Secret Life of a Scandalous Debutante Page 9

  ‘Yes, but that wasn’t about the diamond. It was not the Filiki Adamao that massacred your people,’ Beldon interrupted.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Lilya responded sharply. ‘That was about quelling independence. What is going on now is about independence, too. Freedom is linked to the diamond. The Phanariot elders knew the hazards of the diamond. They rightly feared it could be used to create a tyranny. It’s too much power for any one man or any one group to wield.’

  ‘You have to tell Val and Philippa.’ Beldon sat down and pushed his hands through his hair. ‘Then we can decide what to do.’

  Lilya shook her head. ‘I will tell them. But there will be no “we” deciding what to do. If there’s any doing of anything, it will be by me alone.’ She had to be firm on this point. She would take the risks, no one else. ‘Telling Val and Philippa is for their own safety. I am not telling them as a ploy for enlisting their help, or yours.’

  ‘Don’t be stubborn, Lilya. Let us help. You are only one woman against an unseen enemy.’

  It was not the right thing to say. Lilya stopped him with a cold glare. ‘Yes, I am and I have made it this far. Now, if you’ll excuse me?’

  Beldon sprawled against the cushions of the dainty sofa. Last night, Lilya’s sharp wit had been enjoyable. This morning it was merely sharp, and sharp things, as a rule, hurt when one was stabbed with them. He had no doubt she was telling Valerian and Philippa right now what she’d already told him. She’d wanted to do it alone. She had too much pride. She’d not want it to look as if she’d made this decision because of his prompting.

  He would let her have her privacy and her pride. He needed time to think, time to sort through all she’d shared. Ultimately, he needed time to determine what his role in this was to be. Beldon was well aware that his role didn’t have to be a role at all. Other than his role as brother-in-law to her guardian, he need do nothing more than nod his head and offer her verbal support and go about his own pursuits in town.

  But she’d become one of those pursuits over the past few weeks. If he chose to do nothing about the diamond, that pursuit would have to end before it even became official. The thought of not dancing, not conversing, not occasionally sparring with her and certainly not stealing the rare kiss from her did not sit well with him.

  Beldon knew he must tread carefully and honestly with himself here. He’d defended her twice against Christoph’s less-honourable intentions by intervening in the garden and again with the fisticuffs last night. Were those simply the acts of a gentleman doing his duty or were they motivated by something more? If so, what was that something more? It was daunting to give a name to the passion invited by their kiss. Lilya had been all fire in his arms, igniting like dry tinder at his touch. His body had answered in kind. The attraction was mutual.

  More importantly, if he chose a larger role in her life, what would he do? What could he do? Lilya made it clear that Christoph was just one head of the Filiki Adamao hydra. There would be others. Lilya’s shocking disclosures this morning had made it clear the kind of perils she lived in at all times regardless of war or peace.

  That was long-term thinking, however. There was still the present situation to deal with. Christoph Agyros suspected she had the diamond and he was at large, able to pursue his mission. He was both devious and arrogantly dangerous. He would not hesitate to threaten Lilya outright or indiscreetly.

  By rights and logic, the situation begged him to distance himself. Lilya and her secrets threatened all he’d worked for. She could not be the wife he’d come to London looking for. But the longer he thought on all she’d told him, the more his admiration grew. He understood the significance of what she’d shared, and also the significance of what had gone unsaid; what the diamond meant for her life. He’d heard the unspoken remorse when she’d talked of her father and Alexei. The charge was not to have come to her. It should have gone to Alexei, the oldest male. She would have been free of the responsibility but his death at Negush and her father’s execution had changed all that.

  She had not chosen to be tied to the diamond, it had simply come to her. Beldon understood, too, she was bound by more than a political legacy. She was bound to the charge by familial loyalty, which was to her, perhaps, a more powerful bond than any political tie. To fail the charge would be to fail her father. Lilya was caught neatly in a web spun long before her birth and Beldon found he did not want to leave her there alone.

  ‘Lord Pendennys, you’re wanted in the study.’ A footman interrupted his thoughts with the summons. Lilya must be done telling them. Val would want to lay plans now. Good, Beldon had a few plans of his own to offer.

  ‘I should go,’ Lilya said as he stepped into the study. ‘If I leave quickly, Christoph will not be able to follow. I’ll have a few days’ lead on him.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Beldon shut the door behind him with more force than intended. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ He understood what had precipitated her flight from her homeland but those running days were over. She had him now, and Val and Philippa, too.

  Lilya’s chin went up in stubborn defiance. ‘It is the only way. I’ve told you the kind of men who hunt this diamond. They are not to be toyed with. They’ve devoted their lives to the pursuit. They will not stop until they’re convinced the diamond has passed out of history.’

  Beldon exchanged a long-suffering look with Valerian. Apparently this wasn’t the first time in the conversation she’d voiced this idea.

  ‘Perhaps we can help her get away to a place where she won’t have to run again,’ Philippa put in from her chair, uncharacteristically pale.

