One Naughty Night2 (32 page)

To her surprise, it was not a tale of historical drama and heroism or a drawing room romance, which were all the rage now on the London stage. Instead it was a dark story set in places like barrooms and Madame Marie’s establishment, populated by people who faced the gritty realities of life every day. As she read on, drawn deeper into the plot, she saw that Aidan had a true gift for words. He had captured the rhythm of speech perfectly, drawing pictures of the characters’ inner beings through their words and their interactions with each other.

The main character, Nell, was a milliner who kept all her suitors at bay with a sharp wit. One man, a sailor named Will, was obviously meant for her, but too much stood in the way of their love—Nell’s ambition to leave the millinery trade, Will’s work, another handsome scoundrel who courted Nell. They were surrounded by the world of music halls and barrooms, by Nell’s friends and enemies, shopgirls, servants, laborers, all of them with their own dreams. Their own joys and sorrows.

It was an entire world populated by people who felt real and whole, so true to life.

But all too soon the pages were done, the play ending in the middle of a scene of dangerous action. Lily nearly cursed when she turned a paper over and saw there was no more. The play had taken her out of herself completely
and into the world Aidan created. A world populated by people she knew so well.

She laid her hand on the last page and blinked back the prickle of sudden tears from her eyes.

“Lily?” Aidan said from the bed, his voice hoarse from sleep. He sat up, his shoulders tense as he scanned the room.

“I’m over here,” she answered.

“What are you doing?”

“Discovering that you, Aidan Huntington, are a terrible fraud.”

Aidan swung his long legs out of the bed and moved slowly across the room to the desk. His eyes were narrowed. “Did you read that?”

“Yes. And I can’t believe you go through your life pretending to be such a care-for-nothing rake when you have this rare gift. You
see
people; you capture them here in your words.” Lily swallowed hard. “Why do you not reveal yourself? This would do any theater proud.”

In answer, Aidan scowled and snatched the pages off the desk. They fluttered to the floor. “No one is meant to see that. What would the world say about a duke’s son who dares to write about barkeeps and milliners?”

“Aidan!” Lily jumped up from her chair and knelt to gather up the papers. The precious pages had given her a glimpse of Aidan’s soul. “You could produce it anonymously. No one would have to know. But if your family realized—”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t you think they already see me as enough of a scapegrace, Lily? This writing is for me. That is all.” He knelt beside her and took the papers to put them away in a drawer.

“But it shouldn’t be.” She reached up and caught his
face between her hands to force him to look at her. “I know what it means to love your family and yet not to truly belong with them, Aidan. To always feel… apart. Alone. To always be watching life, pretending at it, and never being true to yourself.”

“Lily.” Aidan seized her hands tightly in his, and in his beautiful eyes she saw something she had never glimpsed there before. Pain. “Your parents and your siblings, they love you. You do belong with them. But I never should have been a duke’s son. I write those plays to remember the world I do understand, but I don’t belong there either.”

Lily shook her head. “I love my family, too, but I always know I’m not a real St. Claire. I always remember how my life was before them, no matter how hard I try to forget. I remember my real mother. And since Tom Beaumont came back”—she shuddered—“I remember him too. I was almost able to convince myself those days with him were only a nightmare, but they were too real.”

She knew she couldn’t tell this tale if Aidan looked at her with those clear blue eyes that saw everything. She pushed herself to her feet and went to the window. She pressed her palms to the cool glass and stared down at the empty, fog-laced street below.

Aidan seemed to sense what she needed him to do and stayed where he was, just listening to her in silence.

