Page 19 of Not a Chance in Hell (The Chances #6)

I t was very difficult to practice Mozart when one’s doorbell was jangling so unpleasantly.

It was a convenient excuse. With a great sense of relief, Lilianna closed the lid of the pianoforte and checked her gown for any marks or scuffs. There was clearly someone coming to visit and it would not do to be untidily dressed.

Even if her entire family was away, there was no need to let the side down.

“Y-You must be perfect. You m-must always be p-perfect!”

The marchioness’s words resounded in Lilianna’s head as she settled herself gracefully upon the sofa, ensuring to tuck one ankle behind the other and keep her head upright.

There. She was ready.

Unfortunately, that did not appear to matter a great deal. The doorbell kept jangling, the clanging echoing resounding louder and louder in Lilianna’s mind as she waited for…

Her shoulders slumped. “Of course.”

After living with servants her entire life, it was still getting difficult to remember that she was here alone with only Clarke for company. And as hard-working as she was—and Lilianna had never realized how difficult it was to press a gown until her maid had roped her into helping in the laundry room yesterday—it was perhaps too much to expect the only servant in the house to do everything.

Which left… her.

“Clarke?” Lilianna called out hopefully.

After all, she’d already made the mistake once of opening her own door. Look where that had led.

Pushing aside the memory of her and the earl upon the table sternly and chastising herself for even allowing the thought to meander into her mind, Lilianna turned and leaned over the sofa, as though that would help her voice travel farther.

“Clarke?”

No one answered. Not her, and not the door.

Lilianna sighed. “How long does it take to recover from scarlet fever, anyway?”

Surely, it could not be long until Humphreys was well again and Frank out of danger—then her family could return, and all the other servants, and her life could go…

Well. Not back to how it was .

She could never do that, not now she knew what it was to love and be loved. Not now her innocence had been taken from her. Not now she could never look another man in the face without flushing and knowing, or at the very least guessing, what was lying underneath his trousers.

Lilianna cleared her throat as the doorbell continued to jangle. Well, no one else is going to answer it.

Sighing as she swept out of the drawing room into the hall, she wished not for the first time that her Papa had listened to her desperate please to update their front door. The fashion was quite different now, with an elegant triptych of colored glass being quite the thing. Not only would it look better, she had argued vehemently last spring, but it would make it easier to see who was approaching the door before it was opened.

As it was, John Chance had said it was a frivolous waste of money and that front-door fashions, if there were such a thing, would soon swing back around to solid doors.

And so Lilianna unlocked the door and grasped the handle firmly, ensuring to place her coldest, most aloof expression on her face before she opened the door to the mysterious stranger.

Just half an inch of gap was enough for Lilianna to slam it back into place.

“Lilianna!”

“Absolutely not,” she muttered fiercely as the door slid back into its frame.

But it hadn’t. Somehow, despite the rapidity with which she had moved, Arthur Nelson, Earl of Taernsby and general tyrant, had managed to get a toehold into the crack of the door.

It was quite literally a toehold. Lilianna resisted the urge to tread on the very tip of his boot that had managed to wedge itself into the gap and instead glared profusely at the man who was attempting to force his way into her home.

Her home!

“Go away!” she snapped.

Arthur groaned. It surely hurt, Lilianna realized, to have one’s toes the only thing preventing solid wood and solid wood from colliding, especially as she was putting her entire weight against the door.

Good.

“Lilianna, I just want to speak with you.”

“I said, go away !”

“You’re really hurting my—”

“Good!” Lilianna cried, heaving her body against the door and wishing to goodness she had a brother or two at home to assist her.

When she halted, she caught the momentary gaze of the man who was attempting to shove his way inside. His mouth was open, his eyes dull, his posture stooped. And he arrested her with his searching gaze.

He was… devastated. It couldn’t just have been the pain in his foot that was making him look that wretched, could it? She had never seen a man look so injured yet so besotted. It gave him a look of agonizing desire and she did not know what to do about it.

Pulse quickening, stomach twisting, core aching, Lilianna tried to think, but her full attention was caught by the twin focuses of pushing the door closed—or attempting to—and the look on Arthur’s face.

