“She has spent the past seven years trying desperately to pay off the debts my father left us with. She has gone without, all the while letting us think she was escaping for restorative, luxurious cures to Bath when she was making trips to sell off her jewelry bit by bit to keep the ruffians my father owed from doing us bodily harm. And she had to endure groveling at my selfish uncle’s feet to allow us to stay in his houses. So don’t you dare talk about my mother. She is amazing. Yes, she may have a bit of a dependency upon laudanum when she is home, but I daresay anyone in her situation would.”
“I imagine you are correct,” he said quietly, though a black rage had come over him at the thought of unscrupulous men threatening Lilias and her family. And the notion that her uncle, her family, had not wanted to help them, had clearly barely done so, made him want to kill the man, but that would help no one. He kept the rage inside, and in a calm voice, he said, “Your mother sounds as if she has done her best.”
“She has,” Lilias whispered, looking down at her lap and wringing her hands. “But it is not enough.”
He could only imagine with what Lilias had revealed. Her mother selling her jewelry during fake trips to Bath—that was likely so she could sell her jewels without being recognized. Her mother groveling at Lilias’s selfish uncle’s feet and it not being enough—was the marquess planning on turning them out? He knew the Mayfair home they stayed in was the smaller of the two their family owned in Town. And the Cotswold home? Did the same hold true there?
“Did your family have another country home?”
She frowned. “What?”
“Another country home. Did your family, or rather does your uncle, currently possess two such homes?”
A distracted nod. “Yes, a much larger one in Shropshire.”
“Why did you all not stay at the larger country home?”
“My father preferred the smaller.”
Just then, the back door to the club opened, and a tall, wiry man stepped into the shadowy lane. “No loitering in the alley.”
“We’re coming in,” Lilias called.
Nash scowled. She knew nothing about getting into a club such as this. “You cannot just say you’re coming in. You have to be given permission.”
She offered him a haughty smile, stood, and opened her cloak, letting it drop upon the bench she’d just risen from. He got a full view of the tops of her breasts again, as did the stranger whose mouth dropped open. “Send the man who tends to the carriages,” she ordered, and to Nash’s astonishment, the man nodded and disappeared.
Lilias grinned down at Nash. “Well,” she said, her tone smug, “he did not seem to notice I have no gloves, a hole in my slippers, and a threadbare cloak. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
To his surprise, she stepped down from the gig. He had to lunge for her, and he just barely caught her by the wrist.
She glanced over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows challengingly. “You can come if you want, but don’t expect me to wait for you, Nash.”
He had mere seconds to find out the most important thing he wanted to know, the one fact that would determine his actions. “Did you tell Owen you love him?”
“What?” She looked utterly perplexed. “Do you… Do you mean when he asked me to wed him?”
“No. Before that. Four years ago in the Cotswolds by the river. The one where I first met you.”
He saw the moment she recalled saying it, and it felt like a blow, though it shouldn’t. Everything would move forward just as it should with her and Owen.
“I did say that,” she said, her voice so quiet he barely heard her. She turned fully toward him then, her head tilted back. “But I meant as a friend,” she added, her voice even lower now as each word dripped misery. “He told you?”
Nash nodded, his chest tightening, the world around him spinning.
“When?”
“Four years ago,” Nash replied, feeling a sort of numbness for what he was sure she would say to his next question. “Would you have wed Owen if you had not been caught on the terrace with him?”
She blanched at that, and Nash knew. Good God, heknew.
“I—” Her gaze dropped from his, and she shook her head. “Probably not, but who can say for certain. I—That is, my mother and my sister—”
“Need you. They need a savior, and Owen is to be it.”
She nodded again, her head rising and her eyes finding his. The tears that shone there made him want to fall at her feet and offer himself if she’d have him. But maybe she wouldn’t, and he could never do so anyway.
“You think me horrible?” She sounded small, broken.
