Chapter Thirteen

Adam was the devil incarnate. He must be, to turn her sister’s poor opinion of him on its head so easily. It had taken him two days to charm his way into Willa’s good graces.

Two days.

Sometimes, after a row, Willa wouldn’t speak to Lily for a week. But soon she was sharing secret jokes with the man she had refused to acknowledge upon his arrival. How had he managed that?

“Adam is escorting me to the park. Are you joining us?”

Lily blinked at the tome in her hand, squinting as if to read a far different text than the page she had perused twice. Had the book spoken to her? It seemed as likely a tale as the words pouring out of Willa’s mouth.

Yet, when she raised her gaze, she found her younger sister standing in the study doorway, looking expectant—perhaps even happy. Willa had been nothing short of despondent since she had been cast off by Mr. Sanderson in front of everyone at Lady Breeding’s party. Had Adam managed to cheer her, though Lily and Sophie had fallen short?

Impossible. They must have a wager or challenge, some compelling reason to stir Willa from her bedchamber.

Her eyes danced, her mouth pursed as she waited for an answer.

“I… Did you say Adam was escorting you?”

Willa pulled a face. “You don’t have a monopoly on him. You haven’t paid him the least bit of attention this past week. He’s gotten lonely.”

Sometimes, late at night, Lily stared at the ceiling of her borrowed bedchamber and strained her ears for movement in the room next door. Even when she’d thought him the thief who had stolen Lord Ednam’s mummy, she couldn’t help but listen for him and battle memories of the last time they had shared a bed together.

Lily’s throat constricted. “How lonely, precisely?”

Willa’s smile turned mischievous. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Are you joining us?”

A hot emotion churned in her stomach, one she didn’t care to analyze. When Lily had invited Adam into her home, she had stipulated that he not flirt with or seduce her sisters. He’d promised to be faithful.

No, he’d promised he had been faithful. Adam hadn’t made any future promises.

And Willa, for all that she was most volatile of the Bancroft sisters, perhaps was the most malleable. She had always been impulsive, living for her own desires first and considering the consequences later. Had Adam noticed her desire to be the center of a man’s attention? He could easily have capitalized on it.

Adam belongs to me.

She swallowed hard, shoving the thought aside. After all, they had not been married in truth for four years. She would not share his bed again, but that didn’t mean she would step aside and give him her blessing while he used her sister in the same manner.

She shut the book aside and pushed to her feet. “I’m coming.”

Willa beamed. “Excellent! I’ll change clothes.”

As she skipped away, Lily glanced down at herself. She wore her favorite walking dress in a faded shade of pink. It might not be the height of fashion anymore, but the well-worn cotton was soft against her skin. She smoothed her hand down the front and did the same to her hair as she stepped out into the corridor, following her sister. One way or another, she would ensure that Adam behaved himself.

After all, she knew, even if Willa did not, that he was doing this to prove a point. Lily rubbed between her breasts, where she ached. She should never have brought her sisters into this.

The door to Willa’s room was ajar, voices spilling into the corridor.

“Do you think this one complements my eyes?”

Lily stopped in her tracks. She struggled to breathe, picturing Willa trying on dresses for the man. Without a lady’s maid, Adam would offer to fasten her buttons—the same way he had offered for Lily. For that scant week they’d been married, he’d enjoyed the task, his fingers skimming over her back and teasing her with each button. Was he forcing his company on her sister?

Was she inviting it?

Lily’s fingernails bit crescents into her palm. She straightened her shoulders and strode into the room. If Willa wanted privacy, she should have shut the door.

Willa, fully dressed, waved a blue ribbon next to her cheek for comparison.

Across the room, with his hip leaning against the vanity, Adam crossed his arms. He cocked his head to the side. “If you want to stir his jealousy, you’d best add color to your cheeks, not your hair.” His mouth was curved in a warm smile, his eyes dancing beneath raised eyebrows.

Willa giggled and spun. “Why, Adam, are you telling me my hair needs no adornment?”

He laughed. “That’s precisely what I’m saying. Wear what you will, but put color into those cheeks.”

Lily cleared her throat. “What’s going on here?”

As Adam glanced sideways toward her, he grinned. “I’m helping Willa prepare for her tour of Hyde Park. I promised to escort her. She tells me that you’ll be joining us?”

Lily swallowed thickly, glaring at him. “I will. But perhaps you ought to leave us for a moment. Willa will need help with her dress.”

