Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (Scandalous Seasons #3)(33)

“You are a romantic, Miss Stone,” Geoffrey bit out.

Three pairs of eyes swiveled his way. He stiffened under their intense scrutiny.

“Are you a cynic, then, my lord?” Abigail quietly asked. A sound, very nearly a groan, escaped Lady Beatrice, who dropped her head and shook it back and forth.

Geoffrey ignored her. His jaw tightened. “I am a man of logic. I’d not be so desperate as to pledge my love to a woman merely to escape Minos’ labyrinth.”

Abigail moved to the edge of her seat, her back stiffly held in a way that Lord Wellington himself would have applauded. “Then you, my lord, must have never known desperation.”

Geoffrey moved to the edge of the seat. “Then you, Miss Stone, would be wrong.”

Silence met his pronouncement. The steady tick-tock, tick-tock of the ormolu clock, blended with the rapid breathing of Miss Stones’ heaving chest, filled the quiet.

Geoffrey balled his hands into tight fists, shamed by his unwitting revelation. He’d lived the past five years of his life guarded, protecting himself from outside notice and censure. In the span of a moment this woman had made him reveal a hint about the dark past he kept buried. He stood hastily. “Lady Beatrice, I shall leave you and Miss Stone to your visit with Lord Sinclair. Good day.” Geoffrey sketched a quick bow.

As he took his hurried leave, he felt Abigail’s eyes boring into the fabric of his garment.

With her romantic views and bluestocking tendencies, Abigail posed a threat to his well-ordered world.

Yet, for the first time in nearly five years, he craved the opportunity to live and laugh with the same reckless abandon the lady herself seemed to exhibit.

Geoffrey ran hands that shook through his hair.

God help him. It would appear he’d not changed at all.





A gentleman must keep a private box at the theatre. He is not, however, to take part in the public display of gossip that occurs at that particular venue.

4th Viscount Redbrooke



11

Scandalously loud whispers and too-polite laughter filled the auditorium of the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. The candles from the chandeliers set the theatre aglow in a flickering light, throwing shadows upon the theatre boxes. In the dim light, Abigail scanned the crush of satin clad bodies.

“It hardly seems like people come for the sake of the show,” Abigail said under her breath at the conclusion of Act I of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Beatrice grinned. “Don’t you know? The only reason Society attends the theatre is to gossip and gawk at one another.”

Abigail’s lips pulled in a frown. “That is a shame. Perhaps they’ll be quieter for the second half.”

Her cousin Robert snorted. He tipped back on the legs of his chair. “Hardly. Just the opposite.”

“Hmph.” Abigail’s gaze moved with methodical precision through the crowd, taking the opportunity to study the people in attendance.

Beatrice cocked her head. “Are you looking for anyone in particular?”

Abigail started, and gave thanks for the darkness that concealed the rush of heat that flooded her cheeks. “No.” She prided herself on the nonchalant delivery of that single word utterance.

Beatrice frowned, and leaned closer. She ran her pretty blue-eyed gaze over Abigail’s face.

Abigail pressed her back against the red velvet cushions of her seat.

Robert winked at her. “Beatrice’s trying to verify whether you are being truthful.” He directed his attention out on the crowd below.

“Oh,” Abigail said, lamely.

Her cousins studied her with such intentness that Abigail squirmed under their scrutiny. Still, she had one determined sister, and two, very obstinate brothers, three if one considered her youngest brother, back at home, and Abigail had long ago learned how to close her lips and aggravate them with her silence.

Knowing Beatrice studied her, Abigail quelled the urge to look for Geoffrey. It was utter madness, this desire to see him. Except…she touched the special pocket sewn into the front of her gown where she carried the frayed and battered scrap of Italian lace Geoffrey had twice rescued for her. She suspected there was more to him than the rigidity he presented to his glittering world: a man unafraid to intervene with the use of force if it meant the protection of a woman’s honor, someone who would set aside propriety to wade into a lake to retrieve a memento to stave off a woman’s sadness. He didn’t mock her interest in the stars as Alexander had, but seemed to appreciate that she cared to speak on topics different than those expected of a lady.

And he belonged to her cousin.

“Ahh, there is, Lord Redbrooke,” Beatrice said, seeming more to herself.

Abigail followed her cousin’s gaze and knew the moment Geoffrey registered Beatrice’s focus.

Geoffrey and Beatrice shared a smile. There, for all of Polite Society, to see. From the stoic lord, it may as well have constituted a formal offer of marriage.

Abigail curled her toes in a desperate bid to halt the urge to flee. All his heroic efforts on Abigail’s behalf had merely been the actions of a gentleman. Here Abigail sat, making more of his rescue when in actuality, Geoffrey would have done the same for Beatrice—any lady, for that matter.

The curtain drew back.

“It is starting,” Beatrice whispered, clapping her hands together with more enthusiasm than Abigail ever had seen demonstrated by her otherwise, reserved cousin.