A Secret Ambition

XII

"Let's take a walk. You can show me some of your memories and I'll show you some of mine." Adam Berlin, The Number of Missing

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XII.

Lily's meeting with Sir Richard Frogmore had certainly been an unexpected one, and it had been one that had rattled her. Perhaps she would have been able to move past it more easily had she been able to talk to her sister about it. Just as Mr McCarthy had threatened Sir Richard, Lily knew Perrie well enough that the baronet would have had to cower and beg for his life before all fifty-eight inches of Perrie Parish.

But in her correspondence home, Lily had to pretend that all was well with her lessons and she was learning the harp as well as she could. She maintained the same story with her family in London, and it began to be the first time that she had really felt that she was being deceptive.

When what had happened lay on the tip of Lily's tongue, and she had to pretend otherwise, she felt like a liar.

And the only person who could alleviate that dreadful feeling happened to be the man that she had been lying to in the first place.

Whatever assumptions Lily may have made about Mr McCarthy during their first few meetings, she had never known a more attentive and caring gentleman than he in the aftermath of Sir Richard's visit.

Of course, Lily understood that in the eyes of those to whom she belonged; Mr McCarthy was not a gentleman. But it had become something that quickly did not make sense to her. She had been brought up to expect a gentleman to behave in a chivalrous and respectful manner. How could a man like Sir Richard Frogmore be a gentleman, and a man like Callan McCarthy not be?

Lily knew that she would always consider her father to be the very best of men. Something told her that her father would approve of a man like Mr McCarthy.

Though, of course, they would never have occasion to meet.

"Mr McCarthy." Lily knocked on the door of Mr McCarthy's office.

It had been two weeks since Sir Richard's visit. It was startling to Lily how quickly the shortest month of the year seemed to go by. March was rapidly approaching, and she knew that her grandmother would begin insisting that Lily make her way to Belle's shop to be fitted and draped with the latest fabrics ready to make her debut.

Lily pushed it from her mind.

Mr McCarthy looked up from his desk and he offered Lily a welcome smile. He smiled at her often, and that fact was a lot to do with what had helped Lily to find some comfort in this mess that she was most certainly making.

Mr McCarthy was a different man without the veil of stress that had been upon him during their initial time together. Ever since he had secured the loan from the bank and had sold his cotton, Mr McCarthy had quite the new lease on life. He spent his days corresponding with vendors, or rather, dictating to Lily as she corresponded with vendors of vessels that Mr McCarthy was looking to procure, as well as organising the transport of his cotton to the north of England.

He was an ambitious man, and a very dedicated one. His work ethic was something that Lily greatly admired. She had certainly never encountered this sort of ambition before in another. She recognised herself in him in an odd sort of way. Lily was so determined to be something more, and to experience something more.

But the both of them were in the dark as to the other's motivation.

Lily had not exactly asked Mr McCarthy about his motivation. It seemed a sensitive subject, and she could infer that there was certainly some animosity in his history that seemed careless to bring up in conversation when the information was not volunteered.