Christmas Betrothals. Sophia James

her secrets too. Well, she did, and it was a secret that she could never tell anybody.

      She … loved … him.

      And she had done from the very first second of laying her eyes upon him outside the retiring room at the Lenningtons’ ball. Loved a man with a smile in his eyes and a voice that held the promise of every single thing that she was not.

      Brave. Free. Wild. Untethered.

      And today with the chance of death dogging his bravery she had recognised it, her very heart pierced with the impossibility.

      ‘Oh, Lord God, help me, please …’

      The prayer circled in her head, another petition to smite from her soul the horrible recognition of what was there.

      Cassie St Auburn now sat on a chair near her bed, all the other women gone for the moment, and yet in her newly found revelation she did not dare to ask anything about Lucas Clairmont. What if he was a villain? What if he truly did inhabit the underworld of crime and gambling? What if she as a friend who knew him well warned her off?

      ‘I am glad to see you better, Cassandra,’ she began, at least filling the silence with something.

      ‘Oh, I am only ever sick at mid-day. After that I am always much recovered.’

      Lillian could not quite get the gist of her illness.

      ‘I am pregnant,’ Cassandra St Auburn laughed. ‘Already halfway along.’

      A great surge of envy overcame puzzlement. Cassie had a husband who loved her and was now awaiting her first child. With her smiles and happiness she had a life that Lillian suddenly felt was very far from her own. A solitary quiet life, her father’s daughter, and burdened with a stalwart code of behaviour that was beginning to look faintly ludicrous and infinitely lonely.

      ‘Lord Wilcox-Rice has been asking after you almost hourly,’ Cassie continued, ‘though I have made it clear to him that you need your rest.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Nat also had the doctor look at Mr Clairmont’s injuries, but apart from a torn nail and a cut that has needed to be stitched across his cheek he is in fine form. He also asked after your health.’

      ‘He did?’ She tried to keep the interest from her question, but knew that she had not succeeded.

      ‘Indeed. He felt somehow responsible for your faint.’

      Lillian nodded and looked away. ‘I thought that he might have been killed.’

      ‘Nathaniel says that Lucas is a man who can easily look after himself.’

      ‘I do not doubt it.’

      ‘The wound on his cheek makes him look even more unruly than he normally does.’

      ‘But it is not deemed dangerous to his health?’ Lillian hated the tremor of worry in her words and hoped Cassie would not detect it.

      ‘I doubt the doctor could have made Lucas stay in bed to rest even had the injury been worse.’

      ‘I believe Mr Clairmont will be returning to America at the end of December? Has he already arranged passage?’ Goodness, and she had promised herself that she would find out nothing, but Cassandra stood and looked at the time on a clock by the bedside table.

      ‘I must not wear you out as the doctor asked for quiet and I think it might be wise for you to sleep.’

      When she was gone Lillian wondered about her quick exit. Her hostess had not wished to answer any questions about Lucas Clairmont, that much she could glean. Why ever not? Were the St Auburns in on some sort of ruse? The headache she had been pretending for the past hour suddenly became real and she closed her eyes against the growing pain.

      Caroline Shelby waylaid Luc in the drawing room after dinner and he wished he had left the salon when the other men had. She looked rather excited, her colour high and her eyes bright.

      ‘I would like to thank you again for your help, Mr Clairmont.’

      As she had already thanked him numerous times he held his counsel and waited.

      ‘I would also like to ask you a question.’ She looked around to make certain that there was no one behind her, eavesdropping. When she saw the coast was clear she continued, albeit a little more softly. ‘I would like to ask you of the relationship between you and Lillian Davenport?’

      ‘Miss Davenport?’A hammer swung against the beat of his heart. She had heard Lilly’s words and everything was dangerous. Fury leaked into caution and into that came the obvious need for sense.

      ‘I stopped her falling when she fainted. Something I would have done for any woman.’

      ‘Any woman?’ Lady Shelby looked relieved. ‘So there are no special feelings between you?’

      ‘There are not. I barely know her.’

      ‘Then would I be remiss to ask you if you might accompany me home on the morrow? I need to be back in London and would appreciate an escort.’

      ‘Of course,’ Luc answered. ‘I would be delighted.’

      When she had left he poured himself a large cold drink of water.

      Nat found him forty minutes later sitting watching the night through the opened curtains.

      ‘You are not in bed?’

      ‘I am leaving with Caroline Shelby first thing in the morning.’

      ‘A change of plans, then?’

      ‘The woman came right out and implied I had feelings for Lilly Davenport.’

      ‘Lilly?’

      ‘And I haven’t.’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘I would ruin her.’

      ‘Lord, Luc. Sometimes I think that you are too hard on yourself and Virginia is far from here.’

      ‘It is my home, the only one I have known.’

      ‘Only because you refused to ever come back.’

      ‘No.’ Anger was infused in the word. Real anger. ‘You do not understand …’

      ‘And God only knows how I wish I could, but you will not let me in! There is something you are not telling me, and if there is one person in the world who owes you a favour you are looking right at him. After Eton …’

      ‘None of it was your fault, Nat.’

      ‘It was me who stole the watch, remember, and you who took the blame.’ This confession was said with such a sense of doom that Luc began to laugh.

      ‘Lord, Nathaniel, it was your damn watch in the first place and the master had no right in taking it.’

      ‘Still, it was not one of my finest moments and I always regretted such a lapse in courage.’

      ‘You just wanted your property back and I was desperate to be gone. Each of us gained what we hoped for. You know that.’

      ‘If you had stayed in England, I could have helped you.’

      ‘Getting expelled from Eton saved me, because with my mother and father out of the country, I had a chance to escape them and become my own man.’

      ‘You were fourteen.’

      ‘Going on twenty.’ Luc took another sip of the water in his glass. ‘And you and Hawk were the only damn friends that I ever had there.’

      ‘Not much of a friend, I fear. Look at Paget bringing up the past like it was yesterday.’

      ‘He is a man who still has much of the boy in him.’

      ‘And there is the trouble of it all, Luc. People here are long on memory and short on forgiveness and without