challengingly. “You can come if you want, but don’t expect me to wait for you, Nash.”
He had mere seconds to find out the most important thing he wanted to know, the one fact that would determine his actions. “Did you tell Owen you love him?”
“What?” She looked utterly perplexed. “Do you… Do you mean when he asked me to wed him?”
“No. Before that. Four years ago in the Cotswolds by the river. The one where I first met you.”
He saw the moment she recalled saying it, and it felt like a blow, though it shouldn’t. Everything would move forward just as it should with her and Owen.
“I did say that,” she said, her voice so quiet he barely heard her. She turned fully toward him then, her head tilted back. “But I meant as a friend,” she added, her voice even lower now as each word dripped misery. “He told you?”
Nash nodded, his chest tightening, the world around him spinning.
“When?”
“Four years ago,” Nash replied, feeling a sort of numbness for what he was sure she would say to his next question. “Would you have wed Owen if you had not been caught on the terrace with him?”
She blanched at that, and Nash knew. Good God, he knew.
“I—” Her gaze dropped from his, and she shook her head. “Probably not, but who can say for certain. I—That is, my mother and my sister—”
“Need you. They need a savior, and Owen is to be it.”
She nodded again, her head rising and her eyes finding his. The tears that shone there made him want to fall at her feet and offer himself if she’d have him. But maybe she wouldn’t, and he could never do so anyway.
“You think me horrible?” She sounded small, broken.
“No.” His body thrummed with the need to go to her, to embrace her. He had to clutch the edge of the seat he still sat upon until he was sure he could master his basest desire. “I think you are a woman trapped in a man’s world.”
Before anything else could be said, the back door to the club opened once more, and the tall man from before came out. But this time he was accompanied by another tall but broader, more muscled gentleman with brown hair that was tied back at the nape of his neck. He wore expensively cut clothing as a lord would, but he had the look of one who knew the streets well. It was a hard look, a wary one. He had an air of self-confidence about him that Nash recognized immediately as belonging to someone with authority. This had to be Carrington’s partner in the club, Beckford.
The man looked between Nash and Lilias, and then he said, “I had to come out here myself to see what sort of lady could tempt my gatekeeper to break the rules he knows well not to break.”
“What rules are those?” Lilias demanded before Nash could speak.
“I’m to meet all ladies that want entrance. I don’t want any jealous husbands coming here causing me trouble. But for you—” he winked “—I could make an exception.” The man stepped toward her as if to touch her, and Nash stepped in front of her to meet the man head-on.
A slow smile spread over the man’s face, but it did not lighten his eyes. “It’s like that, is it?” He did not have the cultured tone of one raised by tutors and nannies. He possessed a more guttural speech, as one who had been raised by their own wits on the streets.
“It is,” Nash said in an unbending voice, but just in case there was any doubt, he added, “The lady is with me.”
“Fine, then,” the man replied. “And just who are you?”
“He was here last night,” the sinewy man answered for him. “At the front entrance. That there is the Duke of Greybourne.”
“Of course you were here last night,” Lilias scoffed, cutting Nash a glare. “No doubt this is where you met the light-skirt who smeared lip paint across your face.”
Nash ignored her for a moment, though he’d not missed her jealous tone or how dangerously pleased it made him feel. Instead, he focused on the man who’d spoken. “I don’t know you. We’ve not met. So how do you know me?”
“Carrington told me. When you got snippy with him and stormed out, I asked him if he wished me to bring you back. He didn’t. He said you were a personal friend, and you were welcome here anytime.