Lily (28 page)

Lily blinked up at him, aware of a powerful sense of relief. She had made an assumption that he knew all about the meager lot of his servants, that Howe’s niggardly treatment of them was at his direction, or at least with his consent. To learn otherwise made her feel lighthearted—and strangely, like crying. She started to speak when she saw that his face had grown dark and grim.

“I’m sorry they’re gone, Howe and her bastard son. If they were still here, I swear before God, I’d—” He halted, and clamped down on some powerful emotion. “What happened”—he took a deep breath—“what happened was my fault. If I could change—anything …” He stopped again.

Lily felt tears burn again at the back of her throat. She searched his eyes, so somber. The taut parentheses on either side of his mouth were white with tension; she wanted to soothe them with her fingertips. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “You didn’t know.”

“No.
I didn’t know.
But that was my crime, not my excuse.”

“But it’s all right now.”

Her understanding goaded him. “No, it’s far from all right. You could have been killed. Or raped, or hurt so badly—”

“But I wasn’t. And you—”

“But you could have been.”

“Dev—” She stumbled over his name. She had no right to call him that now. They were both silent, hampered and uneasy, not looking at each other. But she couldn’t stop her hand from going out to him, hesitantly. She laid her fingers on his wrist, ever so lightly. Just to touch him. To soothe him, and to take comfort for herself. She closed her eyes and felt another surge of blackness rushing toward her.

“Lily,” he said, bowing his head. “I can’t ask you to forgive me. I only want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He kept speaking, his voice low and intense; but in spite of her best efforts, her grip on the meaning of the words loosened and loosened until finally it seemed only fair to tell him.

“Devon, please stop talking before I fall asleep.”

“What?”

She thought he sounded a little hurt. “Lowdy made me take the last of the laudanum just before you came. I can’t keep my eyes open.” It was literally true; she was speaking to him with them closed. “I don’t understand why, but I know you want me to be hard on you, not to forgive you. But I really can’t, it’s not”—she yawned widely, barely getting her hand up in time to cover it—“not in my nature. What happened was dreadful,” she went on sleepily, “but it’s over now. I’m going to get well. Thank you for being sorry—” she tried to open her eyes when she heard his impatient snort, but she just couldn’t manage it—“and thank you for telling me that you are. Now …” Now, what? She had no idea, and she was too tired to think about it. “Now I have to go to sleep.” Her hand relaxed and fell open on his thigh.

He blinked down at it. He felt the beginning of a smile, his first in a long time. He enclosed her limp hand in both of his, examining the calloused palm, the long, slim fingers. He fought the impulse to laugh when she let out a delicate snore, just before pulling her hand out of his and settling gingerly onto her side.

“Good night, Lily,” he said in a conversational tone. Nothing, not even a flicker of an eyelash. She was fast asleep. “Sweet Lily,” he said in a whisper. He watched her a moment longer, beguiled. Unable to resist, he bent and pressed a light, lingering kiss on her cheekbone. Then he blew out her nub of a candle and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

“A
REN’T YOU READY YET?”

Lily looked up, startled. “No, I’m—for what? Aren’t I supposed to—”

“Meet Clay. I told him I’d come and get you.”

“Oh.”

Squinting, Devon moved farther into the room. Lily sat in a splash of sunlight before the open windows, dressed in her nightgown and cloth slippers and sewing on something mustard-colored and voluminous draped across her lap. Dusty sun bars touched color in her dark red hair and made the green specks in her eyes, usually subdued, look almost gaudy. But it was her smile that dazzled him. He returned it unguardedly, and for fully half a minute they were too absorbed in beaming at each other to speak.

Lily recalled herself with a becoming blush and finished pulling the needle through the narrow seam she was sewing. “I’m not quite ready. Your brother said two o’clock, and I’m about three minutes shy of finishing this.”

“What is it?”

“A dressing gown. I haven’t got one, so I’m altering this to fit me.”

“Ah.” He frowned down, observing the lengthening line of her delicate stitches. “How is it that you haven’t got any clothes, Lily?”

