Lily and the Duke (Regency Spinsters Alliance #1)

Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I feel no hesitation in saying it again: Lily Tremayne is a diamond beyond compare!” Hellsmere stated with satisfaction as he and Gabriel stood together, watching as the Earl of Shefford’s secretary was led away after being charged with murdering the earl the previous week.

Lily, Gabriel proudly acknowledged, had been completely correct in her summation regarding the method and reason for Shefford’s demise.

Unfortunately, by the time the two dukes had succeeded in persuading the authorities it was an alternate manner by which the earl had met his death, Shefford’s secretary had, again, as Lily had foretold, already absconded.

The man had eventually been discovered making his way to the coast, no doubt in the hope of securing passage to France, when he was finally apprehended and subsequently brought back to London.

Gabriel and Hellsmere had very much enjoyed being present when the man was questioned. He had now been charged and taken away to the cells.

“So.” Hellsmere turned to Gabriel, eyes alight with speculation. “How much longer are you going to wait before making that lovely lady your own rather than allowing some other lucky bastard to snap her up before you realize you are behaving like a stubborn ass?”

Gabriel glared at the thought of any other man so much as touching Lily. “I am well aware of Lily’s worth. And it is not stubbornness on my part, but a regard for her feelings after I offered her less than she deserved when we—when we began our friendship.”

“Because you did not love her then, and you also thought the age gap was too large to offer her anything more,” Hellsmere reasoned.

“I did not think that I loved her.” He now believed that he had fallen in love with Lily that day in the library, rather than just lust. “And the age gap between us is still very real.”

“But of less importance.”

“True,” he acknowledged. “But when you interrupted us on the terrace the other evening, Lily had just been telling me she could not continue with our…arrangement.”

“Why?”

Gabriel glared his irritation. “Obviously, because she wished it to end.”

“The evidence of the tears she had cried would seem to imply otherwise,” Hellsmere disagreed. “And I was asking what reason she gave you for ending your relationship.”

“She said it was because she found it too hurtful to continue.” He shook his head. “The last thing I would ever wish to do is hurt Lily.” Merely thinking of her tears that night made his chest ache.

“Hurtful in what way?” Hellsmere persisted.

“I believe she said she was incapable of turning her emotions on and off at will, as seems to be a requirement in a casual arrangement such as ours. That she found the constant uncertainty and inner questioning too exhausting.”

“Uncertainty over what? And questions regarding what?”

“Whether or not she wished to be with me, I assumed.”

“But you did not ask?”

“I did not have time to do so before you arrived.” Gabriel frowned. “After we had all spoken in the summer house, and you had departed—”

“I believe you instructed me to get out,” his friend reminded dryly.

“So I did,” Gabriel acknowledged without apology. “After you left, she told me she was worth more than a few snatched minutes of any gentleman’s time.”

“She is.”

“I know that!”

“Then do something about it.”

“I attempted to offer her more. She said it would not be enough.”

Hellsmere eyed him pityingly. “Exactly what more were you offering her?”

Gabriel’s jaw tensed. “I believed that was something that could only be decided between Lily and me.”

“Then it is time for you to return to the lady and the subject,” Hellsmere advised. “But only if you have true feelings for her and really do have more to offer her than that shoddy arrangement which obviously caused her so much unhappiness,” he cautioned.

The last time the two of them had spoken, Lily had been clear it was her wish not to continue with their intimacy.

Gabriel had not agreed with that decision.

He still did not.

“If you should need one, then you have a perfectly valid reason for calling upon her now that her suspicions regarding Shefford’s secretary have proved to be correct, and she specifically asked you to inform her of our progress,” Hellsmere pointed out. “I will go to Prinny and tell him we no longer need to continue with his investigation, and you should go to Lily and tell her exactly how you feel about her.”

“And if she does not feel the same way about me?”

“Then you will have to suffer that hurt on top of the humiliation of having confessed your unrequited feelings for her.”

“Your compassion is overwhelming!”

The other man grinned. “No one said falling in love was easy, my friend.”

No, they hadn’t.

Much as Gabriel had wished to see Lily this past week, he had instead deliberately kept himself busy with his work for the Crown and his other business concerns in an effort not to think of her at all. He had failed, of course, but being constantly occupied had helped.

Chloe’s birthday had also come and gone. It had necessarily been a muted affair, with one of her closest friends in mourning and another attending her.

