LITMIR.BIZ

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hope, and I haven’t given up yet.”

      Her father would never give up. It was his desire to see her wed to the duke, and nothing less would do.

      “And that is all that you intend to say on the matter, is it? Well, then I shall let it rest for now. Come then, Lucy, I must be off. I shall escort you across the street.”

      “Really, Papa, there is no need for concern. I am quite all right at home.”

      “Alone?” he guffawed. “Absolutely not, you’re still recovering from your illness.”

      There was no fighting him on this. A fortnight ago she had been gravely ill—her own stupidity, which she refused to think on—and ever since, her father made certain that she was never left alone, although it was not him who was a constant presence, but Isabella, whose task it now seemed was to hover about and mind Lucy’s activities.

      Lucy thought back to those months ago, when, in an attempt to appease the loneliness left behind by the imagined loss of her lover, she had turned down many a dark and dangerous path, one of séances and scribing, and bargaining in her dreams if only she could find her lover once again. There had been that awful sense of incompleteness, having never had a chance to say goodbye. To see him one last time before he faded forever onto the other side, where breathing mortals could not follow.

      Dabbling in the occult had been a way of idling her time away—and perhaps a somewhat foolish and desperate measure to find him in the ethers of the spiritual realm—it was then that she had come across the mysterious Brethren Guardians and their sacred relics—a relic she had stolen and used for her own purposes. The result had been disastrous, and nearly deadly.

      It had terrified her father, and now he was hovering about, foisting her onto her cousin, and generally distrusting her, treating her like a child.

      “Come, Lucy. I insist,” her father muttered in that voice that would brook no refusal. “There is no moving me on this. You will join Lady Black today and attend to those things that ladies do during morning calls.”

      “I will just change,” Lucy sighed, quite resigned in the matter.

      “Balderdash! You are quite appropriately attired. There is no need to waste time on changing your wardrobe.”

      Her father wouldn’t hear of it. He was in something of a hurry to get to his club, and therefore, she was escorted out of the salon, and into the hall, where Jennings, their butler, assisted her with her cloak and umbrella.

      “Damn this weather,” her father grumbled as he reached for her elbow and ushered her down the stone steps to the waiting carriage. “We’ll drive across the street, for there is no telling how long it will take Black’s footman to open the gates. I have no desire to wait in the rain for the gates to open. Don’t know why he needs them, anyway.” Because he was a Brethren Guardian. But she couldn’t very well inform her father of such a fact. She herself should know nothing of it. Lucy barely understood this strange Brethren that Sussex and Lord Black belonged to, but it didn’t matter. During her study of the occult, she had stumbled across it, discovering not only who the Brethren were, but the relics they kept hidden. She had sworn an oath of silence, promising never to speak of their little group to anyone. And in return, her own shocking secret would be kept from her father, and the microcosm that was their world—the ton.

      She knew only bits and pieces of the Brethren Guardians’ secrets; it was an esoteric society made up of three influential peers: Black, Sussex and the Marquis of Alynwick.

      Their business was mysterious and secretive, and dangerous. From what she knew of their secrets, there existed an onyx pendant, which was the very essence of evil, and some sort of chalice that they protected. But what they represented, she could not say, and could not find out.

      Black, who had recently become the husband of Isabella, Lucy’s cousin, had been shot a fortnight ago during what was termed Guardian business. Well on the mend, Black pretended that naught had happened, and Isabella, a true and honorable wife, would not speak of it. Lucy had tried, but Isabella had remained stubbornly tight-lipped. And the pendant … it had belonged to Black and his family, and purportedly contained seeds with magical powers. Lucy had taken it, ingested a seed inside the pendant and wished with everything inside her in the hopes she might once more see her lover and say her tearful goodbyes.

      Of course, the rash action had caused her days of vomiting, and a strange feeling of possession, not to mention the fact that her actions had both alarmed and angered not only Black but Sussex. But in the end, her goal had been achieved. Thomas was alive …

      And the Brethren Guardians were not only looking for him, but watching her as well to see if Thomas would come to her. When Sussex had delivered the lace to her he had also informed her that the man who had dropped it was a man he and the Brethren were hunting. He was their enemy, Sussex had claimed, and that man, Lucy knew, was Thomas. Her lover from the past. And Lucy knew with every cell of her being that she must protect him from the duke and his two fellow Guardians, for they were powerful and influential men, while her lover was an artist, without influence of a title or the power that both peerage and money could wield.

      Yes, those iron gates that surrounded his lordship’s home, standing sentry like a castle drawbridge against marauding knights, was a security measure—one Black would never abolish.

      Her father cleared his throat several times, while glancing sidelong at her, all indications that something was weighing on him, something he felt compelled to speak of. “I’m afraid I cannot allow our previous conservation to lay fallow. I must speak plainly, Lucy. I’ve noticed, my dear, that Sussex hasn’t been by for some time. Two weeks, at least, I believe.”

      Lucy refused to take her gaze from the rain-streaked carriage window. She would not talk of his grace, and she would not have this conversation with her father.

      “I hope you have not had a falling-out.”

      “I wasn’t aware that we had a falling-in.”

      That quip made her father glare at her. “You don’t make it easy on the poor fellow. You hold him at arm’s length. He’s trying to court you, but you’re too obstinate to see it.”

      “I am well aware of the fact, Father. You have made it too blatant for me to misunderstand. You wish me to marry the duke.”

      “You say it with such disdain, as though he were a common laborer, when he is the furthest thing from it.”

      She thought back to her young friend Gabriel, the butcher’s boy, and realized that they had shared something remarkable—the same sadness, the same loneliness, despite their stations being so opposite. “I am not at all opposed to a common man, if he were to feel a genuine sense of affection for me.”

      “Affection!” Her father’s thick mutton chops twitched in irritation. “Good God, child, are we back to that? Those fairy-tale thoughts were amusing when you were twelve, now they are downright mortifying. Marriage is an institution—”

      “Rather like one of those asylums for lunatics,” she mumbled, unable to help herself. She didn’t want an institution. She wanted a marriage. A friendship. A loving partner.

      Her father sighed deeply, but did not bother to address her thoughts and instead began to talk to her as he had so many years ago, as she lay on her bed, sobbing into her pillow after he had turned away the only friend she had ever had—Gabriel. Depriving her of that friendship had destroyed her, frozen part of her heart and soul. How wretched her father had been—how horrid it was to see her friend leave, and never, ever return. Internally she had railed against the injustice of it all, but she had been powerless then to take charge of her life, and her future. And now, here she was years later, still just as powerless, still enduring the same lectures on duty and the responsibilities of a female of her class.

      “Now, Lucy, must I remind you that every station in life has its obligations, and the daughter of a marquis’s obligation is to marry well, furthering their nobility, and riches. You were put on this earth, girl, to marry a duke.”

      How

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