“I am sorry,” he said, unable to think of any other response.
She frowned. “What?”
He did not know how else to say it. “I am sorry. I should have handled it better. All of it.”
“And that is to magically erase the past ten years of my life?”
“No. It is merely how I feel.”
Still not looking at him, she picked up her skirt. “Well, I’m glad you’ve expressed how you feel. If you’ll excuse me.”
He couldn’t let her go. “Miss Hargrove. I have still not explained.”
“And I have said, I do not care for your explanation.”
“Please, Miss Hargrove.” He did not know how to make her stay, make her realize how much he needed to speak with her.
She hesitated.
An eternity passed while she decided. Finally, she inclined her head.
Relief rushed through him, and he held out his arm.
She looked at it and, quite deliberately, did not take it. Making her way to a stone bench, she seated herself. “Very well, my lord. I will listen.”
Suppressing his admiration at her imperiousness, he said, “Miss Hargrove, perhaps we should go inside.”
“No. You’ll do this now, or not at all.” Though her cheeks were flushed with cold, she sat on the bench as regal as a queen while she waited for him to begin speaking.
And, of course, now that he had her ear, he had no idea what to say.
EVER IMPASSIVE, THE EARL stared at her. Moments passed, filled only with the faint strains of music and laughter.
Breaking their gaze, Sofie exhaled forcefully. Damnation, was he ever going to speak? He’d begged for her to listen, and now he said nothing at all. Folding her arms, she looked toward the ballroom. It would take less than nothing to leave him, alone in the dark with his unspoken explanations.
“I am thought to be dissolute, Miss Hargrove,” Edgington said.
Surprise by the sudden words, Sofie glanced at him. Jaw tense, he looked somewhere left of her shoulder. Then, she realized what he’d said. Unable to help herself, she barked a laugh. “Do tell.”
He didn’t react to her sarcasm, but then when did he show anything approaching emotion? Immediately, a memory rose, of hot eyes, rasping breath, and urgent hands. Quickly, she quashed such foolishness to focus only on the present. Only on her hate.
“I am thought to be a wastrel, a useless thing,” he continued. “I do not begrudge this reputation, you understand. Indeed, I do my best to adhere to it.”
He was telling her things she already knew. “I do not—”
“I beg your indulgence.” Something flickered in his expression, something that might have been discomfort or desperation. He cleared his throat. “It has always been so, since the time I can remember. My mother thought little of me, as did my father. I was raised by nurses and tutors, but that is an experience no different from any child of the aristocracy. I went to school. No one expected anything of me. It seemed my character had been determined, and no matter what I did, none would waver from it.”
It did not matter. It did not matter his childhood was unhappy, that no one had ever believed in him. It. Did not. Matter.
Tightening her grip on her biceps, she hardened herself. “Again, I do not see how—”
“My apologies, Miss Hargrove, but it will become relevant.” His features once more smooth, he again placed his hands behind his back. “I decided if I could not impress them, I would live down to their expectations. Indeed, I would exceed them. I became the worst sort of degenerate—wild, careless. I gambled. I made foolish wagers. I rode too fast, drank too much, I got myself into brawls with lads older and bigger than me. I set about to have my first woman and once I had done so, I sowed my oats indiscriminately.” High color stained his cheekbones, as if he were embarrassed to be telling her this, and she knew her own cheeks blazed. Please God, he could not be embarrassed. She could not soften toward him. She could not.
Briefly, she closed her eyes. This. This is what she liked about him. He had always spoken thus, always told her everything, whether it had been fit for her ears or not. He’d delighted in making her blush, in flustering her, and she’d loved seeing his delight. Somehow, she’d known he’d had very little joy in his life, and she’d wanted to give it to him.
Foolish girl.
“When first I met you, I had six years of dissolute behavior behind me, and the knowledge that all who proclaimed I would come to a bad end were correct.” He met her eyes. She inhaled sharply. He looked … he looked impassioned. Full of anguish, frustration, longing. An answering passion began a burn within her, and she tore her eyes from him. She remembered this, too. His gaze had always done such to her.
“I did not intend it to go as far as it did. I enjoyed my time with you. You … had no expectations. You simply liked me and thought to indulge that emotion. I was at fault for what happened. I should have known it would end badly. When we were caught, I should have done more to persuade them they had seen nothing.”
She frowned. “You could not have—”
“I should have persuaded them,” he said. “I was heir to the Earl of Edgington, with five hundred years of privilege behind me. If I decreed the sky to be green, people would hasten to agree. I should have been able to convince them they’d seen nothing. But I didn’t. Then, I compounded my error by not offering for you.”
His gaze never left her, and she found herself nervous under such intensity.
“You left, and I returned to my old ways,” he said. “Indeed, I became worse than ever. I had ruined the one bright thing in my life, you see, so how could it be I was anything but a degenerate?”
She did not know what to say. How to feel. This was … He was making her … She would not forgive him. Nothing he could say would make right what he’d done. She hated him. She did.
