“Mmm.”

Alec frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Only that they are never interested in telling us.” The newspaperman was married to a woman who had been something of a scandal herself—sister to a duke, unwed mother to a daughter who was now as much a source of paternal pride to West as his own children.

“Luckily, this one isn’t to be my problem,” Alec said.

“They’re always our problem,” King interjected.

“Not Lillian Hargrove. Unlike the rest of London, I did not know of her two weeks ago, and I have no intention of knowing of her two weeks hence. She’s to be the problem of the man who disgraced her.” He looked to West. “I simply need to know who that is.”

West’s gaze flickered to a faro table nearby, and he watched the game for a long moment. Alec followed suit. A man dressed all in white joined a threesome there, flashing a broad smile at the dealer and setting a massive amount of money on the table.

Alec looked back to his friends. “Who is that?”

King raised a brow at West, who sat back in his chair. “Shall I tell you what I know of your ward’s circumstance?”

Alec nodded, the faro table gone from his mind.

“There is a painting.”

Alec’s brow furrowed. “What kind of painting?”

A pause. Then King said, “Allegedly? A nude.”

Alec froze, the words summoning a great roar in his ears. Not words. Word. Nude. Long limbs. Full lips. High breasts. Round hips. Skin as soft as silk. And eyes like a silver storm.

No.

“A nude of whom?”

West’s hands went wide, as if to say, Isn’t it obvious?

Of course, it was.

Alec shot forward in his chair. “Allegedly. King said allegedly.”

West replied. “It’s not alleged.”

He turned on the newspaperman. “You have seen it?”

“I have not, but my wife has.” He paused. “Georgiana is on the Selection Committee of the Royal Academy.”

Alec’s heart pounded. “And it is Lillian.” West remained still and Alec grasped for another solution. “How do we know she honestly sat for it? You and I both know that scandal is rarely truth.”

“It’s true in this case,” West said.

“How do you know that?”

West cut him a look. “Because I’m exceedingly good at my job, and I know the difference between gossip and fact.”

Alec considered the woman he’d met hours earlier. Yes, she was beautiful, but she was not an idiot. He shook his head. “Not in this case,” he said. “I’ve met the girl. There’s no way she posed for a nude.”

“Love makes us do strange things.” King’s words were simple and direct, and Alec hated the ring of truth in them.

He did not want to acknowledge the truth. He did not want to imagine her nude for a man. He had enough trouble not imagining her nude, full stop.

Nevertheless. “So the girl is in love.”

It was the question he’d asked earlier—the one she’d answered without words. She hadn’t needed words. He’d seen the sadness in her eyes. The wistfulness. As though she wished the man in question to appear there, in her sitting room.

He knew about wishing. And he knew, better than most, how false emotion could lead to some mediocre artist manipulating and mistreating her. He met West’s eyes. “Where is the painting?”

“No one knows. It is set to be the final piece exhibited as part of the Royal Exhibition in ten days’ time,” West said. “They select the best, Warnick. And this one—Georgiana says it is unmatched.”

“The most beautiful portrait ever painted,” King interjected.

“We don’t know it is her.”

“She admitted it, Warnick.”

Alec stilled again. “She did what?”

“She stormed the stage. Caused a scene. Professed her love. Was rebuffed. In front of all London,” West said. “That alone was enough to destroy her in their eyes, but there are those who believe she is a part of it. That she and her artist worked together to ensure that the painting’s reputation will precede it when it travels the country. The world.”

Alec cursed and shook his head. “Why would she do that? Why ruin herself? The girl is locked away in my house, waiting for the funds to run.”

Not that she would get them from him.

He’d seen women run. He’d run himself. And he knew what happened when the running stopped.

Lillian Hargrove would not run.

“She wants the funds from you?” It was King who spoke this time.

Alec shook his head. “In ten days’ time, she inherits pin money.”

West swirled the scotch in his glass. “Fine timing, as the painting is revealed in ten days’ time.”

Alec met his gaze. “What are you saying?”

One lean shoulder lifted and fell. “Only, imagine the Mona Lisa.”

Alec huffed his irritation at the exercise. “Who cares a fig about the damn Mona Lisa?”

“A great many people, I imagine.”

