And Samuel merely smiled, looking more embarrassed by the fuss than anything, staring into Lily’s eyes with an intimate gratitude that pierced her heart.
Lily plunged from one panic to another.
She wanted to make a good impression on Samuel’s sister. Lady Alice was his only surviving relative. She and Mrs. Halford pored over such gastronomical delights as mushroom soufflé, fried apples in custard, and cream-of-carrot soup. The Gobelin carpets were beaten again to within an inch of their weave. The housemaids, under Marie-Elaine’s command, even dared to infiltrate the library to dislodge the cobwebs strung between the vellum-bound volumes that were arranged from Abelard to the life of Zarathustra. Any apple seeds discovered were cautiously moved and reassembled in exact formation on the windowsills of the duke’s office.
None of this pleased Samuel, who, having regained his strength, came to Lily’s bed when she was too exhausted and preoccupied to put up a protest. He had regained his vigor with unearthly speed.
“You can’t continue to take these liberties when your sister is under the same roof.”
“Why not?” he inquired lazily, her nightdress discarded, both of them naked as sin, his fingers caressing her in an undisturbed, determined rhythm.
Lily’s hands moved down his back to his lean buttocks. He did not tense when she touched his scars. “Because I want to make a good—”
He entered her slowly, flexing his spine. “Go on,” he said, his attention clearly superficial, his penetration so welcome that Lily soon lost her own thread of thought.
“I’ll stop if you insist,” he acceded in a whisper, withdrawing from her as if it were a courtesy and not intentional torment.
She locked her ankle around his. “I have to rise before daylight—”
“As do I.”
“—to attend my housekeeping duties.”
He whispered the words that her unconventional heart most wished to hear. “To hell with housekeeping, Lily. It was not mentioned in the terms of our original contract. Do you think I worry about the cobwebs in the corners?”
“I—” She arched off the mattress and parted her legs to draw him back inside her, whispering, “I don’t care much about cobwebs myself at the moment.”
His tongue swirled around the rim of her ear. Blood stirred in the hidden reaches of her body. “What do you care about?” he asked, his hand encircling her waist.
She shifted, aware that his voice had deepened, that his body felt tense. “Only you,” she said before his eyes locked with hers and he drove so deeply inside her that she cried out in surprise.
“Let me know if this is too rough.”
“It isn’t,” she said breathlessly.
He bent his head and kissed the swollen tips of her breasts. Her heart quickened at the relentless strokes that impaled her. She wanted to feel him embedded all the way. She twisted up, into him, seeking more, until she felt a tightness in her womb. The unbearable tension of impending relief.
Elusive. She was in knots. Soon. She whimpered as he kissed her with a deep and devastating tenderness that left her trembling. “Samuel,” she said in desperation. “I can’t take any more of your teasing. I thought you were kind.”
“But I am.”
She knew then what he meant to do, that he was prolonging, heightening her pleasure. “Cruel,” she whispered, and let him lure her closer and closer until she felt herself uncoil and break into pieces.
He reared up before she recovered. The lines of his face deepened in concentration. His body demanded the same bliss he had given her. She cushioned his every determined thrust, encouraging him by obeying her own instincts.
He moved like seduction unleashed at her urging. She wondered if
she
would be able to move at all the next morning, if she would even try. For an electrifying moment she met his gaze. She saw past his sensuality to the intense emotions he struggled to hide from the world. He beckoned her into their dark vortex, revealing his vulnerability to her without a word.
She realized then how much he needed her—he wasn’t a man who easily shared his nature.
“I care about you,” he said in a husky voice that pierced her heart. “I care so much I would do anything to keep you.”
He gave a deep moan and thrust a final time, the impact forcing the breath from her body. Even then she thrilled at the feel of him pulsing inside her. When he withdrew from her, she felt as if she were slowly falling to earth.
He stretched out beside her, stroking his hand along her shoulder, down her arm to her wrist. She could not summon the will to stir. She was content to absorb the heat of his hard-boned body.
