Page 12 of Not a Chance in Hell (The Chances #6)

April 9, 1840

“I t’s all going to plan,” said Arthur proudly as he pulled on his coat. The spring air was sultry this morning and he was going to relish it.

“I am overcome with delight, my lord.”

Arthur grinned as he glanced over his shoulder at his butler. “There’s no need for your sarcasm, Haslehaw.”

“I suppose not, my lord,” said the older man stiffly. “I trust you will enjoy your walk?”

“As do I,” muttered Arthur as he opened the door. “As do I.”

It was the information that the little urchin Kay had given him, what felt like years ago, that had done it. Though it was slightly mortifying to discover that in fact Lilianna had been cognizant of his methods, the details discovered were at least still useful.

Arthur strode along the street with a tingling expectancy. Knowing Lilianna’s habits had at first been just a clever way to make sure he could accidentally run into her. Then it had been a pleasant way to irritate her, to see the red sparking in those cheeks when she grew frustrated with him.

And now…

Now it was a way to keep her safe.

Today is a Thursday , Arthur thought as he side-stepped around a pair of gentlemen arguing about what sounded like cards. That meant she would be delivering a parcel to Mr. Creighton again, as she did every Thursday. That meant at about this time, a church bell chiming helpfully, she would be on Milsom Street.

So that was where he would be.

Arthur wasn’t sure what had made him decide to do it. Lady Lilianna Chance was, after all, the daughter of a marquess. Based on the rules of society, of the etiquette she knew far better than he did, she should not be meandering about the place alone, unchaperoned. Last time he had observed her during this task, she had parted from a woman he knew now to be her cousin. He could only hope she was with her cousin or maid today.

Of course, her cousin had not been enough to save her before. After seeing her almost attacked on that dreadful night, Arthur had promised himself that any time he had to spare, if he knew where she would be, he would be there too.

Not with her, not necessarily. But there. Keeping an eye on her.

Keeping her safe.

Within five minutes, Arthur was leaning in a shadowy doorway and watching as Lilianna conversed with the same old man with whom he’d seen her before, her lady’s maid at the end of the alleyway, looking about nervously.

“—temperate evenings now, so my rheumatism is much better,” Mr. Creighton was saying.

Lilianna placed a hand on his arm. Arthur straightened, just for a moment, so he could rush forward if the old man took advantage of her kindness, but he sank back against the doorframe as the man chuckled and continued to speak to her kindly and politely.

“Don’t worry about us old folks. We’ll do fine.”

“But you must tell me if you need anything in particular. There will still be cold evenings coming.”

Arthur watched her, his eyes hungry. She was so beautiful—and when she was like this, calm and relaxed, knowing she was safe, the joy he now knew she often forced down blossomed.

It made her… not a different person. Just… more the person she was always meant to be.

Mr. Creighton was bowing now. “And my wife’s best regards, m’lady.”

“And I return them,” said Lilianna, her voice carrying in the quiet lane. They were a long way from Milsom Street. “Until next week, Mr. Creighton.”

Arthur watched as the man meandered off, clasping the basket that the noblewoman had given him. How many people did she help like this? Quietly, without pomp and ceremony, without the dramatics that ladies of the ton like Lady Romeril required before they could be kind to anyone.

She was a most interesting woman.

He followed at a respectable distance, making sure he was not too close, as Lilianna walked slowly along, her lady’s maid a few steps behind her. Her basket now gone, there was a lightness about her shoulders that Arthur delighted in.

She deserved to be happy. If he could give her happiness…

“Lady Lilianna!”

Arthur stiffened. He stopped, standing behind a large bush that gave him cover when peering out at the pair. Lilianna, his Lilianna, and another man.

Not his Lilianna. Not technically. Not yet.

“—and if I had any interest in accepting those dinner invitations, you would have seen me sooner,” came the ringing, cold voice of a Lady Lilianna who was having none of it. “As I said, Mr. Lister, the sooner you learn that I have no interest in your invitations, the sooner you will save money with your calligrapher. Good day.”

The man looked utterly crestfallen as Arthur passed him, following in Lilianna’s and her maid’s footsteps, and he could not help but be delighted.

There was something so arch, so refreshingly direct in Lilianna’s approach. No gentleman could ever claim that he did not know where he stood with her.

His stomach lurched. Except him.

“You have not a chance in hell.”

A great deal had changed in the last few weeks, to be sure, and in a way Arthur could hardly tell what would come next. He admired her, yes, he cared for her, wanted to keep her safe. Calling her beautiful was almost an insult to the word, for she was so much more than that. More than the word beauty could contain.

