“Sadly, Your Grace, money is not enough to secure a girl a sponsor.”
He raised a brow. “A girl? Or a girl like you?”
Relief flooded through her at the question, returning them to solid, adversarial ground. She narrowed her gaze. “What’s that to mean?”
“A girl who sits for a nude.”
Anger flared. Anger, and a hurt she’d tucked away and sworn never to consider again. “Any girl,” she said, tartly. “You need connections for a season.”
“You’re connected. I’m a goddamn duke.”
“You forgot me,” she said finally. “I had no sponsor because none would have me. A shadow of a duke is not enough to win over the attention of London, it seems. Shocking as it is.”
“I am here now.”
She raised a brow. “Yes, well, surprisingly, your dukedom has lost some of its . . . cachet.”
“Why in hell is that?”
She made a show of tracking the swath of tartan from his shoulder, over his torso, and down to the place where it hung in pleats just above his knees. “I cannot imagine.”
He scowled at her. “You’re having a season now. This year.”
She laughed around the flare of panic that came at the words. “I don’t want one.” She had already been too much on show. The gossip pages already knew enough of her. And that was before Derek became involved.
“I’m afraid I don’t care. It’s the way we get you married.”
“There is no we, Duke. There is no getting me married. I told you. I wish my freedom.”
“If you want freedom from me, lass, it comes in the form of marriage. Nothing else.”
“Couldn’t you imagine me marrying myself? Give me the dowry for taking responsibility for myself?”
He smirked. “Marriage to a man.”
“You ask me to trade one master for another.”
He raised a brow. “I’m offering you your pick of men. Any man in London.”
“And I’m to get down on my knees and thank you.”
“Gratitude for such an exorbitant dowry would not be out of line,” he pointed out.
She offered a long-suffering sigh. “And if I don’t agree to a marriage?”
He opened his mouth as though he had something very serious to say, before thinking twice of it and closing it once more. He took a deep breath and exhaled, all frustration, before meeting her gaze. “You want your funds? You get yourself married.”
“And my husband gets my money.” And a ruined wife.
He watched her for a long, serious moment before he repeated himself. “Where would you go, lass?”
She lifted one shoulder. “Anywhere but here.”
“What does the future look like?”
It had looked like love and marriage and children. It had looked like quiet idyll and the happiness that came with contentment. With security. With the keen knowledge that one’s life was well tended.
She’d only ever wanted a family.
A man of my caliber does not marry a woman of yours.
She closed her eyes at the words, spoken by a man who had once lauded her beauty, whispered it in awe, claimed her his muse.
She shook her head, eradicating the thought, returning herself to the moment at hand. To Alec’s question. “The future looks like anywhere but London,” she said, hearing the irritation in her voice.
He shook his head. “No. That’s where it looks like. I asked what it looks like.”
It looked like a life without shame.
The thought came unbidden and painful, packed with the truth, that she’d ruined her life. That she’d risked everything for what she had believed was love.
She hated him then. Hated the way he saw too much, this great, unexpected, unwilling duke. But she would not tell him the answer. As much as he thought she was his problem to manage, he was wrong. She was her own problem.
And she would manage herself. Without him.
“It looks like happiness.”
He didn’t believe her.
He shouldn’t believe her.
He huffed his frustration. “Happiness isn’t so easily found, Lily. It is not as simple as giving you funds and setting you free.”
There was such truth in the words that she couldn’t help herself. “How do you know that?”
“Because I do,” he said. And she waited for him to elaborate, desperate for him to continue. They stood there for long moments before he finally said, “I’ve had enough of this. Your season begins tonight.”
“My season.”
“Eversley is hosting a ball. You are invited.”
A ball. Her stomach twisted at the words. She could not think of anything she wished to do less. “No, thank you.”
“You are laboring under the misapprehension that you have a choice.”
The words raised her ire. “You know there are seven other residences in London where I could hide.”
“You are unconvinced that I would find you?”
“You wouldn’t find me in time for my season to begin tonight.”
He leaned in, and when he spoke, the words were low and graveled with Scots burr, sending a shiver of something unnamable down her spine. “I will find you, lass. Always.”
Her lips fell open at the words. At the promise in them.
At the idea that she might be worth seeking.
He straightened, and the moment was gone. “Find yourself a gown, Lillian. We leave at half-nine.”
“And if I don’t?” she asked, the words softer than she intended. She cleared her throat, tried for taunt. “What then, Your Grace?”
He considered her then, his brown eyes beautiful and glittering in spite of the shiner he sported. He watched her until she grew uncomfortable, shifting beneath his attention.
“Find yourself a gown,” he repeated. “You won’t like it if I have to find one for you.”
He left the room, leaving Lily alone in an explosion of canine decor, flooded with unsettling warmth at his words.
She resisted the sensation.
She would not be unsettled by him.
Instead, she would find herself a gown, and she would do the unsettling.
Chapter 7
“LOVELY” LILY STARTS SEASON WITH SPECIOUS STYLE
At half-nine that evening, Alec stood at the foot of the main staircase, trying to avoid the gaze of Jewel. The bejeweled hound appeared to see everything from her position and, as she lay in repose on her inane silk pillow, she most certainly mocked him.
Nearly as much as his own dogs did from their position across the foyer, standing sentry.
The overwhelming canine judgment seemed entirely reasonable, however, as Alec was certain he looked ridiculous.
The tailor he’d found on Savile Row earlier in the day had sworn to be in possession of formalwear that would “perfectly accommodate His Grace,” when, in fact, the formalwear accommodated no part of him, least of all any grace he might summon. When Alec had told the simpering man such, he’d been assured that “the fit was de rigueur.”
Alec was not an imbecile, however. His coat was too tight. As were his trousers, if he were honest.
So big. A great, Scottish brute.
Nothing about you fits, you beast.
He hated England.
But time was of the essence and he could not wait for a better-fitting garment. Tonight, he began the hopefully blissfully brief end to his sojourn in England. He’d asked West to put it out that Lillian was now in possession of a massive dowry, and he felt confident that young pups across London would happily throw their hats in the ring upon their immediate arrival at Eversley House that evening. The woman was, after all, wealthy and beautiful and ward to a duke.