Page 111 of Devil in Her Details

“Do you wish to inspect my knees, dear brother?” She held out her hands. “They might only be shallow scrapes, but I really did fall.”

His jaw clenched. “Not hard enough to be carried.”

“Yes, well, that may be,” Lilly said offhandedly. “But Dagger is extremely thorough in his care.”

“I knew it.” Her brother’s face turned stormy. “He touched you, didn’t he?”

Her temper flared. “What exactly are you implying, Carlisle?”

He sat back and crossed his arms. “You’re not answering my questions. You’re being vague at best. Something happened between the two of you, didn’t it?”

She mimicked his posture. “I’ll answer questions worth answering, and nothing happened that you have to know about.” She was most certainly not going to have a supremely intimate conversation with her brother. Her body was her own. He could accept that or not.

He cursed. “Then tell me this, what is he to you?”

Lilly grimaced before she could school her features, prompting a deepening scowl from her brother. It was the question she had been grappling with the entire time. He was her one and only love, only they couldn’t be together. “We exchanged services. I make him his belt, and he helps me with Calvington. What would you call that?”

A muscle ticked in Carlisle’s jaw. “That still doesn’t answer my question. And don’t bloody give me that rot about not answering questions not worth answering. I’ll let that one slide, but not this bloody one.”

“Well, I don’t know how to answer it, Carlisle. I don’t know. I don’t know how to define us because there is nothing to define. Our arrangement ended the moment you stepped into Brighton.”

“Well, aren’t I important then?”

Lilly shook her head. She could understand his frustration. He was only acting out of love for her. And given her troubles with the marquess, it was only natural for him to question the situation. After all, from her brother’s point of view, Dagger had everything to gain should she have been ruined by him.

And she had.

And he could come to claim her.

But he wouldn’t.

He would never follow her into her world, especially not after her brother’s outburst in the dungeon. She didn’t even want to contemplate how those words must have been perceived by her panther. And, on the opposite end, she could never follow him into his world.

Calliope and Violet came to mind. Their happiness.

But no.

They were perhaps cut from the same cloth, but they had diverging patterns. Lilly had family she could never part from. She had friends she didn’t want to be estranged from. There had never been hope for him and her, not from the very start.

Or was there?

“I don’t approve of this, Lilly,” Carlisle ground out. “Whatever you and he were, it has to end permanently.”

No. No hope. Not unless she was willing to lose her brother.

Lilly bit the inside of her lip to keep from tearing up and gave her brother a small smile. “There is nothing to disapprove of, Carlisle. And there is nothing between him and me.” Not anymore.

“Are you sure you don’t have any feelings on the matter? On leaving?”

A dog with a bone. “I have a great many feelings,” Lilly said pleasantly. “About most things. The weather today seems very fine for travel, which I feel positively about.”

“Lilly.”

“The roads should be nice and dry.”

“That is not what I’m asking you.” His gaze pinned hers. “I want to make sure you’re—”

“I’m perfectly well, Carlisle. Leave it at that.”