Lilianna appeared utterly unconcerned that she had dashed the hopes of what appeared to be a polite enough young man. She continued walking at a slow pace, palpably not eager to arrive wherever she was headed. Then, to his horror, she pointed ahead of her, causing her lady’s maid to step forward and gaze about, and with the maid’s back turned, Lilianna slipped down a lane.

When Arthur reached its mouth, he saw it was more an alley than a lane. It was dark, the gap small, only a few feet wide.

And she was walking here, alone?

Arthur shook his head as he followed her. Did the woman never learn? If she was going to avoid being accosted by some troublesome lout, she couldn’t be walking along places like this.

He was but a few inches away when he said, “Lil—”

She acted immediately.

The basket had been given to Mr. Creighton, but there was still a reticule on her arm. The instant he had uttered the first syllable of her name, Lilianna had whirled around, reticule flying, and whacked him across the face with it.

“Christ!” he shouted.

“Let go of—Arthur?” she said, blinking.

Arthur was blinking too. It was the only way to prevent his eyes from watering.

“God in heaven, what is in that thing?” he said thickly. “Is my nose bleeding?”

It certainly hurt enough. Stars popping in the edges of his vision, Arthur shook his head as though that would rid him of the pain.

When he stilled his gaze it was to see Lilianna staring, hands to her face, clearly mortified.

“Arthur! I thought—I mean, I was alone and someone said my name. I thought—”

“Yes, yes, I can see I was an idiot,” Arthur said thickly, grimacing through the pain.

God, she has a good swing to her.

“But why are you alone? Your maid was with you but a moment ago. I left her standing back on the sidewalk, searching for you.”

She swallowed. “Yes, well, I feel bad about that. But Father and Mother have been annoyingly concerned about by safety since that night. I might not have told them, but my aunt did, once she realized what had happened. I just thought… Well, surely, I’d be all right for a short while on my own.” She tugged on the brim of her bonnet, as if that were enough to keep people from recognizing her. “Clarke will know where to meet me if I happen to get parted from her in the crowd.”

He arched a brow. “You’ve given her the slip before?”

She pursed those kissable lips. “A time or two.”

He wanted to laugh, but it hurt to smile. It was his own fault, he could see that as he leaned against the wall, blinking the pain away. There didn’t seem to be any blood, thank God, but there would be an interesting bruise on one side of his face where the catch of her reticule had swept past his cheek.

“What is in there?”

Lilianna flushed. She was standing beside him now, clearly battling between laughter and mortification. “It’s Frank. She asked me to pick up something for her.”

“What, a brick?” said Arthur with a weak smile.

Her cheeks pinked. “A hammer, a specialist one, she said she needed it for a project.”

Arthur groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Trust me to try to talk to you while you’re carrying a—did you say hammer ?”

She nodded. “Frank ordered it especially, and as I was coming into town, I said I would collect it.”

That hit must have been heavier than he thought, for Arthur could have sworn Lilianna had said “Frank” and “she.” Well, that would keep. He had more important things to think about.

Like the woman in front of him.

“Well, at least I don’t have to worry about you walking the streets on your own anymore,” he said sheepishly.

Lilianna’s eyes widened. “Is—Is that what all this is about?”

“Perhaps,” Arthur said cagily.

Now he’d said the words aloud, he wasn’t certain if she would take offense at such a thing. Lord knew, he wouldn’t appreciate being followed about the place.

“You’ve been following me. You noticed as soon as I left Clarke behind.” The slight puckering frown between her brows suggested she was thinking on similar lines. “Because you don’t think I can look after myself.”

“Because I know what men are like, and you gained a taste of that yourself four nights ago,” Arthur said urgently, stepping toward her, pain in his face forgotten.

She did not step away and this brought him far closer to the woman he cared for than he had expected.

“And another thing,” Arthur said, relishing his subject now that he had broached it with her. “I think it’s very admirable, what you’re doing for Mr. Crighley.”

“Mr. Creighton ,” she corrected him with a wry smile. “Arthur, you—”

“But it was not a clever idea to walk down this alleyway on your own,” he said sternly.

Lilianna’s lip quirked. “Oh, I don’t know, you seem to have come out worse. You’re bleeding, Arthur.”

Bleeding?

Arthur blinked. “You called me ‘Arthur.’”