The man she—

She did not, could not, would not love him. How could she betray herself so utterly by loving a man who was so treacherous?

“You really are hurting my foot,” Arthur said, his voice strained in the effort to keep the door open. “But if it will help you forgive me…”

His voice trailed away, cheeks a burning red as he caught her eye again.

Lilianna blanched. How did he—it was most unfair that he could do that. Treacherous men should not be able to look so… so innocent! Betrayers should not be allowed to look betrayed.

Swallowing hard and hating that he had managed to wrongfoot her with just a few words, Lilianna looked away from his face. Perhaps that would help. Perhaps ignoring his pleading eyes was the only way she could keep herself resolute.

Unfortunately, that meant she had to look at something else.

Lilianna’s eyes widened. “That’s… That…”

Her mind could not fathom and therefore her words could not explain what she was seeing. Because it couldn’t be.

“You’re holding something,” she whispered, her shoulder still leaning against the door. “You… It’s…”

It wasn’t a roomful of roses, like the first time the Earl of Taernsby had attempted to gain her attention. It wasn’t a thousand delphiniums—Frank had been most meticulous and counted—which had made her mother sneeze for three days.

It was a forget-me-not. In a pot.

Lilianna swallowed. All the fight drained out of her, her shoulder lifted from the door, and Arthur gasped as his foot was released.

He did not attempt to push forward, for which she was grateful. In this moment, in this state, she was not sure she was cogent enough to stop him.

“A forget-me-not.”

Arthur appeared confused. “Of course.”

“Of course”? There was no “of course” about it.

“You remembered,” Lilianna said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. They were still sky blue, still passionate and brimming with emotion.

She swallowed. He was still, in many ways, the Arthur with whom she had fallen in love. But no, he was also the man who had betrayed her, who had kissed another woman just after they had—

“Lilianna,” Arthur said firmly, slamming a hand against the door just as she attempted to close it. “I remember everything you say.”

“I don’t want to listen to you.” She spoke through tears, tears that threatened to fall at any moment.

“You must hear it. You must hear me.” Arthur spoke with an urgency Lilianna had never heard from him before. “You must because I am falling apart without you, and—and I love you.”

I love you.

Three small words. They shouldn’t mean anything, not when spoken by a rake who had clearly no real understanding of just how painful it had been to see him, watch him take up with a mistress mere hours after they had shared… shared everything.

Yet they were the words she craved to hear from him again, and again, and again. Words that promised so much and yet so little. Words that were meant to be shared between two people who were committed to each other. Who could not imagine life without each other.

Who trusted each other.

Lilianna swallowed. Oh, it would be all too easy to be taken in. That handsome face, those features arranged in a most contrite manner. A man she wanted to believe.

The charming, bragging, confident man she had met—he had been enchanting, yes. But it was the other Arthur, the one only she had seen, who was so endearing.

She saw him now. The bluster, the fight, was all gone, and there instead was a man who truly felt his loss. The loss of her.

Try as she might, Lilianna could not prevent warmth from suffusing through her. He missed her—truly missed her. It wasn’t that other woman’s door he was crashing through, trying to beg for forgiveness.

It was hers.

“You hurt me,” she whispered.

She’d let go of the door. She couldn’t fight it and him, and the determination to resist the charms of Arthur Nelson, the Earl of Taernsby, was taking a toll.

Slowly, Arthur opened the door. He did not step in.

“I know,” he said quietly, pain etched across his tense face. His fingers gripped the potted plant tightly.

“I don’t know how to forgive you,” Lilianna said softly.

“I know,” came the solemn response.

“I don’t know if I can trust you again.” It hurt, saying these words, but it was almost like the poison of the betrayal was being drawn out with every syllable.

Perhaps it was being with Arthur. To be with him was to adore him, worse luck, and Lilianna had tried to fight off his charms before and knew it was a losing battle.

She needed him. Part of her always would.

“I know.”

“You don’t deserve to be forgiven,” she heard herself saying stiffly.

She noticed the slight slump of his shoulders, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he appeared to collect himself, the overall demeanor of defeat.

And it was intoxicating.

