Her Secret Fantasy (44 page)

The few tenants, long left to fend for themselves, came to complain to him that their cottages also needed mending.

Once Derek grasped the full magnitude of all the problems at Balfour Manor, he had to take deep breaths to restore his calm. What the hell was he supposed to do?

Yes, his prospects had improved considerably as Lord Arthur’s newly designated heir, but he had to be responsible. He was not about to burn through his father’s entire fortune, which was what it would take to put this place to rights.

But even more disconcerting were the changes he observed in Lily. Ever since they had come here, the unhappy influence that this place exerted on his bride became more marked. Derek was worried. It was his duty to protect her, not just in body but in spirit and emotions. He did not know how he was supposed to do that in this place.

He did not know how to fight ghosts, and this crumbling manor house was full of them.

For example, every time Lily went up or down the drive, she had to pass the tree where Lord Owen Masters had first approached her. Derek had asked where that had happened, and when she showed him, he had wanted to chop the thing down, but Lily said it wasn’t as if the big, old tree had done something wrong. “It does not deserve a death sentence, Derek.” Of course. It was only a tree.

Maybe so, but when Derek looked at its knobby old trunk, he saw the faces of ghouls grinning at him, ghouls who preyed on little girls.

That was the first moment that he knew deep down in his survivor’s core that he had to get her out of here. This eerie place had her under its spell, and somehow he had to save her.

Then there was the sad, pathetic ruin of the garden folly that her father had left unfinished for his daughter—another painful memory that she had to face every day. If Langdon Balfour were alive, Derek would have liked to punch him in his aristocratic nose. The garden folly was just one more thing Derek wanted to fix for Lily, to help rebuild and mend her heart. For his part, he would make sure the job was finished this time, and done properly.

But for now, he debated with himself on what to do.

It could not be good for Lily to have to see, every day, these constant reminders of the losses and betrayals she had suffered. Yet the most damaging influence of all came from her mother. By God, he thought, Lily should not be anywhere near that harpy except for the briefest possible visits. The woman was poisonous.

Working on her embroidery in the drawing room, Lady Clarissa would send small jabs of insult and criticism at her daughter all the day long, intimidating Lily and wielding the weapon of guilt on everyone around her. For God’s sake, why wouldn’t the girl stand up for herself?

Though Lady Clarissa didn’t dare try her tricks on him, Derek was careful about intervening—he knew quite well that to offend a first-rate manipulator like her would only end up making
him
look like the villain somehow. But he wasn’t sure how much longer he could bite his tongue, seeing what all this was doing to his wife.

Subjected each day to her mother’s cruel comments and this place, and the Gothic weight of the past that permeated Balfour Manor, Lily grew quieter, more subdued, withdrawn. Every day she seemed like someone more removed from the fearless goddess who had saved him from the stable fire. She had become almost mousy. It was difficult to watch. His beautiful wife was becoming a hollow-eyed stranger.

To Derek, it would have been easier to nurse her through a bout of the flu. This inward infirmity in her he did not know how to heal.

He knew he had to get her out of here before she faded away like a ghost herself. He had to save her, break her out of this cage and free her, just like she had done for him.

But the cure he had in mind—well, he thought grimly, she wasn’t going to like it.

In fact, she was going to hate it. She might even end up hating
him.
But so be it. He would do whatever was necessary to protect her. That was his most sacred vow.

His mind made up, Derek wrote to Charles Beecham to get the wheels in motion for the sale of Balfour Manor.

He did not know yet when or how he would tell Lily they’d be moving soon—to wherever she fancied.

He only knew he had to save his wife.

CHAPTER

         
TWENTY
         

T
he ghost of guilt, familiar guilt, whispered its silent curses in her ear later that night as Lily watched her weary husband drag himself into their bedroom, his big, strong body moving slowly, stiffly, after another sixteen-hour day of backbreaking work.

Waiting in her bed for him, dressed in a sleeveless white chemise, Lily watched him, privately stricken to see what she was putting him through.

Although dauntless Derek never uttered a complaint—indeed, he seemed to be taking it in stride—still, he must think that marrying her was akin to indentured servitude or a sentence of hard labor in the penal colonies of Australia.

He peeled off his dirty work clothes and washed himself without a word.

Soldiering on.

Lily felt the sting of tears behind her eyes and had to blink them back. Oh, what was she doing to him?

When he came over and sat on the edge of the bed, she knelt behind him and rubbed his shoulders, kissing his neck in wordless apology. He sighed as she worked out a knot at the base of his neck.

