She did not know what to say. It was an unspeakably maniacal thing, to persecute a man by targeting his loved ones. Even her uncle would have recoiled at such evil.
“It was only a house, of course.” He spoke flatly. “But that is the last loss I will incur.” He glanced back at her, his face remote. “You are leaving Buckley Hall. And in London, you will not know me. We are strangers, from here forward. For your sake.”
“Strangers.” The idea seemed impossible. Foul and offensive. But for weeks, she had felt out of her depths here. Only now did she realize that there might be a greater price to pay than the loss of her position, her dignity . . . and her heart.
Agonized, she studied him.
Strangers
. Her father and uncle had never agreed on anything but a single principle: no matter the cost, survival came first. Becoming a stranger would be wise, sensible, safe. His face was impenetrable to her now, beautiful and severe, as though she were indeed a stranger, her feelings immaterial.
But his eyes spoke differently. He watched her as closely as she watched him. She saw the mirror of her own feelings in his eyes.
He was trying to protect her. How dare he imagine that she would not do the same for him?
“Once, in your study, I saw a map.” She spoke softly, choosing her words with care. “My uncle, whom I told you about—he knows those areas you circled. He
knows them very well. Do you think this Bolkhov might be hiding in one of them? If so, my uncle could help you.”
“Lilah. My God.” He rose to his feet. “Have you heard a single word I’ve said? I want you
out
of this.”
She scrambled to her feet. “But I am in it! There is no getting out. I work for Miss Everleigh, don’t you see? And my uncle is no ordinary—”
“Forget your uncle,” he snarled. “Forget Catherine. She knows a bargain when she sees one: she means to use me as I use her. She is
useful
. But you, Lilah . . . you’re a goddamned weakness. And if you care so little for your own life that you would risk it on me, you’re a fool.”
She caught her breath. Those fierce words burned away the last vestige of her numbness. He cared for her. He could not hide it. She would not let him. “Then I’m a fool.” But not a coward. “I can help you, though. I
can
.” Nick could. She would find a way to make him do it.
He dug his hands through his hair, then spun and stalked to the door. “We will not have this conversation.” Yanking the door open, he said, “Get out.”
“Don’t you want to know my name, before I go?”
That caught him. He turned on her, furious. “
No
. I wish to know nothing about you. Are you deaf? Listen once more: I have put everyone I love in danger.
Everyone
.” He stepped toward her, a violent movement, arrested abruptly. “I have buried my brother’s body. His death—my doing. Susseby—my doing. I have robbed my sister and mother of their home. I have exiled them. And tonight, I killed a man, and then I wiped away your blood. You have no care for yourself. Fine. But
I
care. I care and I will not risk you. I will be
dead
before I take your help. Is that clear to you?”
Everything was clear. This snarling speech, his terror—for
her
—was the most dreadful, beautiful ode she’d ever heard.
“My name is Lily Monroe,” she said. “Niece to Nicholas O’Shea.
That
is the man you need now.”
He sneered. “Fine.” He seized the doorknob again, pulling so hard that the wood cracked as the door lurched open. “You’ve said it. Now go.”
He wasn’t hearing her. “You know my uncle. They call him Saint Nick. King of Diamonds, the Lord of the East End.” Was he listening? “He controls half the city. The
darker
half.” She watched his profile, the stony set of his jaw, the rigid line of his shoulders. His silent, physical rejection. “All those areas you circled on the map—they are his. He
owns
the people there. With the letters, I can propose a new trade—”
He turned, his expression black. “And does he own you? He’s the one whom you fear, isn’t he? The bastard who blackmailed you.” An ugly smile twisted his mouth. “The other bastard, that is.”
What irrelevant nonsense was this? “It makes no difference.” In the face of this danger, it didn’t matter. “He could help. I could
make
him help.”
“It matters.” He stared at her. “I will not give him cause to blackmail you again.”
“But there would be no need! I have the—”
“You’re right. There’s no need.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “The Russian auction will be held in a fortnight. I’ve made arrangements to lure out Bolkhov. This travesty ends then . . . if not beforehand.”
“But what if it doesn’t? Why not use all the weapons at your—”
“I had hoped you esteemed me better,” he cut in.
“Foolish, I know. What cause have I given you for esteem? But if you think I’ll send you back to the bastard who put you into this mess—to beg for his
favors
, by God—then you think me some species far lower than a coward.”
Her lips shaped the words several times before she got them out. In that brief pause, anger sparked. “I think you a
bastard
,” she said. “An arrogant ass! For it takes a bastard to turn up his nose at a friend! If
I’m
willing to do it, then why can’t—”
“We are not friends.”
He spoke so coldly that it took the breath from her lungs. “You’re a liar,” she whispered.
“And now you bore me.” He bent to strip the knife from his boot. Laid it solidly on the table before turning back to her. “Still here?” The derisive curl of his mouth smashed into her like a fist. “I used you, Lilah. You were useful, for a time. But now you’re not. I do see why you were so cool under pressure—the niece of Saint Nick; why, you’re the aristocracy of the underbelly. But I don’t mix with filth on regular occasions. I do thank you for the offer, though.”
The pain twisted, making her reckless. She knew he meant not a word of his speech. He was trying to drive her off. But he certainly knew the proper way to do it. His words laid open her chest and bowed an ugly song across her heartstrings. “You’ll take filth into your bed, but friendship is a step too far, is it? Friendship is for women like Miss Everleigh. You’ll take
her
help, but not mine.”
He shrugged and leaned back against the wall, the lounging posture of an idle masher, bored of low entertainments. “She sells her help for a price. You have nothing left that I wish to purchase.”
She ignored the sting. “You told her to call you Christian. Was
that
necessary? Was your Russian lunatic listening then?”
