Page 14 of Broken

Another breach of etiquette, but who was counting, right?

“God damn me.”

If her father found out what Lilly had seen him doing… Giles shuddered.

Pistols or swords?

Would he have a choice? He doubted there would be even one witness. A shallow grave and a rumor he’d gone abroad. Giles had never professed an interest in the sea, so he hoped that someone, someday, would look for his body, if only to give his uptight sister the chance to say she had seen it coming. He might just deserve what was coming, too.

He walked back to the bed and stared down at the face on the white pillow. Lilly hadn’t moved. Pale and perfect, one thin hand draped at her side, and not a hint of color showing. Was she truly alive? He hesitated to touch her again, but he had to be sure.

With trembling fingers, he touched the back of her pale hand and flinched, awareness of her existence thrumming through him in an unwelcome rush.

Atticus whimpered, looking at him over her prone body, tail thumping the bed in anticipation. The dog was waiting on a miracle, was he? Giles touched her hand again, rubbing his fingers in small circles, upwards to her wrist. She was cold. Her pulse, when he found it, was still slow.

Dithers reentered the chamber, and Giles stepped away from Lilly, guilt and self-disgust whirling in his brain.

“How is the young miss, milord? Is there a change? Anything I can get for her?”

Yes, a pistol or a great big blunderbuss would do nicely, so Lilly could shoot him. He deserved a ball between his eyes. He would even hand her the weapon and cheer her on as she pulled the trigger. If she ever recovered from whatever had happened to her last night, that was.

Giles struggled for an appropriate response, but could only manage two words. “Hot bricks.”

Dithers departed, leaving him alone with his self-recriminations.

He strode to the fire and threw in another log. The blaze scalded his face and he was glad for it. Perhaps it could cleanse away the darkness he left behind in his wake. Behind him was an example of his darkness. He turned to look long and hard at the lump under the bedding. He had imagined what his ghost had been like when alive too—now he would get to find out.

Perhaps.

He wanted to laugh at the situation, but feared he might leap over into madness. He had played many a wicked game in front of this innocent woman, dreamed of doing unending, unearthly feats of passion in her cold embrace. Never once had the possibility entered his lust-filled brain that she might have been real.

Alive.

Or that she would be the woman once intended for his bride. What the hell had she been doing in London, gadding about Huntley House in a nightdress?

He brushed his fingers across her palm, an intimate gesture usually shared between lovers.

Startled at his unconscious relocation to Lilly’s side again, he clasped his hands behind his back. Lapses like that would only turn up the fires of his guilt. He was seared on both sides and his bollocks were shrinking in retreat. He had better start keeping his trousers on, and his hands firmly to himself, if he wanted to enjoy what was left of his life.

He sank into a chair on the far side of the room and dropped his head into his hands. His behavior put him well beyond the pale. He knew it very well, indeed.

He looked up as Dithers returned, handling the cloth-wrapped bricks carefully. Giles looked at him blankly.

The butler waited patiently, but after a moment he quirked his head to the side. “We will need to get the bricks in around her soon, milord. Shall I lift the covers, or will you do the honors?”

Giles bristled at the thought of any man near Lilly. He stalked to the bed, placed himself between his servant and the unconscious woman, and lifted the covers.

“She isn’t much bigger than when the accident happened,” Dithers mused.

“You’ve met her?”

“I was here temporarily for the house party. I remember them bringing her back to the manor.”

An irrational irritation grated on Giles’ nerves. He’d deliberately absented himself from the house party, had been away at the time of the accident, to avoid the girl. He hadn’t lain eyes on Lilly since she was little. If he hadn’t avoided doing his duty and entertaining his mother’s guests, he might have recognized her as the ghost and behaved far differently. He might have spoke to her, made love to her instead.

That thought shocked him to his boots.

He was attracted to the ghost. No, not the ghost. He was attracted to Lilly, the woman who was supposed to be his wife. A woman whom he’d thought dead.