“We are not hiding the truth from my sister,” he said as her heart began to resume its usual rhythm.
“Does she know everything about you?” she asked curiously.
“She did until I met you. Now we will tell her together that I have found happiness.”
Chapter 37
L
ily warmed to Samuel’s sister the moment that the duke introduced them in the great hall. Lady Alice was infinitely softer and more understated than her charismatic brother. She had a refined beauty that was more subtle than his. With her aristocratic bearing and easy grace, she made Lily recall the status she had once taken for granted. She felt a poignant stab of longing for her own family. Would she ever see them again? Would Samuel’s rank impress them?
“I understand now,” Alice said very quietly as Lily rose from a curtsy, “why Samuel is so late to return my letters. It is not only his work that claims his time. And do not make a knee to me again. You will be my sister-in-law, and you were not meant for subservience.”
“You can say that again,” Samuel murmured before he left their company with some excuse about proof sheets he had received in the mail.
“Let us walk in the garden, Lily,” Lady Alice suggested, lifting her brow as she spotted the sword Samuel had forgotten on the stairs. “My bones ache from the coach travel here.”
“That
I understand,” Lily said, laughing. After all the work she and the staff had undertaken, it would be a delight to relax for a few hours. And it was soon clear that Lady Alice refused to acknowledge her as a housekeeper. She treated Lily not only like an equal but like a friend.
Soon Lily fell under her spell, too, slipping back into the position of gentlewoman before she knew it.
“I am glad that my brother found you,” Lady Alice said when they reached the rose arbor. “I was engaged once to the only man I will ever love. Stephen was wounded defending his troops at Ligny. His last request was that he come home to marry me in the probable event that he would die. Samuel and the staff helped me care for him for three months before his merciful release.” She turned toward a rose trellis. “We never did get married.”
“The war was wretched,” Lily said, shaking her head. “I hated it.”
“But it had to be,” Alice said with a sigh.
“Don’t you get lonely?” Lily asked.
“Honestly? Not really. My friends insist I will find another wonderful gentleman, a widower perhaps. But what for? Samuel pays my bills. The pair of you will give me nieces and nephews to spoil—besides, at twenty-seven, I’ve grown too fond of my independence to play the game of love.”
“I wouldn’t have understood that before I left home,” Lily admitted. “I was convinced I would never love anyone again.”
Alice laughed, biting her lip. “Didn’t you know how persuasive Samuel can be?”
Lily thought fondly of Chloe’s warning on the night of the masquerade. “I suppose I had to find out for myself.”
Later on the night of her arrival, Alice came to Samuel’s office. She had never been afraid of him. They had been conspirators against the elderly aunt who had raised them after the fire.
Samuel made himself put aside his pages and beckoned her from the door. “Come inside—if you can find a spot to sit. Lily despairs of the mess. I’ve no idea why.”
A stack of golden sovereigns spilled across his desk, collapsing against his inkwell. He and Alice held their breath. The inkwell held.
“Lily was never meant to be a housekeeper,” Alice said. She carefully moved the folio pages arranged on the couch to make room for herself. She had a black jeweler’s box with a gold clasp in her hand. “How exactly did it happen?”
“I met her at a masquerade.”
“Romantic.”
He sighed. “From my point of view. I had a marriage contract drawn the same night.”
“Well, why aren’t you married?”
“There was an obstacle I had overlooked. Another man had claimed her first.”
“I’m surprised you let that stop you.”
His eyes glinted. “It didn’t.”
He went on to explain the chain of events that had brought Lily back into his life. He emphasized Grace’s part in her fall and downplayed certain nuances of his own role. Alice would have to fill in these holes by herself. She would. She had grown up with Samuel and knew what a devious scoundrel her younger brother had been. They had fought bitterly as children.
“I have something for you.” She rose to hand him the box. “Or rather, for you to give Lily on your wedding day. It belonged to our mother.”
He unhooked the box’s hinge. “Her diamond-and-pearl necklace?” he said in surprise. “I know how much it means to you.”