“I told you I ran away from Madame Josephine’s after my mother died,” she said. “And that Tom Beaumont was the one who found me. He had me steal for him but not prostitute myself, which is what I was escaping from at Madame Josephine’s. I made friends with some of the other children. I had food, a place to sleep. It didn’t seem so bad. Until…”

Her voice broke, and she heard Aidan rise to his feet. She held up her hand to warn him back. She would break now if he touched her. “I have never told anyone this part of the story, Aidan. I thought I really could escape my mother’s life, that as bad as mine was, it was not
that
bad. But Tom had known of my mother. She was famous in certain circles. That was why he sought me out. And he said it would be a shame to let my familial… talents… go to waste. When I protested and tried to run, he… he took me anyway. He raped me. He said when I was properly trained, I could go to one of his brothels or out onto the streets. But the St. Claires found me before it could happen again, and I… I…”

She did break off then, a ragged sob escaping before she could catch it. She pressed her fingers over her face. He would hate her now, turn from her in disgust, this extraordinary man who was unlike any other she had ever known. She had never told anyone what Tom really did to her, not even her parents, and for a moment she was lost again in the horror of it all.

“Now you see how… how filthy I really am,” she said. Lily rubbed her hands hard over her aching eyes, as if she could dash away the old images.

Suddenly she felt Aidan’s arms around her waist, and her eyes flew open to see that he knelt before her, staring up as he held her. The pale gray light of earliest dawn fell across the perfect angles of his face, and written there she saw the strangest mix of fury, determination, and deepest tenderness.

She had the unreal feeling of being in a poem or a fairy tale in that moment, where the knight swore fealty to his lady and vowed to be her champion. It was as if
whatever was hidden inside of him reached out to her own secret heart and wrapped around it, tying her to him.

“Lily,” he said roughly. “I promise you I will find him, and this time there will be no constables, no prisons. I will kill him myself, and he will never hurt you again.”

Lily couldn’t speak through the ache in her throat, and she shook her head. Aidan was more a threat to her than Tom Beaumont had ever been. For Aidan held her heart, and she feared she would never be able to reclaim it. All those careful years of guarding her emotions, keeping herself apart, they were all for nothing. Aidan had claimed her in one effortless smile.

She threaded her fingers through his hair and stared down at him for one endless and yet far-too-brief instant.

Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door, and Lily let him go and turned her face away. Aidan rose smoothly to his feet, and to her relief, he went to the door with just one searching look at her face. If he had pressed her, if he had kissed her, she feared she would shatter and never be able to put herself together again.

She heard him move away into the sitting room and open the door, then heard the low, harsh murmur of voices. She quickly found her shoes and smoothed her hair, managing to somewhat compose herself before he returned.

His expression was unreadable as he held up a hastily scrawled note. “It’s from David,” he said. “He’s found something.”

A
idan held on to Lily’s hand as they made their way through the narrow lanes of the Devil’s Acre. The night was over now, dawn creeping along the dingy alleys, and all the thieves and whores had scattered to their hidey-holes. There were only laundresses and dockworkers making their way to another day’s work, yawning behind their caps, to see Aidan and Lily as they hurried by.

Lily had said nothing since they left Aidan’s lodgings. She let him hold on to her, but he sensed she had drawn back into herself, her eyes shuttered against him. He wouldn’t drag her out, not yet, but he knew something profound had shifted between them when he put his arms around her and swore he would kill Tom Beaumont for what the man had done to her.

He didn’t want to merely kill the bastard; he wanted to rip him limb from limb, slowly, painfully, for putting that terrible flash of pain in Lily’s eyes. Every bit of Aidan’s civilized, aristocratic veneer dropped away, and he had only instinct to go on now. If he was alone right now, Aidan knew he would hunt Beaumont down like the animal he was and tear him apart.

But he was not alone. He had Lily with him, and she had to come first.

Aidan glanced back at her. She had drawn her shawl up over her head and around her shoulders to cover her costume, and she looked back at him steadily from under the folds of black cloth. That morning, they had revealed themselves to each other in a way that was so raw and real that Aidan had felt torn open. No one else had ever done that to him.

No one else had ever been more important than himself. But now Lily was. She was not just inspiration for his writing, not just a good fuck or a distraction. She was… more. And he didn’t know what to do with that new, terrible realization. It was something so completely foreign to him.

And whatever had happened between them seemed to have startled her too. She had withdrawn from him, retreated behind her protective walls. If he wanted her to come back to him—and he didn’t know yet if he did—he would have to lay siege to her all over again.

