Page 16 of Devil in Her Details

Lilly stormed up to Calvington, who straightened at her approach, demanding, “What is the meaning of you, sir? Have you lost all common sense?”

A pair of passing girls slowed their steps, curiosity bright in their eyes. Lilly felt their attention prick along her spine and loathed Calvington all the more for drawing a potential spectacle outside her shop. A woman squaring off with a man on a public street. Whatever the outcome, the story would be told and retold by evening, shaped by whoever told it first. That was the particular annoyance of public scenes. They belonged to the audience the moment they began, and the audience was rarely kind. Hopefully, this wouldn’t reach London, since it wouldn’t take much to sleuth out his identity and attach it to her.

The coxcomb arched a brow lazily, a smile tugging at his smug mouth, as though he’d accomplished his goal for the day, which, by needling her into vexation, he probably had.

“The meaning of me?”

“You know what I mean!” Lilly hissed, then promptly scolded herself at being goaded. “What are you doing here? Did I not make myself perfectly clear?”

He nodded slowly, indulgently, causing her chest to burn.

“You have,” he murmured. “This is me making my stance clear.”

“By hounding me?”

“Pursuing.”

Lilly stared at the man at a loss. He said pursuing as though the word had a different meaning in his mouth than in hers. As though it were something pleasant, even romantic, and she had simply misunderstood its meaning before.

This was the thing about Calvington that made her want to take a very large book and apply it smartly to the side of his head. It wasn’t cruelty exactly, though he was surely capable of that. It was the fundamental certainty that he was the ruler of this encounter, and she was merely a supporting character waiting for her cue. That her no was part of the script of his play he’d concocted in his head, her indignation was atmospheric, that eventually the scene would proceed as written, because it was his story.

She had never been anyone’s supporting character in her life. And she would not start with him. “Calvington, listen to me well. I, Lilly Trenton, decline your pursuit. I decline it so thoroughly that your face has now been imprinted beside the word in my head!”

His smile didn’t even stiffen. “Is that not what courting is about? What would it say about my character if I gave up early? Besides, I like the fact that my face has been imprinted in your head.”

Beyond distasteful. “You revealed your character the moment you attempted to trap me into marriage. I retired to Brighton to escape you. So tell me, how did you discover my whereabouts?”

“A trifling matter to me.”

A trifling matter? As though her carefully calculated distance, the weeks of planning, the deliberate obscurity of her new life, amounted to nothing more than five dismissive words from this madman. His whole bearing chilled her to the bone. The fact that he’d found her this quickly meant that either she’d been less careful than she thought, or he had resources she hadn’t accounted for. Neither possibility was particularly comforting.

“A trifling matter to you, but not to me.”

He spread his hands slightly, as though presenting a reasonable argument to a difficult child. “Surely you did not believe distance would end the matter between us.”

“There is no matter between us.”

His gaze flicked briefly to the shop behind her, then back to her face. “Your little enterprise seems to keep quite interesting hours and interesting clients.”

He must be referring to Dagger Fury. To annoy him, she purposefully kept her mouth shut.

His smile sharpened. “Though I imagine society would take a dim view if certain details about your . . . occupation became known.”

Threatening her again? They stood nearly toe to toe, staring at one another, neither yielding an inch. Lilly wished she’d brought a broom with her to club some sense into his thick skull. How one man could be so dense, stubborn, and insufferably arrogant at the same time was surely some kind of remarkable feat! But what was the point of trying to put a man in his place when he wouldn’t move an inch anyway?

“Perhaps they will. Perhaps they won’t.”

“Ever the optimist.”

“And what of it? The times are changing.”

“Not fast enough.”

A matter of perception. And since he was a man, need she say more? “So what’s the plan here?” Lilly demanded. “Wear me down? This is an unusual sort of courtship you’ve devised. Even for you.”

“Come back with me to London. Marry me.”

“Never.” She would give the exact same answer until her dying breath. Lilly would much rather be done with this fool, but until Dagger Fury had kept his part of the bargain, she would bludgeon her tongue senseless with that single word. “Pressing your intentions won’t do you any favors, sir. Best you belly-crawl back to London.”