“I have never worn it, and pearls are meant to be worn or they lose their luster. It’s as if they come alive when they’re put on. They are believed to take on the wearer’s vibrancy. You’re the artist, Samuel. I don’t have to describe how warm they will look on Lily’s skin.”
“Thank you,” he said, moved by the gift. “You’re right. These pearls are one of the bright memories.”
“You will make others, Samuel.”
He sat back in his chair. “So will you.”
“It took years before I stopped having nightmares about the fire,” she said. “I don’t know how or when it happened, but now at least it has become a bearable ache.”
He nodded. “For years afterward I would think it was coming back to me. I’d hear screaming or I would smell smoke. But I’m not sure it wasn’t my imagination.” He smiled at her. “Don’t fret over me. I feel their presence often, and I take comfort from them.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I understand.”
Lily brought Lady Alice the whiskey toddy she had requested in the drawing room before bed. She smiled up at Lily from her chair, still wearing her plum silk evening dress. She had removed her shoes and crossed her bare ankles on the footstool. “You should have one of these, too,” she said, taking her drink.
“I have to keep my wits about me in this house.”
Alice laughed. “I can imagine you do. Samuel was a veritable demon during our childhood.” She closed her delicate fingers around the mug. “Well, at least until the fire. You know about that, I assume?”
Lily hesitated. She was torn between her instinct to protect Samuel’s privacy and her need to know everything about him. Who better understood him than his sister? “He’s talked of it a little. But when he got that frightening fever, I saw . . .” She shook her head.
“The scars from his burns?” Alice said, putting her whiskey on the table between the two chairs.
“Yes.”
“You have a right to know,” Alice said.
“Then how did it happen?” Lily asked.
“Father was painting a portrait of our mother, and our other aunt was watching my two younger sisters. Nobody knows exactly
how
it happened. It was a month before Christmas. A fire always burned in the solar, and we had beautiful old tapestries that hung opposite the windows.” She exhaled softly. “Oil paints, turpentine, and a spark, I’ve been told.”
“But you and Samuel weren’t there?”
“We were too restless and sick with coughs to sit for a painting,” Alice said. “He and I had gotten into the guardroom downstairs. We heard Aunt Leona screaming from the top of the private staircase. We thought she wanted us to come upstairs to sit, and at first we ignored her. And then Samuel said he heard pounding.”
Lily said nothing.
“Samuel doesn’t remember running up the stairs. We only got halfway. The flames had spread through the upper hall and the smoke beat us back. Lawton had to save us.”
Lily’s brow furrowed. “The steward who is usually off on business?”
“Our devoted Lawton.”
“The quiet gentleman in the long gloves?”
“To hide his burns,” Alice said. “He smothered the flames from my dress sleeves and Samuel’s jacket with his bare hands. Then he carried us both outside and instructed the castle cook to dress our wounds and take us to St. Aldwyn House, where our other grandmother lived.”
“I thought Lawton was unfriendly.” When would Lily learn not to judge? “I almost asked him once to remove his gloves.”
“He’s the only servant still living from the old house,” Alice mused. “He stays at Gravenhurst to guard the place, because that has been his duty since time immemorial. He’s even made friends with a band of gypsies who put curses on the occasional journalist or ghost hunter caught sneaking past the gates.”
“I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know,” Lily said. “And grateful that the three of you survived.”
“For a long time I wished I’d been the one who couldn’t remember. Now . . . I have doubts. It doesn’t matter how many times I have told Samuel what happened. He cannot seem to recall for himself. But then he was burned and I was not. Considering his temperament, a blank memory might be for the best.”
Samuel’s demanding shout resounded profanely in the pensive lull: “Come out! Come out, wherever you are! I need volunteers to put me in a pair of manacles and lock me in the pantry. Ladies are not excluded from participation.”
Alice reached for her whiskey. “He’s been like this from the day he was born,” she whispered. “He’s never going to change.”