Page 116 of Devil in Her Details

Allie dropped her gaze to the black ribbon pinched between her fingers before locking eyes with her again. “If you’re so attached, what is the obstacle holding you back?”

“You know the obstacle.”

“Besides the obvious, I mean. If you stripped away your birth, your brother, London, what is the obstacle?”

He would still be a criminal, which was beside the point, but would that make her his accomplice? Could she thrive as the wife of an outlaw? As a lady outlaw? Lilly sighed. “I don’t know. He’s the son of a duke, you know. All of them are.”

“They’re by-blows? Of a duke? Well, there you have it. Half the ton would marry them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lilly chastised her friend.

“All I’m saying,” Allie murmured, pointing a pink ribbon at her, “is that you have spun stories to your advantage more complicated than that. Or is it that you don’t want to marry a man of illegitimate birth?”

No. She’d . . .

Lilly shook her head. “It takes two people to marry, Allie. As you well know. He would never marry me.”

“Did you ask?”

Lilly grimaced. “Should I have? Blazes, the man left me in the middle of the night after we . . .” She trailed off at her friend’s widening eyes and sighed. “He left, all right. I’m not a villain like Calvington. I won’t trap him into marriage or demand we marry.”

Allie blinked, a flash of concern entering her gaze. “Are you sure he just left you? Or did he simply leave first?’

Lilly hesitated.

She wanted to retort, asking if there was a difference, but even as the question formed in her head, she knew that there was. Nausea rose in the back of her throat. If he hadn’t left that morning, would she have stayed? If he had asked, would she have stayed? Had he wanted her to stay? Or had he known to not even ask?

Lilly couldn’t say.

Since that had never happened.

But, without a shadow of a doubt . . . Her heart had known the moment their eyes had locked, too. So what did she do now?

*

“You look like hell.”

Dagger lifted his gaze to glare at Saint. He didn’t bother to reply. Each of his brothers had taken it in turns to enlighten him about his state. Apparently, they’d never witnessed him rumpled before. Though was rumpled even the word to describe him at this point? He hadn’t shaved for five days and sported dark circles beneath his eyes. He knew this because they’d shoved a mirror in his face. He’d barely eaten. The liquor, on the other hand—there he’d made a dent. The last two bottles were the reason why he felt like he might retch at any moment.

All he wanted to do was be left by himself.

But the arses hadn’t given him a single moment’s peace to wallow in his torment alone. Saint had even taken up a watch at his door. Which would be fine, had said watch been outside his bloody chamber. He also slept when Dagger slept, which meant eyes-wise, he wasn’t faring any better.

Dagger understood what his brothers were doing. He’d have done the same—had done the same, more than once, for various of them in various states of falling apart. You didn’t leave a man alone when alone was the thing most likely to finish him. He still wished that they would all bloody go away and let him be miserable in peace for five minutes. Was five minutes too much to ask?

“This can’t go on,” Knight said from his usual spot. “You’re going to faint again.”

Right. The reason they’d become barnacles. He’d collapsed in the street and apparently lost his damn head. Dagger couldn’t remember anything vividly about that, however. Thank God. His memory became hazy after Lilly entered the carriage. Not one of them, not even Reaper, that chatter-mouth, spoke about it. But he must have gone crazy, for Reaper had sported some nasty bruises on his face for a while.

He’d slept for a whole day after that. Started drinking the next.

Dagger lifted his glass to his brother in salute. “Go buy some smelling salts.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Serpent said from the far corner of the room.

“Then I get myself killed,” he muttered, draining his glass.

Four fierce scowls turned to him.