Page 8 of Inconvenient Honor
“Should I be shocked?” Lily asked, eyebrows high, hiding her smile.
“Of course,” the countess lied to general laughter.
“You walked over here with purpose,” Lady Chadbourn continued more softly. “Don’t tell me you plan to leave us so early.”
The change in company tempted Lily to stay. She knew she ought to linger long enough to speak with Walter Stewart and continue her campaign to fix his attention. Tonight she couldn’t bear it, not with Glenaire nearby. Walter Stewart would keep for London.
Lily opened her mouth to plead headache when a rustle of skirts around the pianoforte alerted her to an open door.
“I fear I must,” she answered quickly. “We leave so early tomorrow, and I suspect a headache will keep me from sleep.” If she didn’t have one now, she would after an hour in the same room with Glenaire or Volkov, either one. She rose and accepted the countess’s sympathy.
Lily reached the midpoint of the enormous salon when she saw Glenaire’s tall frame fill the doorway and linger there. A hunted look swept across his face; a mask of indifference quickly shuttered it. Lily hesitated, pretending interest in a Dresden figure on the Adam mantelpiece in the center of the wall. She waited for him to move away from the door.
The duchess marched toward her son with a swish of skirts, andhe moved forward from the doorway. He looks resigned to the inevitable.
A crush of gentlemen entered behind Glenaire to seek their companions. Lily thought that if she stepped softly she could slip past the marquess and his mother and get to the door without being noticed. She paused her escape at the sound of her name.
“I saw you staring at that Thornton woman,” Lily heard the duchess hiss.
When she hesitated, one of the junior diplomats smiled at her hopefully and approached. He stood with his back to the duchess, blocking Lily from view. He began to complement her gown, a conversation that necessitated little beyond nods and blushes.
“I did not stare at Lilias Thornton,” the marquess replied to his mother under his breath.
Lily smiled up at her admirer, one ear cocked to the conversation behind him.
“‘Lilias,’” the duchess sneered. “Her very name has the reek of Scotland, as if that hair weren’t enough. She is nobody and has pretensions above her station.”
Lily’s smile wavered, but she kept her admirer talking. Eavesdropping seldom blessed the listener.
“Her father is a well-regarded diplomat,” the marquess responded. “Hardly ‘nobody,’ but you needn’t fear. Miss Thornton has the least hope of becoming Marchioness of Glenaire, much less Duchess of Sudbury, of any woman here,” he said.
Quite, Lilias thought.The very least hope.She made her excuses. One thought carried her up the stairs with unladylike speed. She needed to return to London, to begin her marriage quest anew, to regain her sanity.
She pushed open the door, determined to leave at first light. A folded paper just inside the room where it had been slipped under the door made her stop abruptly and grab it up.
She snapped the message open.
Perhaps we will meet in London. I will certainly see you. Be careful what you do and say, Darling Lily.
V
Lily fought back rising bile.Volkov. How can I pursue respectable marriage with Volkov lurking in corners?
She wished her papa home, she wished him safe, even as she knew wishes solved nothing. Panic flooded Lily’s imagination with desperate ideas in torrents that eddied and flowed until one idea began to shape itself in her head. Neither fear of reprisal nor thought of propriety shook it loose. Prone on her bed, she thrashed about for another solution and found none. Finally, weary, she rose and began to write.
Moments later she dribbled hot wax to seal the missive.
The Marble Marquess isn’t the only person who can be devious.
Chapter Four
Richard worked his way steadily through the contents of a bulging dispatch case the following morning. He had commandeered the Earl’s estate office and his desk. He was not alone.
“You do this every morning?” Will asked, warming his hands on a cup of coffee. A dozen reports lay in organized array across the desk, with a pile of requests, forms, and other documents to be signed in front.
“Most days. There will be more in London. These are the most pressing.” Richard spoke without looking up.
“The Ottomans are gone, thank God.” Will sighed. “Now if I can just rid my house of the Foreign Office,” he added slyly, “I can get back to my estate.”
