A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(58)

“Might not be?”

“Definitely not.” He shook his head. “I shall send word to Stanhope. You shall meet tomorrow.”

Her eyes went wide. “Tomorrow?”

“We haven’t time to dally. You’ve seven days to catch him.”

I’ve seven days to resist you. Alec’s teeth clenched at the thought.

“And if he is otherwise occupied?”

“He shan’t be.”

She raised a perfect auburn brow. “You may not like the title, Duke, but you have most certainly mastered the superior arrogance that comes with it.”

He snapped. “You chose the damn man. I’m fetching him for you, am I not?”

Silence stretched between them until he felt like a dozen kinds a beast for yelling. He opened his mouth to say something else. To apologize.

She stopped him. “By all means, then, fetch him.”

“Lily,” he said, suddenly feeling very much like the morning was getting away from him.

She narrowed her gaze on his. “What did I tell you about calling me Lily?”

The name wasn’t for him. She’d made that clear.

“Lillian,” he tried again. “Last night—I was—it was—” This woman turned him into a blathering idiot. How was that possible? He took a breath. “Let’s chalk it up to my brutishness.”

“Stop calling yourself that. You’re not a brute.”

“I shredded a topcoat.” And more. Her bodice.

He would not think on the bodice.

“You need a better tailor.”

She was frustrating as hell. “That doesn’t make me less of a beast.”

Lily was quiet enough that he thought she might not answer. Instead, she said the worst possible thing he could imagine. “Why do you do that?”

“What?”

She moved again, around the table, and he followed suit, keeping his distance. “Call yourself that. A beast. A brute.”

The Scottish Brute.

He hesitated. “You’ve called me that, as well, have you not?”

“In anger. You use it in truth.”

Because I will always have it in me. And it will never be good enough for you.

“What do they call me in your ladies’ magazines?”

“All sorts of things. The Diluted Duke, the Highland Devil—”

“I’m not a Highland Scot. Not anymore.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but no one seems to care about truth.”

That much, he knew and was grateful for. He did not wish to discuss the truth. “Either way,” he said, “it will never happen again.” If he vowed it to her, perhaps he would stop wanting it.

After a long moment, she nodded and said, “I shall require a chaperone.”

“No. Chaperones get in the way.”

“That’s the point of chaperones. To get in the way and maintain propriety.”

“We don’t have time for propriety.”

Hardy barked; the dogs were beginning to think that the circling of the breakfast table was a game of sorts.

Lily ignored the dog. “Then why worry about a chaperone at all? My reputation is not exactly gilded.”

Because she was every man’s dream. And a chaperone was essential. Not just a doddering old lady with poor eyesight and worse hearing. She needed a chaperone who both understood the critical, time-sensitive nature of the situation and was able to—should it be necessary—drop a man into unconsciousness if he were too forward.

There weren’t many pugilist chaperones to be had in London on short notice, Alec imagined.

But there was an ideal solution. One he had devised in the dead of night, as he forced himself to think of her as ward and not woman. He was rather proud of his success. “I’m not worried.”

She stopped, looking at him with utter disbelief. “You’re not.”

“Not in the slightest.” He rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. “I have the ideal chaperone for you.”

That auburn brow rose again, threatening to lose itself in her hair. “And who is that?”

He smiled. He had her now. “Me.”

She laughed, the sound light and lovely and temptation incarnate. “Honestly.”

“I am being quite honest.”

Her brow furrowed, and he resisted the urge to soothe the twin wrinkles above her nose. “You are no kind of chaperone.”

“Nonsense. I’m the best possible chaperone.” He paused, ticking off the reasons on his fingers. “I have a vested interest in your finding a successful match so I can leave London and never return—”

“Something you could do this moment if you’d simply give me the funds to leave.”

He ignored the statement and continued. “I am predisposed to loathe all Englishmen, so I will be on my guard more than some aging spinster.”

She raised a brow. “You are old and unmarried as well, Your Grace. I would have a care with whom you call an aging spinster.”

He ignored the taunt. “And, as a man, I am more than able to predict any compromising situations.”

Lily pursed her lips and was silent for a long minute—long enough for Alec to conclude that he had won her over to his argument, particularly when she nodded. “It sounds as though you’ve planned the whole thing quite perfectly.”