It had nothing to do with the idea that he had a lover, full stop.
Lily looked over her shoulder to Alec, who was looking directly at Lady Rowley, with an intensity Lily had never experienced. And she could not stop the emotion that flooded her. Betrayal.
“Darling.” The countess sighed. “Look at you, coat in tatters, still as big and broad and strong as ever. My goodness, I’ve missed you.”
Lily closed the door before she could hear the answer. She did not wish to hear the answer. Let him spend the rest of the evening with his paramour. Let her tend to his bruised knuckles and ego. Lily wanted out of this room. Out of this house. Out of this damn world with its rules that meant different things for different people.
And she meant to get out, without him.
This was not the first time she’d been alone, after all. Lillian Hargrove had made a life of being alone. And the arrival of a massive Scotsman would not change that.
By the time she reached the entrance to the ballroom, she was nearly deafened by the cacophonous chatter within. No one was dancing, despite the orchestra playing a perfect quadrille. Instead, all of London stood in little huddled groups, bowed heads and fluttering fans and gleeful sotto voce. Despite the fact that this was an event designed to underscore the social differences between people, gossip remained the great unifier.
Lily was no fool. She knew the subject of the chatter. Knew, too, that she would soon be a part of it.
Even before Sesily Talbot approached, clutched her hands, and spoke, low and quiet. “Good Lord! When I said that you and Warnick should make Hawkins the villain, I did not mean that you should beat him almost to death!”
“It wasn’t almost to death,” Lily said.
“He crossed the room with a swollen cheek, a split lip, and an eye that would make a fighter wince.” Sesily paused. “Not that I didn’t enjoy the portrait he made.”
Lily couldn’t help but smile at that. “I imagine you did.”
“He deserved it and more,” Sesily agreed before adding, “Was it very exciting to watch Warnick go at him? He’s a glorious brute of a man.”
Lily was coming to hate the word. “He’s not a brute.”
“Indeed not,” Sesily immediately corrected herself. “He cares for you a great deal, obviously.”
She didn’t like the way Sesily’s words made her feel, full of confusion and something akin to sick. She settled on, “Everyone saw Derek?”
“It was marvelous,” Sesily said with glee.
“I suppose I’m at the center of another scandal.”
“Pish.” Sesily waved the words away. “It’s the same scandal. You’ve nothing on the Talbot sisters. But I shall acknowledge this, you certainly know how to enter a ballroom.” Sesily looked to Lily’s dress. “And how to dress for it.”
Lily didn’t find it amusing. Instead, she found it terribly defeating. Regret coursed through her, and she desperately wanted to be anywhere but here. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Listen to me,” Sesily said with firm conviction, squeezing Lily’s hands tightly and forcing her to meet her eyes. “You do not let them win. Not ever. There is nothing in the world they like more than tearing a woman down for having too much courage. And there is nothing in the world that makes them angrier than not being able to break her.”
Lily looked to the woman, an Amazon set down in the heart of London. Beautiful in her too tight, red dress—a dress that no doubt made other women green with envy. She was everything Lily was not. Confident. Sure of her place. Happy with it, even.
Lily wondered what that might be like.
Perhaps it was all of that confidence that made Lily so willing to talk. Bold enough to say something she probably shouldn’t have said. “Derek asked me to be his mistress again.”
“Derek is a troll.”
Lily laughed, because it was either that or cry. “He is, rather.”
“An arrogant, addlepated, pinpricked troll.”
Lily’s eyes went wide at the creative insult. “One with a great deal of power to ruin me, it seems.”
Sesily took her hands again, and there was comfort in the warmth and firmness of her grip. “We shall survive it.”
The we set Lily back. “We shall?”
“Of course,” Sesily said with a shrug. “It is what friends do. Help each other survive.”
Friends.
She’d never had a friend. But she’d read about them. She shook her head. “Why would you be so kind to me?”
Shadow passed over Sesily’s face, there, then gone. “Because I know what it feels like to have them all loathe you. And I’ve seen them chase another away. Women like us must stay together, Lovely Lily.”
Lily wanted to ask more, but there was no time to do so, as Alec chose that moment to reappear from the hallway beyond, coat shredded, trousers in tatters, gloves stained red with Derek’s blood.
“Cor! He looks like a prizefighter. Or worse,” Sesily said, her gaze locked on him as he approached and took Lily’s elbow in hand. “Oh, the female half of the ton wishes to be you, tonight, Lillian Hargrove.”
Lily couldn’t imagine why, as Alec looked as though he wished to murder someone. As though he had already murdered someone.
“We leave now,” Alec growled, ignoring Sesily, and Lily knew better than to argue with the glittering anger in his brown eyes, or the firm set of his square jaw.
Sesily leaned in to kiss Lily on her cheek, and took the moment to whisper, “Be careful. In my experience, men who look like that are ready for one of two things: kissing or killing. And he’s already attempted the latter.”
Chapter 10
BE STILL MY BEATING SCOT!
DILUTED DUKE DISCIPLINES DEREK
He did not trust himself to speak.
Not when he faced the worst of London in Eversley’s ballroom, burning in the heat of their combined not-quite gazes. And not when he guided Lily through the room, and he heard the whispers. The Diluted Duke . . . Covered in Hawkins’s blood . . . The girl is nothing but trouble . . . Poor Hawkins . . .
Certainly, Alec did not trust himself to speak at the idea that it was Hawkins who deserved the sympathy in this farce.
As if all Lily deserved was judgment.
The Scottish Brute.
He turned at the last, his gaze falling to a woman nearby, her eyes familiar. Knowing. He gritted his teeth, the words echoing through him, his clothes in shreds, the smell of Peg’s saccharine perfume still on them. The memory of her hands sliding over his chest, the touch evoking loathing, not of her, but of countless Englishwomen who thought of him as a notch in their collective bedposts—good enough to take to bed, not enough for more.