But for now, they had to find Beaumont and take care of him once and for all.

“All right?” Aidan asked. “I think this is the place David described in his message.”

Lily nodded, still silent. She followed him up a narrow wooden staircase that was built haphazardly against the side of an ancient, half-timbered building. Most of the windows were open, letting out the sounds of crying children and sleep-heavy arguments, along with the smells of frying onions and boiled cabbage, the tang of harsh lye soap.

At the top of the stairs, a door flapped open. The old wood was splintered, as if it had been violently bashed
in, and broken pottery was scattered across the floor just inside. A thin wailing came from an inner room. Aidan held Lily behind him and peered inside.

David stood near the dingy whitewashed wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched something impassively. He had put on a rough wool coat but otherwise looked as he had earlier, with his collarless shirt and wild long hair. No bruises or blood.

“David,” Aidan said quietly, and his brother turned to look at him.

“Ah, there you are,” David said calmly, as if they were meeting in a ballroom or at a St. James club. “I see you got my message.”

Aidan led Lily into the room, still holding her close at his side. “What is this?” Aidan asked David.

“I know a few people at the docks, just as you do, brother,” David said. “Perhaps you remember Molly?”

Aidan nodded brusquely. Molly—one of his brother’s women. David didn’t indulge in romance often, but when he did, his women remained intensely attached and loyal to him even after it ended. And for a man who refused to leave the countryside often, he had a wide acquaintance.

“Well, Molly heard from one of her friends who works the streets that one of Beaumont’s mistresses had rooms here, and he has been seen skulking around after his escape. It turned out to be that Sarah you sent me word of. I got here only to find that Beaumont had already left, after taking out his temper on the poor woman.”

Aidan studied the doorway into the other room. The wailing had stopped, and now he could hear the murmur of women’s voices, harshly accented. “She knows where he’s gone?”

David shrugged. “I could get little out of her. Perhaps you’ll have better luck, brother. You have a softer touch than me when it comes to the ladies.” His gaze slid over Lily.

Lily stared back at him. “I think that your old nanny was quite right,” she said.

David’s brow arched. “I beg your pardon?”

“You two
were
changeling children, left in the duke’s nursery by dark fairies,” she said, and David threw back his head to laugh.

“So we were… Mrs. Nichols, is it?” David said. “We are a terrible disappointment to our father.”

“But we do know how to get things done when we need to,” Aidan added.

“I’m beginning to see that,” Lily murmured.

“I’ll go see if I can persuade this Sarah to confide in me,” Aidan said. He made his way into the other chamber, David and Lily close behind him. It was a bedroom of sorts, with a narrow straw mattress pushed against one wall and a trunk spilling clothes out onto the dirty floor. A young woman huddled on the bed, her head down and the tangles of her blond hair falling over her face. Her bony shoulders, wrapped in a thin dressing gown, heaved with sobs. An older woman knelt beside her, whispering in her ear and holding out a beaker of ale.

“Hush now, girl,” the woman said. “He’s gone. You need to get yourself together.”

“He’ll be back,” the girl sniffled. “He always is. Even when you think he’s gone…”

“And when might that be, Sarah?” Aidan asked quietly.

The woman’s head shot up, tense as a fox run to earth, and Aidan saw with a wrench that her thin face was
bruised. She wiped at the smear of dried blood under her nose. “Who are you, then?”

“This is my brother,” David said, using that soft, coaxing voice that always soothed his wild horses. “We were sent here by Molly, remember?”

Sarah nodded warily. “I remember. Well, I don’t know when he’ll be back, so you’d better go look for him somewhere else. Does he owe you money or somethin’? I told him not to mess with toffs.” Her dull blue eyes slid past Aidan and widened when she glimpsed Lily at his shoulder. She went white under her livid bruises, as if she glimpsed a ghost. “You!”

“Hello, Sarah,” Lily said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Aidan glanced down at her to find that she watched the other woman calmly. Too calmly. It reminded him of her demeanor with Marie in the brothel. “You know her?”