One Naughty Night2 (10 page)

Lily remembered the scheme very well, for she had tried it once or twice herself. A child selling matches would suddenly duck in front of a passing well-dressed gentleman and drop her matches and then start crying and fussing as if he had pushed her. Usually a crowd would start to gather to see what the noise was about, and the man would pay off the child just to stop her from making a scene.

But this man was having none of that. He grabbed the girl by the arm, making her cry out in unfeigned pain. “I’m not listening to any of your lies!” he said. “You street rats have done this to me once too often. I’m calling the constables this time.”

“Oh, no, sir! Please,” the girl sobbed. “I didn’t do nothin’, I swear.”

The man gave her a hard shake, and Lily swung down off her horse. Isabel called her name, but she was hardly aware of what she was doing. She only knew she had to stop what was happening to that child.

She pushed her way through the crowd that had predictably begun to gather and shoved the man away from the girl.

He was so startled by her sudden interference that he fell back a step, and the girl’s wails faltered. He swung around toward Lily, and she saw that his bearded face was bright red, his eyes blazing with fury.

“What is the meaning of this?” he shouted.

But Lily was just as angry as he was, and she stood her ground. “Apologize to her for your unacceptable behavior,” she said. Her voice was steady and cold even though her hands were shaking.

“I should do
what
?” the man choked out.

“You are behaving like a brute on a public walkway, sir, and to a child at that,” Lily said. “Someone should call the constables on
you
.”

“I don’t have to take this nonsense,” the man said. He suddenly shoved the child away and strode off into the park. The girl landed hard on the pavement and whimpered, a more fearful sound than her loud wails.

Lily dropped to her knees beside her and reached for the child’s scraped, dirty hand. “Are you all right, my dear?” she whispered. The girl yanked away from her. “No, it’s all right now, I promise.”

The feral glow in the child’s eyes as she glared past the tangles of her hair made Lily want to cry. She tried to smile reassuringly, to ask the child her name, but suddenly she was pushed out of the way and a woman swept the girl up in her arms.

Lily sat back on her heels and looked up to see a thin, gray-faced woman. She also glared down at Lily as she clutched at the weeping girl.

“You leave her alone! All of you,” the woman cried. Before Lily could stop her, she whirled around, and the two of them disappeared. The crowd, sensing there was nothing more to see in this impromptu little scene, dispersed.

But Lily couldn’t move from where she knelt. She stared numbly at the spot where the child had been, at the scattered matches. She let out a sob.

“Shhh, Lily, it’s all right,” Aidan whispered in her ear.

Slowly, slowly, his soft words pierced through the buzzing in her head, and she became aware that he held her hands. She had stripped off her gloves when she knelt by the child, and he rubbed at her cold, bare fingers.

Lily shook her head and raised her gaze from their joined hands to meet his eyes. They watched her face carefully, the blue so dark it almost looked black. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all, but she remembered his cynical smile when they first met in the park, the way he seemed to know something, some secret, about her. And she had just behaved appallingly in front of him. The girl’s plight had catapulted her back into a past she would never want anyone to know, least of all him.

She tried to pull away from him, but he held on to her. “I’m quite all right,” she said, and tried to laugh. “So silly of me to overreact like that.”

“You did not overreact,” he answered. “Anyone with a heart would have been angry.”

“But no one else made a scene, did they?” No one else here at the fine park gates knew what it felt like to be bruised and hungry, to know there was no place to run. She tugged harder at his hands, feeling a hot bubble of panic rise up in her when he wouldn’t let her go. He looked at her searchingly, as if he wanted to see what she hid in her locked-away soul.

But she couldn’t let him see. She could
never
let him see.

“Please, Aidan, I’m fine now!” she cried. “You can let me go.”

“Lily, you almost fainted. Even now you look as if you just saw a ghost.”

“I did,” she whispered.

He let her go then, but only to put his arm around her shoulder. He seemed to have forgotten they stood on a public pavement, but Lily remembered. She eased away from him and rubbed her hands over her arms. Where was Isabel?