“You asked me to.” Her eyes were liquid, suggestive, reminding him of that moment in his carriage when he had almost been carried away. “I did not think the request was limited to times when you were kissing me senseless.”

He groaned, forcing himself not to think about that delectable moment. Then he frowned. “I’m bleeding?”

“Here.” Before he could ask what she was doing, Lilianna had opened up her reticule.

“Not going to hammer me, are you?”

“Not this time, Taernsby,” she said softly, pulling out a spotlessly clean handkerchief. “Now hold still. If you will barrel into things like this, I’m afraid you will have to take the consequences.”

It was hardly a bad consequence, really. Arthur stood, trying to fight against the instinct to pull the woman into his arms and kiss her senseless as she had so recently described. Lilianna in turn resisted the temptation perhaps to bop him on the nose as she delicately wiped away a small amount of blood from his cheek.

“I think it was the catch of my reticule,” she admitted quietly. “I am sorry.”

“I should not have startled you.” Arthur breathed, drinking her in as she stood on tiptoe, so close, he could almost hear her pulse.

Lilianna gave a laugh. “I should get accustomed to it, I suppose. Some of the people I help they… Well, they don’t live in Royal Crescent.”

Clenching his fists by his side to prevent himself from grasping her and shaking a promise out of her that she would never go there again, Arthur said instead, “Oh?”

“And don’t you start. Clarke can barely bring herself to accompany me, always itching to leave. And Frank is already mortified that I go there at all.”

Ah, well. At least she had a brother like Frank to look out for her . “And you don’t listen?”

“I’ve not listened to a word Frank has said in years,” Lilianna said dryly, returning her handkerchief to her reticule. “There. You’re presentable enough.”

She did not step away.

Not that it would have been particularly easy to do, in an alley this size. It reminded him of Squeezegut Alley, in Whitstable, the seaside town to which his father had taken him as a child. As his father had grown older, and rounder, it had become impossible for him to enter.

“You should be more careful,” Lilianna whispered.

Arthur snorted sardonically. “What, like you were? Lilianna, anyone could have approached you.”

“But they didn’t,” she pointed out. “It was you .”

Yes, it was. This time .

Arthur’s stomach clenched with fear at the thought of a time when he wouldn’t be here to protect her, to accept the hammer to the face from a startled woman. What would she do then?

He pushed aside the dread. He could not, would not, give into it. “You must—”

“You can’t ‘must’ me. I will live my life as I choose.” Her voice was soft, but there was iron at its core. “I am not the only woman in Bath, Arthur. I know what I’m doing.”

“Like you knew what you were doing today?” The words slipped out before he could stop them.

Lilianna grinned. “I’m sorry, who has just had blood wiped off their face?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You know what I mean,” she quipped quickly. “And before you start riding about on that high horse of yours, Arthur Nelson—”

His pulse spiked. “I am not riding on any—”

“—you should recall that you yourself have spoken rather directly and at times, crudely, to a woman in public,” Lilianna said softly. “To myself, for example.”

It was a most uncomfortable moment. There was silence in the alley, nothing but the chatter of far-off people living their far-off lives. In this moment, in this place, there was no one but themselves.

And it was uncomfortable. Arthur shied away from the truth of her words, but it was a discomforting thing to be faced with the truth of yourself.

He swallowed. “I speak plainly.”

Lilianna raised an eyebrow.

“Fine, very plainly.”

“Is that what you call it?” she said lightly.

Arthur tried to shrug. “I only speak that way because I wanted to catch your attention. And it worked. Here we are.”

Her smile was stifled but not successfully. “We’re here because you followed me down an alley, you dolt.”

And it was the delicate insult that made him swell and his spirits soar. Arthur had been cut down, cut off, and now literally cut by this woman, both in public and in private. He had kissed her and tried desperately to do more, yet it was in this moment that he felt closest to her.

Not just because she was standing before him, her breasts grazing his chest when they both inhaled at the same time.

But because they were happy. Together. Here, in this moment, she had called him a “dolt” and now he never wanted to be called anything else.

“Lord, if my mother could see this.” She sighed. “It doesn’t exactly fit the picture of a perfect daughter.”

Perfect . It was the right word to describe her, yet a shadow had passed over Lilianna’s face as she had spoken.

“‘Perfect’?”

Her cheeks pinked. “It’s… Well, I am the eldest daughter of a marquess. I am a Chance. There are certain expectations—”

“Lofty expectations, by the sound of it,” Arthur interjected gently.

He couldn’t take his eyes from her face. It was the most vulnerable he had ever seen her; the admission that she was seeking some sort of validation, that her parents had requirements of her.

