It did not escape him that he’d been alone with her moments earlier, but it was different. There was no time to parse the double standard of the situation, however, as Hawkins was moving toward Lily with a speed Alec did not like. He straightened in the darkness, ready to approach and tear the man limb from limb, but she spoke before he could move.
“Derek.” Alec hated Hawkins then, as his given name swirled through the darkness, soft and lovely on her lips. “Why are you here?”
“It’s London in season. Of course I am here,” Hawkins said. “I am everywhere.” He waved a hand. “Like ether.”
Alec rolled his eyes.
“Sesily said you’re here with a rich widow. For the money.”
Good girl. Disdain was precisely what she should be feeling.
“Sesily Talbot is nothing. Cheap as the rest of her family.”
What an unmitigated ass the man was.
“I just met her family. They seem quite expensive. And wonderfully honest. Unlike others.”
“All that glitters is not gold, sweet Lily.”
“It seems to me that Sesily is made of stronger stuff than gold. She’s judged harshly by the ton in large part due to her brief courtship with you, and yet she remains tall in the face of their scorn. I wish I was as strong as she.” The accusation came next. “She refused to be ruined by you.”
“I did not ruin you,” he said.
“Of course you did. Without care.” The accusation was not angry, or hurt. It came on a thread of honesty that Alec at once admired and loathed. She should be hurt. And angry.
At him.
“Poor Lovely Lily . . .” Hawkins said, reaching for her, running a finger down her cheek, down the skin that Alec thought must be impossibly soft. “You . . . you were the mirror that reflected my genius.”
Lily closed her eyes at the man’s touch. Or perhaps his words. Either way, Alec hated the longing on her face, mixed with pain. He decided then and there to destroy Derek Hawkins. For touching her. For hurting her.
He would leave him broken here, in this dark room. He’d have to apologize to the Marchioness of Eversley, he imagined, and purchase a replacement carpet, but surely she would understand that the world was better off without this loathsome eel in it.
Before Alec could do anything, however, Lily spoke. “You promised me you wouldn’t tell anyone about the painting. You told me it was for you and you alone.”
“And it was at the start, darling.”
“Don’t call me that.” Lily’s words came sharp and steel.
“Whyever not?” Hawkins said with a laugh. “Oh, Lily. Don’t be so pedestrian. You were my muse. I am sorry that you misjudged the role. You were the conduit for my art. The vessel through which the world will see the truth of my timeless influence. The portrait is my Madonna and Child. My Creation of Man. For centuries to come, people will see it and they will whisper my name with breathless awe.” He paused for effect, then practiced the whisper in question. “Derek Hawkins.”
What utter rubbish. If Alec didn’t loathe the man already, he certainly would now.
“And what of my name?” Lillian asked.
“Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter what happens to you. This is for art. For all time. You are a sacrifice to beauty. To truth. To eternity. What would you have me do, Lily? Hide it away?”
“Yes!”
“What purpose would that serve?”
“It would make you decent!” she cried. “Noble! The man I—”
Alec stiffened, hearing the rest of the sentence as clearly as if she’d said it.
The man I love.
“This is the noblest act I could commit, darling.”
There was a long silence, during which Alec could virtually feel Lily’s disappointment. And when she finally spoke, saying small and soft, “I thought you loved me,” Alec thought his heart might explode in his chest.
“Perhaps I did in my own way, sweetheart. But marrying you—impossible. I’m the greatest artist of our time. Of all time. And you are beautiful . . . but . . . as I said . . . your beauty exists as a vessel for my talent. The whole world will soon see how much.”
He set his hand to her cheek. “Darling, I never pushed you away. I was happy to have you. I would have you still. That is why I followed you here.”
The bastard.
Alec stiffened as Lily snapped her gaze to Hawkins’s. “Still?”
The artist leaned close, and Alec held back a roar of fury at the nearness, until the pompous prick whispered, “Still. Now.” There was no mistaking the sexual promise in the words. “You would like that, would you not?”
That was it. Alec went for him.
Except Lily got there first.
It felt exceedingly good to punch a man in the nose.
She knew she shouldn’t do it. She knew it wouldn’t solve her problem. Knew, too, that it would do nothing but anger Derek and likely make him more committed to her ruination.
It would only increase her shame—her shame for her feelings, for her behavior, for the consequences of it.
But there was only so much a woman could be expected to take. And once he’d resurrected the shame—along with all the pain and sadness and doubt that he’d settled upon her—she hadn’t been able to help herself.
“Ow!” Derek’s reached up to check the state of his handsome, exceedingly straight nose. “You hit me!”
“You deserved it,” she said, shaking out her hand, doing her best to ignore the sting of it. It was the first time she’d ever punched a thing, and it hurt, frankly. More than she would have imagined.
“You little bitch! You will regret that!”
“Not as much as you will regret using such language with her,” came a low Scottish burr from the darkness.
Lily let out a surprised squeak as she spun to find Alec crossing the room, six and a half feet of massive, muscular fury with a single goal—to finish the job that Lily had started.
His fist was significantly larger than hers, and packed an impressive wallop. She should not have enjoyed the sound of bone meeting flesh but, she confessed, it was rather thrilling.
As was the way Hawkins dropped to the floor like a sack of grain.
And the way Alec followed him down to lift him up with the strength of one massive arm and hit him a second time. And a third.
It was when he pulled back for the fourth blow that his coat split in two, right down the back seam. In the sound of the rending, Lily found her voice. “Stop!”
Alec froze, as though she held him on a string. He looked back over his shoulder. “Do ye want him?”
She shook her head, confused by both the question and his brogue, thickened with fury. “What?”
“Do ye. Want him,” he repeated. “To husband.”
“What?” This time it was Derek who sputtered the reply.
Alec returned his attention to his victim. “I did not give you permission to speak.” He looked back to Lily. “If you want him, he is yours.”
She believed him. There was no question in her mind that if she announced that she wanted to be Mrs. Derek Hawkins, Alec would make it so. They would be married before sunup. She’d get the man she’d mooned over for months. The one she’d cried herself to sleep for more times than she could count.
Alec would give him to her.
A week ago, perhaps she’d have wanted it.
But now . . .
“No,” she whispered.
“With conviction, lass.”
“No,” she said, more firmly. “You are terribly committed to getting me married, Your Grace, if you think to marry me to him.”