Page 57 of Devil in Her Details

Well, you did let him stay.

There might have been a line in the bed, but she’d known she could never hide him from the all-noticing eyes of her servants. Fortunately, they were prime. Neither the cook nor the maid had even blinked twice at his presence at breakfast, and the footman who had brought in the tea tray had done so with a perfectly straight face.

Lilly appreciated that about her servants. They asked no questions, volunteered no opinions, and whatever they thought about the row of daggers occupying the tea table—or the man they belonged to—would travel no further than the walls of this house.

Don’t let others dictate your future . . .

Those words had caused a riot of dreams that ranged from running for her life to being caged by the devil. The devil, in this case, not being Dagger. Well, he had been a devil in her dreams, just not the Calvington kind. In fact, he’d been Calvington’s devil.

You’re a strange woman, Lilly Trenton.

Indeed. In the short time she’d known him, the man had provoked her mind more than the twenty years she’d spent amongst educated men. Not that she’d assumed Dagger uneducated, but his mind seemed sharper than some of the most educated of men she’d known. She’d stared at the wall in the dark for a long time before those nightmares claimed her sleep.

Her gaze snagged on his hands.

They were unreasonably competent hands. The kind that knew exactly what they were doing at all times, whether it was cleaning a blade, fighting brigands, or she imagined any number of other things she had no business imagining before noon. Things married ladies tittered about behind their fans.

Her gaze traveled the length of him, and then back up again, following the strong cut of his legs, stopping on his scar, his focused expression, before dropping to his hands again. There was just something about them cleaning his daggers . . .

Something breathtaking.

She tried, for curiosity’s sake, to imagine him elsewhere.

A ballroom, perhaps.

Dagger Fury in a ballroom surrounded by ladies and gentlemen, an assembly of London’s finest, him at the center enjoying a dance under candlelit chandeliers. Fierce countenance, dark-eyed, utterly, catastrophically out of place.

No.

She couldn’t see it.

Well, she couldn’t entirely not see it. If one were to place him in such a setting, he wouldn’t be out of place at all, would he? He’d stand in the corner of the ballroom the way he stood everywhere. Watchful. He’d probably melt into the shadows in a way that no one would notice him.

Simply not a man born for Almack’s.

She tried a drawing room instead. Afternoon tea amongst her friends. The gentle murmur of polite conversation. No daggers. Simply making pleasant small talk with a dowager duchess or the like.

Lilly nearly laughed aloud.

She couldn’t see that either.

No. He belonged nowhere near polite society and their musings on the latest fashion. Not that all her peers were the same. She didn’t particularly enjoy the topic of fashion, but the majority did tend to steer that way. There was no escaping talk of weather either. One just had to grit one’s teeth and endure until a moment of possible escape. This man, however, hadn’t been trained for such a life.

Indeed. She almost wished she hadn’t either.

“How frequently do you polish your daggers?” Lilly asked, unable to stand the quiet any longer. Lord, the man could focus. “They seem clean to me.”

“Does your room also seem clean to you?”

Lilly’s mouth dropped open. “I beg your pardon?”

Shaking his head, lips twitching, he said, “Never mind.”

“You can’t say that to a woman and then say never mind. I mind! Are you saying my chamber is dirty?” Lilly scoffed. “It might be a bit messy, but it’s not dirty.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You implied.”