He didn’t protest. He straightened, pulling on the hem of his jacket before he crossed to the door. As he passed beside her, he leaned closer and whispered, “And will you need help with your dress, darling?”

“I won’t be changing.”

He raked his gaze down her body and up again. “A pity.”

He left without another word, lightly shutting the door behind him.

Gathering herself, Lily willed her thumping heart to subside as she turned to her sister. She found Willa scowling at her.

“What did you do that for? I wanted a male opinion.”

“It won’t do for him to see you unclothed.”

A burble of a giggle escaped from between Willa’s pressed lips. She clapped her hand over top, but the giggle grew like an avalanche, pouring from behind her hand. “You don’t think…” She laughed harder. “Oh, Lily. He has eyes only for you. Besides, we’re brother and sister.”

Was that how he had swayed her good opinion?

“By marriage.”

She dropped her hand, looking solemn. “Yes, your marriage. You don’t treat him as a wife ought.”

Lily gasped.

“Oh, don’t look so aghast. You know you’ve treated him abysmally. You might think it a penance for his long departure on business, but I think you’ll regret it.”

“He deserves the penance.”

Willa tilted her head, pondering. “His absence wasn’t entirely his fault. He tried to write; we simply didn’t get the letters. And you, Lily? Did you write to him?”

Lily gritted her teeth. Of course she hadn’t bloody well written to him. Not only had she no notion of where to find him, but he had robbed her! Not that Willa knew the truth. For the first time, Lily lamented keeping her weakness a secret. She had been so ashamed at finding herself deceived by the man she’d loved that when Papa had suggested the lie, she’d welcomed it.

“It was an urgent matter. He said he’s explained this all to you; you just won’t hear it. You should listen to him. He still loves you.”

Lily scoffed. “He does, does he?” If Adam was teaching her anything with this charade, it was that he was willing to say anything in order to achieve his goal. Which made their courtship and marriage all the more pathetic.

“He does. It’s plain as day.” Willa sighed, looking crestfallen. “You don’t know how much I’d give to have Thomas look at me that way…”

The simmer of anger beneath her skin evaporated. Lily clasped her sister’s hand, but Willa pulled away.

The fiery young woman squared her shoulders. “I won’t wallow in despair, not over him. Letting idle gossip turn his good opinion of me was his mistake. And I will make him rue the day he made it.”

She turned, presenting Lily with her back. “Now, are you here to help or to chastise me?”

Lily shook her head and laughed. “I don’t see why I can’t do both at once.”

“Willa is singing in the foyer.”

Lily winced at the faint caterwauling. She held her place with her finger as she glanced up from the book. “I know. It’s why I shut the door.”

Sophie stepped inside the study and quickly did the same. The sound muted immediately. “She hasn’t left her room for over a week, and now she’s singing in the foyer. What changed?”

As much as she wished for a moment of silence to continue her reading, Lily didn’t seem likely to find a quiet moment while under the same roof as her sisters. With a sigh, she set down the book on a stack sitting next to her on the floor. “You’ll have to ask her. But you know Willa’s moods are as changeable as the wind.”

Sophie clasped her hands in front of her waist. “Not precisely. She has some cause for her black mood of late.”

The topic of Mr. Sanderson was as wrung out as a wet rag. Lily couldn’t force him to come up to snuff; neither, did she think, would her sister be satisfied if he were forced to the altar. Willa wanted a wild, dramatic, all-sweeping sort of love. She wanted to be idolized. If Mr. Sanderson didn’t worship her…they would both be unhappy.

Adam had worshipped me when we were married. Lily rubbed at the pang in her chest. Look how long that had lasted. Truthfully, Lily would be happy for her sisters to find matches they respected, who respected them and considered them friends. Torrid love affairs ended in heartbreak and scandal.

Sophie added, “She confessed that she would have been practicing her pianoforte if you hadn’t sold the piano.”

Lily fought back a grimace. “That was the first thing I sold, for good reason.”

The corners of Sophie’s lips trembled. A giggle slipped out but she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle it. “That’s incorrigible. We should encourage her.”

Lily gestured to the watercolor on the wall, so shapeless and inexpertly drawn that no one ever guessed correctly at the subject. “Like we did when she took up watercolors?”

“She improved a great deal before she grew bored.”

Boredom was Willa’s constant worry. Her impulses led her from hobby to hobby, man to man. She couldn’t seem to find something to satisfy her. Would Mr. Sanderson even have done so?

