“Are we speaking of anyone in particular?” His voice was hard, and he sounded suddenly so angry that she knew he understood she was referring to Nash. She would not say it, though. That would get them into another quarrel, and at this particular moment, she’d rather not admit that Owen had been correct all these years when he’d told her to forget Nash because he had long ago forgotten her. Owen had said Nash would break her heart if she let him, and Owen had been right. Her heart was shattered.
“No,” she lied. “I had thought by now a man would have realized I was the woman he’d been longing for.” That was as close to the truth as she was willing to get tonight.
“Ah, damnation, Lilias. I… Well, hell…”
And before she knew what was occurring, her best friend, the man she thought of like a brother, yanked her to him and covered her mouth with his. Shock stilled her for a moment, then utter dismay, but before she could react, gasps filled the silent night, followed by a bevy of excited chatter.
“I will live in exile as a spinster,” Lilias said over her mother’s wailing.
Her mother whirled toward her, the excessive noise finally, blessedly stopping. Yet Lilias’s ears still rang. She supposed she should expect no less since Mama had been weeping very loudly since Lilias had been forced to wake her last night and tell her what had occurred at the ball. Lilias was ruined. In fact, her ruination was so complete that she felt she’d given new meaning to the word. She couldn’t have just been discovered in a compromising embrace by anyone. No, certainly not. She’d been found with Owen’s mouth sealed over hers by not only Lady Adaline, but by Lady Adaline’s closest friend, Juliette Blanche, and her father, who everyone knew owned one of the cruelest scandal sheets in London. There was no hope to conceal the incident, and if she’d held the faintest fantasy that there might be, the scandal sheet she now held, which had just been delivered and on which hers was the very first story, dispelled that ludicrous notion.
Her mother paced back and forth, wringing her hands. “Blackwood is a good man. He will come to offer you his hand. I’m sure he simply did not have the chance to do so last night.”
No, he had not. She’d fled the ball and come straight home. She’d left him standing on the terrace calling her name. She still could not believe Owen had kissed her. It was a tragedy beyond reckoning. She had lost the man she loved and the man she’d always counted on as a friend in one night. Would he come? She prayed he did not. Or maybe she prayed he did and that he’d say he’d been impulsive, that he’d acted to simply make her feel better about herself. She did not want to hurt him. She did not want to be capable of hurting him. It left her reeling to think it was possible to hold such power over him and that she’d never seen it, never even suspected it. Her stomach cramped to think perhaps this was exactly how Nash thought of her.
“I cannot wed Blackwood,” she said again.
Her mother turned to her and looked at her as if she had sprouted two heads. “You can and you will.”
“Mama, no! I do not love him. I—”
Her mother grabbed her by the arm in a shocking, viselike grip. Mama had never touched Lilias in anger in her life. “Do you think you are the only consideration?” she hissed.
Fear shot straight to Lilias’s heart, and Nora’s face popped into her head. “No,” she whispered. “I know this could affect Nora’s ability to make the best match.” She was drowning in guilt over that.
Mama gave her a little shake. “If only it were that simple.”
The fear in Lilias’s heart spread everywhere. “Whatever do you mean, Mama? Are you speaking of our finances?”
Her mother grasped Lilias to her bosom suddenly and squeezed her tight, a sob escaping her. “We havenothing, Lilias. Your father left us with nothing.” Another sob burst from her. “No,” she cried out, shoving Lilias away, Mama’s face twisted in a pain that hurt Lilias’s heart. “That’s not quite true. He left us in debt—enormous debt—that I have been struggling to repay because the people he owes are unrelenting and unscrupulous! He died owing four gaming hell owners in the worst part of Town you can imagine!” Her mother pressed a hand to her flushed cheek. “And those men… Those men don’t care about laws or that we did not create the debt. They only care about getting their money.” Yet another sob ripped from Lilias’s mother, and Lilias flinched. “He left a huge debt to two very unsavory Irish brothers who run an illegal whiskey business at the docks.” Tears filled her mother’s eyes. “The things they threatened to do to us if I don’t pay them…” Her mother shuddered. “Your father was not in his right mind near the end. He could not have been to leave us so vulnerable.”
Lilias felt her jaw slip open. “I cannot believe it.” The room seemed to spin around her.
Mama took Lilias by the hand and led her to the settee, dragging Lilias down with her into the cream-colored velvet cushions. “I discovered it several months after your father died—or rather the horrid men started calling upon me, threatening me, and demanding I pay them or else they would harm us, or take us and sell us!”
Lilias did not understand, and her head was aching fiercely. “If we had no money at all, how did you afford all those restorative cures in Bath?”
Mama sighed. “I was not in Bath taking restorative cures. I lied. I was away selling my jewels, our art, your father’s guns, our silver. I worked out yearly payment plans with these men and every year when the payment came up to the men your father owes, I had to go away and sell things. I could not do it here lest I be discovered, and we were ruined. Those men… Well, they arranged for me to meet buyers. But I have nothing left to sell, and there is still so much debt.”
Shock pricked Lilias and then deep guilt. She had not even noticed the silver being gone, and when she’d remarked on the art, her mother had told her that looking upon it made her sad, so she’d taken it down, and Lilias had simply believed her. She had been so self-absorbed. “Oh, Mama. All this time I thought you were melancholy—”
Her mother forced a bright smile. “Well, I was. Truly, in the beginning. But there is nothing like the threat of bodily danger to force someone to make a choice, and I have chosen you girls.”
Lilias bit her lip. She had been utterly, utterly selfish. “What shall we do? Perhaps we can beseech Uncle Simon—”
“No, dearest,” Mama interrupted. “Your uncle refused to aid me when I confessed all to him.”
Lilias supposed she should have guessed that, but she had hoped if he knew the trouble they were in, he might have helped. “I’m surprised he’s aided us this long,” Lilias murmured, her mind spinning with what they could possibly do.
Mama scoffed. “He has not aided us. Not once. He allowed us to stay in the house in the Cotswolds and use this home because I gave him a payment, as well.”
Lilias knew instantly what the payment was. Her aunt had always coveted her mother’s wedding ring. Her gaze went to her mother’s finger where she used to wear that ring, which had belonged to Lilias’s grandmother. It had been set with a rare diamond. “Your ring?”
Mama nodded. “But now he says that payment has been exhausted, and he wants us out.”
A coldness settled deep in Lilias’s gut. Nothing was as she’d thought. All this time she’d been waiting for a man who did not even want her while her mother had been trying desperately to keep them alive. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her mother stroked a hand down Lilias’s head. “I didn’t want you to worry, and I wanted you to wed the man you loved.”
