Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (Scandalous Seasons #3)(76)

“His Grace spoke of an accident. He mentioned you’d been out, unchaperoned during a storm. He suggested I speak to you for further details. What happened to you, Abby?”

I fell in love. My heart was broken. I was turned away…in shame…again.

“I’m well,” she hurried to assure him, even as her dislocated arm throbbed in protest to the lie she told.

He folded his arms over his chest. “What happened, Abby?” he pressed.

She swallowed, and looked past him to where Alexander stood, unyielding and silent like the dead. How could she speak of Geoffrey here to either of these men? Abigail couldn’t lay herself bare in front of them; not like this when the pain of Geoffrey’s rejection was still raw. “Please don’t make me speak of it?”

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed, and he looked prepared to press the point, but then the fight seemed to leave him. “You look like hell,” he said bluntly, his gaze fixed on her bruised face.

Her lips tipped up at the corner; she winced at the subtle movement.

“Why have you come, Nathaniel?” She repeated her earlier question. Her eyes flitted once again over to Alexander’s broad back. He stiffened, but remained otherwise stock-still.

Abigail jumped as Nathaniel took her hand. He turned her palm over. His familiar hazel eyes earnest and angry all at once. “You and Alexander were wronged.”

Her heart flipped over as she tried to sort through that statement.

“I love you, Abby,” Alexander said, from across the room, his tone flat and emotionless.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.” After they’d been discovered, Alexander had spoken to Papa. Papa had vowed Alexander would never see a penny of her dowry, and Alexander had left—her money had been the only thing that mattered to him. Father had told her.

“He lied, Abby,” Nathaniel said softly.

She froze. “No,” she whispered. Her father loved her.

Her brother gently nudged her chin, and forced her eyes back to his. “Yes.”

Abigail scrambled to her feet so quickly, the room spun. She gripped the edge of the sofa, her nails pressed into the upholstered fabric. “Why would he do that? Why?” Her voice steadily increased in volume. “Why?” she cried.

Alexander at last turned around, a sad, bitter smile on his lips. “Come now. You know your parents never approved of me.” He glanced away, and then back to her. “Your father believed I cared more about your dowry than your heart, and set out to prove as such.” His face contorted as if in pain. “And how easily you believed his lies.”

Bile burned like fire in her throat. “He wouldn’t do that.” Mama and Papa’s had been a love match. They defied the late Duke of Somerset, been forced to start anew in a new country. Her father would not be so cruel as to prove Alexander’s unsuitability by orchestrating the events that followed her ruin.

The note.

Her heart shuddered to a slow halt.

As much as we’d wished for you to have a marriage based off love, we realize your comfort and happiness requires you to find a suitable gentleman who will properly care for you.

Her stomach turned over as the sudden depth of her father’s betrayal sank into her mind. “I’m going to be ill,” she whispered.

Nathaniel touched her shoulder, and she shrugged his hand off. “Did you know? Did you know he planned to separate Alexander and I?” she asked, her words harsh to her own ears.

“Of course not, Abby.”

Then there was Alexander, who, through all this, remained stoically silent. She looked to him. How many days and weeks and months had she spent hating him for his betrayal? Resenting him for not loving her enough?

When ultimately, she had been the fickle one for doubting his love.

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “I’ll allow you and Alexander an opportunity to speak.”

She dimly registered the soft tread of his booted footsteps along the floor, the opening and closing of the door, and then silence.

Abigail and Alexander continued to study one another. Odd, how she’d given so much to this man, had known him nearly all her life, but in that moment, with the veneer of ice that fairly seeped from his tautly held body, he might as well have been a stranger.

“Alexander…I…”

Her words died as he arched an icy brow.

“I didn’t know,” she implored him to understand.

Another sad smile formed on his lips. “I believe that is what hurt the most, Abby. Your willingness to have believed the absolute worst of me.” He averted his gaze. “But then, I’m the blackguard who took your virtue outside the confines of marriage.”

And in doing so, he’d cost Abigail her good name. She, however, had been complicit in that act.

Her throat bobbed up and down, as she continued to stand there looking at him. And perhaps she was nothing more than a feckless, faithless woman, for in that moment, with her past and present now converged, she accepted that she’d never truly loved Alexander. The pain of that realization gripped her; it sucked the life from her legs. She sank into a puddle of satin skirts on the nearby sofa. She’d been so besotted by him, this, her brother’s friend, a dashing gentleman she’d known and admired as a child.

But she’d not loved him with a woman’s heart.

And she hated herself for it. Because he deserved far more than her.