“Please, let me see you home,” Aidan said.

Lily shook her head. Finally, to her relief, she saw Isabel making her way toward them on the lane, leading Lily’s horse by the bridle.

“Thank you, Lord Aidan, but there’s no need,” Lily said. “I see my sister now.”

Before he could argue, she brushed off her sister’s cries of concern and swung up into the saddle. “Good day, Lord Aidan,” she said.

He stayed her with one hand on her saddle. Lily stared down at his long, elegant fingers against the brown leather, so powerful in their very stillness. So alluring. That panic to get away choked her again, and she wanted to bring her crop down on his hand, to make him ache as she did.

“You can run now, Lily,” he said quietly. “But not forever.”

Then he let her go and stepped back. Lily tugged at the reins and guided her horse as fast as she dared to the end of the road, Isabel scrambling to keep up with her. Lily could sense that her sister practically vibrated with the force of the questions she wanted to ask, but Isabel stayed silent as they rode home.

And Lily could swear she felt the burning force of Aidan’s blue gaze on her skin long after she knew he was out of sight. She forced herself not to look back at him.

Aidan slowly drew the small pair of black leather gloves across his palm. He had found them on the ground where
Lily had knelt beside the child, and he had put them in his coat pocket to give back to her, but in the rush he forgot.

The smell of her violet perfume drifted from the crushed folds, and he closed his eyes to inhale deeply.

Damn Lily St. Claire. Why did she get under his skin like that? Invading his senses until she was all he thought about.

She was a puzzle, a mystery, and it was true he could never resist a challenge. Every time he thought he had seen who she was—a lonely widow he wanted in his bed, a temptress who held on to men’s love letters to torment them—she changed completely. She slipped out of his grasp, leaving him more baffled than ever.

Leaving him still wanting her. And he wanted more than her body for a few diverting nights. He wanted her secrets, her smiles.

Aidan frowned as he stared at the patch of pavement where she had knelt by the ragged child. He had been angry with her for what she had done with Freddy, playing with his heart while keeping his letters. He had been ready to confront her, to do whatever he had to do to get those damned letters back, to give her a taste of her own malice.

But then he saw her face as she looked at that child, the raw torment in her brown eyes. For a moment, her cool mask fell away, and he saw a world of pain behind it. He remembered the burning longing he had seen all too briefly when he kissed her in her office; it seemed a part of that same complex, tormented world she tried to hide away. She said she was no actress, but Aidan thought she was the finest actress he had ever seen.

What would he see in her eyes if he had her in his bed,
her body under his as he slowly made her come apart? What would she do then? Would he hold the real Lily at last?

Aidan shook his head and muttered an oath as he reached for his horse’s reins and leaped into the saddle. Lily was becoming a distraction he didn’t need, almost an obsession. It was because she still hid from him, ran from him, and the chase had his temper up. Once he held her, knew her, the fire would fade, and he would see she was like all other women.

And Aidan liked all women too much to settle for just one for very long. He liked his life just as it was.

He turned the horse toward home and resisted the strange urge to ride past Lily’s house. He would let her run for now. But soon, very soon, he would go after her, and she couldn’t hide from him forever.

“So there you are.”

Lily whirled away from the mirror in the foyer, gasping at the sudden sound of a voice. Isabel had gone upstairs, and Lily thought she was alone for a moment. Her heart pounded as Dominic stepped out of the evening shadows that stretched over the polished parquet floor.

“You scared me,” she said breathlessly. “I thought everyone was at the theater.”

Dominic held up a stack of papers as he studied her carefully, frowning. Lily always hated it when he turned serious. “Father forgot these. Did you enjoy your ride?”

“Very much.” Lily turned back to the mirror to finish unpinning her hat. The eyes that stared back at her in the glass glittered too brightly, and her cheeks were slashed
with red. She looked and felt feverish, shaking with old memories and new, frightening feelings for Aidan.

