Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (Scandalous Seasons #3)(44)

She expected him to smile, or chuckle. Except, having come to know him these past days, Abigail should have known he’d not be given to expressions of mirth. Instead, a frown darkened the hard, angular planes of his chiseled face. “You desire love.”

She’d thought she’d had love with Alexander. Only just recently had Abigail realized she’d carried nothing more than a girlish infatuation for him. She’d worshipped him the way one might have honored the Greek gods. He’d cared for her, made her laugh, but he’d not truly embraced Abigail’s true interests. With a woman’s eyes, she could appreciate the level of foolhardiness on her part that she’d ever done something so rash as to give him her virtue.

“You are quiet, Abby. And you didn’t answer my question.”

Abigail lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I didn’t believe it was a question.” And because she was suddenly too very uncomfortable with his precise questioning, she turned his question back on him. “And what of you, Geoffrey. Have you ever been in love?”

A cold, stony glint reflected in the moss green irises of his eyes, something dangerous, and pained. She took a step away from him.

“Yes.”

Her eyes widened, and she suspected she must appear like a lack wit with her mouth open.

Geoffrey directed his attention to Lyra in the stars.

Abigail’s mind suddenly spun under the flood of questions that opened up inside her mind. Who was she? What had happened to her? Did he still love her? A vise-like pain squeezed her heart.

“Her name was…is…Emma. She…” A hard smile formed on his lips. “She betrayed me. And taught me the perils of turning oneself over to that empty emotion called love.”

Emma. Without him even needing to speak another word, Abigail hated the other woman. Hated her because she’d earned Geoffrey’s love, and had been so callous as to throw aside his affection. Unlike Abigail who’d had the misfortune of trusting her heart to a gentleman who’d wanted nothing more than the pleasure of her body.

And because Abigail knew the pain of a broken heart and the bitter agony of betrayal, all she said was, “I’m sorry.”

He waved his hand. “It was a long time ago.”

“I don’t imagine that lessens the pain. What…happened?” she asked hesitantly.

Geoffrey clasped his hands behind his back, and walked ahead several paces. “My father warned me her interest stemmed from my family’s vast wealth and power.”

She made a sound, and he stiffened, seeming to mistake the expression for pity. Abigail wandered over to him, encouraging him with her silence to continue his recounting.

His mouth hardened. “I didn’t heed my father’s sage advice.” Those perfect, sculpted lips twisted into a macabre rendition of a smile. “Instead, I made arrangements to elope to Greta Greene. It was a miserable night. Cold. Sheets of rain and bolts of lightning.” He jerked his chin up toward the sky. “Perhaps those mythical gods trying to warn me against my folly.”

He fell silent.

Abigail touched her hand to his shoulder. The muscles bunched beneath her fingers, but he didn’t pull away.

After Alexander’s betrayal, Abigail had yearned for someone to take her in their arms and hold her close, assuring her that everything would be all right. No one had. Perhaps because they’d known it would not be all right, that her life had been irrevocably changed by her impulsive actions. She sought to give Geoffrey that which she’d so craved.

“Why did you not marry her?” she asked gently, prodding him to continue.

***

Abigail’s question emerged hesitant, and gentle.

Geoffrey closed his eyes a moment, unable to fight the bitter chuckle from escaping. He pressed his fingertips alongside his temple wanting to drive out the memory of his father’s broken body, his mother’s agonized cries as she learned of her husband’s death. Geoffrey had never before shared the shame he’d carried these nearly five years.

He gave his head a firm shake. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.” Not to her. A respectable young lady.

“I’d wager, Geoffrey, you should have spoken of it long ago.”

He closed his eyes finding her willingness to listen, oddly freeing.

When he opened his eyes he found her studying him with a gentle patience in the elegant lines of her face. In that, he found the courage to continue. “In the middle of the night, in that raging storm, my father set out after us. He was determined to prevent me from making a mistake I didn’t realize I was making. My carriage could not navigate through the muddied roads.” He remembered Emma’s insistence that they continue on regardless of the dangerous conditions. At the time, he hadn’t understood her desperation.

What a bloody fool he’d been.

“We were forced to stop at an inn. My father located us there. He leveled some very harsh charges against Emma. But I was,” his lip curled back, “in love. I insisted he leave. I was determined to wed her. I said some truly reprehensible things to my father.”

Words he could not call back. Words that, until Geoffrey drew his last breath, would forever haunt him.

Abigail took one of his hands and gave it a faint squeeze; her silent support far greater than any spoken words she might utter.

“In spite of the harsh words I hurled at him, in spite of the fact that I rejected his plea to not wed Emma, he still would not disinherit me.” That had been the loving, dedicated father that the Viscount Redbrooke was. “Instead, he left me to my own mistakes. He turned around and rode off. His horse stepped in a hole on the muddied road. It shattered its leg and threw my father. His body was found by several villagers on their way to the inn.”