As quickly as the anger came, it faded, replaced instead by concern for her sisters.
“What do you want from me? I beg of you, if you’ve come to expose me, please. Think of my sisters.” She could barely force the last, cracked word from her mouth.
He frowned down at her. “I have no desire to harm them, I assure you.”
Lily took a shuddering breath; Lord Hayes’s hand spasmed against her waist.
“Then why are you here?” She blinked up at him, a sudden, hopeful inspiration alighting. “Have you come to London on an errand?”
Lord Hayes scoffed at the idiocy of her statement. “I came here foryou.”
Lily did her best to hide her wince. “Butwhy?”
The initial shock of Lord Hayes’s appearance had fled, instantly chased by the reality of being held in his arms. It was as if waves of incredulity battered her in turn. She recovered from one just to be pummeled by another.
He’s truly here. He’s dancing with me. He says he has no desire to harm my sisters.
But that didn’t mean hewouldn’t.
“Lord Hayes,” she started again, desperately.
“I insist you call me Bradford,” he said with a dangerous smile. “I intend upon calling you Lily, after all.”
“Very well. Bradford.” She nearly choked on the name. It felt wrong to feign the intimacy of friendship when they were closer to adversaries at the moment. “Please don’t reveal anything that would harm my sisters’ chances. They’ve done no wrong here. They didn’t have anything to do with it—they didn’t even know I was going to go until after I’d left.”
“Your sisters and I have that in common, then,” he fairly growled.
Lily winced but didn’t dare point out that his assessment wasn’tpreciselyfair. She had, in fact, told him that she was resigning. She’d offered him an explanation—a very reasonable one.
Lily had even gone so far as to tell Lord Hayes—Bradford—the truth of the matter, instead of the carefully crafted lie William had suggested. She didn’t feel right telling him that her childhood love had returned from sea and asked for her hand in marriage.
Lily had thought that after all her lies, Bradford deserved some of the truth. It had been easier to lie to an unknown, faceless man who needed a governess. It was far more difficult to lie to Lord Hayes, whom she knew. Whom sherespected.
But the scant information she’d given him had obviously been a mistake. It had proven her a liar, for one thing—Miss Hughes had no brothers. It had somehow—though Lily hardly knew how—given Lord Hayes enough information to find her, here.
And now her sisters were to suffer the consequences.
Lily swallowed deeply and tried again. “Lord Hayes, mysisters?—”
“It’s Bradford, and your infernal sisters can go to—” He broke off his words and gave a tight-lipped shake of his head. “Lily, you must give me a moment. Although you’ve recovered quite quickly from the shock of our meeting, I have not.”
The next several minutes were passed in awkward silence—as awkward and silent as any can be when one is dancing surrounded by other people’s laughter and the stringed music of the Season’s first ball.
Several times, Lily swallowed down questions, the foremost and most pressing being the obvious: What on earth was Lord Hayes doing in London? And not just London, though that would have been bad enough, but what was he doinghere, in this very ballroom?
The fact that he should be here now made her head swim worse than that awful six hours at sea from Dover to Calais. Lord Hayes had admitted he’d come to London forher, though thathardly answered any of her questions. Was there a magistrate waiting just outside the ballroom?
She also thought it too much to hope he might be cajoled into giving her an update on Rebecca’s well-being, though she was very tempted to ask.
But in the same moment, Lily didn’t understand. If the man didn’t want to expose her, what on earth was he about? In fact, his very presence here was a risk to her, certainly he could see that. And if he didn’t have any designs on leveraging the information against her, surely he would have just stayed away.
“Lord Hayes,” she started again. “Bradford.”
He sighed, and it sounded as if the exhale had come from the tips of his toes. “You cannot fathom my surprise when I saw you the other day in the park.”
Lily jolted and promptly stepped squarely on his foot.
“Easy,” he said, seamlessly covering her flaw by supporting her waist and adjusting his next step. “Neither of us wish to draw the attention of these social vultures.”
