Page 35 of My Dark Duke

“Perhaps,” she stuttered, turning her eyes toward him, “you have never tried to feel love for the one you make love to? Perhaps you’re not incapable, you just don’t wish to.”

He was silent for a moment, as he tried to think of an answer.

“It’s one and the same,” he eventually replied. “I cannot love any woman.”

His confession was too much for Lillian to bear; though she knew being bedded as Thorncastle’s mistress would be purely physical, she had not expected it to be so devoid of emotion. Unable to look at him, she turned on her heel and fled down The Lover’s Walk.

“Mary,” she heard him shout, though she did not stop.

A strange madness had overcome her; her chest felt tight, as though she could not breathe, yet her feet urged her to run. In her mind, she envisioned herself racing from her past, throwing off the shackles of her sins.

She saw the path’s end ahead of her, where the topiary hedging ended, giving way to the brightly lit walk beyond. She slowed her pace, unsure of where to go next, and as she paused, a pair of figures turned on to The Lover’s Walk.

A man and a woman; he, finely dressed; she, wearing the garish bright silks of a lightskirt.

There was something familiar about the man, she thought, as they approached. His bearing, his height, his dark silhouette against the far lights…

Lord Bailey.

Lillian shrank back into an alcove which held a Romanesque statue, willing them to pass by unnoticed.

From the sound of his voice, as he approached, she deduced that her distant cousin was deep in his cups, but that did not mean he would not recognise her. Lillian held her breath as they neared, afraid to even move lest she be noted.

“I could set you up in a house on Grosvenor Square,” she heard the baron say, in a nasally whine. “Visit you each night. What say you, eh?”

“Oh, my la-wd, t’would be ‘eavenly,” his companion replied, her accent pure London Estuary.

The pair were too engrossed in each other to even glance Lillian’s way, and they passed by without event.

She waited a moment, for the sound of their footsteps to recede, before letting out a long sigh of relief - she was safe.

Or was she?

“Thorncastle,” she heard Lord Bailey salute the duke. “What brings you here?”

“I am looking for someone,” he replied, brusquely. “And I was not aware we had been introduced. If you wish to solicit me for something, Lord Bailey, have someone in White’s set-up an introduction. Goodnight.”

The sound of Lord Bailey’s indignant spluttering filled the air, though Lillian barely heard it over the pounding of her heartbeat. Would Thorncastle reveal her hiding place?

She heard the duke’s footsteps approaching and she held her breath. He moved slowly, as though he knew just where he would find her.

Indeed, a moment later, he came to a halt before the alcove and looked in at her.

The fear which had grown inside her, threatening to overwhelm her, stopped dead as her eyes met with his. The world held no danger when he was there to protect her. A bruised heart was all she had to fear…

“I apologise for upsetting you,” he said, formally.

Lillian shook her head, afraid to speak lest Lord Bailey still lingered nearby. Instead, she reached out her hand and pulled him towards her.

“Take me home,” she whispered in his ear, as he embraced her in a hug. “Take me home and make love to me - I don’t care about the rest.”

He stiffened.

“Are you certain?”

As his strong arms held her, filling her with a sense of safety, Lillian felt she had never been more certain of anything in her life.

She nodded, looking up at him shyly. “Take me home,” she repeated, though the home she envisioned was not the house off Berkeley Square, but in his warm embrace.

---