Page 1 of Love, Lies, and the Lyon (The Lyon’s Den Connected World)

Seven Years Ago

M iss Anastasia Banks shyly drew the scratchy, white bedsheet around her to cover her chest, ignoring how the damp sheet felt rough against her skin.

Her limbs were sweaty and her leg muscles and pelvis felt sore, but she was happy.

She had finally done it. Against her upbringing and better judgment, she had thrown caution to the wind and fully embraced all that romance had to offer.

Namely, Jeremiah Jemisin, the love of her life.

Being the bright young age of twenty, she had been seeing him privately and in public, walking together and spending time together at dances.

She, being the eldest daughter of a wealthy tradesman and Jeremiah, being a soldier who looked positively dashing in his red regimentals, they were simply smitten with each other.

So after months of courtship, he had asked her to come back to his army barracks, and she had given her lady’s maid an excuse for an errand that had sent her to the far side of town, with a promise she would meet back at the family home.

The maid had been disapproving but followed her direction, and so Anastasia quickly found herself unchaperoned in Jeremiah’s room.

In his bed. His fellow soldiers were gone, and the room rather smelled of men’s dirty laundry, but she didn’t care.

They were alone together. This was the moment, where she would give herself to him and they would consummate their love.

Amidst pleasurable touches and kisses, his expert hands had shed her clothes, until all she’d worn had been her stockings. And even then, he’d taken a distinct pleasure in shredding them with his bare hands. The way his face had lit up as he’d torn them had made her blush.

She didn’t mind. An impish part of her liked the secretiveness of it all.

But then came the pain from the act of lying with one another, and she felt blood on the sheets and saw his nose wrinkle in disgust. “I didn’t think you were a maid,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said instantly. “I’m surprised.

My father is a well-respected man in town.

There’s no reason to think I wouldn’t be.

” She felt a trifle hurt that he would assume she hadn’t been innocent, but what did that matter?

They would be engaged soon, and wed in no time at all, especially now that they had…

acted on their romantic feelings for each other.

She had stretched in the damp bedsheets and said, “So, Jeremiah… may I tell my father?”

“What?” His head snapped up. He was half-dressed in trousers and socks and sat nearby smoking. “Tell him what?”

“That we are engaged.”

She didn’t like his questioning tone. She didn’t trust the unfriendly look in his eyes. But she could not bear his laughing at her.

Jeremiah chuckled, a sound she had come to know well. But this wasn’t a belly laugh, or a warm, good-natured laugh. It was mean, and she was the joke.

“No, pet. I would not have you lie to him,” he said.

She sat up straight, not caring that the bedsheet began to fall. When she caught his gaze wandering down to her breasts, she pulled it back up again for modesty. His gaze disappeared, as did his interest.

“But I thought… I thought that once we’d…lain together, like man and wife, then—”

An undignified fart and a snort hit her ears as he laughed again. He didn’t even dignify that with an answer.

Jeremiah pulled up his suspenders and began to lift a shirt over his head. “Do not think so hard about this, Ana. It’s no great matter. You’re always so serious. It was just a bit of fun.” He grinned at her.

“‘Fun’?” Her voice took on a shrill note. “I gave myself to you. We have lain together. I gave you my virtue.”

He wrinkled his nose. “And you stained the sheets with it.”

A gasp escaped her, and she stared at him. This was the man she’d fallen in love with?

Her thoughts ran mad. And this was the man she had planned to marry.

Why was he blaming her for bleeding on the sheets when they had slept together for the first time, and she for the very first time ever?

She cocked her head at him in confusion.

Why wasn’t he going down on bended knee and proclaiming his heartfelt love for her?

Why was he smirking? Where was the kindness, warmth, and comfort she had thought sharing his bed would bring?

Then it hit her. She’d been a fool. There was no warmth there to begin with.

He’d used her to satisfy his own lusts, and she had stupidly believed it had meant something more.

She had wanted him, too. But at his urging, she had gone along with it, even though she had been brought up to wait until marriage before giving away her virtue.

Her governess’s lessons on female purity and innocence rang in her head, along with her harsh, disapproving tone to never be in a room alone with a man unless it was one’s husband.

And now her purity was gone. Her maidenhead, lost. Forever.

All of a sudden, her world began crashing down.

Seeing her expression, he came forward and grasped her chin with one hand. “Don’t worry, Miss Banks. I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be our secret.” He winked.

