’d said to him once when thunder drummed through the clouds and rain cooled them with a few drops. “To have the things you love, you must have showers.”
They did not discuss current news. The regent was far from his mind. So too any of his friends. Only those who came to him for help or advice was he disposed toward. Yet his dealings with his clients were nothing he would share with anyone, least of all Miss Delacourt. She would not be interested. She had no regard for gossip. Nor did she pine for standing among the ton. She was happy with who she was.
If only to the point that her life did not revolve around her father. That man’s criminal activities kept Bow Street busy. She knew it, though she only implied as much. In fact, she was discreet in discussing her family background, declaring that she and her father shared a standoffish view of each other. So from the beginning of Dáire’s relationship with Blanche, he had not probed into the dynamics of her relationship with her father.
He had no need. He knew who she was. In her bones. In her work. In her heart. She was generous to her personal servants, a personal maid at home and an assistant at the servants’ registry she owned with another woman here in Richmond. She demanded good wages and half-days off for all those posted to fine houses. In fact, Dáire had learned that she refused to accept the offer of one lady who was known among those in Richmond Society to beat her staff for any little infraction.
As for her heart—ah, well. Dáire had loved her spontaneity, her willingness to laugh and joke with him. He’d appreciated her quick wit to note that he changed the colors of his clothes at her suggestion.
“Chalk blue like Wedgwood to match your eyes, sir. For your waistcoats.” She’d waggled a finger at him. “A forest green for your riding habit to highlight the ruddiness of your complexion.”
He was certain he had blushed at that. “I’ll be a dandy.”
“Dear Mr. Dillon,” she had intoned in that alluring whisky voice of hers, “you command any space. Never will anyone challenge you to what you desire.”
No. Only circumstances now take from me what I most want on this earth. You.
He gave his horse another nudge toward her. Their time would be short and sorrowful today. He expected it, had girded himself for the disastrous tale she’d impart about her visit to the Lyon’s Den.
But for a few exquisite minutes at the beginning of their meeting today, their relationship would be as pure as it had ever been. Friendly, jovial, honest as far as each could be about who and what they were. He’d keep it that way…until she told him what she’d agreed to.
And she would tell him, wouldn’t she?
Dáire took in the sight of her. The tall figure, regal atop her hired mount. Her hair, a golden-brown crown with red highlights, tucked beneath her prim little hat. Her breasts, generous beneath the cranberry-red wool serge coat. The color, he’d told her before, accentuated her luminous gray eyes and gave a glow to her porcelain complexion. He’d noticed that she wore more of the dark red and shades of jade that alone could make his mouth water and his loins go to iron. She shifted. Her horse pranced, and the skirt to her habit rode up her calf. He had a glimpse of white hose and tempting curves from her trim ankle to her knee.
He bit down hard on his desire. Her contours begged for his hands, his lips. That ankle, her calf, her thigh and waist. The breasts that he had imagined far too often were large enough to overflow his hands. Her nipples. Were they pink or rose?
He looked away and collected his gentleman’s persona. But as he approached her, he noted how she met him and reached out her hand. She was followed by the groom, whom she thought she had hired at the nearby Richmond stables. But, in fact, her “groom” was his man. His trusted man that he had placed at the stables where she rented her horse—and where she had left her maid. Dáire had put the man to the task of riding with her each Monday and Tuesday so that she would have an additional guard for her safety. Who knew who could pop out from the forest along the banks of the gently flowing Thames?
Dáire took no chances her father might have a man following her here. Rivers did it elsewhere sporadically. Dáire didn’t trust the man to leave his daughter alone. He was a bully, and even that was too mild a term for the man who controlled the rookeries, the docks, and maybe more.
She beamed at him as they came closer, their mounts at a walk. She rejoiced to see him, as she always had. Her lips, plump and pink without a hint of more than the pressure of her pretty teeth—if he ever had the chance, which he would never, he would savor those lips of hers. Show her how a man enraptured would take her, kiss her, thrill her.
But not today. Not any day.
He could not touch her, but he would consume her with his eyes and inhale her with his heart.
She was the one he wanted and could never have.
He was her friend. Only ever that.
She approached him with that tilt of her head that confirmed their comfortable relationship. Yet her lips began to tremble. And in her large gray eyes, darkness lurked and a storm brewed.
Curse him. He knew what it was.
Just tell me, my darling.
Blanche took the bridal path where Mr. Dillon would always appear amid the leafy foliage every Monday and Tuesday at one. A large man, perfect in his sculpted beauty, handsome in a rough way, with a brogue to his bass voice that brushed her senses to irrational want of him—but he was late today. “Only a few more paces, Dancer. Ah, there he is!”
Around the bend of the river at gracious old red-brick Ham House, she spied him trotting his huge black stallion from the far end of the river path. She held her breath. The man never failed to take hers—and make her want for all she wished to have. Especially and impossibly from him.
