Page 69 of The Lady and the Footballer
“I’ll think on it,” he finally settled on. “In the meantime, continue to be careful, Lily. I don’t like the thought of you getting involved. If someone is willing to take a bribe and work for a rival club, then you could be put at risk as well. Stay away from the mill and the club for now. For your own safety.”
“Just my safety?” she asked, raising a brow.
Before he could respond, her mother sailed into the room, and Lily sighed. Her mother had been preoccupied with one topic of conversation and one only.
Lily’s upcoming marriage, although the groom was yet to be selected.
“John, what are you doing in here?”
“The match finished, and I needed to speak with Lily.”
“Oh, have you found a suitor?”
Her father sighed and ran a hand over his face.
“Not yet.”
“I was thinking of Lord Anderson’s son.”
“He’s practically married already!” Lily protested, thinking of her friend Ada, who had been in love with him since they were children.
“He’s not married yet,” her mother said with a shrug, as she took a seat next to her husband on the sofa.
“No,” Lily said, although the truth was, she would say no to everyone. Everyone who wasn’t Colin.
“There is still Lord Nathaniel?—”
“Absolutely not,” Lily and her father said together, and, as angry as she was with him, she sent a small smile his way to tell him that she appreciated his defense.
Her parents finally left to prepare for dinner, and Lily knew for certain that she had to see Colin – one way or another.
Colin knew this was folly.
But he had been in agony all day since the match.
Yes, part of it was because muscles in his body he hadn’t even known existed were sore from his exertions, but the other part was his uncertainty over where Lily had been. She wasn’t in the stands, and he hadn’t seen her in the carriages either.
When he had seen her friend Miss Whitmore watching with a man he assumed was her brother, he had sought her out before entering the bathing room, but she had been as perplexed as he was, telling him that she didn’t know where Lily was, that sheonly knew that she hadn’t received word that Lily was coming to the match and so she had to find her own way to the game.
“You played well, Mr. Thornton!” she called out as he walked away, and the little wink she gave him told him that she likely knew far more about what he had been up to lately in addition to football.
But he had a feeling that his secret was safe with her.
Now, here he was, prowling around Harcourt’s mansion in Ellesmere Park, wondering which of the lit windows might hold Lily’s bedroom.
He was saved by having to guess when he saw the woman in question lowering herself from a first-story window. Her dress was modest, the skirt in clean lines, but he still couldn’t imagine climbing with so much material. Muttering under his breath, he took off through the manicured gardens toward her, cursing at the hedgerows and vines that stood between them, not saying anything until he was beneath her.
“Lily, what are you doing?” he said, and she gasped in surprise, losing her hold on the vine she was dangling from when she did.
For a few heart-stopping moments, she was suspended in the air, falling to the ground, but Colin managed to reach her just in time and she landed in his arms with an “oof” from each of them. Soon, she was looking up at him, confusion on her face as though she wasn’t sure whether to whack him or kiss him.
“Colin!” she finally exclaimed. “What are you doing here and why did you startle me like that?”
“Startle you?” he said, lifting a brow. “You scared me half to death, hanging so high in the air.”
“I was escaping to come to you.”
“To me?”
