Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (Scandalous Seasons #3)(64)

Abigail took a step toward Geoffrey. She held her palms up. “I thought my heart died that night, Geoffrey. I hated my parents for forcing me to give up my family, forcing me across the sea.” She managed a tremulous smile and took another step until only the space of a palm separated them. “But then I met you, Geoffrey. And it all became clear. If there had been no Alexander and no scandal and no rejection by my parents,” she lifted her eyes to his. “There would be no us.” She raised her hand to his cheek. “And that would be the greatest tragedy. I love you.”

***

Geoffrey stiffened at the feel of Abigail’s satiny smooth palm upon his cheek. His eyes closed.

He didn’t want her story to matter. He didn’t want to care that there had been another man who’d teased her, and showered her with pretty compliments and bouquets of flowers. He didn’t want to care that she’d lain with that nameless man, and given him the gift all ladies were supposed to cherish.

Except the nameless man now had a name.

Alexander Powers.

Geoffrey didn’t want to care.

But he did…and he hated himself for it.

I love you.

He stared unblinking, gaze fixed upon her long, elegant fingers. Then, found the strength to close his fingers around her wrist and remove her hand from his person. From the moment he’d met Abigail, she had lied to him. He’d laid himself bare before her and shared every, agonizing bit of Emma’s betrayal, his father’s death, and yet deceived him with her silence, not sharing the guarded secrets she carried. She’d made him care for her…he winced, no, love her, and how had she repaid that love?

By opening him up to Society’s censure. What a bloody fool he must seem? He’d courted her with the most honorable of intentions. He did so against his own better judgment, against his own mother’s adamant protestations. Once again, he’d allowed his selfish desires to supersede responsibility.

Geoffrey released her.

“Tell me, madam,” he said, arching a brow. “Did you have any intentions of telling me of your,” he ran his eyes over her person, “lack of virtue.” She jerked as though he’d physically struck her. Guilt stabbed at him, but he shoved it aside, embracing instead the pain of her betrayal.

Her regret merely stemmed from the fact that he’d discovered her duplicity. “Come, no answer, Miss Stone? Would you have waited until our wedding night for me to discover your secret?”

Her eyes flared wide. She held her hand extended up, toward him. “Wedding?”

A sharp, ugly chuckle escaped him. “What intentions did you expect of a gentleman courting the Duke of Somerset’s niece?”

She wet her lips, and lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “I did not allow myself to dare dream of marriage to you, Geoffrey.” Her eyes bled agony.

For all that had transpired last evening at Lady Ainsworth’s soiree, the sight of Abigail’s suffering threatened to shatter him. He stretched a hand out, and then remembered himself. With a ragged sigh, Geoffrey stepped away from her. He swiped the back of his hand across his eyes. God help him for being the same, weak, reckless fool he’d always been.

Abigail’s face shifted, and in his mind became another. A long-buried memory resurfaced; Emma’s harsh laugh as she’d at last confessed the truth to him. Geoffrey hadn’t mattered to her. He’d merely been a wealthy, titled gentleman who could give her unborn babe a name. He blinked back the remembrance and steeled his heart. He’d not be fooled. Not again.

He clapped his hands, slowly, and rhythmically. “Brava, madam, your false innocence could rival the greatest Covent Garden actresses.”

Her midnight black brows stitched into a single, mutinous line. “I’ve not lied to you.”

“A lie by omission is still a lie.”

She snapped her mouth closed, and glanced to a point beyond his shoulder. “There is nothing I can say,” she said softly, as though she were speaking more to herself. Then she squared her shoulders, and tossed her chin up; even with her hair hanging in long, limp strands about her person, she had the regal elegance to rival a queen. “Tell me what I can say to make you understand. Tell me what you’d have me do?”

She stood there, chest heaving up and down, her eyes imploring. Ahh god, even with her betrayal, the sight of her suffering hit him like the edge of a steely dagger being plunged into his gut.

He spun around, and stared at the wood panels of the door, unable to confront the sight of her. Because he was so very close to capitulating, and saying to hell with all her treachery.

He could not do that. Not again.

Thunder rumbled in the night sky, and shook the door…a reminder of the sins of his past, of the selfish man he’d been who’d put a woman before his father. The muscles in Geoffrey’s stomach tensed. His father had paid the ultimate price for Geoffrey’s desires.

“Madam, there is nothing you can say.” Nothing that would take away the dull ache that throbbed inside his heart.

And before he did something foolish like take her in his arms and throw aside his pride and honor, Geoffrey jerked the door open.

Sheets of rain slanted down sideways and pounded upon the marble floor.

“Geoffrey, please,” she begged.

He gritted his teeth so hard, pain radiated along his jawline. “I am the Viscount Redbrooke and you no longer have leave to use my Christian name.”