Abigail dropped her hand to her side but continued to study the pattern of stars. Until that moment she’d believed his silence indicated he found her recounting silly. How very different he was from Alexander, who had found her fascination with the stars tedious, and encouraged her to pursue more ladylike interests.
“Hades allowed Orpheus to take her back, under the condition that he’d trust Hades and not look back over his shoulder at her.”
“And he of course, failed to abide by Hades orders.” There was something bitter and cynical in that succinct utterance.
“He did,” she confirmed. “And so Hades swept Eurydice back to the underworld. The stars were put there by Zeus to honor the love Orpheus had for Eurydice.”
From the corner of her eye, she noted the way Geoffrey’s firm, square jaw hardened. “Or it served to remind man of the dangers in not honoring ones word.”
A smile teased the corner of her lips. “Perhaps, that, too.” And Abigail expected that Alexander’s betrayal should have disabused her of any further dreams of love. Her gaze locked with Geoffrey’s. “But I prefer the romanticism of the first one, Geoffrey.”
She expected him to smile, or chuckle. Except, having come to know him these past days, Abigail should have known he’d not be given to expressions of mirth. Instead, a frown darkened the hard, angular planes of his chiseled face. “You desire love.”
She’d thought she’d had love with Alexander. Only just recently had Abigail realized she’d carried nothing more than a girlish infatuation for him. She’d worshipped him the way one might have honored the Greek gods. He’d cared for her, made her laugh, but he’d not truly embraced Abigail’s true interests. With a woman’s eyes, she could appreciate the level of foolhardiness on her part that she’d ever done something so rash as to give him her virtue.
“You are quiet, Abby. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Abigail lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I didn’t believe it was a question.” And because she was suddenly too very uncomfortable with his precise questioning, she turned his question back on him. “And what of you, Geoffrey. Have you ever been in love?”
A cold, stony glint reflected in the moss green irises of his eyes, something dangerous, and pained. She took a step away from him.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened, and she suspected she must appear like a lack wit with her mouth open.
Geoffrey directed his attention to Lyra in the stars.
Abigail’s mind suddenly spun under the flood of questions that opened up inside her mind. Who was she? What had happened to her? Did he still love her? A vise-like pain squeezed her heart.
“Her name was…is…Emma. She…” A hard smile formed on his lips. “She betrayed me. And taught me the perils of turning oneself over to that empty emotion called love.”
Emma. Without him even needing to speak another word, Abigail hated the other woman. Hated her because she’d earned Geoffrey’s love, and had been so callous as to throw aside his affection. Unlike Abigail who’d had the misfortune of trusting her heart to a gentleman who’d wanted nothing more than the pleasure of her body.
And because Abigail knew the pain of a broken heart and the bitter agony of betrayal, all she said was, “I’m sorry.”
He waved his hand. “It was a long time ago.”
“I don’t imagine that lessens the pain. What…happened?” she asked hesitantly.
Geoffrey clasped his hands behind his back, and walked ahead several paces. “My father warned me her interest stemmed from my family’s vast wealth and power.”
She made a sound, and he stiffened, seeming to mistake the expression for pity. Abigail wandered over to him, encouraging him with her silence to continue his recounting.
His mouth hardened. “I didn’t heed my father’s sage advice.” Those perfect, sculpted lips twisted into a macabre rendition of a smile. “Instead, I made arrangements to elope to Greta Greene. It was a miserable night. Cold. Sheets of rain and bolts of lightning.” He jerked his chin up toward the sky. “Perhaps those mythical gods trying to warn me against my folly.”
He fell silent.
Abigail touched her hand to his shoulder. The muscles bunched beneath her fingers, but he didn’t pull away.
After Alexander’s betrayal, Abigail had yearned for someone to take her in their arms and hold her close, assuring her that everything would be all right. No one had. Perhaps because they’d known it would not be all right, that her life had been irrevocably changed by her impulsive actions. She sought to give Geoffrey that which she’d so craved.