  ‘Philippa is right,’ Lilya protested. ‘I am a danger to your family. It’s not fair to have you all in fear because of me. Val, you must think of your little son and of my brother, Constantine. Agyros or some other in the future will come for them in order to get to me. If I disappear, you are no more use to him. The Filiki will not waste time on dead ends. It is why they’ve left me alone for so long.’ She shot a meaningful glance Beldon’s direction ‘They thought as you did that a woman couldn’t possibly be the guardian of the diamond.’

  Beldon took the chair next to Philippa. ‘I can see I’ll be apologising for that remark several times over. My poor choice of words aside, you simply can’t leave, Lilya. Leaving will confirm his suspicions. You would only run if you had the diamond and knew why he’d come.’

  ‘But staying corners me. We cannot live in a guarded town house for ever. If Agyros thinks we have hired protection, that, too, will raise his suspicions,’ Lilya countered, her dark eyes flashing with temper over being countermanded.

  ‘Beldon’s right. The guards are all plainly clothed and unobtrusive. We can call them off. What we need is a strategy that will keep you here and dissuade Christoph from the notion that you have the diamond.’ Val drummed long fingers on the desk top. He offered Lilya a commiserating smile. ‘Too bad you couldn’t just be a normal society miss, my dear.’

  ‘Why not?’ Philippa sat forwards, some new energy overriding her earlier fears for her young family. ‘Why not be a normal débutante? What does a normal young society miss want? A round of parties, pretty dresses, a proposal, a wedding. Lilya has all of that in place already.’

  ‘Except for the proposal part,’ Beldon put in.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Philippa divided her gaze between him and her husband. Beldon was glad to see Val was as perplexed as he was, the mysteries of the feminine mind being what they were.

  Philippa plunged ahead. ‘If Lilya had the diamond, marriage would be the last thing on her mind. Marriage is permanent. She’d be dragging a husband into this web of intrigue and later children. Marriage anchors her to England. She could not run any more, which is hardly what the keeper of the diamond would want.

  ‘Marriage to a peer is public. If Lilya had the diamond, the last thing she’d do is flaunt her whereabouts with a large wedding, announcements in the paper and taking her place in soci
ety as a hostess. She’d never be able to conceal herself. The best part is, the stage is already laid. She’s in London, she’s here under her own name, and she’s already being courted by all the right sorts of men with titles and positions. There’s been no pretence of hiding. If an engagement is announced, if a wedding is held, it won’t look awkward or contrived. It will be the natural outcome of a lovely, well-dowered young woman going to London.’

  ‘No, the only awkward part would be the part where there’s no groom at the wedding.’ Beldon chuckled. ‘But perhaps part of the plan could work, Val? What do you think of the old “hide in plain sight” strategy?’

  Val looked at his wife, contemplating the plan. ‘I think it would work, but we have to go all the way. Agyros is already here and suspicious. Only a marriage will dissuade him. It’s the choice to anchor herself in England that matters. That’s what sells this plan. If there’s no anchor, the option to run still exists, and if she can run, she’ll always be a suspect.’

  Lilya stood up so quickly her chair wobbled, threatening to fall back from the force of her rising. ‘I will not stand here and be talked about as if I’m not in the room.’ She shot Val and Beldon lethal looks. ‘Running is the only choice. There are three reasons why.’ She proceeded to count them off on her fingers. ‘First, I could not burden an unsuspecting husband. Second, even if one of my suitors came up to scratch, it wouldn’t be fast enough. No one is likely to offer until July and we need a husband now, or at least an engagement to announce. Third, I refuse on principle to live a lie and it might not even work.’

  She was magnificent in her anger, Beldon thought, something lusty and rebellious stirring in his lower parts. He wanted to kiss her into compliance until their bodies overruled their minds and they forgot their differences: her secret, his search for the ‘perfect’ wife.

  ‘The marquis’s son could be brought up to scratch sooner than that, I am certain of it, and perhaps he could be told…’ Philippa was saying.

  The image of giving Lilya to the marquis’s son was reprehensible. Simply giving her to another must not be tolerated, his body argued.

  ‘No.’ The words were out of his mouth before his mind could make his body take them back. ‘Lilya will marry me.’

  Chapter Ten

  Lilya blanched and blindly groped for the chair she’d nearly toppled. ‘I’m not going to marry anyone and I’m certainly not going to marry someone who hasn’t asked me.’ In his high-handed way, he’d announced it to the room. As proposals went, it was definitely not the stuff of dreams. Nightmares, perhaps.

  ‘Yes, you are, because it makes sense, because it protects you and your quest.’ Beldon was all cold logic, his eyes holding hers in a challenging stare. ‘I will “come up to scratch” immediately. We can have an announcement in The Times by tomorrow morning. I will not be an unsuspecting husband.’ He paused, his eyes glinting with something wicked. ‘And finally, you won’t be living a lie with me. I can give you a good life and we have already established we have, shall we say, a certain amount of mutual esteem for one another?’

  ‘What exactly have you been doing with my ward, Beldon? You were supposed to be her chaperon, not the one she needed chaperoning from,’ Valerian broke in.

