A Secret Ambition

XXVIII

"Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?" Socrates 

----

XXVIII.

Lily felt her heart irreparably break into a thousand pieces within her chest as Callan slammed the door in her face.

Though she might have imagined the betrayal he might feel at learning the truth about her, the reality was so much worse. Lily and underestimated just how deeply ingrained Callan's wounds were, and she could see the ghosts of his past in his eyes as he aligned Lily with the demon overlords he had once served.

No matter her intentions, when Lily reflected on her behaviour, she feared she was like the people who had mistreated him most ill. And even as she tried to mend her wrongs, she was in the midst of failing to put them right. Callan wouldn't listen to her. Even if she wrote to him, she knew that at the present time he would rather burn her letters.

Callan hated her. He hated her. He had said the words and Lily had heard the venom in his voice. Then man she loved hated her, and that, she knew, was a wound in her own heart that would never heal.

No. She couldn't leave. Lily knew that she needed to break down the door and scream at him just to make him listen. He needed to stop Sir Richard. Lily thought that maybe she could live with Callan hating her if it meant that he was not ruined.

Otherwise, what was it all for? Lily's secret had been discovered anyway. Just as she was about to throw her body at the door to break it down, her arm was once again seized, only this time by her father.

Lily's head whipped around to look up at him, and whatever was left of her poor, pathetic heart just about crumbled into ash.

"Get in the carriage, now." Adam was furious. His jaw was locked as his teeth were clenched, and he glared down at Lily with narrowed, intense eyes. Never had he appeared so tall, and never had Lily felt so small, than as her father looked down upon her in a way that he never had before.

Lily could do nothing but obey. She felt as though her entire world was on fire. She felt as though she were a hundred feet underwater in the bleak darkness and had no idea which way was up. Everything she did, every move she made, was wrong, and the people she loved most hated her.

How was it possible that she could have made so many mistakes all at once?

"Papa –" Lily tried to appeal, but Adam interjected with a firm, "Now."

Adam saw to it that Lily was securely inside the carriage before he climbed inside himself, knocking on the roof to let the driver know that he was ready to leave.

The carriage began to move, and Lily trembling and tears refused to stop. "What on God's green earth is the matter with you, Cecily Beresford?" Adam growled. "What have you done? What has happened here?"

"Papa, I'm sorry!"

"Sorry for what?" Adam barked angrily. "Clearly you have deceived Mr McCarthy. You have most certainly deceived your mother and me. I do not recall giving you permission to call upon a man unchaperoned. And by Mr McCarthy's familiarity with you, I would wager that this visit was not the first."

Lily had nothing to stop herself from drowning as all she could manage to say was, "I ... I w-worked for him."

"You worked for him?" Adam repeated in utter disbelief. He threw his head back against the window in the back of the carriage and covered his face with his hands. "In what world would you think it appropriate ..." he began, but he stopped himself. "You lied to him. You lied to me. You lied to your family. You put yourself in harm's way. How is it possible, with everything that I have tried to do differently to how I was raised, that I have brought up a daughter who would lie to me?"