He didn’t have to say it. She knew he hated it here and soon he’d probably start to hate her, too.

She could tell he was not happy. How could he be, working like a dog, subjected to all the tension of life around Lady Clarissa? By now, Derek was probably wondering why he had married her, and coming home to Balfour Manor, remembering the sorry little person she had always been here, Lily had begun to wonder that herself. How had someone as flawed as she managed to snare such a god for a husband, anyway?

Derek had promised he wasn’t going to return to India, but by now he was probably wishing he could. A part of her was terrified, perhaps irrationally, that he was going to leave her, after all, just like her father.

“You all right?” he murmured, reaching up to clasp her hand on his shoulder as if he could hear her churning thoughts.

Lily paused. “I’m fine,” she said in a tentative tone. Whining would only make her look worse. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” he admitted with a weary smile in his voice.

“Oh, Derek,” she breathed, sliding her arms around his neck. She held him; he leaned his head against her cheek.

“Mm?”

I’m so sorry for all this.
She stroked his long hair, pondering her unformed questions, then moved back and let him lay his head on her lap, caressing his cheek and his chest. She took a deep breath. “What’s on for tomorrow? Pamela and I want to help.”

“Oh, God.” He groaned to be reminded of it. “Some fire hazard in the kitchens has to be taken care of first. But the most important thing is that tomorrow night I’ve got to patch up those roof holes where the bats got in.”

“At night?”

“You have to do it at night while they’re out flapping around, so, that way, when they come home in the morning, they can’t get back inside.”

“How clever.”

He smiled sagely.

She stared at him for a long moment, feeling as if her heart would burst. “Darling, I’m so sorry about all this,” she blurted out. “And I’m sorry about Mother. I know she’s driving you mad. She’s just used to ruling the roost, you see? And now you’re here and she can’t push you around and she doesn’t know what to do.”

“I just don’t like seeing her intimidate you.” Derek laid his hand on her knee. “I know she hurts you, darling. She’s been beating you down for years with her fault-finding, hasn’t she?” he asked tenderly.

“I’ve learned to know when to ignore her.”

“But you shouldn’t have to live that way,” he protested in a soft tone, looking into her eyes. “There is nothing about you that deserves unkind words. Lily, I love you. When I married you, I took a vow to protect you, not just in body, but in spirit, too. If she’s going to be nothing but a harmful influence, there’s going to come a point where I’ve got to say, no more.”

“You are so sweet.”

“Why don’t you ever stick up for yourself around her? Someone ought to put her in her place and I think that someone should be you. I will do it gladly if you wish, but I really think it would be the best thing for you, and maybe the best thing for her, too.”

“What are you suggesting?” she asked in amusement. “That I have a shouting match with my own mother?”

“Aye, let her have it, girl. It’s the only way she’s going to learn that she can’t walk all over you.”

“Oh, Derek, I don’t think I could ever do that. It wouldn’t be, er, ladylike.” She couldn’t help smiling sheepishly at him.

“You never had a problem standing up to me,” he reminded her, then he flexed one bulging arm before her eyes. “Aren’t I a bit scarier than she is?”

Lily admired his biceps with a lavish caress, running her palm along the smooth, stony mass of muscles. She smiled at him with desire fluttering to life in the pit of her stomach. “Good point.”

He cupped her cheek. “You’re not a little girl anymore. Remember that. You’re a grown woman. A beautiful, luscious, fully ripened…woman,” he finished huskily as he trailed his fingertips down her neck and then brushed her loose, flowing hair behind her shoulder so he could better view her breasts.

Lily trembled as his light touch glided down over her nipple, and moaned softly when he slipped the strap of her chemise off her shoulder. He bared her breast and leaned lower, capturing her nipple in his mouth.

In a moment, he moved up to kiss her lips. She slid her arms around his neck, lying back and wrapping her legs around him as his tongue caressed hers.

“Are you too tired—?” she whispered, but he smiled wickedly against her mouth.

“Never.”

He reached down and stoked her desire to new heights with his deft fingers, and then went down on her, as well, pleasuring her with his clever tongue. But once they began making love, she spared him the exertion, letting him lie back and enjoy while she rode him.

“Take this off,” he ordered thickly, sliding her chemise higher. Still straddling him, Lily paused and slipped the simple garment off over her head. An almost pained look of appreciation etched his face as his hands followed his gaze. “God, I’m a lucky man.”