Sophie stepped closer, almost tentatively. With no other furniture in the room, she had no place to sit. Gingerly, Sophie tested the solidity of the stack of books, frowning as she studied the cover of the top volume. Daintily, she perched on the stack, testing her weight before she leaned on it fully.

No, Lily would not find the time to read at all.

“You know, Adam isn’t the only man who disappeared from our lives four years ago.”

Lily stiffened. She wished she hadn’t given up the book now under Sophie’s rump, so she would have something to hide behind. “Please tell me you aren’t defending him.”

“I’m not.” Sophie rearranged her skirts, composed as ever. “I’m merely pointing out that Mr. Chatterley left us with as little indication of his intent. He didn’t even come home for his father’s funeral. To be honest, I thought he was dead until he returned recently.”

Lily frowned. “Your point?”

Sophie frowned, the downward curve of her lips as close as she ever got to a scowl. “I only mean to ask why you’re ingratiating yourself to him.”

Lily sat straighter. “I’m not.”

“No? Then why are you reading about Egypt? You’ve never cared a farthing about Egypt before.”

Lily glanced down at the books and then back at her sister. “It’s something to pass the time.”

Sophie narrowed her eyes. She shared Willa’s blue irises, but they were framed with lashes so pale that they seemed ghostly. Sometimes, it seemed as though Sophie could see through a person to their soul beneath. Lily fidgeted.

“If I am spending any more time with Reid than I might normally, it’s at your urging. What happened to the way you were championing him upon Adam’s arrival?”

Sophie flinched. “That was not well done of me. I’m sorry.”

Lily wanted that to be the end of this discussion, but somehow she doubted she would be so lucky.

“I don’t want my decisions made for me, so I certainly shouldn’t have been making yours.”

Wary, Lily met her sister’s gaze. “Thank you.”

After a conflicted look passed across Sophie’s face, she added, “And I didn’t stop to think. If I had, I might have wondered why Mr. Chatterley was here now, helping us now. You didn’t write to him, did you?”

Lily shook her head. She forced her words from between pressed lips. “Like you, I wasn’t even certain that he was alive.”

The silence that descended was filled with needles and thorns, lacking all familiar comfort.

“Has he asked for anything in return?”

Lily drew in a deep breath, and in a moment of weakness, she almost told the truth.

But she didn’t. She would handle this on her own.

“No.”

The expression in Sophie’s eyes flattened. “I run the house finances.” When Lily raised her eyebrows, about to contradict, Sophie added, “Using the money you allot to me. Every month, you give me less. Why aren’t you at the shop today, Lily?”

Lily had tried to study the texts at the shop, surrounded by her father’s ghost and the dust she constantly chased off the wares. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on either reading or greeting potential customers and introducing them to the jewelry she could make. Most men seemed to look through her in search of another man and when there was none, either twist the conversation into something uncomfortable or leave. In a fit of moroseness, she’d decided that since she wasn’t likely to sell anything, she might as well do one job well.

When she didn’t answer, Sophie asked softly, “The shop isn’t doing well, is it?”

Lily swallowed, pressing her lips together. However, no matter how hard she tried to emulate Sophie’s composure, she’d never been able to do so. She glanced down at her lap, hoping that her sister wouldn’t see the depths to which they had fallen. “It’s difficult, as a woman taking Papa’s place. I try, but…”

Sophie squeezed her knee. “You don’t have to explain.”

They fell silent, a shared pain and fear of the future passing between them. Lily didn’t want to say more, lest she expose how bad it truly was.

“Are Egyptian antiquities the next answer? Is that why you’re reading all these texts?”

Lily swallowed hard. She hadn’t considered creating jewelry in the Egyptian style. With the mania for all things Egyptian sweeping across London, the pivot in her creation style might be well received. However, in order to create the stock, she would need the gold, silver, and gems. She barely had enough money to keep her family from starving.

“You can confide in me, you know.”

No, she couldn’t. These past few years, she had witnessed Sophie retreat into herself, her optimism and good cheer chipping away like old paint. Lily would not be able to live with herself if she scraped away the last good her sister saw in the world.

Besides, she didn’t need Sophie’s help. She could do this on her own—fulfill Reid’s request and reclaim their debts. It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would set them on a new path. And once she no longer had to worry about the creditors, she could think about new endeavors, like the one Sophie had suggested.

When Lily hesitated a heartbeat too long, her sister released a pent-up breath. She stood, shaking up her skirts. “Very well. Keep your secrets.”

Lily tasted tears at the back of her throat, her sister’s disappointment a pointed weight. She choked them down. After all these years, she was so weary. She wanted to pass the burden on to someone else.