“Why did you not marry her?” she asked gently, prodding him to continue.
***
Abigail’s question emerged hesitant, and gentle.
Geoffrey closed his eyes a moment, unable to fight the bitter chuckle from escaping. He pressed his fingertips alongside his temple wanting to drive out the memory of his father’s broken body, his mother’s agonized cries as she learned of her husband’s death. Geoffrey had never before shared the shame he’d carried these nearly five years.
He gave his head a firm shake. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.” Not to her. A respectable young lady.
“I’d wager, Geoffrey, you should have spoken of it long ago.”
He closed his eyes finding her willingness to listen, oddly freeing.
When he opened his eyes he found her studying him with a gentle patience in the elegant lines of her face. In that, he found the courage to continue. “In the middle of the night, in that raging storm, my father set out after us. He was determined to prevent me from making a mistake I didn’t realize I was making. My carriage could not navigate through the muddied roads.” He remembered Emma’s insistence that they continue on regardless of the dangerous conditions. At the time, he hadn’t understood her desperation.
What a bloody fool he’d been.
“We were forced to stop at an inn. My father located us there. He leveled some very harsh charges against Emma. But I was,” his lip curled back, “in love. I insisted he leave. I was determined to wed her. I said some truly reprehensible things to my father.”
Words he could not call back. Words that, until Geoffrey drew his last breath, would forever haunt him.
Abigail took one of his hands and gave it a faint squeeze; her silent support far greater than any spoken words she might utter.
“In spite of the harsh words I hurled at him, in spite of the fact that I rejected his plea to not wed Emma, he still would not disinherit me.” That had been the loving, dedicated father that the Viscount Redbrooke was. “Instead, he left me to my own mistakes. He turned around and rode off. His horse stepped in a hole on the muddied road. It shattered its leg and threw my father. His body was found by several villagers on their way to the inn.”
The fall had broken his father’s neck.
“Oh, Geoffrey,” Abigail said ever so softly. She wrapped her arms about his waist and held him.
He stiffened at the feel of her in his arms, but then the lavender and lilac scent that clung to her, blended with the fragrant aroma of the buds in bloom all around them, moved him, far headier than any spirit. His arms came up around her and he accepted her silent support. Geoffrey rested his chin atop the satiny crown of her midnight black tresses.
He didn’t care they were a stones-throw away from being discovered, alone, unchaperoned in the Duke of Somerset’s formal gardens. He craved an absolution he’d thought impossible to achieve—until he’d taken her in his arms.
“All my plans of elopement,” he said, forcing himself to tell the rest of the whole sordid story, “were of course quashed. Emma, begged me to continue on to Gretna Greene. The schemer believed I’d wed her even in the immediate aftermath of my father’s death. I, of course, refused. At which point, she revealed the truth.” A harsh, humorless laugh spilled out of his lips.
“The truth?”
“She was carrying someone else’s child.” Time hadn’t lessened
the shock of that revelation. His father had been correct; Geoffrey’s judgment had been flawed, and his father had paid the ultimate price. “It didn’t even matter the identity of her nameless lover. My father was dead and I may as well have killed him by my own hand. And all because I foolishly believed I loved her.”
“Whatever happened to her?”
Geoffrey shrugged a shoulder. “Her father sent her off to his country seat in the far flung corners of Northumberland.” Geoffrey had never seen her again, nor had he ever wanted to set sight upon the woman who’d deceived him.
“Oh, Geoffrey,” she whispered.
He shrugged.
Abigail leaned back and her eyes roved a path over his face. “It is not your fault.”
Geoffrey stiffened, and set her away from him. “Of course it is my fault,” he said, his tone harsher than intended. “If I’d honored my obligations and responsibilities, my father would be alive.”
“But you loved her.”
He held her gaze, and she must have seen something dark and primitive in his eyes for she looked away. “I did not love her. I loved the illusion she presented. My responsibility was always to find and wed a proper, respectable demure English miss.”