Her fingers stilled. What was it she’d told Mrs. Howe? Something about being robbed at a hiring fair. “They were stolen, just before I came here.” The words almost stuck in her throat. Lying to Devon repelled her now, but she shrank from telling him the truth. It wasn’t time. Not yet. Working in haste, she finished her seam, looped a tidy knot, and snipped the thread with a pair of scissors. “There, it’s finished. What do you think?” She held up the robe for his inspection, praying he would ask no more questions.

“Not your color,” he said mildly. She smiled—a bit mysteriously, it seemed to Devon. “Why is that amusing?”

She grinned outright. “Whose color do you think it is?”

He looked at the robe, then back at her. The light dawned. “Mrs. Howe’s?”

“Yes! Clay said it would be all right if I had her clothes—she left them
all,
Devon, a whole wardrobe full—and tried to make a few things from them for myself. This is my first attempt.” She surveyed her handiwork critically; it wasn’t too bad, she decided, although he was right about the color. She glanced at him expectantly. “Oh,” she realized, seeing his face, “you don’t like it.”

“No, it’s fine.” He took the coarse cotton out of her hands and pretended to examine it. “You sew very well.” What he was thinking was that he detested the thought of Lily working on Howe’s—or anyone else’s—ugly, cast-off garments in order to have something to wear. He was prepared to buy her all the clothes she wanted, and a great deal more. But first they had to come to an understanding. And it was too soon, she was still too ill, to broach the subject of the arrangement he had in mind.

“It’s all right,” she assured him, misunderstanding his expression. “I don’t mind that they were hers, really I don’t. In fact”—she smiled and looked away, a little embarrassed—“if you want to know the truth, I enjoy cutting them up. The
irony
of it pleases me. These are even her slippers. They’re miles too big”—she stuck her feet out to show him—“but I can’t help liking it that I’m wearing them. Do you think that’s childish?”

He chuckled, then laughed. “No, I think it’s delightfully human.”

She blushed as if he’d paid her a rare compliment.

He reached for her hand. “Well, stand up, let’s see how well you’ve done. If it falls off you, Howe will have had the last laugh after all.” It astonished him that he—that they—could joke about his housekeeper in any way, any context. And it pleased him, because he knew it was a measure of the extent to which Lily had healed, in mind as well as body.

She stood, her borrowed nightrail billowing around her ankles. It was full, high-collared, and anything but sheer. Nevertheless, she felt self-conscious standing in front of him in it, he fully dressed. Silly; he’d seen her in significantly less. Still—

“Come on, put your arms in. There.” She stood still while he settled the robe around her shoulders and joined all the frog fasteners down the front. The best he could say for it was that it fit. “It fits.”

But Lily was thrilled. “Oh, it does, it really does. In fact, if I say so myself, it’s perfect.” She made a slow turn in front of him, ridiculously pleased with herself.

You’re perfect,
he thought as he took her hand and guided her out of the room at a sedate pace.

“Clay said today was an occasion, and not just because it’s my first time outdoors. Do you know what he meant?”

“Ha! He’s milking this for all it’s worth, I see.”

“What?”

“He’s telling everyone today is his last day of ‘freedom.’ Tomorrow he starts work at the mine.”

They stopped at the top of the staircase. Lily picked up her skirts, hoping she wouldn’t trip in her roomy carpet slippers. But before she could step down, Devon put an arm around her shoulders and one behind her knees and lifted her off her feet. “Oh, no, I can walk, really, I’m perfectly—”

“Quiet. I’m not taking any chances with you,” he said gruffly. True, but an even stronger motivation was the need to hold her. She’d lost a lot of weight, but the solid feel of her in his arms, the living, companionable substance of her filled something inside he hadn’t realized was quite so empty.

As he carried her down the stairs and through the corridors of the cool, dim house, neither spoke, and a silent, breathless awareness replaced the lighthearted banter they were growing used to. At the doors to the wide, shady terrace, he stopped again. Lily breathed softly, hands clasped over his far shoulder, watching the steady pulse that throbbed in his neck. If he turned his head just a little, their lips would touch. The odor of roses was faint and teasing on the capricious breeze, the sea a subtle, gossipy whisper. Their expressive silence went on. She should ask why they were standing here, it occurred to her vaguely; but she knew why, and to ask would break the spell. More than anything she wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and press her lips to the side of his throat. Or tug on his earlobe with her teeth. The seconds wandered past, lazy and unnoticed, until Lily finally murmured, “I must be heavy.”

