Never Courted, Suddenly Wed (Scandalous Seasons #2)(28)

“You really…”

“I heard you quite clearly, Phi,” he bit out. She hadn’t protested Mallen’s offer. God if it wasn’t a childish thought but still, it chafed.

Her mouth snapped closed. Christopher relaxed his hold upon her and guided her in the steps.

Unbidden, his mind returned to a time she’d begun sessions with her dance tutor. Christopher and his father had been visiting her family’s country estate, and Sophie had rushed outside to greet him and inform him about her dance lessons. She’d asked to dance with him so she might practice. He’d laughed at her and in response, she’d ground the heel of her slipper upon his foot and raced away.

He started at the memory. What had possessed him to be such a bastard?

“Has it really been two years since I danced with you?”

She gave a firm nod. “Lord and Lady Tisdale’s ball was the last time.”

How very odd that she should recall the last time he’d partnered with her for a set. He wondered what it was she remembered about that exact night. Had he been a bastard to her? Guilt roiled in his belly.

“I don’t recall dancing with you,” he said, truthfully. It seemed the greatest tragedy that he should have ever forgotten the satiny feel of her skin.

A wry smile played on her lips.

“I shouldn’t have laughed at you,” he said, startling the both of them.

Sophie’s eyes went wide in her face, giving her the look of a night-owl startled out of concealment. “You laughed at me?” she said, when she seemed to find her voice.

“When you were a girl,” he clarified. “You’d just begun taking lessons. You asked me to dance with you and I laughed.”

Sophie caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Oh.”

He wished he’d been a better person, wished he hadn’t hurt her. Mayhap things might have been different between them. Mayhap the incident in Father’s stables would never have taken place. “Forgive me. I was boorish.”

She lifted her shoulder in a slight shrug. “It was a long time ago, Christopher.”

“That doesn’t pardon what I did.”

Her gaze fell to his cravat. “I…I wasn’t always pleasant to you, either.”

The day of the fire crept into his thoughts. The stables had been his place of refuge from Father’s disappointment and abuse. The mockery she’d made of his efforts to read aloud, had forever shattered that sanctuary. Unable to forgive her, she’d come to represent an extension of his father’s cruelty. “Perhaps we should pledge to be kinder to one another.”

Sophie dipped her head at an endearing little angle. The sudden movement released a single, golden strand from her artfully arranged coif. Christopher’s fingers itched to tuck that lock behind her ear. There was something so very familiar about the sight of it; a tempting image that danced just beyond the wisp of a memory.

“Why are you being so nice to me, Christopher?” Her question pulled him back to the moment.

He frowned and guilt stirred to life in his breast. What would Sophie say if she were to learn of his plan with Mallen? He shoved aside the unwelcome emotions. She wouldn’t discover anything. In fact, he suspected she’d feel quite kindly toward him if he unveiled his attempt to thwart his father’s efforts and preserve her inheritance.

“Your silence only deepens my suspicions, Christopher,” she said, tapping him upon the arm.

“I only want to help you, Phi.” Christopher was struck by the absolute truth of those words. “Have you always had such a low opinion of me?”

A wave of guilt slammed into him at the contrite look that flooded her eyes.

She sighed. “Forgive me. It just makes so little sense. You haven’t spoken to me in years.”

“It hasn’t been years.”

Her full, bow-shaped lips twitched. “Good-day, hello, and good-bye, do not count.”

He stared transfixed at those luscious lips. These were not the lips of a young woman who’d tormented him, but rather the lips a man dreamed about—lips capable of a different kind of torture.

“Christopher?” she said, with a trace of hesitancy.

He gave his head a clearing shake. “Come, never tell me you desired more from me than that?”

“Oh, never,” she concurred with a little laugh. “I still marvel at the fa?ade you manage to present to Polite Society.”

A wave of cold slammed into him and just like that, the gentle, teasing camaraderie between them lifted. He schooled his expression. “Oh?” he said, coolly.

Her seductive red lips tipped down in the corners.

Fortunately, at that moment, the strains of the waltz came to an end.

Christopher clapped, offered a hasty bow, and then abandoned her on the dance floor.

He’d maintained a lie for more than twenty years of his life. It was only a matter of time before Society learned that his whole life had been a carefully crafted ruse— but he’d be damned if either Sophie Winters or his father would expose him.

***

Sophie chewed at her lip, staring after Christopher’s retreating figure. He’d dropped her hand and stormed off like his heels had been set afire. Her mind spun as she tried to piece together exactly what she’d said or done to elicit such a reaction. Feeling eyes boring holes into her skin, she peered around at the curious onlookers. Oh, she could only imagine Lady Ackerly’s Tattle Sheet the next morning.