Why on earth did she sleep here?
He did not have time to consider the question, as it occurred that the proximity to the servants was a boon in this particular moment. He left the room and poked his head out into the servants’ stairwell, catching a footman and two maids descending. “You there.”
They went stone still, and one of the young women squeaked.
The footman spoke first. “Your Grace?”
“Who are Miss Hargrove’s most frequent visitors?”
Silence.
Alec tried again. “Her friends. Who visits her?”
One of the girls shook her head. “No one.”
His brow furrowed. “No one?”
The other shook her head. “No one. She does not have friends.”
The words came heavy in the dark stairwell, and surprising enough for Alec to have to work to hold back his instinctive How is that possible? Lillian was beautiful and clever and had the power of a dukedom behind her. How could she possibly lack friends? Perhaps they simply did not come to the house.
He nodded once. “Thank you.”
“Your Grace?” the footman asked, confusion in his voice.
“Och,” Alec replied. “In Scotland we’re more grateful than they are in England, apparently. You needn’t peer at me like a lion in a cage.”
The servants blinked in unison. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Alec returned to the landing as the trio passed. “Oh!” one of the girls cried a split second later before she popped her head around the door frame. “She sees the solicitor.”
It was Alec’s turn to blink. “I beg your pardon?”
“Older man. Wiv spectacles. Starswood or somefin’,” she said.
“Settlesworth?”
The girl smiled. “That’s it! Comes once a month. One of the other girls says it’s ’ow Lillian—” She corrected herself. “Miss Hargrove—gets her blunt.” Another pause. “Her money.”
Of course it was.
She couldn’t leave home without funds. And Settlesworth held the purse strings. Alec turned to leave the girl before another thought occurred. He turned back to find her watching him. “Why does she sleep here?” he asked, indicating the room.
She blinked, considering the little room as though she’d never thought to look at it before. Shook her head. “Don’t know, rightly,” she said, finally. “ ’Twas ever thus.”
Alec nodded at the unsatisfying answer, thanked the girl, and headed for his solicitor’s offices.
Chapter 6
DUKE GOES TO THE DOGS!
If he wished to marry her off, he’d have to find her, first.
The Dukedom of Warnick boasted eight London residences. There were four town houses scattered throughout Westminster and Mayfair, a house east of the city on the banks of the River Thames, a lodging house off Fleet Street that she’d been told was “for income” (though it didn’t seem that the dukedom lacked such a thing), a sprawling home with extensive gardens in Kensington, and a little house east of Temple Bar that was supposedly quite drafty.
Lily had always preferred number 45 Berkeley Square the best, likely out of comfort, as the house had belonged to the Duke of Warnick she’d known best—the one who had died five years earlier, beginning the spate of ill luck that had subsequently taken the lives of sixteen other Dukes of Warnick, leaving the dukedom several residences richer, thanks to those interim dukes who had died without heirs, wives or family. Bernard Settlesworth, taxed with managing the London bits of the dukedom, had purchased the properties in the months and years following the deaths. As a result, Alec Stuart, Number Eighteen, now claimed them as his own, despite very likely not knowing that they existed.
Which was his problem.
Lily, on the other hand, did know they existed. And she was not afraid to use them.
Not that Lily had ever actually seen the other houses. She’d never had much interest in them. Certainly, she’d had interest from the outside, but as they’d been subsumed into the dukedom, their staffs reduced to skeletons, Lily had always imagined that the devil one knew was the devil with which one stayed—and at least number 45 Berkeley Square had killed a duke who’d held the title for longer than a quarter of an hour.
Nevertheless, Lily was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and the fact that there were seven other places to lay her head beyond Berkeley Square was a fine gift indeed.
So it was that the previous evening, she’d arrived at number 38 Grosvenor Square and been warmly greeted by Mr. and Mrs. Thrushwill, the gardener and his happy housekeeper wife. The two had shared their ploughman’s supper with her and opened a room—one they proudly kept clean and aired for just such an occasion.
Lily had tucked herself into bed, filled with thoughts of how she intended to avoid the Duke of Warnick’s mad scheme to put her on the marriage mart.
Step one, avoid the Duke of Warnick.
Certainly, 38 Grosvenor Square would be an excellent start, as he’d have to go searching for her. This house would buy her time. Two days. Possibly more.
And in the darkness, surrounded by crisp, clean linen, she’d felt relief for the first time in two weeks, five days. For the first time, she felt as though she were captain of her own ship.
That feeling lasted all too briefly, soon replaced with the thoughts that had consumed her since the opening of the Royal Exhibition. Thoughts of Derek. And of her own stupidity.
If only she’d seen the truth about him. That he’d never honored her. That he’d never intended to. That every promise he’d ever made, every pretty word he’d ever spoken, had been a lie.
Lily lay there in the dark, quiet house, turning those lies over and over in her mind, remembering the way they’d made her ache, filled with desire and something far more dangerous. Hope.
How many times had she dreamed of being seen? Of being loved? Of being honored?
And how well had she destroyed every possibility for that?
She’d seen the truth in Alec’s gaze over his breakfast in Berkeley Square. The sympathy there. No. Not sympathy.
Pity.
It was out of pity that he had come. Out of pity that he stayed, with his ridiculous promises of a massive dowry and a husband—though how she was to get it in eight days . . . it was a fool’s errand.
But the other option . . .
The painting will follow you.
Her shame would follow her.