When he had held her after the child was snatched away, she had wanted to cling to him, losing herself in the clean heat and strength of him. In that flashing moment, she had
needed
him, and she didn’t like that feeling at all.

“You’re back late,” Dominic said.

“The park was very crowded today,” Lily answered. She wished he would go away and quit looking at her like that. She had had enough today of people trying to peer into her soul. She needed to be alone, to rebuild the walls of her careful defenses. To forget.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” Dominic said suddenly.

Surprised, Lily raised her gaze to meet his in the glass. Dominic so rarely apologized. “For what?”

“For pestering you about Aidan bloody Huntington. You were quite right—it’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s not.” Lily slowly put her hat down on the pier table under the mirror. “But you seemed so deeply opposed to me even talking to him. Why be sorry now?”

Dominic scowled. “I had a talk with Brendan.”

“Oh? And what did the two of you decide about my life?” she asked wryly.

“Know thy enemy.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Perhaps it would be a good thing for one of us to be friends with a Huntington.”

“Oh, would it now?” She whirled around toward Dominic, trying to resist the urge to hit him with her hat. It had been a long, trying day, and she was sick of people trying to use her. “Well, Dominic St. Claire, I am not your spy.”

He held up his hand. “That is not what I meant—”

“Oh? Then pray tell, what did you mean? Because that is exactly what it sounded like. To spy on the Huntingtons through Lord Aidan.”

“We just want to know what they’re planning. They’ve caused the St. Claires enough grief already.”

“That was long in the past! And perhaps you want to cause them a bit of grief now?” Lily lifted the heavy hem of her habit and hurried up the stairs. Her head was pounding in earnest now, and she was tired. Tired of men and their schemes, tired of her own emotions tying her up in knots.

“Well, you and Brendan go and do your worst to the Huntingtons—get yourselves killed in duels, cast out of society—and see if I care,” she called over the balustrade. “I won’t be your spy.”

“Lily, please.” The soft tone of Dominic’s voice stopped her foot on the next step. Her confident, laughing brother never sounded like that.

She peered down at him as he came to stand just below her.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have said anything tonight, not when you’re tired. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just… Damn it, Lily, it’s the Huntingtons.”

“And we are the St. Claires. I know,” Lily answered quietly. No two families could be further apart. None could hate each other more. And she could not forget that no matter what else he was, Aidan was a Huntington.

“We’ll talk more of this later, Dominic,” she said, and continued up the stairs toward the empty darkness of her room.

L
ily slowly wandered around the edge of the main salon of the Devil’s Fancy, watching the people gathered around the card tables. It was not as crowded as the night they had opened. She had heard that Queen Victoria was in attendance at the Italian opera tonight before she left for Coburg, and most of society would be gathered there to curry her favor. But they still had quite a crowd at the club, people who were becoming regulars, who would prefer the thrill of winning and losing on the turn of a card to staring at the young queen and her stern German husband.

Lily rubbed her lace-gloved hands over her bare arms as she listened to the laughter and chatter and the clack of the roulette wheel spinning. She saw it all and took it all in, but she didn’t feel as if she were really there. She felt like she had been wandering in this strange half-waking state ever since the incident at the park yesterday.

Her nightmares of the past and Dominic’s hints that she should spy on the Huntingtons, it was all tangled up in her mind. She worked to pull her usual calm coolness around her, tried to lose herself in account books and the club, but it all hovered there at the edge of her thoughts.

She noticed Brendan staring at her from across the room, and she made herself smile at him. He didn’t smile back, but he gave her a nod before looking down at the cards in his hand. In the rosy-amber glow of the gaslight, the tracery of scars on his left cheek was softened and his brushed-back sweep of black hair gleamed. He was fashionably dressed in his usual black-and-white evening attire, yet still there was that air of barely leashed rawness about him, something dark and primitive and angry.

Brendan was the brother Lily understood the least, for he always stood slightly apart from the rest of the world. He never told anyone how he got those scars, what had happened to him when he disappeared several years ago and returned with his gorgeous face marred. And Lily never dared ask.