Geoffrey’s throat worked reflexively, and he dropped his gaze to the wet bouquet in his hands. How could he blame Abigail? He deserved her scorn and loathing. And yet…he needed to see her. He glanced up, past Westfield’s shoulder to the staircase that led to Abigail’s chambers. Geoffrey trusted he could just slip past the other man. It remained questionable how far he could advance before…
“Don’t even think of it, Redbrooke,” Westfield snapped.
“Robert, that is enough.”
Geoffrey froze at the sudden, unexpected appearance of the duke. The man peered down at him from his long, noble nose.
Westfield’s glare darkened, but he nodded curtly and took his leave.
Geoffrey bowed, and sent drops of rain flying onto the duke’s immaculate black boots.
“You are rather determined, Redbrooke,” the duke said in a flat, unreadable tone.
“Your Grace.”
“Abigail requires her rest but has asked to see you.” He jerked his chin, and began walking, clearly expecting Geoffrey to follow.
Geoffrey hastened his stride, and fell into step beside the duke. She asked to see him. Hope flared in his chest.
“You have fifteen minutes, and after that you are to leave, Redbrooke. My niece will determine whether she again sees you. If she asks to never see you again, then you are to leave my doorstep and not return. Is that clear?”
Fifteen minutes. He had but fifteen minutes to plead forgiveness for being a pompous, self-important ass. He had fifteen minutes to declare his love, and convince Abigail to allow him to spend the remainder of his days trying to be worthy of her. It wasn’t enough time.
“It is clear, Your Grace,” he murmured.
They stopped beside a closed door. The duke pressed the handle, and motioned for Geoffrey to enter. “Fifteen minutes,” he repeated quietly.
Fifteen minutes.
It would have to be enough.
Geoffrey stepped inside. His gaze swept the impressive parlor until he found her. He placed the awkward box shouldered under his arm down upon a nearby rose-inlaid table and set the bouquet of flowers atop it.
His stomach tightened like he’d been kicked in the gut by Decorum’s back hooves. The air left him on a whoosh as he saw her. “Oh, God.” Vibrant greenish blue bruises stood bright and angry upon her lovely face. His eyes slid closed. He forced them open. He’d been coward enough.
Abigail’s lips tipped up in a sad little rendition of a smile. “That bad?”
He swallowed painfully and crossed over to her. He dropped to a knee beside the floral upholstered sofa. “That bad,” he said, gruffly.
Something sparked in her eyes; a glimmer that bore traces of the merriment she’d always carried. “You always were rather candid, weren’t you?” A hint of wistfulness threaded those words together.
Geoffrey reached for her hand, and froze at the sight of her left arm kept tight to her chest. When he’d been a boy, there had been a small wren that had shattered its wing. The bird had hopped about his mother’s garden with that broken wing. With her fragility, Abigail put him in mind of that injured creature.
Geoffrey’s gut clenched. “This is my fault.”
She touched her fingers to his head. “It is not.”
He didn’t deserve her absolution. “It is. I should have never allowed you to leave. I should have seen you home myself.” He should have been there to protect her, and support her, and sneer in the face of a cruel Society. Instead, like the worst kind of bastard, he’d put her into that hackney and sent her off alone.
“Geoffrey,” she touched her hand to his cheek. “I am a woman. The mistakes I’ve made, they are my own.”
She referred to Alexander Powers…and now him. God, with every fiber of his filthy being, he loathed the category he now kept with that faceless coward.
“Is that why you have come?” she asked. “Out of a sense of guilt? That isn’t necessary. I should have never gone to you that evening. It wasn’t proper.” A macabre rendition of a smile turned her full-red lips.
He glanced away unable to look at the transformation his betrayal had wrought on his tender-hearted, hopeful Abigail.
He remembered back to their first meeting.
Miss, we’ve not been properly introduced; therefore, all manner of discourse between us is improper.
Geoffrey no longer recognized the man he’d been.
“Oh, Abby,” he whispered. He covered her uninjured hand with his. “I’ve been such a bloody ass.” Sinclair had been correct. “I couldn’t see past my own jealousy.” In the days since he’d learned of her accident, Geoffrey had managed to reconcile that Alexander Powers represented a part of her past. Just as Emma Marsh would forever be part of his dark, shameful youth. Both of those relationships had shaped each of them into the people they had become. “You were right, Abigail.”
She pulled her hand back, and tucked it in her lap. “Oh?”
He stared, unblinking down at her long fingers. He no longer had a right to touch her. He’d turned her out, and now must forsake the privilege she’d granted him with her love.
“We were not dissimilar. We were both hurt by love.” Only, you never hurt me, Abby. I betrayed you. “But I will never hurt you again. If you’ll allow me, I will spend the rest of my days endeavoring to deserve you. I love you, Abby.”
***
I love you, Abby.
Abigail’s heart flipped inside her breast, and she blinked back the tears that clouded her vision.
Before Geoffrey had entered the parlor she’d resolved to make peace with their past. She would hear his words. And then send him on his way to live his entirely proper, staid life, and she would carry on just as she’d done since she’d been forced from America.
That had been before he’d come to her with more unrestrained emotion than she’d ever seen from him. Now, he’d thrown her earlier resolve into upheaval.
Abigail sucked in a breath. She could not trust him. Not again. She shook her head sadly. “Geoffrey, you can never forgive me for the mistakes I made,” she said at last. As much as her heart ached for a future with him, she knew he would never be able to truly forgive her lack of virtue.