She froze, and it occurred to him he’d inadvertently offended her.
“And that is why…”
“You want to wed Beatrice,” she finished for him.
He nodded. Or, rather, that had been true at one point. He owed it as a kind of penance for his past transgressions, and yet, he was still a helpless sinner for he no longer could commit himself to wedding the young woman—even if it was to honor his father’s expectations of him.
“Because she is a proper, respectable, demure English miss,” Abigail said, her voice peculiarly hollow.
“Yes.”
Her hands came up and she folded them about herself, as if warding off a chill. She looked up toward the night sky, inhaling deep.
His eyes, of their own volition went to the rapid fall and rise of her chest. The generous swell of her breasts tempted, beckoned him to partake in the visual feast she represented. With her lush feminity, she was more captivating than Michelangelo’s rendering of the temptress Eve.
And he was the serpent at her feet, sinful, and wicked.
“Giving up your happiness will not rid you of the guilt you carry. Only you can find forgiveness in yourself, Geoffrey.”
He jerked at the unexpectedness of her words. His desire died a swift death.
“And you presume to know what would make me happy?” he asked, coldly. In that moment, he resented Abigail Stone for having turned him into the same, weak man he’d been once before.
She looked away from the night sky and met his gaze with a bold intensity. “I know it isn’t Beatrice.”
Geoffrey closed the distance between them in two long strides. “What kind of spell have you woven over me?” he asked, the words harsh and desperate to his own ears.
Abigail leaned up and kissed him.
His body stiffened at the brazenness of her touch, and then, God help him, he was as lost as Adam had been when he’d been offered that damning piece of fruit. Geoffrey took her in his arms and slanted his mouth over hers again and again. Punishing and pleading all as one.
She moaned, and he slipped his tongue inside to reacquaint himself with the moist cavern. She kissed him back with a wanton eagerness that set his body aflame. His flesh sprang hard against her belly, and he moved his hands over the exposed skin of her arms, lower, down the curve of her hip, until he cupped her buttocks in his hands. Geoffrey groaned, and urged her closer.
Abigail’s head fell back on a moan steeped in desperation. “Please, Geoffrey,” she pleaded.
He nipped at the skin of her neck and she cried out. “Yes!”
That word echoed around his mind like the blare of a pistol’s report. He jerked upright and set her away from him.
She swayed on her feet; her thick, sooty black lashes drifted open. “Geoffrey?”
His name served as a reminder. His obligation. His sins. His failings.
She stepped so close her body’s heat warmed him. “You came out here for a reason, Geoffrey. You set aside propriety and the threat of discovery for a reason.”
For her.
Instead, he said, “I was taking my leave for the evening.”
She touched the tip of her fingers to his lips. “But you didn’t leave. You stole away into my uncle’s parlor, and allowed me to lead you outside. Do you know why that is?”
Because he’d gone mad. There was no other answer that made rationale sense.
Abigail continued. “Because you are not this cold, commanding figure you present to Society.” A gentle breeze ruffled his hair, and a strand fell across his brow. She reached up and brushed it back. “You can’t punish yourself the rest of your life. I, of course, never knew your father, but I do not believe he would want that of you.”
Her words swirled about him. All the muscles in his body tightened, until he feared the slightest night breeze would shatter him. He took a step away from Abigail, and closed his eyes. For nearly five years, he’d believed he’d known exactly what his father had wanted of him. And yet…Father had merely wanted to spare him the pain of wedding a pernicious woman. His father had set out on horseback that long ago, thunderous night to save his son, not to punish him.
It had been Geoffrey who’d felt the need to flagellate himself over the loss of his father. Geoffrey opened his eyes and stared up at the twinkling starlight above. Abigail’s words, they were the benediction he’d needed for so very long. Geoffrey’s throat worked up and down reflexively. “Thank you, Abby.”
Her brow wrinkled. “I’ve not done anything, Geoffrey.”