Alec cut him a look. “I grow weary of your obvious self-made brilliance, West.”

The newspaperman smirked. “You’re self-made, are you not? You only lack the brilliance.”

“A pity, considering the size of you,” King needled. “I suppose it is true what they say. We can’t have everything.”

Alec cursed them both. “Fine. The Mona Lisa. What of it?”

“Imagine how renowned the model would be if we knew her name.”

Shock flared. “You think Lillian wishes for fame?” Memory flashed. Those grey eyes, storm clouds of sorrow. “No.”

King raised a brow. “I am married to a Dangerous Daughter. Living proof that some revel in fame.” Not six months earlier, the Marquess of Eversley had found a stowaway from one of London’s most notorious families in his carriage. That stowaway had become an unexpected traveling companion and, after the story broke, the most scandalous member of the family. And Marchioness of Eversley.

“You would have never married if not for me.”

King cut him a look. “Oh, yes. Your part in the play was most definitely welcome. I didn’t have to make amends for it at all.”

“You’re lucky you had amends to make,” Alec said. “Someone had to knock some sense into you.”

“And for that, I will be forever grateful.” The words rang with a remarkable honesty.

“Och,” Alec said, looking away. “There’s nothing worse than a nob who loves his wife.”

“Watch it, Duke. Halfhearted or no, you are a nob now—all you need is the wife.”

It would never happen. He’d learned his lesson every time he’d considered it. Every time he’d been passed over for money, for title, for refinement. Every time he’d been desired for his body and nothing else. The Scottish Brute.

He shook his head. “I’ve enough trouble with women, thank you.”

“It’s because you scare the wee things,” King said, mocking Alec’s brogue.

“This one isn’t scared of me.” If anything, Lillian Hargrove was willing to battle him without hesitation. “She could do with a little more apprehension, honestly.”

“Another reason to believe she might be party to the scandal,” West said. “Lovely Lily, immortalized for all ages.”

He loathed the moniker, not that he would show it. “I didn’t know she called herself Lily,” he replied, drinking again, disliking the fact that these two knew more about her than he did.

And he did not like that they might be right. That Lily might have destroyed herself for a man, without hesitation. He thought back on the girl, on their meeting earlier. She didn’t seem to be proud of her scandal. Did not wear it as a badge of honor. He had seen the regret in her gaze. The shame there.

Recognized it as keenly as he knew his own.

He shook his head. “She was not part of it.”

“Then the performance at the exhibition . . .” King began.

West finished the thought. “Was not a performance at all.” He looked to Alec. “Poor girl. What now?”

I plan to run.

She wouldn’t run. If he had to tear London apart brick by brick to ensure it, she would stay here and have her reputation restored. England would not chase her away or destroy her, the way it so easily destroyed those who did not suit it.

One solution remained—safe and swift and utterly acceptable. Swiftness was most certainly a boon. Swiftness ended in Alec returning home, to Scotland, far from London and Lillian Hargrove, who was turning out to be more trouble than expected.

“You could marry her.” King’s words startled Alec from his thoughts.

“Marry whom?”

West smirked. “The London air is clouding your thoughts, Scot. The girl. Miss Hargrove. King is suggesting you marry her.”

A vision flashed, Lily beautiful and perfect in her simple grey dress, skin like porcelain and eyes flashing fire. There was a time when he would have proposed on the spot, blinded by her beauty and desperate to win her heart. To claim her for himself.

Despite his size. Despite his hulk. Despite his lack of grace.

He knew better now. He was for baser acts than marrying.

“Even if I weren’t her guardian—”

King interrupted. “What nonsense. If I had a pound for every guardian who married his ward, I’d be rich as sin.”

“You are already rich as sin,” Alec replied. “Either way, she wouldn’t have me.” It took a moment for him to realize that West and King were staring at him. “What is it?”

West found his tongue first. “I think I speak for us both when I say the girl would get down on her knees and thank her maker you proposed.”

The Scottish Brute.

So big. So beastly. Only for working days.

The memories burned. How many Englishwomen had denied him anything more than sex? Held themselves for another when it came to marriage? Even if he were interested in the girl. Even if she were more than a troublesome beauty keeping him from home . . . He shook his head. “I am not the husband in question.”