The ladies moved, clearing a path and indicating Lily should take a seat at the front of the box, in front of all London, bold and proud and unafraid of being seen in Hawkins’s theater. It was then that he saw her for the first time, head to toe. Saw what it was she wore.
The air was suddenly gone from the room.
The dress was the most stunning blue he’d ever seen, silk and perfectly suited to her, with a low neck that made him want to blindfold every man in the room and press wild, lingering kisses along the expanse of skin it revealed. But it was not the dress that destroyed him. It was the sash, tied tight around her waist, falling to the floor in a wide red swath.
It was his plaid. Again.
It should not have moved him. After all, had he not seen her wrapped in the tartan the night before, alone and nude on his bed? Had that not been the worst of all prospects? The one most likely to shred his patience and his nobility?
How was it possible this was infinitely worse?
The evening prior had felt like a gift. Tonight felt like a declaration of war. Like an invasion. A claiming. As though she stood in front of all London and claimed Scotland for her own.
Claimed him for her own.
And he was expected to resist.
As she approached, Alec found himself backing away, until he came up against the edge of the balcony and she said, low and without emotion. “Have a care, Your Grace, or you shall topple into the seats below.”
The prospect was not unpleasant when confronted with the alternative—facing her, looking like a queen. “You wear my tartan.”
She raised a brow. “Is it yours? I did not notice.”
Bollocks.
He wanted to pull her to him and kiss her senseless at the lie. Instead, he narrowed his gaze and lowered his voice to a whisper. “What is this game you play, Lily?”
She tilted her head and matched his volume. “Nothing but the game you insist upon. We neither of us are very good at truth, are we?”
Ironically, he replied with it. “No, we are not.”
She nodded, her lips pressing into a thin line. “The item you seek?”
“I am told it is here.”
“And what am I to do whilst you play the role of swashbuckling hero?”
He wanted it to be true. But the role was not for him. “Not hero,” he said. “Guardian.”
“Ah, yes. My hero is to be another.”
No. Never.
He was saved from answering by the dimming of the lights, footmen around the theater dousing candles, marking the start of the performance and summoning Stanhope, who placed a hand at Lily’s elbow, making Alec want to commit murder. “Shall we sit, Miss Hargrove?”
If a duke killed an earl, did the hierarchy of the aristocracy come into play? Did it matter? Newgate seemed a reasonable sacrifice for destroying a man who touched Lily while she wore the Stuart plaid.
Luckily for Stanhope, Sesily approached Alec. “Your Grace, it seems you are landed with me, as we are surrounded by turtledoves.”
It took a moment for him to find his tongue. “It is my pleasure, my lady.”
She raised a brow. “Obviously.”
They sat, and Sesily leaned in. “The wolves watch her, Duke. I suggest you refrain from making it any harder than it already is.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you know precisely what I mean. They do not watch the stage. They watch her.”
He did not look at Lady Sesily, too focused on the back of Lily’s head, on the curl of her hair, on the line of her neck. He inhaled, meaning to calm his rioting emotions, but instead catching her scent—Scotland and sanity.
He looked across the theater, desperate for something other that Lily, and found the whole world watching them—opera glasses trained on the box. On Lovely Lily, once Derek Hawkins’s muse, now his disgraced mistress, surrounded by champions who were not enough—who would not be enough if Alec did not succeed in his task.
“He knows his role,” Sesily said quietly, returning Alec’s attention to the earl, seated in front of him. Stanhope leaned in as the box darkened and the curtain opened, whispering in Lily’s ear, making her laugh.
Playing her savior in front of her judge and jury.
The role Alec would have done anything to play.
“I cannot—” The words came unbidden, unwelcome, and he stopped them before they betrayed too much.
Unfortunately, Sesily Talbot saw everything. “Then you should not be here,” she whispered. “If you are unable to be the man she requires, then it is only fair that you remove yourself from the playing field.”
His hands fisted on his thighs. “You overstep yourself, Lady Sesily.”
“It would not be the first time,” she said. “But what sort of friend would I be if I did not name you for the coward you are?”
If she were a man, he would call her out.
But she was a woman. And so he was forced to acknowledge that she was right.
Far below, Hawkins took the stage, and the theater erupted into applause. The bastard preened beneath the accolade before he spoke his first line. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”
Alec was out of the box like a shot.
He’d left her again.
She stared blindly at the stage, as the man with whom she’d once imagined herself in love wooed all of London with a magnificent performance. Not that she noticed a bit of it. She was too busy seething.
How dare he leave her again? How dare he make her feel as he had the night before, make her confess her love, make her love him all the more, and then summon her here, tonight, on the arm of another?
And then leave her?
I love you. How many times had she said it? How many times had he demanded it from her?
And then he’d spoken his words, full of regret and shame, words that had echoed through her since he’d deposited her like an unwanted parcel on the steps of the Berkeley Square house.
We shall find the painting and we shall set you free.
And tonight, he passed her off to another man. Infinitely better. Infinitely kinder as he sat beside her before London. In front of the instrument of her ruin.
And somehow, infinitely less.
Why did he not want her for himself?
He’d made his pretty promises last evening—rendered her breathless with his powerful words, vowing desire and desperation. Made love to her as though she was the only woman in the world, and he the only man. And then he’d refused her. Regretted her.