He could have held her all day, all night. Forever. “Light as a feather,” he answered. A banal analogy. “Or a lily,” he amended whimsically, watching her soft, sensitive mouth. “A long, graceful lily, as white as your skin.”

A drawn-out sigh was the only response she was capable of making. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and felt his chest begin to rise and fall against her bosom in a different rhythm. The longing to kiss him was like wine in a tall glass, rising to the brim, ready to overflow. She said, “Dev,” in a husky whisper, and closed her eyes.

“Well, are you coming out or not?” called Clay from behind the lacy trellis of greenbrier and clematis they’d thought had concealed them. “What’s keeping you? Is Lily all right?”

Devon made a noise in his throat that summed up perfectly all the frustration Lily was feeling at that moment, and stepped down from the shallow portico to the flagstone path.

“Finally. I was almost ready to come and get you.” With a put-upon groan, Clay set down his lemonade, closed his newspaper, pulled his bare feet from the edge of the wrought iron table, and stood up.

“Yes, I can see you were eaten up with worry about us,” Devon observed. He set Lily gently on her feet and pulled a chair out for her. Neither looked at the other, but they wore identical small, secret smiles.

“Lily, you look wonderful today,” Clay said gallantly. “Pink and healthy and rosy-cheeked.”

“Thank you.” She could imagine exactly how rosy-cheeked she must look.

“But I can’t say I think much of that dressing gown. No offense, it doesn’t do you justice.”

“So I’ve been told.” She took a deep breath. “Oh, it feels lovely to be outside. What a
beautiful
day.”

“Isn’t it? My last, you know. From now on it’s nothing but black, dripping pits for me, a candle in my hat, burrowing about in tunnels like a mole.”

Devon rolled his eyes. “Clay will persist in this childish conceit that he’s going to work
in
the mine,” he explained for Lily’s benefit. “He thinks it’ll buy him sympathy.”

“I see.” She smiled across at Clay and asked, “Why are you going to work if you hate the idea of it so?”

“Because I can’t stand Dev’s nagging another day,” he answered promptly. He held up his glass. “Let’s drink to my last afternoon on the earth’s surface,” he proposed dramatically. Devon chuckled and poured a glass of lemonade for himself from the pitcher. He pushed something under a towel toward Lily, brows raised expectantly.

“Oh, no,” she wailed when she saw what was under the cloth. “Oh, that’s not fair.” It was Dr. Marsh’s “tonic,” a yellow, viscous brew as foul as anything Cabby Dartaway ever dreamed of concocting, and she had to drink a glass of it every day. “You’re just doing this to get back at me, Devon, and I don’t think it’s very nice of you.”

He widened his eyes in pretended shock and covered his heart with his hand. “How could you think such a base, petty thing? I tell you, Lily, I’m deeply offended.”

She giggled at his silliness; she’d never seen him so playful.

“That reminds me. I’m changing the toast.” Clay’s voice, serious for once, drew their attention from each other. “I’ve never thanked you, Lily, for taking care of Dev when he was hurt. It was my fault; I’m the one who got him into the whole stupid mess. It could have ended very badly. Mostly because of you, it didn’t.” He lifted his glass again. “To you, Lily. With my gratitude and friendship.”

“Hear, hear,” Devon seconded quietly.

The brothers drank while Lily stared down at her hands. She murmured something inaudible and turned her glass around and around in circles on the table.

“You still have to drink it,” Devon reminded her, and they all laughed, a little self-consciously.

“Oh, very well.” She squeezed her eyes shut and downed the noxious liquid in four swallows, shuddering afterwards and making exaggerated sounds of disgust.

“Good girl,” Devon said warmly.

Her eyes watered, but she smiled back in pure pleasure, feeling again as if he’d given her the compliment of her life.

Clay looked back and forth between them, fascinated.

“So. Tomorrow you start a new job.” A new life, she might have called it. She found it slightly odd, although understandable, that none of them ever alluded directly to what Clay’s “job” had been immediately preceding his new one. It had affected all of them in one way or another, and yet a sort of cautious, well-bred tact prevented anyone from mentioning it. “Will you be Mr. Morgan’s assistant, then?” It was an innocent question, so Clay’s suddenly cool, hooded look confounded her. She wanted to bite her tongue.