“I know,” Arthur said in a cracked voice, his eyes dropping to his hands and the plant within it.

She was about to make a decision, one she could not easily take back. She might regret it, yes.

She might live the most incredible life.

Sniffing back a chuckle and hardly knowing if she was going to laugh or cry, Lilianna managed to say, “It is most irritating that it is getting easier to forgive you with each passing second!”

Arthur grinned, and it was the perfect medley of shy and uncertain and bold and brash. “I know.”

Her Arthur. Hers.

It was almost too much, but Lilianna managed to hold herself together.

She was a Chance. She was the eldest daughter of the Marquess of Aylesbury. She was not going to burst into tears on her front step.

Probably.

“I… I thought love would be easier than this,” she confessed before she had time to draw the words back.

A shadow flittered across Arthur’s face. “I know—so did I. Though if I am entirely honest—”

“And you had better be, my man, because I have had it up to here with your surprises!”

“I just… I was going to say…” Arthur swallowed and a shiver of fear flickered up Lilianna’s spine.

What on earth was he trying to say? Was this, in fact, not a reconciliation—merely an apology?

Her pulse skipped a painful beat. Surely, life would not be that cruel. Surely, Arthur would not be that thoughtless, raising her hopes to a peak before forcing them to tumble off a cliff?

“I never thought any woman would want me,” Arthur said in a rush.

Lilianna could not help it. She laughed. A snort would have been unladylike, and therefore, it most definitely could not have been a snort that had left her nose, but it had been something very akin to one.

“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” she said incredulously. “What, because you were too handsome, or too charming, or too skilled in the bedchamber?”

She had spoken the words to be derisive and anyone else would have flinched at such coldness.

But Lilianna saw to her great surprise that Arthur did not. He held her gaze, strong and yet not forceful, preventing her from looking away as her stomach flipped over.

“No,” Arthur said softly. “Because… Because I am not good at being honest. Not all the time—but I am getting better. I want to get better, be better, for you.”

Lilianna hesitated. It was charming, in a way, but it was also painful. No one liked to admit that they had any faults and Arthur had therefore been brave to admit to such.

But no one liked to think that the person they loved had any faults, either. None of the princes or heroes in her novels ever had any faults, other than a predisposition to accidentally tear the clothes off their lovers’ bodies, which, in Lilianna’s opinion, could happen to anyone.

Standing here, looking deep into Arthur’s eyes and knowing that they had almost lost whatever this was because of their pride and disinclination to speak, Lilianna had to accept that Arthur had faults. He was not perfect.

And neither was she.

Forcing down the panic that rose, Lilianna took a deep breath. “I am not perfect.”

“You said that as though you were admitting to murder,” Arthur said with a lopsided grin.

She shoved him hard on the shoulder, but he took the momentum and did not step back. “I am being serious!”

“So am I,” he teased. “‘Perfect’? You think I want perfection, Lilianna?”

Years of upbringing rose up in her defense. “What man doesn’t want a perfect wife?”

“And I would quite agree with you there, except it appears that our definitions of ‘perfect’ are not the same,” Arthur pointed out. He was still holding the forget-me-not plant in a terracotta pot. “For example, I think you most perfect when you are irritable and angry at someone, shooting them down with deft language and a sneer that a queen would envy.”

Lilianna tried not to smile. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Perhaps we both are,” he said gently. “Perhaps we both love each other, and foolishly wanted perfection, and instead have an even better perfect. The perfect we make together.”

The perfect we make together.

It was a heady thought, and not one Lilianna could fully understand. Perfect… together? Perfect was always something she had to do alone, achieve alone, maintain alone.

Perfect was being alone, after all: set apart, different, better than everyone else.

The idea of being perfect together, of their imperfections washing away the sharp edges of their characters…

Lilianna laughed helplessly. “I desperately wish to stay angry at you.”

“And?”

“And you know full well I can’t,” she admitted. “I love you, that’s the trouble.”

She loved him. It felt strange to say it like this, in these circumstances, on the front step of her Bath home, where any passerby could see them.

She wouldn’t have it any differently.

“You—You do?”

Lilianna scowled. “Don’t give me that, Arthur Nelson. You know full well how I feel.”