So he was not so late. Not by more than a minute or so. Today of all days, she had wanted him to appear on time. He always had. But this day was different. She had news she wasn’t keen to impart. Not to him. Her announcement of her coming nuptials would end their relationship—and she mourned its end already.
Brief, colorful, fulfilling, her time with this stranger on this bridal path had inspired her to find a husband, a partner—someone she could respect. Her father’s recent insistence that she marry had initially raised the subject. But her appreciation—oh, to be honest, her infatuation—with this striking Irish bear of a man was the real impetus to marry—and to do it soon, in the most outlandish way.
Yes, she wanted a man to share her life with. She wanted children. Stability. Peace. Laughter at home, if she could get it.
He saw her, dozens of yards away, and tipped his riding hat. Today, he was in his verdant-green riding habit, the froth of his ivory cravat contrasting with his sun-bronzed skin and bold black hair. The silver of his waistcoat challenged the pale blue of his eyes. But once he looked at her, as he did now and held her in his thrall, that savage became the man who wanted her, above all others.
She did not imagine that.
Her insides jumped. She rocked in her saddle. Yes, she wanted a man in her life, in her bed. This man.
Yet she knew little about him, save what he’d told her here on their weekly walks along the Thames. His name was Mr. Dillon. No first name. He lived in London. No address. He lived alone, though he had two younger sisters, both of whom he had in a school in Sussex. He claimed he had many friends and many who worked for him. She doubted he was gentry. That Irish lilt to his gravelly voice added sorrow to his tales of life in Dublin. His speech gave him a lighthearted air that elicited joy. Yet beneath his debonair surface, she could perceive the armored plate.
Yes, her Mr. Dillion was a gentleman to her, always had been, never crossing the boundaries of etiquette between an unmarried woman and a man who were never introduced according to the rules. They met the first time here on this bridal path when he paused one day as she sat watching the river twinkle and ripple away—and she wept.
“Are you in need of help, miss?” he’d asked. He had not come close, only stopped his mount far enough away to be respectful. He’d even motioned to her hired groom, paces behind her, that he was no threat to her person.
“No. Thank you, no.” She dabbed at her wet lashes, aghast at the argument she’d had the day before with her father—in public, no less. “I am merely…sad.”
“Might I help to change that for you?” he persisted with a charming smile.
No one in all her life had ever asked her that. She had sniffed and tipped her head up to get the full, magnificent view of him. “Do you do that often?”
He lifted his jaw and stretched the strong column of his throat as he scanned the blue sky. “I do. For many.”
She dabbed at her cheeks and sat back in her saddle to admire him. “Tell me how.”
“People come to me with their problems. I fix them.”
“My. You make that sound so easy.”
He let his huge stallion walk near. “It’s not.”
“What do you fix? Give me an example.”
His mellow blue gaze swept her features. “A lady’s tears.”
She shivered with the admiration in his gaze. How forward of him. How delicious. “How do you help a lady in distress?” Repenting her audacity, she put a gloved hand to her throat. “Forgive me. I am forward.”
Close beside her as he was then, she could smell him. The fine sandalwood of his cologne. The coffee he’d consumed earlier. Both enveloped her in a cloud of desire that she’d never known. “One lady’s challenge was her father. Another, her intended.”
“Neither easy to resolve, sir.”
That first day was the last day she’d been able to tease any details from him about his work or life.
In return, she’d done the same. Sticking to the Delacourt name, her stepmother’s assumed married name, she had told him her given name was Blanche. But where she lived, how she managed her business, she had not revealed. She had indicated that she and her father were not on friendly terms because she disapproved of his business dealings.
Now, after today, she would give her Mr. Dillon nothing more. She would be gone. Another man’s wife. The charms of this man traded for the hope and chance of happiness with another.
How foolish was she?
Any answer drifted away with the charm of his stride toward her. Always before, they would dismount their horses and lead the animals along behind them as they talked. Today, she tied her horse to a tree limb and, after she threw him a smile, checked that her groom drifted away from them. Out of earshot, as she had told the man to always be when she and Dillion walked. The groom obeyed now.
So near she felt Dillon’s body heat warm hers. If she dared, she could reach out a hand and take one of his own. But she did not. They had not met or talked like this since last Tuesday. But they took up their usual topics. Their horses, how his friend considered a business proposal, how hers had rented a new house here in Richmond, and how Mr. Dillon needed to leave her soon for a meeting with a friend.
She halted along the path, not willing to let him go. Oh, how she was going to miss him. His easy conversation. His lilting, rhythmic speech. His perusal of her expression and the light in his eyes when he greeted her or spoke to her. The way he frowned, as if torn, when he had to leave her…or she him.
She could not bear the tension within her any longer. “I must tell you something, Mr. Dillon.”