This woman, who’d been a mere stranger a short while ago, seemed to somehow know him better than anyone else. She’d allowed him to look inside himself and confront all the ugliest darkest things he’d done in life.
“Abigail! Whatever are you doing?”
Abigail dropped her hand like she’d been burned, and spun to face Lady Beatrice who stood at the gaping parlor doors.
All the color leeched from Abigail’s cheeks. He settled a hand on hers, a paltry attempt at calming the panicked glint in her wide eyes.
“I…”
Lady Beatrice looked disapprovingly at Geoffrey a moment, and then returned her attention to Abigail. She held out a hand. “Come along. Father is looking for you. I insisted you were abovestairs, but we must return at once, lest you’re discovered out here. Alone. With Lord Redbrooke,” she said, with a pointed frown for Geoffrey.
Abigail nodded, and with a final glance in Geoffrey’s direction, hurried off with Lady Beatrice.
Geoffrey stood stock still for so long, the muscles in his neck and back began to ache.
In the moment they’d been discovered, he should have been beset with guilt and regret that Lady Beatrice had discovered him and Abigail together. Except, all he’d felt was the searing loss of Abigail’s departure. For in the too brief time they’d stolen in the garden, gazing up at the stars, his entire world had been upended with the staggering realization—he wanted her. In spite of his duties and obligations and the promises he’d made after his father’s death, he wanted Abigail with an intensity that frightened him. He’d prided himself on having become a resilient, unrelenting gentleman; one who wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his youth.
But he was powerless to resist it any longer.
He expected he should feel some sense of panic at throwing over the oath he’d taken five years ago, but with Abigail’s spirit and her beauty and her boldness, his world had been toppled like Boney’s troops on their winter march through Russia.
His gaze climbed up to the sky as he studied the glimmering stars of Lyra. Orpheus had braved the underworld to reclaim his Eurydice. Geoffrey’s lips twitched with mirth.
He supposed he could brave his mother’s disapproval when he shared his intentions to court and wed the America
n, Abigail Stone.
A gentleman should speak in calming, modulated tones when dealing with a distressed female.
4th Viscount Redbrooke
~16~
“Are you mad? Utterly mad? The kind of mad to rival King George himself?”
Mother’s high-pitched screech pierced Geoffrey’s ears and he shifted in his seat. Leaning back, he studied her as she frantically paced the Aubusson carpet at the center of his office. She occasionally paused, glanced up, and then shook her head, as she continued her pacing.
“You are handling this remarkably well,” he said dryly.
She glowered at him. “You dare to make a jest of this? You, Geoffrey? You do not make jests.”
He had at one time.
He attempted to placate her. “Mother,” he began.
She held a hand up. “Not a word,” she muttered, more to herself. “Marriage to that, to that…American. Your sister, why she scandalized Society with…with…” She colored. “I needn’t repeat what happened. But she had the decency to capture the Earl of Waxham. This…” she slashed the air with her hand, “why, this is unpardonable. You’d wed that…that…”
“American,” he supplied sardonically.
“Exactly!” she agreed, and punched the air with her fist. Apparently her fury over Geoffrey’s aims to wed Abigail Stone prevented her from detecting his intended sarcasm.
Geoffrey sat back in his chair, and folded his arms across his chest. “That American as you refer to her, is in fact the Duke of Somerset’s niece.”
“The Duke of Somerset’s niece,” she muttered under her breath, shaking her head. She stopped in front of him and threw her arms open wide. “You had assured me of your intentions to court Lady Beatrice Dennington.”
Yes, he’d intended to wed the demure and perfectly proper Lady Beatrice. He’d believed she’d suited him.
Until Abigail.
“Things have changed, Mother,” he said patiently, as though speaking to a skittish colt.
“Things have changed? Things have changed, Geoffrey?” Her voice steadily increased in volume and pitch. “Days change, Geoffrey. Minutes on the clock change. One does not simply change ones selection for a marital partner.”
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