The thought of the painting shook him from his reverie. He tried his best to sound kind. Comforting. Like a guardian. “I am, you know. Caring for you. Taking responsibility for you. I am attempting to give you the life you wish, Lily.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not for you,” she said.

It was not for Hawkins, either, and still he used it.

He resisted the urge to say the words. She was not wrong. The name was all too familiar. She was at best Lillian to him, even as she should be Miss Hargrove. She shouldn’t be Lily.

It didn’t matter that he wanted her to be.

And he certainly had no right to want her to be anything. She was his ward, and in that capacity, responsibility and problems and nothing else.

Fine. He could play the English guardian, cold and callous and lacking in feeling. God knew he loathed it enough to be familiar with the part. He began anew. “The terms of your guardianship include the factors of which you are aware. You are not allowed to marry without the express approval of the dukedom and, though you receive funds on your twenty-fourth birthday, it was clearly assumed that you would be married, because the terms indicate that I am able to hold those funds in trust until such time as you do marry, should I think you . . .”

It was his turn to trail off.

She wouldn’t allow it. “Should you think me what?”

“Irresponsible.”

A wash of red came over her cheeks. “Which, of course, you do.”

“No,” he said, without entirely thinking the response through.

“You do, though. After all, what guardian wouldn’t after his ward experienced such a disastrous scandal?” There it was again, in her tone. The humiliation.

He should have murdered Derek Hawkins when he had the chance.

“I don’t think you irresponsible. But I think your desire to run unreasonable.”

She cast him a withering look. “But marriage to a man I do not know seems more reasonable?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Choose a man you know. Choose anyone you like.”

She lost her temper. “I don’t know any other men. Believe it or not, I do not make a practice of knowing men. I know Derek. And now I know you. And excuse me, Your Grace, but you’re rather much of a muchness when it comes to desirability in a husband, with the singular difference that he covers his legs when he dresses.”

Singular difference. Alec could not resist responding to the madwoman. “Ah, but he dresses like an albino peacock, in my experience, so in that, I’d say you’re best off with the tartan, lass.”

She scowled her irritation at him, and he pressed on, unable to stop himself. “Shall I enumerate the other ways in which we differ?”

“I do not pretend to believe I can stop you, Your Grace.”

She was not simply mad. She was also maddening. “Well, I might begin with the obvious. I did not make your acquaintance with the goal of ruining you in front of all London.”

“Did you not?”

The question came quick and simple and utterly unsettling, “What does that mean?”

She did not reply, instead setting her jaw determinedly, as though she might remain silent forevermore.

He huffed his frustration. “Either way, Lillian, I have not proposed.”

“And thank heavens for that,” she said.

He bit his tongue at the words. She meant them to sting, but could not know how much they did, coming on a wave of memory. Of shame. Of desire for women for whom he would never be high enough. Never proper enough. Never good enough.

Lily would have a man good enough. “We go in circles,” he said. “You marry.”

“And if I don’t wish to marry the man you choose?”

“I cannot force you.”

She shook her head. “That might be the law, but everyone knows that forced marriages—”

“You don’t understand. I cannot force it because it is a separate condition of your guardianship that you are able to choose your husband for yourself, and that you remain under the care of the dukedom until such time as you marry.”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

“You see, Lillian? Your father did care for you.” Her eyes went liquid at the words, and he was struck with a keen desire to pull her close and care for her himself. Which would not do. And so, instead, he said, “That, I might add, is why you are the oldest ward in Christendom and somehow, remain my problem.”

The words worked. The tears disappeared, unshed, replaced by a narrow gaze. “I would happily become my own problem if you would give me my freedom, Duke. I did not ask to be a burden any more than you asked to shoulder me.”

And the irony of it was that if he did that—gave the girl the money and sent her away, he’d be on the road back to Scotland at that precise moment.

Except he couldn’t. Because it wouldn’t be enough.