He tipped his head in question.
“I… We cannot meet again.”
“No?” He stiffened, his back ramrod straight.
She licked her lips and looked away to the dark waters cascading over rocks. Clouds rolled in to gray the green grasses. She faced him. It would be the last time she would view his manly face, his appreciation of her shining in his large, expressive blue eyes.
“No. I did not tell you, but recently, I have pursued means to be married.”
He winced, and she had no idea if he was alarmed or attempting to accept her announcement. “A good man, I do hope.” His face had gone pale, his words, sharp and clipped.
Was he angry? She was! “By all accounts, he is.”
“You do not know him?” he asked in a rush.
She heard rage in his tone. “No.”
“Is that wise?”
She had expected that question. Mr. Dillion did not set great store by many of Society’s rules, especially those that restricted the rights and means of women. So she had prepared an answer to that. “Many women in Society have never met their intendeds before they are engaged.”
“Many of them regret everyone who forced it on them.”
“I am not being forced.”
“I see,” he said as if it were fact. As if he knew that. But how could he? “Why, then?”
“I have chosen to get married.” If she told him how she accomplished that, he would not believe her. He would most likely think her crazed. “When I knew…” Who he was. No, that was not a fact to reveal. “When I was told his name, I secretly had a dossier compiled for me of his family, his background, and his habits. All are pristine. His major character flaw is his tendency to occasionally fail at cards.”
“Cards.” He sucked in air—and fisted his hands. “When? When do you marry?”
“Friday.”
“So soon.”
“It’s best.”
His luminous eyes seared her with his objection. “For whom?”
“Me!” she cried. “Me.”
He took a step forward, as if he would gather her up and run away with her. But then he froze. “Is he…is he appealing to you?”
Did he show a spark of jealousy? She smiled at this little victory. She had to tease more out of him. Make it a joke. Turn this conversation to one more pleasant. A sweet farewell. “Why, sir, are you asking me if I like his looks?” She knew not what the man looked like, but she had to use this to prod Mr. Dillon.
“I am.” He refused to be cajoled. Instead, sorrow turned his blue eyes gray.
“You think me shallow?” She hoped she sounded as if she parried with him.
“I think you as deep and mysterious as the ocean.” The rumble of his bass voice drummed through her, making her want and yearn for all of him that she would never claim.
“How can you say such a thing to me?” she shot back, irritated at his allusion to the elements, knowing she sounded as if she wanted him to say more like that in just that voice.
He took both her hands. “Because I will not see you again. Because I must say such things now…before you disappear.”
A sob rose in her throat. How could he undo her in a few moments? She would not cry. Would not! But, stripped of her rational thoughts, her desire for him made her impetuous. “You have never told me if you are married.”
“I am not.”
The wind picked up. A few heavy drops of rain fell on her nose and eyelashes.
She yanked her hands back and strode a few steps away. Near a clearing of trees, the wind whistled through the branches. Her hair flew about, her hat tilting, her pins gone. She whipped her hat off her head and let it fly away.
He followed her. “Look at me.”
She shook her head. Angry still, she wanted to prick him with the needle of her frustration. “Do you not wish to marry?”
He stepped around her, his height and breadth a barrier between her and the wind. He lifted her chin. His tormented gaze deepened to a river of regret as the gathering clouds blocked out the sun. Catching her wrists, he pressed the palms of her hands to the flat of his chest. Beneath her flesh, his own pounded. “If I could, I would marry one woman.”
She could not bear to ask if that lady was her. Oh, but she could hope. “What deters you?”
“She and I are star-crossed.”
“Can that chasm not be bridged?”
He brought her hands up to his lips, and the journey they took began with the press of his lips to one wrist, then the other. “No,” he rasped. “She is not mine to have.”
“How…how do you know?”
He opened one palm and licked the skin. She trembled at his ardor.
“She wants, she deserves , more than I can give her.”
“Sometimes,” she ventured, caught between desire and propriety, “love can grant more to a relationship than circumstances provide.” She had no knowledge of that, no understanding. She had heard it whispered among her childhood friends in Crawford’s school, or read of it in books that were in essence fairytales for adults.
He hooded his eyes as he bent and nipped the pad of one thumb, then the other. His lips stirred fresh, hot hunger in her blood.
She threw back her head, her eyes squeezed shut. “Please stop.”
He circled her waist with both arms and pulled her against him. His lips in her hair, he whispered, “I can’t.”
’Twas then she threw all caution to the windy afternoon, reached up, and caught his cheeks. Sliding up against the bulwark of his fabulous body, she put her lips to his.
No man had she ever kissed. She knew not how, exactly. But in that moment, instinct was her guide and she took his lips, parted from him, and took them again. He groaned and crushed his mouth on hers. Heaven, at once, appeared before her.
