A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(70)

“Fifty pounds.” The reins went slack. The horses slowed. Madness threatened. “I’ll give you fifty pounds if you let me drive.”

It was enough to buy another gig. A nicer one than this hack.

“Who are we followin’?” The coachman asked in shock.

Alec took the reins and with a mighty, “Hyah!” they were off, the horses seeming to understand that they were driven by a man with power, skill, and a desperate desire.

They careened through the streets, wheels rattling on the cobblestones, cool wind on Alec’s face, easing the frustration that had lurked—grown—since he arrived in London days earlier. He wanted a race. He wanted his curricle and matched horses and the wild roads of Scotland in the dead of night, terrifying and freeing and his alone.

Instead, he had the tight turns of London, chasing after a woman he wanted more than anything to keep safe.

He loathed London.

“Who are we followin’?” The coachman shouted above the clatter of wheels, clutching the driving box in panic.

Alec flicked the reins again. “No one important.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” the man asked with a laugh, “but fifty quid ain’t no one important.”

Alec ignored the words. Of course she was important.

She was slowly becoming everything.

The coach crossed into Soho, storefronts suddenly ablaze with lights, prostitutes and their clients spilling onto the streets, pubs and gaming hells tempting passersby.

“Where the hell is she going?” he said as he tempered the horses, his frustration threatening once more.

“Looks like Covent Garden, if I ’ad to say, sir.”

And, like that, he knew what she was doing.

It wasn’t Stanhope she was going after. It was Hawkins.

Derek made me feel loved.

The memory of her story, of the way the pompous ass had manipulated her with his pretty promises, sent a thread of rage through him. The rage was followed by fear, which came with a second, possibly worse memory. A memory of Hawkins offering to take her to mistress. Of Alec leaning over the pompous git in the dimly lit back room at Eversley House, looking over his shoulder at a wide-eyed Lily and asking her if she wanted him.

No.

She’d said the word, but Alec hadn’t believed her. He’d heard the doubt in it. The uncertainty. He’d asked her to say it again.

Pushed her to do it.

She had, but perhaps she hadn’t meant it. Perhaps she did want him. Why else would she be here at— “They’ve stopped, m’lord.”

He pulled up on the reins, gaze focusing on the carriage several dozen yards ahead in front of a nondescript row house tucked behind Bow Street. The door to the hack opened and Lily descended in her ridiculous outfit—trousers and shirt that billowed around her, clearly lifted from a wardrobe belonging to a much larger man—hat pulled low over her eyes, hair tucked up beneath.

She tossed a coin up to the driver and the hack moved, heading quickly out of sight in search of a new fare. She hadn’t asked him to wait. Which meant she was planning for a long stay.

Did she not think she would be missed at home?

Home.

The word unsettled him. It wasn’t as though the damn Dog House was his home. It certainly didn’t feel anything like his home in Scotland. And somehow, he wanted Lily to feel it was home. He wanted her to feel safe there. To believe that there was something good there for her.

Something a damn sight better than whatever was inside the building she was skulking around.

He passed the driver an exorbitant amount of coin. “The rest when I return. Wait for me.”

The driver did not hesitate, leaning back on the block and tipping the brim of his cap down over his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

Alec was in the shadows within seconds, moving toward her as she paused outside the door and extracted something from her pocket. A key? She had a key to this place, quiet and dark and close enough to the Hawkins Theater for Alec to be certain of what was inside. Of who was inside.

She slipped through the door, letting it swing shut behind her. The lock clicked as he drew close, and he cursed in the darkness.

He was going to have to break in.





CHAPTER 14



A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WARDS

As a man with a powerful sense of self-worth and a minuscule amount of actual worth, Derek Hawkins spent the majority of his time in full view of Society, trying to convince the aristocracy that the former was as well-founded as the latter was a travesty.

Consequently, he was never at home in the evenings.

No doubt, on that particular evening, he was at a club, or a dinner, or revealing his outrageous pomposity to a group of simpering women, each more desperate than the last to win the attention of the great Derek Hawkins, if for only a moment.

Not that Lily did not understand that desperation.

She had, after all, basked in its glow for long enough to be summarily ruined.

Lily had no doubt that if he weren’t so obsessed with the world’s perception of him and his genius, he wouldn’t have so summarily ruined her. Certainly, he wouldn’t have paraded the woman in his already famed painting in front of all the world, without hesitation.

Without consent.

But no one had ever been important enough to Derek Hawkins to inspire him to act with honor. She knew that now. Was grateful for it, even, as she found she had no qualms entering his home, uninvited, when she knew he was not home.