“Why?” she interrupted his thoughts, the question making him wonder if he’d spoken aloud.

He looked to her. “Why?”

“Why do you insist I marry?”

Because she was ruined if she did not. Because he had a sister six years younger than she, and just as impetuous, whom he could easily imagine falling victim to a bastard like Hawkins. Because he would lay down his life for Catherine in the same situation. And, though he found himself more than able to turn his back on the rest of the London bits of the dukedom, he would not turn his back on Lillian.

“Marriage—it’s what women do.”

Her brows rose. “It’s what men do, as well, and I don’t see you rushing to the altar.”

“It’s not what men do,” he replied.

“No? So all these women marching down the aisle, whom are they marrying?”

She was irritating. “It’s not the same.”

That laugh again, the one without humor. “It never is.”

He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way it set him back. The way it made him feel that he was losing in whatever battle they fought.

“Alec,” she said, his name another blow of sorts—soft and quiet and tempting as hell on her pretty lips. “Let me go. Let me leave London. Let them have the damn painting and let me go.” She might have convinced him. It was not an impossibility, until she said, soft and desperate, “It’s the only way I’ll survive it.”

It’s the only way I’ll survive.

He inhaled sharply at the words—words he’d heard before. Spoken by a different woman but with the same unbearable conviction.

I must go, his mother had said, his narrow shoulders in her hands. I hate it here. It will kill me.

She’d left. And died anyway.

Alec couldn’t stop it from happening.

But he could stop it from happening again, dammit.

“There is no outrunning it, Lillian.” Her brow furrowed in confusion, and he pressed on. “The painting—it is to be the centerpiece of the Royal Exhibition’s traveling show.”

She tilted her head. “What does that mean?”

“It will travel throughout Britain, and then onto the rest of the world. Paris. Rome. New York. Boston. You’ll never escape it. You think you are known now? Just wait. Wherever you go, if they’ve access to news and interest in salacious gossip—which is everywhere I have ever been, I might add—you shall be recognized.”

“No one will care.” She stood straight as an arrow, but her tone betrayed her. She knew it wasn’t true.

“Everyone will care.”

“No one will recognize me.” He could hear the desperation in the words.

Christ, she was beautiful. Tall and lithe and utterly perfect, as though the heavens had opened and the Creator himself had set her down here, in this place, doomed to be soiled. The idea that no one would notice her, that no one would recognize her, it was preposterous. He softened his reply. “Everyone will recognize you, lass.” He shook his head. “Even if I doubled the funds. If I gave you ten times as much, the damn painting would follow you.”

Those straight shoulders fell, just enough for him to see her weakening. “It is to be my shame.”

“It is your error in judgment,” he corrected.

She smirked. “A pretty euphemism.”

“We have all made them,” he said, wishing for some idiot reason that he could make her feel better.

She met his gaze. “You? Have you made such an error?”

More than he could count.

“I am king of them,” he said.

She watched him for a long moment. “But men don’t carry the shame forever.”

Alec did not look away from her, from the words that so many believed true. He lied. “No. We don’t.”

She nodded, and he saw the tears threaten. He resisted the urge to reach for her, knowing instinctively that touching her would change everything.

He hated himself for not reaching for her when she turned away, for the door. “And you think you shall find a man who will choose to marry me. What nonsense that is.”

“I’ve given you a dowry, Lillian.”

She paused, putting her hand to the door handle, but not turning it.

He took the stillness as indication that she was listening. “There was none attached to you. Presumably because you were so young when you became ward to the estate. Also, presumably why you’ve never been asked for. But now there is. Twenty-five thousand pounds.”

She spoke to the closed door. “That is a massive amount of money.”

More than she needed to catch a husband.

She could catch a husband with nothing.

“We shall find a man,” he said, suddenly consumed with distaste at having to buy her a future. It had seemed such an easy solution the night before. But now, in the room with her, he felt the whole thing slipping away from him. “We shall find a man,” he repeated. “A good one.”