He began to pace, his step agitated, the solitary sign that he felt something. Anything. “Tonight, I told myself I should stay far from you, but I could not help myself. I cannot help myself.” He stopped abruptly, and gray eyes found hers. “I’d told myself to forget you. I thought I had. Then I saw you tonight, and I remembered. Too well, I remembered. Your wit. Your laugh. Your taste. The way you would argue with me just for the sake of arguing, the way you would tease me until I smiled. I remembered you loved lemon ices and the final light before twilight. I remembered you waxing lyrical on architecture, and how, though I cared not a whit for buildings, I was interested because you were. I remembered how I feel when I’m with you, how you make me feel, and I knew I could not stay away.”
She felt herself waver. Damnation, he always did this to her, took what she knew to be true and skewed it.
Crossing her arms, she forced herself to remember. To remember he had been happy to abandon her, to take everything that had been special between them and make it seem tawdry and wrong. She had to remember her rage. “I don’t care for your explanations or your contrition. I would much prefer you take yourself somewhere else.” She ignored the voice that whispered liar.
A change came over his expression, one that forcefully reminded her of what he was. A dark, dangerous man, with licentiousness and dissolution to his name. “Why are you so angry?”
She licked her lips. “Wh-what?”
“Why are you still so angry?” He advanced, his eyes glittering in the dark. “Ten years have passed. You have traveled, have conquered the Continent by all accounts. Why do you care for a scandal over a decade old, which most have forgotten?”
“I—” She didn’t know why she was so angry, why it had lingered. “They have not forgotten. They spoke of it in the ballroom tonight.”
He ignored her, his body crowding hers. He was so close now, close enough to touch. “Why, Sofie?”
She closed her eyes, swallowed, at the sound of her name in his rich, dark voice.
&nb
sp; Fingertips danced over her cheekbone, his thumb tracing her jaw. “Sofie,” he whispered, and she lifted herself for his kiss.
He tasted the same, of brandy and smoke and that flavor that was his. The same emotions rioted within her, wild and free, and she wanted his hands on her, all over, as they had been before. Her hands tangled in his hair, the pomade strange to her touch.
His lips brushed her collarbone, and her fingers tightened in his hair. “Michael.”
He paused, his breath ghosting along her skin.
Sofie closed her eyes. She’d said his name. She’d said his name, and damned herself as a fool. She remembered, just as well as he.
Michael pulled back, his chest heaving, as if he were as affected as her. Resting his forehead against hers, he cradled her face in his hands. “I never forgot you, Sofie. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
She hadn’t forgotten him either. Every day she’d told herself she had, but she’d never succeeded. He was burned into her, so deep she couldn’t remove him.
“Why did you not come after me?” It had hurt so much when he hadn’t. She knew it had been irrational, knew it was foolish, but she’d been seventeen, and in love. She’d wanted him to be as much in love as she.
He smiled without mirth. “I’m a bastard. What can I say?”
Pain filled her. She made to pull apart, but he caught her to him. “Sofie, you cannot know how I regretted it. I was callow and foolish, and I wish so goddamn much that I had offered for you. Do you know how proud I would be to have you as my wife? But I …” He swallowed. “I knew you would not be proud of me. How could you? I could not have given you all you have found for yourself. You are— Do you know how magnificent you are?”
Suddenly, in the midst of all this, humor found her. “Of course. I recite my magnificence to myself often.”
A rueful sort of smile took his own expression. “You are magnificent. I always thought so, and I wanted you so much. I was twenty-one, and a fool.” His thumb caressed her cheek. “Why did you run?”
A breath shuddered through her. “I … My parents were so disappointed. My father looked at me with disgust, and my mother wouldn’t stop crying, so I, I left. I’d always wanted to travel, and Stephen was in France already, and …” She met his gaze. “I wasn’t supposed to be ruined at seventeen, but if I hadn’t been, I never would have become this person. I like her. I like me.”
His lips twisted. “So I did you a favor?”
“Perhaps.” She fell silent. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
“No.”
“My parents were furious.” His thumb stroked her shoulder.
“Yes.”
“Are you not going to apologize?” she said, frustrated.
The corner of his lip lifted. “Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what to think, what to feel. For ten years, I’ve hated you, Michael. I can’t … I don’t …” Wild emotion rioted within her. She didn’t know what to make of this, how she felt.
Oh God, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to haul him close and feel his lips beneath hers. She gave a hiccupping laugh. How could she want such things? How? A mere half an hour ago she’d wanted never to see him again.
“Sof,” he said softly. “Why are you still so angry?”
Uncertain, she stared at him. He waited, his gaze never leaving hers.
A harsh sob exploded from her, then another, and another. “Because I love you,” she gasped. “Because I never stopped. Because for ten years, I compared every man to you and found them wanting. Because you left me, you left me, Michael, and I … I …”
He gathered her in his arms, whispering comfort and of how he was sorry, he was so damned sorry. “I should have come after you. I should have followed you to the Continent and made you listen. I should have done it any time these past ten years. I’m sorry I didn’t. Sof, you’ve not a notion of how sorry I am.”