She turned her head, removing her chin from his hand. He chuckled and said, “Make yourself ready, Anastasia. You’d better get dressed. You don’t want to keep your maid wondering where you’ve been. Or who you’re with. Although I suppose everyone will guess you’ve been with me.”

There was to be no more talk of marriage. Or of love, or anything else.

Her movements were wooden, her face hot, as she moved to the side of the bed and slipped off it, pulling on her shift, her dress, her garters, and her shoes.

She left her ruined stockings on the floor where they lay.

They would only raise questions and served no purpose to anyone anymore.

She felt his eyes on her the entire time.

Her cheeks felt overly warm and she felt on display as she finished tying the laces of her dress over her chest. She did not want to meet his eyes.

She imagined they were greedy, and she was not a suckling pig.

But once dressed, she took in Jeremiah’s handsome face. His dark curls. The smart expression she’d once thought was a sign of intelligence, of confidence, now bore a leering grin. His narrowed eyes were all-knowing and amused, the tilt of his chin was arrogant, and his wink was crude.

“Like I said, Miss Banks. Our little secret.” He looked her up and down. “Although now that you’re not so rigid, maybe you’d like a second turn?”

Her cheeks burned. She took one last look at the man she’d fallen in love with, imprinting that moment in her mind for a final time, and walked out the door. Her heeled shoes struck the wooden floor, and she moved as fast as she could.

Jeremiah’s mocking laughter echoed in her ears as she hurried out of the barracks and back onto the main streets of the city.

Only once she was back outside did Anastasia breathe in fresh gulps of air. The room she’d been in smelled like sweat and worse. Now that she was surrounded by regular townspeople going about their errands in the afternoon, she held her head high and began walking in the direction of home.

But once she’d turned down a side street empty of people, she started to cry.

Small, aching sobs erupted from her throat, almost like hiccups.

Her legs were sore and wobbly as she walked, and without her stockings, she felt the slight breeze of air around her legs through her long walking dress and coat.

Each aching step served as a reminder of her foolishness, her silliness.

She wiped her eyes angrily and hurried home as fast as she could.

She met her maidservant on the way, who took one look at her bedraggled state. “Miss Banks, what happened? Are you all right?” The maidservant’s hand darted to her mouth. “Were you waylaid by thieves?”

“No, I took a tumble in the park and tore my stockings. I almost twisted my ankle and I ran into Mr. Jemisin, who… wished to end our relationship.”

There was no hiding her tears from the woman, whose eyes grew wide as saucers. “I never liked him. He…”

Anastasia walked beside her maidservant the rest of the way home, only half-listening to the maid’s tirade.

How could I have been so thoughtless? she inwardly berated herself as she approached the Banks family home.

Here her family was, sitting by her sick and dying mother, and what had she done?

Stupidly sent her maid on a silly errand and jumped into the bed of a lout.

A cad, a blackguard. She was the biggest fool of them all.

Entering her parents’ bedroom, she met a chaplain praying over her mother’s bedside. Her father, sitting next to her mother, was holding her hand. His eyes were wet, and her younger sister, Betsey, was crying, calling out, “Mama.”

The servants glanced at her disheveled hair and clothes and made no comment.

No doubt the maidservant would tell them what happened the moment they were out of earshot.

“Where have you been?” her father, a balding, portly gentleman with an impressive curled mustache, asked. “Why are you back so late? We were about to send out a servant to look for you both.”

“I got waylaid running errands and tripped in the park.” She touched her messy hair. Her gaze fell on the still form of her mother, the bedsheets damp with sweat, her complexion pale. “Is she…?”

“She’s gone. I’m sorry,” the chaplain said, laying a hand on Mrs. Banks’s arm.

He intoned a prayer, and he said some pretty words, but they were like flies droning in Anastasia’s ears.

She couldn’t hear or pay attention to anything.

Her mother was gone. And she had spent those last moments of her mother’s life away from her bedside, ruining herself in the arms of a wastrel.

She’d given her virginity to a blackguard. What a useless daughter she was.

Her younger sister began to cry, her sobs rending the air.

As Anastasia pulled her sister into a tight hug and smoothed down her hair, Betsey cried onto her chest and Anastasia resolved never again to get entangled with a young man.

Above all, she promised to protect her younger sister from anyone who was wholly unsuitable.

If that was everyone, then so be it. She’d have the two of them live the life of nuns before she saw her sister throw herself away like she had.