Lilianna’s brief smile was heartbreaking. “I’ve always tried—I mean, I want to be the perfect daughter. The perfect Chance, the perfect… I know my worth, I know my value. I know the sort of person they all want me to be. Being perfect, it’s hardly easy, and—”

“You are so precious,” he said quietly.

Lilianna stilled, her laughter evaporating like the tide along a shore.

“Lilianna, you… you are so precious,” Arthur said, his voice cracking. “Damn, what I mean is—”

“I know what you mean,” she said softly, lifting a hand to his cheek and brushing past a part that hurt, but not as badly as his stomach. “I know, Arthur.”

And then she was kissing him.

Arthur could hardly believe it was happening, his mind still unable to accept that she had done something so forward and so bold, but she was. Lady Lilianna Chance, the ice-cold daughter of a marquess who had cut him down to size the first time they’d met, was kissing him, pushing him up against the wall, the reticule dropped to the ground, her hands now in his hair and her moans on his lips.

He had promised himself restraint the next time he drank from her, but he had forgotten just how sweet she tasted.

Clutching her to him and exulting in the delicacy of her waist, Arthur poured as much of his technique into the kiss, pushing back the brim of her bonnet with his forehead, parting her lips gently, then ravishing the inside of her mouth.

Oh, she tasted so sweet. So succulent. So innocent, waiting for him to progress the kiss, despite her eagerness at the beginning.

Well, he could teach her.

Shifting his feet and delighting in the way she squeaked in surprise, Arthur took a step forward, pushing her against the opposite wall. Before she could say anything, he had captured her lips with a passionate kiss, but he didn’t stop there.

“Oh, Arthur…”

Her bonnet falling askew off her scalp and to the ground with the roughness of his pressure, her head lolled back as his hand found her breast, squeezing gently at first and caressing just where her nipple would be under all this damned fabric. His mouth moved to her neck, nipping and teasing kisses down until her reached her collarbone. Here he sucked, desperate to taste her afresh.

Lilianna quivered in his arms. “Oh, yes, yes…”

Her moans thrust him forward, tempted him to take liberties he had not considered. He nudged her feet apart, thrusting himself forward between her legs and almost crying out himself at the sensation of coming home.

This was where he belonged. With Lilianna’s arms around him and the taste of her skin on his tongue and the warmth of her core tangible through the fabric of his trousers—trousers that would not be keeping them apart for long—

And that was when he forced himself to stop.

“S-Stop.” Arthur groaned, staggering to the side, away from this woman, who was quite clearly going to be the death of him.

Lilianna was blinking as though surfacing from a deep pool, and he thanked the stars that this wasn’t night or he would truly have been in trouble.

As it was, he wasn’t sure precisely how he was going to walk.

“Why?” she asked, lips bruised pink with the strength of their ardor.

Arthur forced himself to swallow twice before responding. It wouldn’t do to say exactly what thoughts had been cascading through his mind but moments ago.

“Because—Because otherwise, I won’t,” he said simply. “Stop.”

Lilianna’s shock, her wide eyes and parted lips, was momentary. It was swiftly replaced by a grin. “And if I didn’t want you to?”

“Dear God, woman, you’re going to destroy me.” Arthur groaned with a dry laugh, trying to force himself not to look at her heaving breasts, the way he had marked her on the neck. Christ, he’d marked her. Made her his own.

Think, man!

“Good,” she said with a grin. “I want to destroy you. I… I want you to know what it is to be looked at by you.”

She was more than he could ever have expected, more than he deserved—certainly more than he’d bargained for.

Arthur hesitated, then said the words he’d wanted to say for days. Words that meant something different now. “So does this mean you will marry me?”

Lilianna stepped back, leaning against the wall opposite him as she appraised him with a blatant glance up and down his form. Arthur was not accustomed to such an approach and discovered to his horror that heat was cascading up him.

His eagerness to hear her speak was only just restrained by his determination to let her think. If she could agree… If she was about to say that she would be his…

“Perhaps,” Lilianna said, her voice almost a whisper. “But we’ve got to do something first.”

Oh, this is more like it.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Arthur said, his fingers scrabbling to undo the buttons of his trousers. “God, I never thought that we… That you’d want to—”

“Not that !” Lilianna was laughing, and his shoulders slumped as he realized just what an idiot had been. “You think I want my first time to be in an alley?”

“No.” No, of course not. He was a complete fool. “But then… what?”

Lilianna grinned.