  ‘It hardly signifies now that we’re getting married. I’ll have the announcement penned tonight, Val.’

  ‘Wait!’ Lilya cried. In all her imaginings, in all her fantasies of marrying Beldon, it had never been like this. He was surrendering himself on the altar of matrimony. She wanted a husband, not a sacrifice. This was miserable.

  Philippa rose and slipped her arm through Lilya’s. ‘Come, dear, the gentlemen have things to discuss and so do we. We must decide on a dress and flowers.’

  ‘I haven’t agreed to anything…’ Lilya sputtered. Didn’t anyone else see how miserable this was? This was happening too fast. The very thing she wanted to avoid, marriage, had suddenly become her lifeline in a scheme so crazy that it might work.

  Philippa’s reasoning was sound. Agyros would be put off by the permanence of her choice. Lilya saw the necessity for a quick wedding, too. Marriage to someone else made it impossible for Agyros to marry her himself.

  But just because the plan had merit didn’t mean she liked it. She’d never wanted Beldon this way and he hadn’t wanted her either, not under duress. There had to be a way to save both of them. She had to persuade Beldon to settle for an engagement. If she could show him that an engagement was enough to achieve their objective, he might be amenable. While Philippa talked of weddings, Lilya planned a way out of all the things that had gone wrong since she’d got out of bed that morning.

  Everything had gone impossibly wrong. In less than two days all his plans had gone awry. The Times shook in his hand. The bastard Pendennys was going to marry the little trollop. The announcement raised a host of questions. Did Pendennys know about the diamond? If he did, was he marrying her for her fortune? Or maybe this meant she didn’t have the diamond at all? He had to admit the choice to wed thwarted him somewhat. She couldn’t go haring around the world with the diamond if she was a baroness.

  Then again, there had been that boy in Constantinople a few years back who’d died for her, because of her. She’d believed in love once. Perhaps she had decided to roll that die one more time. A cruel smile lit his face in the dimness of his rooms in the Finsbury.

  ‘The game has shifted, that is all,’ Christoph said aloud.

  Love could be a powerful weapon. He could work with that. Right now, his biggest priority was working out how much anyone knew. He needed to flush Lilya out and he knew just how to do it. Lilya had proven strong on her own behalf, but maybe she’d weaken to save someone else. It would be interesting to see what she’d do when she had to choose between her father’s legacy and her new family, especially the baron. But first, he’d let her worry for a few days.

  He would not go down without a fight. It would take more than fisticuffs in a dark hallway to drive him away, or a marriage for that matter. Whether Pendennys and Lilya knew it, he was coming for them and hell was coming with him.

  They were the centre of attention at the Forthby ball two nights later. It was their first public appearance as an officially affianced couple and it would be their last if Lilya had her way. But until then, they were the toast of London.

  True to his word, Beldon had had the announcement printed in The Times the next morning. Who he’d had to bribe to get such a timely response, Lilya could only guess. To Lilya’s relief, Philippa had allowed her to take that night out of society’s eye. But Philippa’s tolerance would only stretch so far. People wanted to see them, she argued. If they disappeared from society, it would raise questions about the engagement. They must appear to the world as a happily engaged couple, the epitome of two people caught up in a whirlwind courtship.

  Beldon stood beside her in their corner of the ballroom, playing the pleased prospective bridegroom to the hilt as he accepted congratulations from those who passed by them. ‘We have not yet decided where to hold the wedding. I would love to marry in Cornwall, but my bride prefers a large wedding here in town at St George’s.’ He shot her a look of besotted indulgence.

  ‘I most certainly do not,’ Lilya hissed after the couple moved on. ‘I’d prefer no wedding at all, as you well know.’

  The hard look Beldon gave her was positively frigid, far from the gaze of warm tolerance he’d feigned moments earlier. ‘I am well aware of your desires. You’ve made sure of that. However, I am not convinced that marriage to me is worse than death at the hands of your various and invisible enemies.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not a recipient of your own high-handed arrogance,’ Lilya muttered, her temper getting the better of her.

  ‘What is that—?’ Beldon pasted on a smile and bowed, breaking off his comment in mid-sentence. ‘Good evening, Mrs Greenward. Yes, I’m elated with my good fortune. Thank you so much.’ The smile faded, the conversation resumed.
‘—supposed to mean exactly?’

  ‘I never asked to be rescued. I never asked for a hero or a sacrifice. I am perfectly fine on my own. I don’t owe you for this.’

  Beldon glared, a thought flitting across the planes of his face. Then he gripped her arm and pulled her through the ballroom.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Lilya protested.

  ‘Outside’ was growled through gritted teeth. He led them to a quiet bench near the far fence of the garden. ‘There, now we can talk.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry you,’ Lilya began, but Beldon cut her off with a strong look.

  ‘Wait, I lied. When I said now we can talk, I meant I could talk and you could listen. I am more than clear on your position regarding our upcoming nuptials. But there is no other way to dissuade him—’