Page 37 of The Last Stitch

The drawing room crackled with tension. I stood between them, watching two women engage in the kind of warfare that left no visible wounds but drew blood nonetheless.

“Perhaps,” I said carefully, “we should⁠—”

“I should go,” Constance interrupted, her composure cracking. “Clearly this is not a good time. August, we'll speak later. Privately.”

She swept past us, pausing only to give Lily one final assessing look. “Miss Whitmore. How. . . delightful to make your acquaintance.”

“The delight was entirely mutual,” Lily said, her tone suggesting the opposite.

The front door closed with slightly more force than necessary. Silence settled over the drawing room.

“Well,” Lily said finally, “she seems lovely.”

Despite everything, I laughed. “You antagonized her.”

“I was perfectly civil.” She turned that innocent expression on me—the one that made me want to simultaneously throttle her and pull her close. “She's the one who made threats about involving your father.”

“She was establishing territory.”

“And so was I.” Lily moved back to the settee, sitting with less grace this time—exhaustion creeping in around the edges. “Besides, better she knows I exist now than discovering me later. At least this way, you can spin whatever story you need about my presence before she goes running to your father.”

She wasn't wrong. But watching her face down Constance with that same fearless intensity—it had done something to me. Something dangerous.

“You're not at all what I expected,” I said before I could stop myself.

“What did you expect?”

“Someone weaker. More compliant. Easier to control.” I moved to sit across from her, needing the distance even as part of me wanted to close it. “Someone who wouldn't make my life so thoroughly complicated.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” But she didn't sound sorry at all.

“I didn't say I was disappointed.”

The words hung between us, heavier than they should have been. Color bloomed in her cheeks, and for a heartbeat, the air itself seemed to hold its breath. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The afternoon light painted her features in gold, caught in her red hair like fire, made her eyes seem impossibly blue.

I'd spent years training myself to see threats, to assess dangers, to calculate risks. But looking at Lily Whitmore in my drawing room, defending herself against Constance with that sharp tongue and sharper mind—I wasn't seeing a threat.

I wanted to understand her. And that was already too much.

No, I couldn’t go there. Couldn’t afford to want what I had no right to want.

She was under my protection. My responsibility. A problem I would solve, not something to feel.

Damn her for making me forget, even for a second, what she was.

Then Mrs. Hartley appeared in the doorway, breaking the moment. “Excuse me, sir. Miss Wolfe has arrived with her things and for Miss Whitmore.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hartley.” I stood quickly, grateful for the interruption and resenting it in equal measure. “Miss Whitmore, Adeline will be waiting in the morning room.”

Lily rose, smoothing down her skirts. “Question for question,” she said quietly as she passed. “We're not done talking.”

“I know.”

She paused at the doorway, meeting my gaze. “Good. Because you still haven’t answered half of mine.”

Then she was gone, the door closing behind her, leaving the air charged with the argument we hadn’t finished—and the uneasy awareness that it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

I’d stopped seeing Lily Whitmore as just a source of intelligence. I’d started seeing her as something far more dangerous.