“Lillian, may I join you?”
Lillian snapped her gaze to the door. Tabitha stood in its frame, her hands picking at her dress.
Lillian dropped into a seat, and the softest cushion in the world silenced what should have been a satisfying plop and creak as the furniture settled beneath her weight. She scowled, refusing to be comforted by the cloud of a chair.
“Please, do come distract me from my thoughts,” she said.
Tabitha joined her in a nearby chair. “Have you heard from Devon?”
“No.” Bother. She sounded terribly petulant.
“Do you wish to hear from Devon?”
Yes. She desperately wanted to know if Frederick’s was finally his, to hear his plans for it, and to help him plan. Of course she wanted his lips on hers and his hands on her body. She wanted to touch him, to trace her fingertips down every divine line of him.
“I don’t know,” she grumbled. She might as well remain petulant if she was going to begin that way. She may sound childish, but at least she’d be consistently childish.Ugh. No good. She sat up straight, organized her brain a bit, and told the truth. “Yes. Desperately so. What happened at the ball…”
“Not good.”
“Not by any stretch of imagination, no. But I was not fair in my reaction.”
Tabitha leaned over and patted Lillian’s arm. “It was a shock. Few would have reacted differently in your situation. You have good cause to keep your reputation pristine.”
“Had.” Lillian’s organized mind crumbled again.
“At least you helped Lady Abigail.” Tabitha offered a wan smile, a tone of encouragement not strong enough to push a breeze in a different direction, to lift an eyelash from a table, to disturb the dust currently not on any surface in this museum of a house. As weighty as they were, Lillian’s spirits could not be lifted an inch by such a tone and look.
“How well do you know your brother-in-law, Tabitha?” she asked.
“Not well, I’m afraid. My attention has been mostly on his brother. He is, I believe, a noble spirit. I do not know if anyone truly knows the man, though. Even his wife seems to find him perplexing. I would venture to say he is nothing more than charms and smiles. Most would describe him as such.”
Yes, Lillian saw how that described her husband. She also knew him better than that, no matter what Tabitha said. She knew the corners of his heart and the shadows of his soul. He was no fairy tale but something infinitely more real and more interesting and more desirable.
“What was it you were hoping to learn from me?” Tabitha asked.
“Oh, I don't know.” Lillian sighed. “I acted poorly at the ball.”
Tabitha snorted. “He is the one who brawled with another man in the middle of a ballroom. He’s the one who’d had too much to drink.”
“No, I don't think he had.”
“Why else would he have behaved as he did? And after what I heard of his behavior at Jane’s home at Christmas.” She sucked air between her teeth, her eyes lighting with disapproval. “It’s an obvious conclusion.”
“He does not like to drink heavy when he’s gambling.” The game last night had meant everything to him. He would not have endangered his chances by inhibiting his intellect and senses.
“Then why would he have behaved like that? Arthur says he has these… dark moments, times when all the light just drains right out him.” She studied Lillian’s face. “Was it like that? Do… do you regret marrying him?”
“No!” An easy question to answer. “No,” she said more softly. “I’ve been told he was defending my honor.”
“Hmph.” Tabitha’s face took on the hauteur of a duchess, reminding Lillian that her friend was indeed such a creature. “He could have done so in a more civilized way. Challenging him to a duel, for instance.”
A strangled laugh escaped Lillian’s lips. “I think I’d rather a brawl at a ball than twenty paces or what have you at dawn. I’m not a fan of bullet holes. Or death.” Oddly, she spoke truth. If someone had asked her last night if she would have preferred him to do nothing at all to defend her honor, she would have said yes, with vehemence. Now she thrilled at the memory of his body falling through the ballroom door, at the primitive growl in his voice as he’d demanded an apology, at the bunched muscle under the fine linen of his shirt that marked him as a man apart from the others under the glittering candlelight.
Her blood bubbled in delight that he’d defended her in such an extravagant way. The whole thing rather made her feel like the heroine of a fairy tale. Not the fairy godmother, not the one helping everyone else to happily ever afters, but the one who got her own happy ending.
“What will you do?” Tabitha asked.
Lillian sighed. “Once I find him, I’ll talk with him.”
