“You need a better tailor.”
She was frustrating as hell. “That doesn’t make me less of a beast.”
Lily was quiet enough that he thought she might not answer. Instead, she said the worst possible thing he could imagine. “Why do you do that?”
“What?”
She moved again, around the table, and he followed suit, keeping his distance. “Call yourself that. A beast. A brute.”
The Scottish Brute.
He hesitated. “You’ve called me that, as well, have you not?”
“In anger. You use it in truth.”
Because I will always have it in me. And it will never be good enough for you.
“What do they call me in your ladies’ magazines?”
“All sorts of things. The Diluted Duke, the Highland Devil—”
“I’m not a Highland Scot. Not anymore.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but no one seems to care about truth.”
That much, he knew and was grateful for. He did not wish to discuss the truth. “Either way,” he said, “it will never happen again.” If he vowed it to her, perhaps he would stop wanting it.
After a long moment, she nodded and said, “I shall require a chaperone.”
“No. Chaperones get in the way.”
“That’s the point of chaperones. To get in the way and maintain propriety.”
“We don’t have time for propriety.”
Hardy barked; the dogs were beginning to think that the circling of the breakfast table was a game of sorts.
Lily ignored the dog. “Then why worry about a chaperone at all? My reputation is not exactly gilded.”
Because she was every man’s dream. And a chaperone was essential. Not just a doddering old lady with poor eyesight and worse hearing. She needed a chaperone who both understood the critical, time-sensitive nature of the situation and was able to—should it be necessary—drop a man into unconsciousness if he were too forward.
There weren’t many pugilist chaperones to be had in London on short notice, Alec imagined.
But there was an ideal solution. One he had devised in the dead of night, as he forced himself to think of her as ward and not woman. He was rather proud of his success. “I’m not worried.”
She stopped, looking at him with utter disbelief. “You’re not.”
“Not in the slightest.” He rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. “I have the ideal chaperone for you.”
That auburn brow rose again, threatening to lose itself in her hair. “And who is that?”
He smiled. He had her now. “Me.”
She laughed, the sound light and lovely and temptation incarnate. “Honestly.”
“I am being quite honest.”
Her brow furrowed, and he resisted the urge to soothe the twin wrinkles above her nose. “You are no kind of chaperone.”
“Nonsense. I’m the best possible chaperone.” He paused, ticking off the reasons on his fingers. “I have a vested interest in your finding a successful match so I can leave London and never return—”
“Something you could do this moment if you’d simply give me the funds to leave.”
He ignored the statement and continued. “I am predisposed to loathe all Englishmen, so I will be on my guard more than some aging spinster.”
She raised a brow. “You are old and unmarried as well, Your Grace. I would have a care with whom you call an aging spinster.”
He ignored the taunt. “And, as a man, I am more than able to predict any compromising situations.”
Lily pursed her lips and was silent for a long minute—long enough for Alec to conclude that he had won her over to his argument, particularly when she nodded. “It sounds as though you’ve planned the whole thing quite perfectly.”
“I have, rather.”
He’d risen early to do so, committed to getting Lily married soonest. He intended to sign her dowry papers the moment she selected a suitor, and return to Scotland.
And forget about her.
“There is only one problem with your plan.”
“What is that?” There was no problem with the plan. He’d considered the plan from all angles.
“It has to do with compromising situations.”
He did not like the phrase on her lips. Or, perhaps he liked the phrase too much on her lips.
Irrelevant.
There was no problem with the plan.
“You see, Your Grace, since you arrived in London, I’ve found myself in precisely one compromising situation.” She stood straight and leveled him with a cool, grey gaze. “Last night. With you.”
It seemed there was a problem with the plan.
Chapter 12
ONE DUKE’S LOSS IS ANOTHER EARL’S GAIN
When she exited Dog House the next afternoon, dressed for a walk in Hyde Park with a gentleman she did not know, Lily was expecting a simple vehicle. Black. Possibly emblazoned with some kind of canine crest, considering her current residence. What she found, however, was a curricle beyond any conveyance Lily had ever seen.
It was not the sleek two-seated gig that young men rode proudly throughout London. Nor was it the elaborate gilded curricle in which ladies spent their Hyde Park afternoons.
It was unparalleled, and not only because Angus and Hardy sat at the center of the seating block like perfect little canine guards. Enormous and high seated, with great black wheels that reached nearly to her shoulder, the entire vehicle gleamed, pristine in the sunlight, even the wheels—which seemed to have somehow avoided the grime of the city’s cobblestone streets.
As if the vehicle and the dogs weren’t enough, the horses were remarkable. So black they shone nearly blue in the sun, and perfectly matched—precisely the same height, the same width. They took her breath away.
And all that before the driver appeared, coming around the side of the vehicle, tall and broad and tartan-clad, looking at once exceedingly wealthy and utterly wild with his bronzed legs and his wide shoulders and his eyes that seemed to see everything and his lips . . .
No. No lips.
She was not thinking of lips today.
Certainly not lips belonging to the Duke of Warnick.
She lifted her chin in the direction of the curricle as she descended the steps to Dog House. “This is beautiful.”
He grinned, turning to admire the curricle. “ ’Tis, isn’t it?”