Winning a Lady's Heart (Danby #1)(5)

Their mother moved deeper into the room and claimed the spot Olivia had vacated.

“Oh, my dear, whatever were you thinking?”

At last, there it was. An aching disappointment kicked Alexandra in the gut. She was all cried out, however. “I loved him,” she said on an aching whisper.

Her mother reached up and stroked a hand across her daughter’s curls. “I knew following that hideous wager we should have sent around our regrets this evening. This is my fault.”

Alexandra shook her head. “Please don’t, Mother. I have caused this scandal, and when the duke finds out…” Her words trailed off and her eyes slid closed.

Her mother made a dismissive sound. “Don’t give Danby another thought.” Alexandra heard the worry in those words.

Alexandra managed her first real smile of the evening. Since she’d been a girl, Mother had always referred to her father as Danby—not Father, not Papa—just Danby. Which was probably why Alexandra had always been so terrified of the duke. She’d never seen him as a grandfather or a Papa, but as a duke. And now he was going to find out that his granddaughter had set London on its ear with a scandal, and worse…that she’d fallen hopelessly in love with a man who’d been undeserving of her love.

“How could he do this, Mother?” She dropped her head into her hands and reminded herself to take a deep breath before her nausea consumed her.

“He’s a cad, my dear. Your father warned you about Pembroke’s family.”

Of course her father would have to be right. When Alexandra had returned from a ball with stars in her eyes, captivated by Nathan, her father had tried to squash all that joy. He’d insisted that the late Earl of Pembroke had been a scoundrel and his son was the same.

Alexandra had staunchly defended the man who’d begun to court to her, who’d remained into the winter even when all the other fashionable lords and ladies retreated to their countryseats, to stay with her.

“I believed he loved me, Mother.”

Mother sighed. “You will find a man deserving of you, Alexandra.”

Not after this. Alexandra would never find a gentleman, nor for that matter did she want to.

“Does Father know?”

“I mentioned there was an incident and told him I would speak on it when I return below stairs.”

“He is going to be livid,” Alexandra whispered, her eyes sliding closed. She didn’t even want to think about facing her father’s wrath come morning.

A sardonic smile tipped the corners of her mother’s lips. “I trust he should be rather easy to speak with once your sister has a word with him.”

Alexandra managed a smile. “By the time you meet with Father, I’m sure Olivia will have already convinced him that he is somehow to blame.”

It wasn’t Father who worried her, though. It was her grandfather, the great Duke of Danby. At least she had time until she had to deal with the Duke of Danby’s displeasure. For now, all she wanted was to climb under the sheets and forget that she’d ever been so foolish as to give her heart to Nathan.





Long after Alexandra fled, Nathan remained for an infernal amount of time in his same seat in Lord and Lady Williams’s card room, pointedly ignoring the bevy of curious looks and hushed whispers.

Taking care to keep his facial expression flat, he finally tossed down his hand of cards and shoved his seat back. “I know when to cut my losses. I bid you good evening, gentlemen.”

He didn’t wait to hear the murmured responses as he collected his winnings, his hand hovering over the notes Alexandra had thrown in his face not even two hours ago. His gut tightened painfully, nearly doubling him over with the intensity of it, but he collected those notes, keeping them separate from the rest. Alexandra had left her heart in Lord Williams’s godforsaken home. He’d be damned if he left any other part of her here.

With a glower and stride meant to deter company, he moved through the ballroom, up the wide staircase, and to the foyer. His lined black evening coat materialized almost instantly. All but wrenching it from the servant’s hands, he drew it on and stormed out the front doors.

A gust of frigid wind slammed into his face but he welcomed the stinging bite of winter pain. Any pain was preferable to the hellish torment he’d inflicted this evening—both on her and himself. He waved his carriage off, instead opting to walk the distance to his townhouse in the midnight cold. It was a meager attempt at penance for the sins he’d committed, a kind of absolution that would not come.

Not that he deserved absolution.

“You’re a bastard,” he muttered to himself.

The one solace of being stuck in London in the dead of winter was that the streets were blessedly empty in the evening hours. So the mask he’d adopted for all of Lord and Lady Williams’s ball could finally slip without the ton’s eyes to witness.

Then, the implications of his actions finally registered, and he staggered to a halt in the middle of the pavement. He stared out into the dark night sky and, shaking his head, dragged a weary hand across his eyes.

She was gone.

The one glimmer of purity and happiness he’d known in his miserable thirty years of existence had gone out as easily as the fragile flame of a candle. What was worse, it had been he who’d extinguished that sweet joy—hers and his own.