Page 33 of Inconvenient Honor
He reached out to brush a lock of hair from her face, remembered his good sense, and pulled back. Lily didn’t stir.
Leaning close, he could smell roses and the subtler scent ofwoman. The urge to protect gutted him. Too frail. Lily Thornton strides through life, a force of nature, she does not faint.
“Miss Thornton,” he whispered to his sister who stood just behind him, determined to keep this discussion formal, “doesn’t strike me as a female who makes a habit of swooning. Odd, don’t you think?” He turned to look carefully at Georgiana, robust and rosy in spite of pregnancy, her second.
“He gave her a fright,” Georgiana whispered back. “She also told me she had missed her tea. That could have made her prone to fainting.”
Would she even tell me if she thought Lily was increasing?
“Is that all?” he probed.
His sister gave an unladylike shrug and a shrewd look. “That’s all Lily shared with me,” she said.
He stood for several long moments watching the woman on the bed, breathing her in, willing her to be well. When he finally turned, his sister and her husband eyed him keenly.
Georgiana shut the door behind him. “The best thing we can do is let her sleep,” she said.
“That dotty aunt of hers offers no protection,” Richard growled. “I doubt if she even knows about the threats.”
“You have a guard on her house?” Andrew asked.
“On the whole of Gilbert Street, but we can’t watch her everywhere. She would be safer at Sudbury House.” The Duke of Sudbury’s mansion in Mayfair boasted a thick stone wall and sufficient beefy footmen to guard every door.
“Mother would eat her alive,” Georgiana said, “assuming she didn’t cut you to pieces for moving a single young woman—and one she would consider of less than desirable lineage at that—into the sacred family compound.”
Richard did not often have what he considered a foolish thought, but moving Lily Thornton into his mother’s house qualified as one of his rare ones.
Lily drives me to insanity.So does my mother.
“Can you keep her here?” He looked at Andrew. “She should be housed in a home with a competent male in charge. That aunt of hers is worthless.”
Andrew appeared to consider the consequences. Georgiana didn’t wait. “We could if she permitted it, which she will not do. Lily values her independence fiercely. I admire that in her.”
“Increase your guard,” Andrew said. “Assign an escort.”
“She’s been eluding Roger Heaton for a week. I’ll have to try another,” he said.
“She’ll hate that,” Georgiana said.
“She won’t know. An escort will serve. Miss Thornton will have to put up with it.”
Miss Thornton what?
Outrage pulled Lily from the dejection that had weighed her down since her humiliating collapse in the Mallets’ hallway. Young men she had considered admirers spied for Glenaire. Disappointment piled on discouragement.
She had felt his presence by the bed. She knew when he leaned in close. For moments, she felt safe and protected, but then she heard his voice—his toplofty, commanding voice.
Damn his arrogant hide.
She sat abruptly and began to look for her slippers, grateful for the sound of retreating footsteps.
I’ll go home as soon as the high and mighty Glenaire leaves. I’ll go home and—. And what Lily? Wait for Volkov to attack? Drat them all!She scooped up one slipper and began fastening the ties around her calf.
What difference does it make, Lily? You aren’t exactly marriage material in your current state. Go home and stay there. Let them all cool their heels in Gilbert Street.
Her resolution lasted ten days before boredom drove her toaccept Walter Stewart’s escort to view Sir George Beaumont’s collection of Flemish paintings. Soon she shopped with Roger Heaton, ate ices with Stewart, and attended theatre with Heaton, on alternating occasions. Neither man ever positioned himself farther than ten feet from her. Neither mentioned orders. Neither acted particularly lover-like either, to her relief. Once or twice the even less lover-like Jamie Heyworth escorted her.
At the end of a month, over ice at Gunther’s, she lost patience with the pretense.