But she couldn’t. She was all their family had left.

What would dear, sweet Sophie say of stealing? She saw the world in black and white. No, Lily must hold her tongue. Even if it felt like a betrayal of sisterly trust.

The door creaked open, letting in Willa’s tuneless yowling. With a gasp, Sophie stopped in her tracks.

Lily raised her gaze, alarm tightening her stomach to the point of pain. Adam stood in the corridor, his fist poised to knock. He stepped to the side to let her sister pass.

For a moment, she held her back still, her gaze locked with his. Then she nodded once, curtly. An acknowledgment, far more than she’d given him thus far.

He watched her go, his face incredulous. “Have I managed to win over both sisters?”

Lily scowled. Hoping to suppress the curdling in her stomach, she snatched the book off the top of the stack and opened it to the last page she had read.

He tugged the volume from her hands. With finality, he shut it and set it aside. Never once did he remove his gaze from hers. He didn’t sit, looming over her. She felt at a disadvantage.

When she got to her feet, she shortened the distance between them but stirred altogether too many memories. A whisper of space separated them, near enough to feel the heat shielded by the waistcoat and shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. Near enough for him to snake his arms around her waist and kiss her deeply, as he had so many times before. Her mouth tingled. She tried to sidestep him, but he refused to give her quarter.

“Will you now admit that you need my help?”

She curled her fists, as much in anger as to keep from touching him. After the way Sophie had left, she craved comfort. Warmth. Most of all, she wanted to forget the look in her sister’s eyes. Adam could provide her with all of that and more.

He’s hurt you, too.

With every repetition, the cautious voice seemed to grow fainter. And the curious one, the one that wanted to ask after his fidelity all these years, strengthened. She trembled, pressing her lips together as she fought the tumult within.

“Lily?”

She blinked hard against the stinging in her eyes, focusing on the cloth-covered buttons in front of her nose.

When he slipped his fingers beneath her chin and tilted up her face, his eyes were soft. “I know you don’t wish to trust me. I know I’ve said this a thousand times before. But Lily, please listen to me. I’m here for you and you alone.”

She pressed her lips together and pulled out of his grasp. This time, he took note of her body language and stepped back. The cool air between them should have granted her clarity. Instead, she had to fight the urge to draw him nearer. She was so conflicted, so wrung out, and so weary.

I can do this on my own.

Could she? She hadn’t received the invitation to Lord Granby’s house. She didn’t know enough about Egyptian antiquities; and moreover, her heart wasn’t in this endeavor. When she stopped to think about the matter, it made her feel as if she were carved from cinders. She didn’t want to embitter someone the way Reid had been embittered by his loss. Lord Granby had done nothing to anyone involved except purchase, legally, an object Reid desired.

She shut her eyes rather than confess how much she desperately wanted Adam’s help.

“Where have you been, these past four years?” Her whisper scarcely reached her ears. Her throat tightened.

She braced herself for the inevitable teasing question. Are you certain you wish to know? Perhaps she didn’t.

But she must. She’d held off in asking this question for too long—afraid of the answer.

When Adam hesitated, she opened her eyes to study his expression. He ran the tip of his tongue over his upper lip as if composing his answer. “I’ve been in a village in the north. Ashton-under-Lyne. It’s very small. You’ve likely never heard of it.”

She hadn’t, which puzzled her all the more. “What the devil have you been doing there?”

“Work.”

She raised her eyebrows.

With a fleeting look of chagrin, he clarified, “Honest work. Carpentry mostly. Some manual labor.”

If anything, that baffled her further. “You absconded to the country with my dowry to do manual labor?”

He flinched away. “I didn’t— Lily, I… To hell with this!”

Lily took a hasty step back. She shouldn’t have asked. “Forget it. Let’s focus on the task at hand. How do you propose to get an invitation to Lord Granby’s house?” When he didn’t immediately answer, she crossed her arms. “Please tell me you have a plan!”

The expression on his face turned from soft to mischievous. Crinkles formed at the corners of his eyes as he smiled. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Four years have passed. You might have lost your edge.”

Adam laughed. “If we want to gain access to Lord Granby’s, we have to ingratiate ourselves to the real influence in the house. Not the lord.”

Lily frowned. “Then who?”

“You mean to tell me you haven’t done your research?”

She scowled at the teasing in his voice.

“It seems as though you do need me, after all.”

“Adam.”

He stepped closer. “Everything comes at a price, my dear. Even information.”

