Page 89 of Devil in Her Details

God help her, she would not give that man anything to witness but his own demise.

Lilly glanced at her new friend. “Are you all right?” she asked as they stepped out into the street behind her shop. “A rather nerve-racking first meeting, is it not?”

“Don’t worry about me, Lilly.” She flashed Lilly a wide smile. “I haven’t had a thrill like this in quite a while.”

Lilly shook her head, then chuckled. Thrill? She rather doubted that, being married to a Fury. And she also doubted Dagger and his brothers shared the sentiment. They must both be restless with worry. “Don’t let your husband hear that.”

“Agreed,” Saint muttered, shutting the door. “Stay close.”

Lilly and Calliope followed Saint down the street.

“Where are we going?” she asked, surveying the street, which was considerably quieter than the main one.

“Tavern.”

Their home? So not back to his brothers, then? Lilly wanted to protest but decided against challenging this man. She didn’t want to further antagonize the relationship of these brothers, and since Calliope didn’t protest, there must be a bigger reason.

But Dagger . . . He was likely less concerned with the marquess and more obsessed with the fact that she was currently out of his sight. She could almost feel the hot gaze of him on her, burning through the walls of the shop. The man had become her shadow, and a shadow was a difficult thing to leave behind, even in the dark. How was she ever going to tear him from her skin and leave him behind?

*

Dagger cursed.

What the devil was this?

A procession of black carriages cut down the street, stopping one by one before Lilly’s shop, ladies spilling out onto the pavement and filing through the door. For a fleeting moment, it looked like all her London friends had come calling. But only for a second. Then a sour, nauseating knot rose in his throat. These were not her friends.

“Lilly,” he surged forward, but two hands clamped down on him, one on each shoulder and one from each brother.

“No, frère,” Reaper said. “You can’t be seen.”

Damn it. His brother was right. If that shite Calvington had orchestrated this—and the neat, theatrical care of these carriages arriving in such a parade suggested very much that someone had—then Dagger stepping into that shop would hand the man exactly the confirmation he needed to prove that article.

Maxen’s gaze was just as black as his.

“Well, it’s safe to say that we know why someone lurked about,” Reaper added. “A bunch of nobs. What’s with this strategy? A grand distraction?”

Dagger hissed another curse. “I know why.”

Both his brothers glanced at him.

“There’s an article being printed tomorrow. A rumor about me and Lilly.”

“Well hell, frère, that’s not bloody good.”

“I bloody well know how bad it is.” He’d thought about it over and over since he’d seen the piece. If word got out on such a scale, it was only a matter of time before news reached his uncle and their traitorous brother, Deveraux. They’d slither in like snakes, and if the past was any indication of how they operated, they’d use Calvington as a means to toy with them. And ever since that thought had taken hold, Dagger couldn’t help but wonder if that hadn’t already happened.

The whole affair had the same ugly shape as Maxen and Drake’s stories, where the women they loved had been used against them and almost been hurt in the fallout.

He refused for history to repeat itself.

Then the door of the fourth carriage opened, and a man stepped down. Dagger recognized the arse instantly. Dagger’s hands closed into fists at his sides. The filthy marquess straightened his coat carefully, his thumbs in bandages, cast a satisfied eye over Lilly’s shop, and grinned.

“There he is,” Dagger snarled. “The rat-faced piece of—”

“Easy,” Maxen warned, the grip that hadn’t left his shoulder tightening. “Think with your head.”

And not with his cock or his heart? Dagger shrugged both his brothers off with a deepening scowl. “I’m fine. I know. I’m not a damn whelp.”