Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (Scandalous Seasons #3)(77)

“You deserve someone better than me, Alexander,” she said softly.

Alexander shook his head; a golden lock fell across his brow. He strode across the room and stopped at her feet. “Don’t you do that,” he bit out. “Don’t you dare, Abby.” His chest rose and fell with the force of his emotion. “I love you.”

Oh, God. For the wrong she’d inadvertently done him, he still would love her.

She closed her eyes.

“But you don’t love me.” That broken and pained whisper cut across the quiet. “The gentleman who left…” he said, those five words flat.

Geoffrey.

Her heart sped up. He’d been here in the room with Alexander, and had taken his leave. Surely with his great sense of propriety he would applaud her marriage to Alexander. Alexander’s presence had in a way, freed Geoffrey of any obligation he might feel toward her. “I…” She studied the tips of her slippers. She loved Geoffrey. Even with all that had come to pass between them.

“He doesn’t deserve you, Abby.”

A humorless laugh escaped her. “How can you believe that when I’ve betrayed you as I did?” Her duplicity, though unintentional, had hurt him, and for that, Abigail could never forgive herself.

He touched his hand to her bruised and swollen cheek. “Because I love you, Abby. And that is what you do when you love someone. You forgive them. Love is not logical.”

No. For if it were, she’d return to America under the mantle of Alexander’s affection and live out a comfortable life in the land that had been her only home, surrounded by her siblings. But Alexander deserved far more than that. “You are going to find a woman—”

He spoke, his words a hoarse please. “Don’t, Abby.”

“Who deserves you,” she continued. “And the time will come when you realize that she holds your love, and I’ll be nothing more than a dream of something that once was.”

Alexander’s throat moved up and down. “There will only be you.”

Abigail did not labor the point with him because not long ago, she’d been like him. She had believed herself shattered by his perfidy.

It had taken Geoffrey to show her the truth…that her heart hadn’t fully lived—until Geoffrey had entered her life.

Alexander raised her hand to his lips, and placed a kiss upon her knuckles. Then, with a long, elegant bow, he took his leave.

Abigail stood there long after he made his solemn exit. The fire crackled in the hearth; the embers popping and hissing loudly. In the span of mere hours, the entire foundation of her world had been shaken by the truth of her parent’s deceit, Geoffrey’s profession of love, Alexander’s reappearance in her life.

Her gaze snagged upon the forgotten items Geoffrey had brought with him.

Abigail angled her head, and studied the blooms of aconite and ivy. She wandered over and picked up the rain-dampened bouquet, and raised it to her nose, inhaling the sweet scent of the red bloom. She’d believed guilt had driven his offer of marriage. And yet…

She touched the tip of her finger to the spriggy, harsh ivy leaf. Were these romantic gestures of a gentleman motivated by a sense of guilt and rightness?

Abigail set the bouquet down, and reached for the oddly shaped box no larger than the span of her hands together. She turned it over, and then set it aside.

She loved him.

Loved him with a depth of emotion that defied humility and pride.

For the first time since the carriage accident a week ago, Abigail smiled. She embraced the liberation of acknowledging her love of him.

She would wed him.

Just as soon as he returned to her.





When consuming spirits, a gentleman should demonstrate restraint.

The 4th Viscount Redbrooke



30

From the alcohol-induced stupor Geoffrey had dwelt within for twenty-six hours, eighteen minutes, and…he glanced bleary-eyed up toward the ormolu clock…the blasted numbers were too small.

He tugged out his watch fob and tried to bring the numbers into focus. Hell, he’d lost count. Twenty-six hours, now nineteen minutes, and…he picked up his half-drunk brandy and tossed it back. It didn’t matter.

Time had ceased to matter.

None of it mattered.

“You must speak to him. I’m ever so worried.” From outside his office door, his mother’s murmured words cut across the numbed haze that gripped him.

The wood panel of the door drowned out his brother-in-law, Waxham’s response.

Geoffrey reached for the nearly empty bottle of brandy, and poured himself a tall glass. They could all go to hell.

Because now, Alexander Powers, once a faceless bastard who’d broken Abigail’s heart was real. A vise-like pain gripped his heart. The other man had stood there looking like one of Michelangelo’s damned sculptures, a golden foil to Abigail’s dark beauty.

No amount of alcohol could drive back his remembrance of the masculine possessiveness and love in Powers’ eyes.

I love you, Abby.

Geoffrey clenched his eyes tight but could not, would never be able to escape the dagger-like pain cloying at his insides. Until he died, he would forever remember the moment of Alexander Powers’ return…because it had been the moment when all Geoffrey’s hopes of earning her love had died a swift, and agonizing death.