She squelched her irritation. This was what she had expected from the beginning. At last, Adam was flying his true colors once more. It should have made her relieved to finally not have to question his motives. Instead, she felt even more burdened.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to treat me as an equal in this. I have as much at stake as you do if this turns awry.”

Lily scoffed. “You do not.”

“It could be the hangman’s noose for us, darling.”

He spoke the words with a cynical twist of his mouth, but it left her blood chilled. She’d been so consumed with the ramifications Reid would inflict on her family if she refused that she’d never stopped to think of the legality. Men and women were hanged for less. And she was no experienced thief.

Softly, Adam murmured, “There’s a reason I manipulated my targets into handing me the contents of their pockets of their own volition. It is far more difficult to prove and prosecute the violation.”

Lily bit her lip. “Should we be doing this at all?” Although she tried to contain them, tears spilled onto her cheeks. She brushed them away briskly.

He fiddled with the loose cravat at his throat. Without looking at her, he mumbled, “That is a question only you can answer.”

Tell Reid you tried and failed. Lily passed her hands over her face, trying to scrape together some semblance of composure. With the consequences so high, Lily feared what would happen to her family if she failed. Surely Reid had not considered that she might die during the course of this endeavor.

If all he wanted was to force her to make amends because she had chosen Adam, perhaps she could swallow her pride and convince him of her repentance.

But she couldn’t dissolve her marriage. And even if she could, she wouldn’t choose to entertain a man who held her family’s debts over her head. A man who, she feared, wouldn’t hesitate to consign them all to debtors’ prison or worse.

One way or another, Lily was trapped.

“You don’t have to stay in London.”

Adam’s deep, soft-spoken voice wrapped around her like a warm embrace. She shivered, feeling more alone and fragile than ever. Grimacing, she dropped her hands to look at him.

“I do.”

“Your sisters would acclimatize.”

He sounded firm about this. Perhaps even adamant.

“I cannot convince Mama to allow me to let out the rooms we aren’t using. How will I ask her to leave the house? No, she clings too tightly to Papa’s ghost.” Lily picked at her cuticles. “Besides, the shop is here.”

He stepped closer, his hands hovering above her shoulders as if he wanted to draw her into his arms. If he tried, she might not have the willpower to pull away. She craved his touch, his comfort. He’d done nothing but help her since returning to London. Was he so untrustworthy?

“You can set up another shop—”

Lily laughed bitterly. “I cannot successfully run the one bequeathed to me. With our debts, I’d have to cut short our losses and leave with what little possessions we still have, if that. I wouldn’t have the money to let another shop, let alone the stock to sell.”

“If I…”

“No.” She lifted her hand, laying her palm on his chest. He felt so warm, so firm, so… She shook her head to clear it. “I want nothing from you.”

“Equals,” he admonished, his voice low. “We’re in this for better or worse.”

She blinked hard against a hot flood of tears, clenching her hand in his waistcoat. “Where were you when Papa died?”

“I didn’t know he was ill.” His voice broke. It matched the look in his eyes. “Lily, I swear to you, I would have come had I known. Damn the consequences.”

She was as weak as reused tea leaves because she wanted to believe him. Hell and damnation, she did believe him. And as the flood of tears broke over her cheeks, she leaned closer, burying her face in his starched cravat.

His arms settled around her like a fortification against the world at large. Here, she felt safe. He held the weight of the world off her shoulders, however briefly. He cradled her as though the tears she wept into him were precious rather than a sign of weakness. She’d held herself together for four long years…

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed.

“Neither do I.” His voice was hoarse. “But I promise you, whatever comes, we will face it together.”

Needing more of his solid comfort, Lily snaked her arms around his waist. His warm, solid body stanched the flow of her tears. I shouldn’t be doing this. For once, she didn’t care. The voice, faded to a whisper, was easily ignored. She had danced the line between right and wrong so often in the past weeks that it had been scuffed out. She surrendered to her husband’s embrace without guilt.

“Together.”

His arms tightened around her. He laid his cheek atop her head, saying nothing.

After a long while, still nestled in his arms, she found the courage to ask, “Who do we approach?”

He made a satisfied, questioning sound. She felt it rumble through his chest, awakening other urges best left dormant.

“To glean an invitation to Lord Granby’s house, who do we approach?”

“Oh.” Reluctantly, he drew away. Gently, he rubbed one thumb beneath the swollen flesh of her eye, lingering on the curve of her cheek. He smiled at her, a secret shared between them. “We approach his daughter.”

She should have guessed.