Page 120 of Devil in Her Details

“You’re spiraling, Lilly. Worrying about things that you’re probably only exaggerating in your mind. Think about the most important thing. You love him. Does he love you? Does he know that you love him?”

Lilly sighed. Her brother was right. She was spiraling. “How could he? I barely knew.”

“From my experience, men usually know.”

Her eyes widened. “They do?”

Carlisle shrugged, half a smile forming. “Ask him when you next see him. You’ll have your answer then. For what it’s worth, I might not know him as well as you, or think he’d ever good enough for you, but he seems like a man that protects his own to the death. There are worse scoundrels out there. Some of them gentlemen.”

Dagger would protect his own to the death.

She’d seen it with her own eyes.

How could she have forgotten?

What did all the other things matter in the face of love? In the face of such loyalty and devotion?

Carlisle sighed. “I know some things about darkness, too, Lilly. I’ve stepped onto its shores.”

Her jaw slackened at the sudden admission. “You have?”

“How do you think I got Calvington’s secrets? You can dress me up in strange finery, but I’m not as innocent as you might think, my dear.” He patted her knee. “If you can’t cross over into his world, and he can’t cross over into yours, just create your own world. One of your own design. That way I can visit. Allie and Leo can visit. His family can visit. You could be the connecting point of the two worlds.”

Blazes, Carlisle said it as though it were obvious, which perhaps it was, from the outside. From the inside, she’d been so busy dwelling on the distance between their worlds that she hadn’t stopped to consider that distance was only a problem if you were trying to cross it.

Building something in the middle was an entirely different proposition.

Could it truly be that simple?

Lilly grinned at her brother and gave him a soft punch in his arm. “Carlisle Trenton. Is this you agreeing that I can scandalize London and follow my heart?”

“Well, you have to catch that man first.”

She punched his arm again. “Aren’t you afraid that if I follow my heart I might not live here anymore? In London, I mean.”

“London has much more darkness than Brighton, my dear. That much, I do know.”

Lilly fell silent for a moment.

She’d always known her brother simply as Carlisle. Her indulgent, loving brother. But hearing him speak with certainty of his personal familiarity with darkness, she understood she’d been looking at a version of him he’d allowed her to see. She wondered how much else she’d missed.

Darkness, she’d come to realize, had many forms. There was the kind that circled a man like Dagger—dangerous and visible. But there was an invisible kind. The kind that enveloped Calvington and his ilk from the inside out.

Her brother . . .

Lilly sent him a concerned glance. “Should I ask how you retrieved those secrets of Calvington’s?”

He glanced over to her, eyes broodier than she’d ever seen them. “I’d rather you not.”

She nodded, averting her gaze. “Darkness can’t exist in the light, remember that.”

He patted her knee again and rose. “You remember it, too. Shall I accompany you to the Avondale ball, or are you attending with your friends?”

“Friends. I know how you hate these things.”

He nodded and strode off, pausing at the door. “Will you be all right? At the ball, I mean.”

A year ago, she’d have laughed at the question. Balls were her natural habitat. But she wasn’t so sure about that anymore. “I’ll be perfectly fine.”