Page 17 of Lily and the Duke
Gabriel spent the rest of the evening inwardly trying to formulate a plan in which he might arrange to spendmoretime with Lily, not less.
“Ah, Lily, now that you have decided to grace me with your presence, we shall immediately discuss the reason why the Duke of St. Albans should have singled you out for his attention at the ball yesterday evening.” Lily’s mother eyed her reprovingly after she dismissed the attending footman with a wave of her hand. She waited until he had left the room before continuing. “Neither your father nor I, indeed none of our family, can withstand the possibility of you being involved in an even more scandalous situation than your sister was two years ago. We only managed it then, and since, because her lover was only a secretary and we, as a family, have been able to maintain secrecy on the subject. The same would not be possible if you were to become involved with a man as prestigious as the Duke of St. Albans.”
“There will be no scandal, Mama,” Lily assured calmly. “And once I have chosen the fruit for my breakfast and am sat at the table, we shall discuss any subject you wish.”
She had successfully avoided answering her mother’s curiosity the evening before.
She had done so when, after the countess returned from the Landers’s ball, she had come directly, and no doubt purposefully, to Lily’s bedchamber and Lily had pretended to be asleep. After several frustrated attempts to wake her, the muttering countess had departed to her own bedchamber for the night.
Lily had decided it would be for the best if she allayed her mother’s frustrations as soon as possible this morning.Goodness knows she knew how relentless her mother could be when she was set on a subject.
Which was why, instead of asking for a breakfast tray to be brought up to her bedchamber, as Lily would have preferred, she had instead come down to eat as soon as she had washed and was dressed for the day ahead.
As expected, her father had already left to go about his daily business, whatever that might be, leaving Lily and her mother to breakfast alone together in the small family dining room.
Lily duly collected the selection of diced fruits before sitting opposite her mother. She smiled as the footman returned with a fresh pot of tea. He poured her a cup before placing the pot in the center of the table and once again leaving the room after a dismissive nod from the countess.
Once they were alone again, Lily knew she could no longer delay answering her impatiently waiting mother. “The duke wished to talk to me concerning his need to choose the material and design for a new gown he would like to give Chloe on her nineteenth birthday in two weeks’ time.”
Lily had been rather proud of herself, as she lay in bed the previous evening, for having thought up this excuse for Gabriel’s conversation with her. Having made that decision, Lily had fallen into what had unfortunately been a restless night’s sleep.
How could it be any other when she could not stop thinking of the hunger in Gabriel’s eyes as he attempted to coax her out onto the terrace with him? A hunger which had left Lily in no doubt of his desire to kiss her again.
Lily would have willingly allowed him to do so, would have enjoyed kissing him back. If they had not been at an event suchas a ball, where so many eyes and ears of Society had already been concentrated in their direction.
Her mother now tutted her disappointment in that answer. “Is that the only reason?”
Lily nodded. “Obviously, he should not have done so where our talking together was sure to attract interest. But as he so rarely chooses to be seen in public, I believe he must have decided to make a special effort to converse with me when the opportunity arose.”
“Oh.” Her mother’s disappointment deepened. “Your father had hoped…”
“What?” Lily gave a derisive laugh. “Surely Papa did not think, even for a moment, that a wealthy and toplofty gentleman such as the Duke of St. Albans would ever be interested in someone like me?”
“You are the daughter of an earl,” her mother protested.
“A poor one.”
“That is not publicly known.”
Lily did not totally agree on that point, but she was not about to say so. Let her mother continue to live in her fantasy world, if that was what she chose to do. “I am not pretty enough to attract such a man as St. Albans.”
“You think far too little of yourself, Lily,” her mother reproved sharply.
Which was ironic, considering her mother was the one who constantly complained that Lily's looks were such that her French maid could only ever manage to make her appear“tolerably pretty.” The countess had also been known to claim that no effort on the part of Lily’s maid would ever succeed in presenting her as a true beauty.
Her mother usually added that Lily’s dark hair, olive complexion, and strange pale green eyes were not in the least fashionable and would never win her a husband.
The truth was, this was Lily’sthirdSeason, not her first, all without a suitable offer of marriage having been made. She was the daughter of an earl, after all, even if he was an impoverished one, and her parents did not believe that a simple Mr. or Lord would do as a husband for her. This lack of a betrothal only added to the countess’s vitriol on the subject.
Lily had inherited her looks and coloring from her father rather than her mother, the countess being a woman who was fashionably fair-haired and blue-eyed. Hazel was similarly fair-haired and blue-eyed, and even at sixteen had been hauntingly beautiful.
It was their mother’s fair beauty which had no doubt briefly captured the Earl of Truro’s attention all those years ago, enough so that he had offered her marriage and they had produced four children together.
But the countess’s looks were now marred by the visible lines upon her forehead as well as beside her eyes and mouth. Formed over the years, Lily believed, by her mother’s deep unhappiness within her marriage.
Whatever the reason, the countess’s frustration with her lot in life was such that she often vented those feelings as criticism of her unmarried daughter.
It was a dissatisfaction with life which Lily was determined she would not emulate.