“Yes, but you haven’t said it before,” said Arthur, his grin growing. “God, it’s wonderful. Say it again.”

“No.” Heat seared her cheeks.

“Please?”

“Absolutely not,” Lilianna said, drawing herself up sternly. “You’ve heard it once. Let that satisfy you.”

“If I get on my knees and beg, will you say it again?”

The heat was descending now, past her décolletage, past her breasts, settling in her core and burning an ache in her that Lilianna knew could only be quenched by Arthur’s touch.

She was most definitely not going to smile. “Fine. I love you.”

The bland tone with which she spoke did not appear to matter. Arthur was almost vibrating with happiness and Lilianna could not help but laugh at the transformation.

“You are daft.”

“Probably,” said Arthur ruefully. “And you’re not the only one to think so, so who am I to argue with the majority?”

Lilianna stiffened.

He wouldn’t… Surely, he wasn’t referring to other women now. After all of this.

Evidently, the concern was revealed in her eyes, for Arthur’s own widened in panic. “No, not—I meant my cousin! My cousin, the Countess of Barlow, she came to see me. She thinks I’m a complete dolt.”

Lilianna considered for a moment. “Good.”

“She’s also very much with child.”

“You mean she’ll have the child soon? And you did not know?”

He winced. “I think ‘extremely’ was the word she used,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “It’s most trying, discovering that you were so wrong. I hope that the next time I need to apologize to you, she won’t be there to make me feel like a complete clod.”

The next time…

Lilianna reached forward and took the forget-me-not pot out of Arthur’s unresisting hands. She placed it on the floor in the hall and turned to the man whom she knew now she could not live without.

“Arthur,” she said seriously.

His lips twitched. “Lilianna.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” he said with a grin.

She shook her head and sent him what she hoped was a wry look, completely unable to dislike this man who had at first forced, then schemed his way into her affections. “I need to know. About her.”

His smile disappeared and his brows puckered, but he did not shout, or scream, or step away. Instead, he said, “She was my mistress, last year. I last saw her—October? November? It’s been over for months, certainly for me. I suppose I was not clear enough with her. You… Well. You saw the letter.”

She had. She had also seen a kiss.

As though the blackguard could read her mind, Arthur nodded. “I didn’t expect her there and I never initiated a thing. I mean, I didn’t want what she did. It’s over. It never really began, not really. I didn’t feel anything for her comparable to what I feel for you.”

Lilianna tried to listen, really listen to his words. Not just his words, but his tone. His honesty. The depth of pain in his words.

He was telling the truth.

“We’re going to argue all the time,” she said quietly.

Arthur grinned and somehow pulled her into his arms. The safety and security and need of his gesture poured through Lilianna’s gown, unable to be ignored.

“I know,” he said, his grin broadening. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Lilianna sighed as she wound her fingers in his hair and knew, as she felt his pulse throb through her arm, that she was home. “I suppose so.”

The kiss was slow, and reverential, yet still packed so much heat, Lilianna whimpered in his mouth. Needing him, craving him, was nothing like finally being sated by the crush of his lips or the teasing aches of his touch.

Arthur tipped her head back, deepening the kiss, and Lilianna welcomed him in as the only man who would ever possess her in this way. Every part of her leaned against him, desperate to be closer, to abandon herself to the pleasure this man could give her.

His tongue swept across her own, sparking tingles of need through her body, her nipples aching to be touched as she ground her breasts against his chest.

More, more, she needed more—and he would give it to her. Soon.

Even in the giddiness of the kiss, however, Lilianna was vaguely aware of the sound of a carriage slowing to a stop just behind the man who was kissing her so thoroughly. When Arthur pulled away, both of them panting heavily, a voice erupted behind him.

“I trust my daughter on her own for a few days! Always insisting she’ll be fine alone, that nothing will happen to her!”

“J-John, d-don’t—”

“Get off me, Florence, I need to rip this man apart!”

“ Papa !”

“Frank, I don’t want to hurt you or your mother. Let go!”

“Ah,” said Lilianna helplessly as Arthur turned around with wide eyes. “I think we may have some explaining to do.”