A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(11)

“Myself included.” She could not resist the words.

“I’m here, am I not? Summoned south by my ward. Surely that counts for something.”

“I didn’t summon you.”

“You might not have set pen to paper, lass, but you summoned me as simply as if you’d shouted my name across the border.”

“As I said, I’ve no need for you.”

“I’m told the world disagrees.”

“Hang the world,” she said, turning her attention to the fire as she added, “and hang you with it.”

“As I am here to save you, I would think you would be much more grateful.”

The man’s arrogance was quite remarkable. “However did I come to be so very lucky?”

He sighed, hearing the sarcasm in her words. “Despite your petulance, I am here to rectify your alleged . . .” He cast about for an appropriate word. “. . . situation.”

Her brows shot together. “My petulance.”

“Do you deny it?”

She most certainly did. “Petulance is what a child feels when she is denied sweets.”

“How would you describe yourself if not petulant?”

Furious. Foolish. Irritated. Desperate.

Ashamed.

Finally, she spoke. “It is no matter. It’s all too little, too late.” After a pause, she added, pointedly, “I’ve a plan, and you are not a part of it, Duke.”

He cut her a look. “I suppose I shouldn’t have told you I don’t like the title.”

“Never reveal your weakness to your enemy.”

“We are enemies, then?”

“We certainly aren’t friends.”

She could see his frustration. “I’ve had enough of this. Why don’t we begin here. Settlesworth tells me you have ruined yourself in front of all London.”

The words, no matter how often she thought them herself, still stung on another’s tongue. Shame flooded her, and she did everything she could not to reveal it.

She failed. “How is it that the ruination is mine and not—”

She stopped.

He heard the rest of the sentence nonetheless. “Then there was a man.”

She met his gaze. “You needn’t pretend you don’t know.”

“It is not pretending,” he said. “Settlesworth gave me very little information. But I am not an idiot, and looking at you, it’s clear that there was a man.”

“Looking at me.” He had no idea how the words stung.

He ignored her. “So. You did not ruin yourself. You were ruined.”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she mumbled.

“No,” he said, firmly. “They are different.”

“Not to anyone who matters.”

A pause. “What happened?”

He did not know. It was remarkable. He did not know what she had done. How she had embarrassed herself. He had only the vagaries of a solicitor’s summons and the boundaries of his imagination. And in those vagaries she remained, somehow, free of the past.

And, though she knew it was simply a matter of time before he heard about the scandal of Lovely Lily, Lonesome Lily, Lovelorn Lily, or whatever nickname the scandal sheets thought clever today, she did not wish him to know now.

And so she did not tell him.

“Does it matter?”

He looked at her as though she was mad. “Of course it matters.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t, though. Not really. It only matters what they believe. That is how scandal works.”

“Facts matter, Lillian. Tell me what happened. If they make it worse than it is, I will paper London with truth.”

“How lucky I am to have a guardian and a champion all in one,” she said, injecting the words with sarcasm in the hopes she could irritate him into leaving his line of questioning.

He whispered something in Gaelic then, something that she did not understand but that she immediately identified as a curse. He tugged at the cravat, tied too tight around his neck, just as the coat he wore was too tight at the shoulders. The trousers too tight at the thighs. Everything about this man was larger than it should be. Perhaps that was why he knew, instantly, her truth. That he saw her flaws so clearly.

Flaws saw flaws.

He returned to English. “We cannot solve the situation if I do not know its particulars.”

“There is no we, Your Grace.” The words were firm and full of conviction. “Until today, you did not know me.”

“I will know soon enough, girl.”

But not from her, and somehow, ridiculously, that was important. Somehow, it meant that she could be something with him she was not with others. “You needn’t concern yourself with it,” she said. “In ten days, my situation will be resolved.”

One way or another.

If she said it enough, it might be believed. She might believe it herself.

“What happens in ten days?”

The painting is revealed.

Not just that. “I turn twenty-four.”

“And?” Alec leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, fingers laced together.

And the painting is revealed. In front of all London.

She looked to him, ignoring the thought. It wouldn’t matter. She had a plan. “And according to the rules of my guardianship, I receive the funds necessary to leave London—and my scandal—behind.”