He was fierce in his claim. Ravenous. His arms were iron, his lips a brand, his tongue a fierce probe she met with a cry of delight. He’d said he was not married. He was gentle, persuasive—an animal who took and gave. He’d said he could not marry because the one he desired was so different. But in the command of his kiss, the claim of his tongue, the groan from his throat, he declared how he wanted her.
She believed him. His fierce possession of her. His words.
And she let him have her. All of her. Her lips, her teeth, her heart. How could he not want to claim her? She wanted all of him!
He broke their kiss.
She gasped for air and marveled at the look on his face.
He was enchanted—torn and furious. He cupped her shoulders. His voice a rasp, he said, “I must go.”
Dazed, she let him steady her on her feet. Insulted, heartbroken, she fought for sanity. He would leave her? After this? Was he a fool ?
She shook back her hair, pretending was so ridiculous. But what else did she have? “Yes, as must I.”
Mr. Dillion took a long look at the sky, his jaw set. She must not fill in the empty space in their relationship with silly platitudes. She must leave, and so she looked around for her groom. As ever, the fellow stood with his back to the two of them—an odd stance, she’d always thought, for one who should be warier of any man she met accosting her.
Mr. Dillon pulled at the points of his frock coat. Yet he let his eyes fall down her form, before he caught her gaze. “It has been a pleasure to know you, Miss Delacourt. I wish you felicitations on your wedding. May you have all you desire in your marriage.”
He bowed and strode off, collected his horse, and led it away. Against the black clouds that scudded the blue sky, then twisted and turned, Mr. Dillon and his horse striding away from her painted a silhouette of doom. The man, his shoulders slumped. The horse, his head down as if in mourning.
She gulped back her despair and frustration. Who was he to treat her so badly? To want her and not? To claim her and leave? To make her pulse and yearn, to kiss her as if he were on fire to make her his? And then he bade her farewell and strode away?
What man did that?
Did she know any?
Ba! She knew of her father’s thieves and pimps and murderers. His gamblers and crooks, his cutthroats—and him. Her father, the worst of the lot.
A wild thought flared through her, hot as flames. She fisted her hands. Was her Mr. Dillon one of her father’s men? Was he one of those criminals who did her father’s bidding? Had Mr. Dillon been assigned by her father to track her, entice her? Was he hired to ruin her? So that she had to marry any man her father put before her?
She whirled in a frantic circle. No, no, that could not be true. He was too kind to be a thief or…or worse. He was too observant of her moods, too ready to accommodate her, to be as ruthless as one of her father’s men.
But whomever he was, Mr. Dillion was gone, accepting her word that she was soon to marry. Respecting it, even if he had stolen kisses from her like a craven rogue. Never arguing with her.
Only kissing her so voraciously that no man, no husband, no attentive lover, could ever compare.
She dashed away fresh tears from her cheeks.
She would not cry. She would not give Mr. Dillion or her father the satisfaction of reducing her to female fragility.
“I am going to be married. My husband will be kind and good and I will be content.” She set her teeth. “I must be.”
She turned to call to her groom. “Hello-o. Let us be on our way.”
I am to be fitted for my wedding gown.
Two hours later, as she stood on Madame Frasier’s little stool and the lady poked pins into her skin, she realized one fact.
Mr. Dillion had not asked her the name of the man whom she married. A man who cared would have curiosity for that. Wouldn’t he?
Not that it was any of his business. But she would have hoped he’d be curious enough to ask and comment if he knew her intended. “Marry me,” he’d whisper to her instead, and take her lips in another of his all-consuming kisses.
But no.
None of that was to be.
Dillon was gone. And she was alone.
Betrothed to a merchant’s son—Mr. Henry Mercer, age thirty, of sound mind and body, a clerk in his father’s business.
A stranger to her.
And why not marry a man unknown to her? From her investigation of him, she learned he was no thug. No thief or cardsharp.
Considering her past…her heritage, her dastardly blood—who was she to want more from life, to want a man who loved her?
A few of her teachers at Miss Crawford’s had pushed her to be proud of herself. Only one of her chums had ever known who her father was. Susana Edmunds had kept Blanche’s secret lo these many years.
She would march onward now.
Sweeping her palms over the iridescent blue-white crepe, Blanche commended the seamstress. Then she gave instructions for the gown to be delivered to Susana’s house in Kensington, to No. 14 Argyll Street. Her best friend, just like her partner Grace Mansfield, knew nothing of Blanche’s wedding. She hated to be so secretive with the two persons whom she valued above so many, but Susana was known to share everything with her mother. Grace was not as talkative, but still, Blanche could not take the chance that either would let any of her plan slip. Later, she’d make it up to both of them, after she was settled in her new home.
She was committed. Her mind made up.
She would become Mrs. Henry Mercer. And she’d love him.