A strange look came over him. “God above. Is that all it requires? Go ahead, then. Call me Christian. What does it matter?”
It mattered. He tried to pretend otherwise, but she knew the truth. “Christian.” She stepped toward him. “Let me help you. Please. I—”
He caught her hand before she could touch him. Forced it back to her side. “I am done with this argument,” he said very slowly, as though she were a child in a tantrum.
“But I’m not.” She glared at him as his fingers tightened. “Hurting me won’t end it, either.”
He dropped her hand as though it burned. Setting his fist to his mouth, he stared at her, his expression bleak.
The silence felt brittle and sharp, as though the wrong word might fracture it into cutting shards. She did not know what to say next. The heaviness of defeat stole over her.
“Christian,” she whispered. “Please. Don’t be a fool.”
Something fraught tightened the skin around his eyes. When it passed, his gaze had softened. He lowered his fist and breathed out. “Do you care for me, Lily?”
Her throat felt so full. A thousand words would not encompass the proper response. All she could manage was a nod.
“Then you’ll trust me,” he said. “You’ll trust my plan. If the auction doesn’t bear out . . . then, perhaps, we will speak of your uncle.”
It was a compromise. Unsatisfactory, horribly insufficient.
She wrapped her arms around herself, miserable.
“Lily,” he said softly. “What a lovely name for you. Lily, you should go.”
Was that all she would have from him? A compliment to her name. A flimsy bargain to talk again, in two weeks’ time. At which point he might be dead already, when she might have saved him.
She deserved more than that.
She dropped her arms and squared her shoulders. “I will go in the morning,” she said quietly. “But not tonight. I’ll have something else before I leave.”
Lily
. The name fit her perfectly. She should not have told it to him. In this darkness his life had become, she remained the sole piece of light. But each secret she shared pulled her closer to him, to this stain he had become on the lives of those he loved.
Her bastard uncle could not have helped. Not when the full force of British intelligence had failed to locate Bolkhov. But she would have gambled herself on the chance. Endangering herself for his sake.
Surviving a war had taught him to recognize true mettle. An ally whom he could trust with his life. She was that, and far more. He would not risk her. This war was different from the other. His survival now was not worth the cost, if it meant losing her.
He touched her face. Standing before him, an exquisite vulnerability in the defiant tilt of her chin, she was his punishment. What he most wanted: what he could not have.
“You will not interfere,” he said quietly, stroking her satin-smooth cheek. “I’ll have your word before you go.”
Otherwise he would make the decision for her. There was room for another woman in that remote cottage where his sister and mother now waited.
But he would not take her there unless necessary, for placing her with his family would compound the danger to her. Bolkhov had no way, yet, to know what she had become to him. Once he put her with his mother and sister, there could be no doubt. She would be just as vulnerable as they were.
She still had not replied. He grasped her by the shoulders, not caring if he frightened her now. “Give me your goddamned word.”
“You have it,” she said, almost soundless. “But first . . .”
A strange laugh escaped him. Did she imagine she would have to force him to it? “Lily,” he said. A flower whose bulb nestled deep in the ground, where one never thought to look for it. Of course that was her name. She had taken him by surprise. He had never expected this.
He hooked his hand in her hair, pulled up her face, and looked into her pale, fearless beauty before he kissed her.
In the morning, she would be gone from his life. But in the meantime, God help him, he would pretend that she was his. That he had seen her waiting at a window in some tower, and slayed dragons to win her, and claimed her by right, and made that tower his home.
He picked her up and carried her to the bed. The light from the hearth painted her in rippling tones of fire. The smooth slope of her shoulder. The wide blue pools of her eyes. The fullness of her lips, which she pressed together to hide how they trembled.
There was no cause to hide that from him. He leaned
down to kiss her lips apart, to lick and suck them. “Tremble,” he murmured. “As much as you like.”
Her small sigh seemed flavored by relief. Her arms came eagerly around his shoulders as she drew him atop her. He felt the fleeting urge to smile. Did she imagine he would retreat now? He kissed her deeply, hard, to show her his intentions.
She took his tongue, drew it deeper into her mouth. Her hands slipped to his waist, her grip tightening.
The thin robe translated every swell and curve of her. Her slim waist, the delicate point of her elbow. The bloody bastard had grabbed her there—
He gritted his teeth and sat back, away from that thought, as he ripped off his clothing. He caught her hands when she tried to pull him toward her, holding them firmly. “Shh,” he said. Then he picked her up by the waist. Her weight—the lightness of it—briefly disconcerted him. Her rich low voice, the ferocity of her spirit—it should have made her as solid and heavy as an anchor.
He laid her down again, on a cushion of pillows, bracing himself on an elbow above her. The picture of her, passive and tousled beneath him, a slight amazed smile flirting bashfully with her lips, deserved trumpets—the adulation of crowds.
But she was his. Only for his eyes. His, alone.
For now.
“Touch me,” she whispered. Innocent. Mistaking his pause for uncertainty, rather than an inward battle against this savage possessiveness.
“I will,” he said very quietly. But he would portion that pleasure out in small bits. Otherwise he would devour her without care or regard.
He started with her hair, running his fingertips lightly down the braid that spilled over her shoulder and swung off the bed. A single ribbon secured it. He pulled one end, and watched her hair slowly untwist.
He ran his fingers through it, drawing the thick locks over her breast. Her eyes fluttered shut. She liked this.
He threaded his fingers through her hair at her scalp, massing, tugging, and then spreading the strands out in all directions. She groaned beneath his strokes. Arched upward, like a cat being petted. His eyes fixed on the point where her robe caught on the twin peaks of her stiffened nipples.