Page 40 of Lily and the Duke

“I said please.”

“As an afterthought.”

“Lily, I have no intention of arguing with you over the possible hurt feelings of someone I am well enough acquainted with to know that he is not hurt in the slightest,” Gabriel dismissed.

“No doubt that is because Hellsmere is well used to your rudeness—” Her words were cut off this time by the forceful claiming of her lips by Gabriel’s.

How easy it was to become lost in the passion that so quickly ignited between them. To kiss Gabriel back with the same passion as he devoured her. Utterly. Completely.

But it was not enough.

She knew it would never be enough.

Lily wrenched her mouth from his to push him away. “I have to go, Gabriel.”

“No—”

“I must,” she insisted, removing and holding out the jacket that had been keeping her warm this past half an hour.

“We did not finish our earlier conversation,” he protested.

“It is finished as far as I am concerned.” Whatever happened in future, she could not allow this intimacy between them to occur again. “I harbor no bad feelings toward you, but I believe I am worth more than these brief snatches of any gentleman’s time.”

“What if I were to offer you more?” he prompted guardedly.

She gave a shake of her head. “It still would not be enough.” Even Gabriel offering her three afternoons of his time instead of two still only amounted to them spending hours together. Hours when the two of them would need to hide away from the world. Lily loved him too much to settle for such half-measures. “I really am sorry, but I must go.” She turned on her heel and fled the summer house as if the hounds of hell were on her heels.

Or the Duke of St. Albans.

The man she loved beyond all reason.

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 notthinkthat 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.”

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