She was moved to hear that he still felt that way.

Leaning down to kiss him, Lily gave him her all, loving him with a smooth, gliding motion until she had brought him to a powerful climax to replenish his body and soul.

“Oh, Lily, darling, come to me,” he groaned.

“I love you,” she whispered as she achieved release atop him seconds later.

They lay together afterward, their bodies still joined, his big member lying semi-hard inside her. She rested on his chest and closed her eyes with a peaceful sense of wellbeing. Everything made sense again. His love had such a power for chasing off her fears.

In his arms, awash in the afterglow of love, it seemed as though nothing could ever assail them.

But this was only the calm before the storm.

The following night, Lily and Pamela crept up into the bat-infested attic with Derek, and while its winged residents were out dining on moths, they helped him fix the roof. All three wore triangular-folded handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces like a gang of bandits to avoid breathing in the dust of bat guano or the unhealthy black mold eating away at the beams.

It was no job for a lady—nor for a gentleman’s son, in fact—but after exclaiming over what a disgusting, or rather “macabre” task they had ahead of them, they got down to work. Lily kept the lanterns glowing so Derek could see what he was doing. He had brought up a ladder and climbed onto the roof for a closer look at the problem. Now he handed down the manor’s loose roof tiles like some unenviable dentist at work on a giant, extracting so many black, broken teeth.

While Lily made a pile of the old tiles, Cousin Pamela dutifully handed new boards up to him through the largest hole in the roof.

Derek kept banging away with the hammer.

Sometime after midnight, they started getting punchy, helping Pamela plot her next novel.

Derek had proposed a story about a young man who visits a strange castle and learns it’s infested with ghosts that he must somehow fight. Lily suggested an exorcist, but Pamela said that only worked on demons.

“Maybe he could have some special tool to fight the ghosts with,” Lily suggested.

“Like what? A magic hammer?” Derek replied with a grin, leaning down through the hole to show them the one in his hand.

“Would you be careful? If you fall, I’ll kill you.”

“That’s what he could do! He could die,” Derek exclaimed. “If he was dead, he could fight the ghosts as a ghost himself.”

“But then they’d have to find a way to bring him back to life,” Lily reasoned. “How’s that supposed to work?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to Gabriel,” he muttered, but he did not explain.

“I like this idea,” Pamela mused aloud. “I’ll start on it first thing tomorrow!”

“It
is
tomorrow,” Derek replied from up on the roof.

“Oh, yes. Can you see our bats flying around from up there?”

“No, but if I do, I intend to tell them as their landlord that their rent is overdue.”

By morning, Derek had sealed the bats out of the attic and they were swooping around outside the house in a bit of a panic. The servants had arisen for their daily duties; the footman and maid helped the three of them carry out the tools and nails and piles of refuse from their project.

“Eh, that was so disgusting.”

“Be sure and wash up well. Bats can carry diseases, which is why I didn’t really want you to help, but so be it. I’m glad that you did. Thanks, ladies.”

“We’re the ones who should be thanking
you,
” Pamela answered, but Lily merely gave him an adoring smile.

“Oh, there you are!” Aunt Daisy came rushing across the entrance hall below as they made their way down the stairs to put their things away.

Derek and the footman were carrying the ladder, Lily held several doused lanterns, while Pamela had the last board that hadn’t been needed.

Aunt Daisy fluttered about in a state of agitation. “Hurry, daughter, oh, hurry!”

“What is it, Mother?” Cousin Pamela asked in concern, setting the board down carefully at the bottom of the stairs, leaning it against the newel post.

“Something’s come for you—a letter! Here! Oh, quickly!”

“Is it from that poet fellow you met at the literary society, hm?” Lily teased, giving her cousin a knowing look.

“No!” Aunt Daisy exclaimed, waving it like a winning slip in the parish lottery. “Dear heaven—it is from a publisher!”

Pamela gasped aloud. “What?” She flew over to her mother and gripped the sealed letter in both hands. “Murray! John Murray, Publisher. Oh, dear God, he publishes Lord Byron a-and Sir Walter Scott! But how could he even know about me?”

Derek cleared his throat, lowered his head, and feigned innocence.

“You didn’t!” Pamela’s jaw dropped as she turned to him.

“Why not? The tale was good enough. My dear, you can never succeed if you won’t even try.”

Pamela turned to Lily, her face white. “I-I can’t. I can’t open it. Lily, you read it. I can’t bear to see what it says.”