“Fat lot of good sorry does me,” she hiccupped, attempting a scowl but certain she failed miserably.
A smile. Finally. “Ah, Sof. How can I resist you when you say things like that?”
Hiding against his chest, she shook her head.
A gentle finger under her chin forced her gaze to his, and her breath caught at what she saw in his gray eyes. “Sof. You know I love you, don’t you?”
She bit her lip.
“I do.” He brushed her lips with his. “I love you.” He kissed her cheekbone. “I love you.” The hollow of her throat. “I love you.”
She closed her eyes. She wanted to believe him. She did. “How can we feel this way? We’ve been … It’s been ten years, Michael.”
His lips feathered over her right brow. “Sof. You need time. We need time. Tomorrow, I will call upon you, and then I’ll pay my address to your brother. I’ll ask his permission to court you. No decision needs to be made. We’ll take it as it comes.”
“I don’t know if—”
Pulling away, he took her by the shoulders. Jaw tense, he said, “Tomorrow, Sofie.”
Words deserted her at his intensity, at her own foolish hope. She wanted that, so badly.
“Believe me, Sof. Believe us.”
There was so much against them, so much. “Stephen will thrash you. He’ll keep you from me.”
Michael set his jaw. “He’ll try.”
A sudden, blinding happiness took her, surely too bright to last, but she would grab it while it burned. She brought his hand to her cheek, kissed the long, sensitive fingers. “Tomorrow.”
Three months later
THE BREEZE WRAPPED AROUND Sofie, warm in the darkness of the garden. Faint strains of music sounded from Diana’s ball, and she could hear the laughter of others who had sought respite from the crush of the ballroom.
Exhaling, Sofie looked out over the garden. Though it was more than two months since her return to London, she had not returned to the Continent. How could she? Michael wasn’t there.
Strong arms snaked around her waist, pulling her into a hard chest while soft lips brushed the spot beneath her ear. A deliciously deep voice said, “You always did like a garden.”
Wickedness rushed through her as she turned in Michael’s embrace. “They provide so much opportunity for mischief.”
He raised a brow. “The Countess of Edgington has too much dignity to get into mischief.”
Laughter bubbled in her, though she did her best to keep her expression solemn. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not yet the countess.”
“Only for twelve more hours.”
She lifted a shoulder. “It still counts.”
As if he could no longer contain himself, a smile broke across his face, his eyes alight. “I won’t win, will I?”
“No,” she said, loving that he shared his humor with her. Loving him.
“Well,” he said. “I shall have to cheat.” And then he set his lips to hers.
His tongue danced along the seam of her lips, seeking entrance, and she opened to him, welcoming him into her as she dug her fingers into his back. He made a sound of pleasure, filling her, making her heated and empty. Soon. Soon.
“Miss Hargrove!”
Slowly, the shrill voice penetrated the haze he always created. Michael tensed against her, lifting his head to stare straight ahead as a tick started in his jaw.
Cautiously, Sofie peeped past his shoulder. Lady Darbyon stood before them, a horrified expression twisting her features.
Leaning her forehead against him, Sofie groaned. Dear God, not again.
“Miss Hargrove! I cannot believe this! And with the Earl of Edgington! Did you not learn your lesson the first time?”
Extracting herself from Michael’s embrace, she squared her shoulders and entered the fray. “The earl is my fiancé. Surely we are allowed some leeway?”
“You still have a reputation to uphold. Come.” With that imperious command, Lady Darbyon held out her hand.
“You saw nothing.”
At the cold, hard words, Sofie glanced at Michael. He’d turned to face Lady Darbyon, and his expression … his expression was terrifying.
Clearly uncowed, Lady Darbyon tutted. “My lord, I saw—”
“Nothing. You will not speak of my countess. You will return to the ballroom, and you will forget you ever saw us.”
“I hardly think—”
“Lady Darbyon,” Michael said. “Do not test me.”
The lady blanched, her eyes wide, then she hurried from them.
Sofie watched Lady Darbyon’s retreating back until she couldn’t see her anymore. “The sky is green.”
Obviously distracted, Michael glanced at her. “Pardon?”
“You said you could convince people the sky is green.”
His expression changed, becoming heavy-lidded. “I’d rather convince you to come deeper in the garden.”
“Why, Michael,” she said mildly, her heart racing. “How scandalous.”
A smile lit his face. “We’ve only got twelve more hours. Come, Sof.” He held out his hand. “Let’s cause a scandal.”
Cassandra Dean is a best-selling, multipublished author of historical and fantasy romance and was a 2016 finalist in the Romance Writers of Australia’s coveted RUBY Award. Her latest novel, Silk & Scholar, is book four of her popular Silk series featuring law-loving peeps and their happily ever afters. Her next novel will be the final book in the Silk series, Silk & Scarlet, and she is working on a new series featuring husband-hunting sisters in Regency England, as well as a novel where a thief meets his match in a determined lady. Cassandra is proud to call South Australia her home, where she regularly cheers on her AFL football team and creates her next tale.
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