Flaws saw flaws.
He returned to English. “We cannot solve the situation if I do not know its particulars.”
“There is no we, Your Grace.” The words were firm and full of conviction. “Until today, you did not know me.”
“I will know soon enough, girl.”
But not from her, and somehow, ridiculously, that was important. Somehow, it meant that she could be something with him she was not with others. “You needn’t concern yourself with it,” she said. “In ten days, my situation will be resolved.”
One way or another.
If she said it enough, it might be believed. She might believe it herself.
“What happens in ten days?”
The painting is revealed.
Not just that. “I turn twenty-four.”
“And?” Alec leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, fingers laced together.
And the painting is revealed. In front of all London.
She looked to him, ignoring the thought. It wouldn’t matter. She had a plan. “And according to the rules of my guardianship, I receive the funds necessary to leave London—and my scandal—behind.”
His brows rose. “That must be a great deal of blunt, lass, if it can erase you from memory.”
“Oh, it is,” she said. “I can leave London and never return. So, you see, Your Grace,” she said, allowing triumph into her voice. “I have a plan to save myself. No guardian required. I plan to run.”
She hated the plan. Hated the way it ended with Derek winning. With London winning. With the life she’d desired out of reach. But she had no choice. There was no other way to survive the scandal that would mark her forever.
Alec watched her for a long moment before nodding once and leaning back in his chair, dwarfing the furniture with his sheer size. “That’s one way of saving yourself.”
She did not like the phrasing. “One way.”
“Do you love him?”
She went pale at the words. “What?”
“The man. Do you love him?”
“I have not acknowledged that there is a man.”
“There’s always a man, lass.”
We were to be married. The tears again. Hot and angry and instant and unwelcome. She willed them away. “I don’t see how it is your concern.”
I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d never met him.
I wish—
I wish I weren’t so ashamed.
He nodded, as though she’d answered him. As though a decision had been made. “That is enough, then.”
And a decision, somehow, had been. She tilted her head. “Enough?”
He stood, enormous and somehow suddenly far more imposing—even more than he had been when he’d sent the door flying from its hinge. As though he were her king, and not simply a man she’d just met. And when he spoke, it was with a firm certainty that made her—for a heartbeat—believe his words.
“You shan’t run.”
Chapter 3
FALLEN ANGEL FISTICUFFS: SCOTTISH BRUTE SERVES BRUMMELLIAN BRAGGART SCATHING SETDOWN
Alec took to the one place in London that had furniture built to accommodate a grown man. That the place also came with scotch imported from his own distillery, a ring ready for a fight if he felt so inclined, card and carom tables, and a handful of men he did not loathe was an added bonus.
“Warnick returns.” The Marquess of Eversley—known to all the world as King—dropped into a large chair across from Alec. “Alert the news.”
“I am off the clock,” Duncan West, newspaper magnate, said dryly from his own seat next to Alec. “Though I admit curiosity, having been summoned by the Diluted Duke.”
Membership in The Fallen Angel—Britain’s most exclusive gaming hell—was by invitation only and had little to do with fortune or title. Indeed, the nobs who frequented White’s and Brook’s and Boodles’s were most often not invited to join the Angel.
King was a member, as was West—despite the newspaperman having had a series of public disputes with the owners. As he called the two men friends, Alec found himself welcome at the club without membership, a fact for which he was grateful. Even he had to admit that they didn’t make gaming hells quite the same way in Scotland. Or anywhere else for that matter.
Alec looked to King. “My thanks for the invitation.”
His friend raised a brow. “As you virtually demanded it, there’s no thanks necessary.”
“I required a good drink.”
“You could land yourself an invitation for membership, considering the Angel is the only place in London a man can get Stuart scotch.” King’s gaze settled on Alec’s coat. “Assuming you found a better tailor, for God’s sake. Where did you get that coat?”
Alec shrugged one tight shoulder. “Mossband.”
Eversley barked a laugh at the answer—a barely there town on the English side of the Scottish border. “It shows.”
Alec ignored the retort. “Neither London clothing nor London clubs are necessary in Scotland.”
“You enjoy London clubs in London, however,” West interjected.
“I’m not addled,” Alec said, drinking deep before he leaned back in a massive leather chair and leveled West with a serious look. The man was owner of five of the most profitable publications in Britain, three of which were widely believed to be the pinnacle of modern journalism.
But it was not the legitimate publications that interested Alec.
It was The Scandal Sheet.
“You’re not off the clock tonight,” he said to the newspaperman.
West sat back. “No, I assumed not.”
“It seems I have a ward.”
One of West’s blond brows rose. “Seems?”
“My solicitor failed to inform me of such.”
“That’s a rather terrible solicitor, if you ask me.”
“He took me at my word when I told him I was not interested in the London trappings of the dukedom.”
King chuckled. “He thought the girl a trapping? Christ. Don’t tell her that. In my experience, women don’t enjoy being thought of as such.”
No. Alec didn’t imagine Lily would enjoy that. “I know about her now, however.”
“Everyone knows about her now,” West said.
“Because of the scandal,” Alec replied.