She did not reply. What was there to say? He regretted the event that had made her feel more alive, more treasured, more desired, than anything in her life ever had. And, sadly, his regret begat hers.
It wasn’t as though she expected him to march into the breakfast room and propose. After all it was not as though they’d completed the official act.
But she hadn’t expected it to hurt quite so much.
She turned away from him, heading to the windows that lined the far end of the breakfast room. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the familiar pang—the one that she’d felt all too often. The one that came with being passed over.
She was being silly. She hated being silly. And, somehow, that seemed to be all she ever was now.
Hardy seemed to sense her frustration, coming close and pressing his large, warm body against her thigh. There was something very comfortable about the big dog’s presence, and she immediately set her hand to his head, stroking his soft ears as she looked out the window, over the gardens of Dog House.
After a long while, she said, “There is a topiary out there in the shape of a poodle.”
Alec did not sound amused when he replied. “I would expect nothing less.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said, softly.
“Of course it wasn’t.” And, for a moment, she believed he meant it.
“It wasn’t Derek’s, either. Not really.”
“There, we disagree.”
She shook her head, but did not look back to him. “The rules, they are so different for men and women. Why should it matter to the world whom I am seen with? Why should it matter if I have private audience with a man? It shouldn’t be their business. It should be just that. Private.”
There was a long silence as he considered the words, and when he replied, he was closer than he had been. Just over her shoulder. “That’s not how it works.”
It wasn’t fair. Lily had been alone for so long, and finding companionship of any kind had given her such hope. She hadn’t even considered her reputation when she’d been with Derek. She’d been too desperate for companionship.
Just as she hadn’t considered her reputation last evening in the carriage with Alec. But it hadn’t been companionship she’d been desperate for then.
It had been him.
“It’s how it should work,” she said, looking down at the dog, his soulful brown eyes seeming to understand exactly how she felt.
“It should,” he said.
It shouldn’t have happened.
His words. Filled with regret. She closed her eyes.
Should was a terrible word.
She squared her shoulders and turned to face him, resolute in her decision to ignore his handsome, angled face and his brown eyes, gleaming the color of whisky. She would not notice any of it. Not his broad shoulders, or the way his hair fell in a haphazard sweep over his brow, or his lips.
She would certainly not notice his lips. They’d done far too much damage as it was.
Sadness and frustration coursed through her, a river of something that could become shame if she allowed it. But she wouldn’t. Not again. Not with another man. Not with one who suddenly seemed far more important than the first.
She pushed the emotions away, leaving room for one thing only.
Determination.
She would not feel shame. Not today. Hang the Duke of Warnick and his temptation. If he wanted to get her courted, she would be courted. It was seven days until the painting was revealed, and she wouldn’t fall in love in that time.
Couldn’t.
She shook her head, resigned to the plan, and hedged her bets. “The Earl of Stanhope,” she said, selecting the first name on his idiotic list. “He is my choice.”
It was remarkable how quickly one could go from receiving what he desired to questioning why he desired it in the first place.
When Alec had entered the breakfast room, he’d dreaded facing Lily, sure she was planning to accuse him of the worst kind of roguishness and insist that he either send her from London or marry her.
He wasn’t certain that he could have done the first, honestly. Not after she’d come apart in his arms the night before, all beauty and perfection and temptation.
And he absolutely would not marry her. She deserved infinitely better than a man who was good for sexual pleasure and little else. Better than a brute beast who, until he inherited the title of Duke of Warnick, was barely worth a second look from fine English roses. And certainly was not worth a second night.
Too coarse. Too unrefined.
Lily was worth a dozen of him. Last night had proved it, and made him resolute in his plan. He would get her married. And when that was done, he would return to Scotland. And he would never return.
He had entered the room, intent on establishing those very clear rules. He hadn’t expected her to be so very beautiful, however, clad in the prettiest green silk he’d ever seen, stroking Hardy’s massive head as though she’d raised him from a pup.
It shouldn’t matter that she liked his dogs.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was getting the girl married.
And so he should have been relieved when she agreed and named her mark, but it wasn’t relief that had flooded through him at that. It was something much more dangerous. Something that—if he didn’t know better—seemed remarkably like jealousy.
He replied nonetheless, pretending to be unmoved by the announcement. “Stanhope. You know him?”
“Every unmarried woman in London knows of him.”
He didn’t like the way she said it, as though the man were some kind of prize. “I didn’t know of him.”
She gave him a little smile. “You do not receive Pearls & Pelisses.”
Alec was proud that he even knew what the ladies’ magazine was. “As I am a grown man, I do not.”
“He’s a Lord to Land,” Lily said, as if that meant something.
Alec could not hide his ignorance. “What on earth does that mean?”
She sighed, and when she answered, it seemed as though she was irritated with his shocking lack of knowledge. “Lord Stanhope has been at the top of the list of London’s Lords to Land for as long as I’ve been reading the scandal sheets.”
“We will return to why you are reading the scandal sheets in short order,” Alec said. “But let’s begin with why Stanhope is so very”—he grimaced at the idea of saying the idiotic word—“landable.”