Lily by Patricia Gaffney Read Free Book Online Page B

through it quickly—but it wasn’t only that. What, then? She didn’t want to lie to him, she realized with a shock.
    “Are you afraid of me?”
    “No.” And that was the surprising truth.
    Her answer dissatisfied him; he wasn’t interested in the trust of this girl, this housemaid. But he said, “Good,” with his bitter smile. “Gunshots are a rarity here, and I’m quite harmless.”
    “O’ course, sar,” she murmured.
    He thought he heard skepticism, and raised one dark brow. Her dress was shabby, he noted, her shoes old and broken, her maid’s cap disreputable. For all that, she didn’t much resemble a servant. Something about her face. Her skin, perhaps? Too smooth and white, too … healthy. Or her eyes, clear gray-green and fine, with a look in them that hinted there was more going on in her head than serving him breakfast.
    He swung away from her abruptly. “Well? Haven’t you anything to do?”
    “I do, yes—”
    “Then go about your business.” The irritation in his tone startled even him.
    Lily drew in her breath. She gazed at him for another second, then crossed to the door and closed it softly behind her.
    Devon sat down at his desk and took a sip of tepid tea. A dozen thoughts curled and turned in his mind, like restless fish caught in a drift net. One kept surfacing again and again, no doubt because among them it was his only remote certainty: The girl called Lily was anything but a maid.

Four
    C LAYTON D ARKWELL JERKED ON the bell rope a second time, and almost immediately a breathless parlormaid trotted into the library. “Coffee!” ordered the young master. “Right away, and in a very large pot.” The girl bobbed a curtsey and scurried back out the door. “Well? What are you looking at?”
    Devon watched his brother collapse on the sofa and cover his eyes with one hand. “When you don’t come home until dawn,” he said dryly, “it’s always a relief to know you’ve not been up to anything more foolish than getting blind drunk.” What hypocrisy, he drought with an unamused half-smile. A week ago he himself had gotten worse than blind drunk, coldly and deliberately. The fifth anniversary of his wife’s death had seemed as good a time as any to pull out a pistol and start shooting up his house.
    Clay pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “I swear it was the rum at John Poltrane’s. And he’d even paid duty on the swill. But I beat him out of twenty guineas at loo, so there’s some justice.” Devon didn’t return his pained but cocky grin. “Well, I don’t see what you’ve got to be self-righteous about. I saw your light on when I stumbled in, after all. The only difference between us is that I drink with my friends and you drink alone.”
    His brother’s already shuttered face hardened a little more, and Clay looked down, regretting his words. “You should have come with us,” he resumed a moment later, lightly. “Afterward we went to the Hornet’s Nest.” Devon steepled his fingers under his chin and grunted without interest. “There’s a new girl there, Dev, she’s really something to see. I think she weighs more than I do. Her name’s Eulalia. I’m not joking!” He laughed delightedly when Devon finally begrudged a ghost of a smile. “Come with us the next time, why don’t you? John and Simon always ask about you. You’d enjoy yourself, I swear you would.”
    Lord Sandown got up from behind the paper-strewn library table and walked to a pair of French doors set between shelves of books in the rear wall. He threw the doors open, and immediately the muted sound of the sea filled the room. A cloud of sandpipers piped derisively over a glassy-calm Channel. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, standing stiff and straight against the bright glitter of the day.
    The girl came in with Clay’s coffee. Devon waited for her to go, and for Clay to stretch out full length on the sofa with a cup and saucer propped on his stomach. “Have you given any