But Gabriel had done the best he could for Chloe, in the circumstances, by presenting her with a new mare, her real present. The two of them had enjoyed a quiet dinner at home together rather than the evening out with her friends he had anticipated happening.

Now that the search for the spy was over, Gabriel knew he still needed to complete his unfinished conversation with Lily.

Even if it resulted in his hurt and humiliation.

Lily had spent an exhausting week with Georgiana and her mother and sisters. Indeed, she had virtually moved into Shefford House so that she might offer them her love and support whenever and in whatever capacity they needed it.

As expected, Lily’s mother was not pleased by the arrangement, but she did appreciate receiving firsthand knowledge of the situation after the shocking news of the earl’s suicide became publicly known.

Quickly followed by the rumor that it had not been suicide at all.

Then the hunt for who could have been responsible for the earl’s death if it was not self-inflicted.

A distressed Georgiana had confided her relief to Lily that she and her mother and sisters had the solid alibi of having been at the musical soiree the evening of the earl’s death.

It was the first time Lily had realized how very much Georgiana and the other Stapleton ladies had hated the family patriarch.

Much as Lily despaired at her own parents’ grasping natures, she did not dislike them enough to want to murder either of them.

The Countess of Shefford, previously a quiet lady who preferred to remain unnoticed in the background, seemed to blossom overnight now that she was no longer under the domineering and disapproving thumb of her narrow-minded husband.

Georgiana’s sisters became equally as lighthearted now that they were not constantly being told what a disappointment they were to their father.

Only Georgiana remained withdrawn. “I hated him, you see,” she told Lily vehemently as the two of them sat together in the family parlor on the seventh day after her father’s death. “And I wished him dead dozens of times.”

Lily reached out to squeeze her friend’s hand. “You did not kill him.”

“But I wanted to!”

“Wanting is not the same as doing,” Lily soothed. “And no matter what your feelings toward him, they are still your feelings, and you are allowed to express them.”

“He was so hateful to us all, always.” Tears began to fall down Georgiana’s cheeks. “He was a horrible, horrible man who made us all feel worthless and unloved, unlovable, and whose death I do not mourn in the slightest.” The tears fell faster.

“I believe he was the one who was worthless and unlovable,” Lily stated as she drew her friend into her arms.

Georgiana’s tears were long overdue, and they were necessary, even cathartic.

“Why did he have to be such a horrible man? Why?” her friend continued to sob.

Lily knew there was no answer she could give that would not sound insincere or trite, and so she said nothing, but instead continued to hold Georgiana as her friend cried at all past hurts and slights she had received from her father.

Lily had kept her own tears over the ending of her relationship with Gabriel firmly under her control. Mainly because she knew that if she once started to cry, she would not be able to stop her outpouring of grief.

She had not heard from him, or the Duke of Hellsmere, as to how the investigation into the Earl of Shefford’s death was going. Truthfully, Lily did not expect to hear from Gabriel again in any sort of capacity after the things she had said to him the last time they spoke privately together.

But she still loved him, still ached for him, still wanted to be with him above all and everyone else.

She knew that would never change.

Gabriel’s disappointment was heavy as he returned to his carriage after being informed by the Earl of Truro’s butler that Lily was not at home.

The man had denied knowing where Lily was. But knowing Lily as well as he did, Gabriel believed she would be at the Earl of Shefford’s residence still, after she had told him of her determination to be supportive of her friend and her family.

To that end, Gabriel instructed his groom to drive to Shefford House.

It was time for him and Lily to be honest about their feelings for each other. Good or bad. Far better for Gabriel to know whether Lily still wished their association to be over than to hope and pray that it wasn’t.

As chance would have it, Lily was walking down the front steps of Shefford House, pulling her cloak more tightly about her, when the St. Albans carriage came to a halt outside the house.

Her thoughts seemed to be so preoccupied, she was unaware of the carriage, or him seated inside it, as she stepped down onto the cobbled street. Allowing Gabriel the opportunity to drink his fill of her before making her aware of his presence.

She looked as beautiful as always, but there was a fragility to her appearance and demeanor that had not been there previously. She also appeared thinner, her cheeks pale and her eyes lacking their usual warm glow.

It would be arrogant on Gabriel’s part to think that missing him might be part of the reason for these changes in Lily. It was far more likely to be because she had spent so many hours this past week in the company of the grieving Stapleton family.

Nevertheless, he was frowning his concern as he stepped down from his carriage directly in front of her.