Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor #3)(10)

“You’ve gone quiet, Miss Benedict.”

“I did not know you required a response.”

Her tart response roused a booming laugh. “Ah, if you are this feisty before a man in discourse, how spirited you must be in his bed.”

Bile burned at the back of her throat. Odd, she’d not grown accustomed to crude talk and leering stares. “Say what it is you’d say and be done with it,” she said with a practiced cool that drew a frown. Good, he did not care for her aloof dismissal. A thrill of satisfaction went through her.

“It occurs to me you detest the Duke of Blackthorne’s family nearly as much as I do.”

He would be wrong. “How do you...?” She snapped her mouth closed, already having said too much. Even as she longed to know just what he knew of her connection to that loathsome lot, she’d not allow him to toy with her like a cat with a mouse between its paws.

He winged a red eyebrow upward. “How do I know that part of your past, Miss Benedict?” He paused meaningfully. “Or should I say Miss Bennett?” Holdsworth gave her a sardonic grin. “I know more than you would like.”

A chill stole through her. Lily schooled her features into an inscrutable mask, refusing to give him a hint of shock and confusion currently running through her. She’d believed she’d carved out a relatively obscure identity as Sir Henry’s lover. With his two daughters near of age to Lily herself, she’d foolishly believed he’d keep Lily away as his dirty secret. Who else knew of the shameful life she’d lived these years?

The memory of her family flitted around the chambers of her mind and an unexpected agony lanced her heart. What would her parents, her siblings, say of Lily’s deeper descent into depravity? Odd, she’d thought each memory of each member of her family was properly buried and forever forgotten. How awful to have that erroneous truth shattered before this heartless bastard, no less. As this icy stranger continued speaking, she forcibly thrust back the images of her brothers and sister.

“My father was quite forthcoming.”

Lily jerked erect. “Was he?” She could not keep the bitterness from creeping into that two-word question. Men had proven themselves remarkably boorish and detestable where she was concerned, and she’d proven herself foolish time and time again for trusting a word out of their treacherous mouths.

“He was.”

Should it come as any surprise he’d violated that portion of her trust with his son? The world was controlled by these men called gentlemen, when there really was nothing gentle in them. They were ruthless, grasping, and self-serving. What value would a single one of them ever place on her desire for some hint of privacy in her own past?

Holdsworth set his glass down. With a taunting gleam lighting his eyes, he folded his arms at his chest. “It is no secret my family disapproved of the whore who kept him company all these years. Hardly coin to be had for my sisters’ Come Outs, and yet you lived this comfortable life in the country.”

“Six,” she bit out. That was how long it had been since Sir Henry had insisted Lily go from his maid to his mistress. That was also the day she’d abandoned her name of Lilliana Bennett.

He furrowed his brow.

“It was six years.” A lady did not forget a moment of her life she spent in a hell of her own making. She tightened her jaw. Or in this case, a hell of hers and a now dead duke’s making.

“Six years a whore,” the man mused, more to himself.

She curled her hands into tight balls at her side, not giving him the satisfaction in knowing his words, even for their truth, nay especially for their truth, cut sharper than a dull-edged blade being thrust into her belly. “Yes,” she said with a stoic calm. “Six years a whore.” To a man who’d taken her to his bed, shared his home, and shared her secrets with his son.

“Regardless,” he said with a flick of his hand. “It matters not how long you’ve warmed my father’s bed but rather what brought you in to his life.” He made a tsking noise. “Blackthorne, that lover of all things beautiful.” Things. That was how these pompous, arrogant nobles saw women and objects alike, as mere things for their pleasures. If only her fifteen-year-old self had known the ugliness in their souls. “My father asked that I care for you.”

Dread pebbled in her belly. That tiny, anxious pit born of the treachery she’d experienced through the years. “How very kind of him,” she responded stiffly. Her eyes must have reflected the thousand panicked questions racing through her mind.

He scoffed. “Surely you’d not expect my father to name his lover in his will? Not when he left his children facing financial ruin.”

Oh, God. Was it a wonder that a gentleman who’d promised her freedom all those years ago had also betrayed her? How could she be so foolishly na?ve, again? Once again, the floor dropped out from under her and she shot her hands out to steady herself with the support of the leather button sofa.

In a maddeningly nonchalant manner, Holdsworth shoved away from the sideboard, and like a predator stalking its prey, closed the distance between them. The triumphant glimmer in his eyes indicated he relished her shock. He came to a stop beside her. “He was clear what was to happen to you were he ever to pass.”

She braced for the sickening, vile proposition he’d put to her. Nausea turned in her stomach at the idea of spreading her legs for another. “Was he?”