Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (Scandalous Seasons #3)(75)

***

I love you, Abby.

Abigail’s heart flipped inside her breast, and she blinked back the tears that clouded her vision.

Before Geoffrey had entered the parlor she’d resolved to make peace with their past. She would hear his words. And then send him on his way to live his entirely proper, staid life, and she would carry on just as she’d done since she’d been forced from America.

That had been before he’d come to her with more unrestrained emotion than she’d ever seen from him. Now, he’d thrown her earlier resolve into upheaval.

Abigail sucked in a breath. She could not trust him. Not again. She shook her head sadly. “Geoffrey, you can never forgive me for the mistakes I made,” she said at last. As much as her heart ached for a future with him, she knew he would never be able to truly forgive her lack of virtue.

He leapt to his feet. “I love you, Abby,” he said again, his tone harsh. Her eyes went to his tan skin breeches as he paced in front of her. “I understand I’m no longer deserving of your trust, Abby, but I do not care about the gossip.”

In that moment, with his emotion-laden eyes, and the hard, determined set of his mouth, she almost believed him. She smiled woefully up at him. “That might be true now. But that won’t always be the case. You’ll tire of the gossip and unkind gentlemen snickering about you.”

Geoffrey jerked to a stop. “I’ll not allow anyone to shame you.”

Abigail came unsteadily to her feet. With her uninjured hand, she reached for the back of the sofa, and found support there. “If you wed me, you’d spend the rest of your days trying to defend my honor…and when you realized you could not, you would grow to hate me.” And that she could not bear.

Geoffrey closed the distance between them. He dropped his brow close to hers. “Oh, sweet Abby, how can I make you see? I do not care.” He slashed the air with his hand. “About any of it, Abby. I am nothing without you. Nothing,” His imploring tone shook her already weakened resolve.

“Please, Geoffrey,” she whispered. “Do not.”

A commotion outside the door cut into Geoffrey’s response.

She looked over just as the door opened. Her uncle entered, followed by a too-familiar, commanding figure.

It took a moment for her muddled mind to work through that which her eyes saw but which her mind could not process.

“Nathaniel?” she whispered. Her brother couldn’t be here. He was in America. Surely her imaginings were a product of the injury she’d sustained to her head.

His eyes did a quick search of her face. “Abby, we’ve come to bring you home.”

We’ve come to bring you home?

Then Nathaniel shifted. A loud humming filled her ears. She blinked, trying to make sense of it.

The familiar, blonde-haired devil she’d hoped to never see again took a step closer. His eyes shifted momentarily from Geoffrey, then back to her. His square jaw hardened. “Abby.”

She blinked. “Alexander?”

Nathaniel looked momentarily over at Geoffrey, who still held her hand and Geoffrey released her. “A great crime was committed against you and Alexander,” her brother said. Again, he glanced over at Geoffrey as if trying to determine the identity of this interloper in their private exchange. Nathaniel dismissed him with a single look, and turned back to Abigail.

Her heart stopped.

She shook her head trying to make sense of Nathaniel’s utterance.

Alexander’s steely gaze burned through her. “I did not betray you, Abby.”

And Abigail fainted.





A gentleman should know when to pardon himself from private exchanges.

4th Viscount Redbrooke



29

Abigail blinked back the fog of unconsciousness and tried to sort through a jumbled dream in which Geoffrey and Alexander both were guests of the Duke of Somerset. There’d been an accident. And pain.

But no pain greater than the defection of Geoffrey’s regard for her.

She winced at the dull, throbbing ache at her temples.

She touched her fingers gently to her forehead, and paused at the thick knob at the center of her head.

Abigail’s eyes slid closed. It had been no dream.

She recalled the carriage careening wildly out of control, the cry of the horses, and then pain.

And Alexander.

Alexander?

Her eyes flew open and she flinched at the suddenness of her movements. Her body jerked upright, and she registered at once the familiar sandalwood scent that clung to her brother’s shirt.

“Nathaniel,” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around him much the way she had as a child when she’d fallen and scraped the skin from her knees. Bitter, hurt tears blazed a trail down her cheek. She’d not expected to ever see her family again. She had imagined with the space that separated them, and her father and brother’s business ventures, that they’d have no time to ever again see the daughter and sister who’d visited such shame upon the family.

“Shh,” Nathaniel whispered. He rubbed soothing circles over her back just as he’d done when she’d been a small hurt girl.

When her sobs became a shuddery little hiccough, Nathaniel helped her down into the sofa.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted. Her gaze shot over to Alexander who stood facing the blazing fire within the hearth, his hands clasped behind his back.