He leapt to his feet. “I love you, Abby,” he said again, his tone harsh. Her eyes went to his tan skin breeches as he paced in front of her. “I understand I’m no longer deserving of your trust, Abby, but I do not care about the gossip.”
In that moment, with his emotion-laden eyes, and the hard, determined set of his mouth, she almost believed him. She smiled woefully up at him. “That might be true now. But that won’t always be the case. You’ll tire of the gossip and unkind gentlemen snickering about you.”
Geoffrey jerked to a stop. “I’ll not allow anyone to shame you.”
Abigail came unsteadily to her feet. With her uninjured hand, she reached for the back of the sofa, and found support there. “If you wed me, you’d spend the rest of your days trying to defend my honor…and when you realized you could not, you would grow to hate me.” And that she could not bear.
Geoffrey closed the distance between them. He dropped his brow close to hers. “Oh, sweet Abby, how can I make you see? I do not care.” He slashed the air with his hand. “About any of it, Abby. I am nothing without you. Nothing,” His imploring tone shook her already weakened resolve.
“Please, Geoffrey,” she whispered. “Do not.”
A commotion outside the door cut into Geoffrey’s response.
She looked over just as the door opened. Her uncle entered, followed by a too-familiar, commanding figure.
It took a moment for her muddled mind to work through that which her eyes saw but which her mind could not process.
“Nathaniel?” she whispered. Her brother couldn’t be here. He was in America. Surely her imaginings were a product of the injury she’d sustained to her head.
His eyes did a quick search of her face. “Abby, we’ve come to bring you home.”
We’ve come to bring you
home?
Then Nathaniel shifted. A loud humming filled her ears. She blinked, trying to make sense of it.
The familiar, blonde-haired devil she’d hoped to never see again took a step closer. His eyes shifted momentarily from Geoffrey, then back to her. His square jaw hardened. “Abby.”
She blinked. “Alexander?”
Nathaniel looked momentarily over at Geoffrey, who still held her hand and Geoffrey released her. “A great crime was committed against you and Alexander,” her brother said. Again, he glanced over at Geoffrey as if trying to determine the identity of this interloper in their private exchange. Nathaniel dismissed him with a single look, and turned back to Abigail.
Her heart stopped.
She shook her head trying to make sense of Nathaniel’s utterance.
Alexander’s steely gaze burned through her. “I did not betray you, Abby.”
And Abigail fainted.
A gentleman should know when to pardon himself from private exchanges.
4th Viscount Redbrooke
~29~
Abigail blinked back the fog of unconsciousness and tried to sort through a jumbled dream in which Geoffrey and Alexander both were guests of the Duke of Somerset. There’d been an accident. And pain.
But no pain greater than the defection of Geoffrey’s regard for her.
She winced at the dull, throbbing ache at her temples.
She touched her fingers gently to her forehead, and paused at the thick knob at the center of her head.
Abigail’s eyes slid closed. It had been no dream.
She recalled the carriage careening wildly out of control, the cry of the horses, and then pain.
And Alexander.
Alexander?
Her eyes flew open and she flinched at the suddenness of her movements. Her body jerked upright, and she registered at once the familiar sandalwood scent that clung to her brother’s shirt.
“Nathaniel,” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around him much the way she had as a child when she’d fallen and scraped the skin from her knees. Bitter, hurt tears blazed a trail down her cheek. She’d not expected to ever see her family again. She had imagined with the space that separated them, and her father and brother’s business ventures, that they’d have no time to ever again see the daughter and sister who’d visited such shame upon the family.
“Shh,” Nathaniel whispered. He rubbed soothing circles over her back just as he’d done when she’d been a small hurt girl.
When her sobs became a shuddery little hiccough, Nathaniel helped her down into the sofa.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted. Her gaze shot over to Alexander who stood facing the blazing fire within the hearth, his hands clasped behind his back.
“His Grace spoke of an accident. He mentioned you’d been out, unchaperoned during a storm. He suggested I speak to you for further details. What happened to you, Abby?”
I fell in love. My heart was broken. I was turned away…in shame…again.
“I’m well,” she hurried to assure him, even as her dislocated arm throbbed in protest to the lie she told.
He folded his arms over his chest. “What happened, Abby?” he pressed.
She swallowed, and looked past him to where Alexander stood, unyielding and silent like the dead. How could she speak of Geoffrey here to either of these men? Abigail couldn’t lay herself bare in front of them; not like this when the pain of Geoffrey’s rejection was still raw. “Please don’t make me speak of it?”
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed, and he looked prepared to press the point, but then the fight seemed to leave him. “You look like hell,” he said bluntly, his gaze fixed on her bruised face.
Her lips tipped up at the corner; she winced at the subtle movement.
“Why have you come, Nathaniel?” She repeated her earlier question. Her eyes flitted once again over to Alexander’s broad back. He stiffened, but remained otherwise stock-still.
Abigail jumped as Nathaniel took her hand. He turned her palm over. His familiar hazel eyes earnest and angry all at once. “You and Alexander were wronged.”
Her heart flipped over as she tried to sort through that statement.
“I love you, Abby,” Alexander said, from across the room, his tone flat and emotionless.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.” After they’d been discovered, Alexander had spoken to Papa. Papa had vowed Alexander would never see a penny of her dowry, and Alexander had left—her money had been the only thing that mattered to him. Father had told her.
“He lied, Abby,” Nathaniel said softly.
She froze. “No,” she whispered. Her father loved her.
Her brother gently nudged her chin, and forced her eyes back to his. “Yes.”
Abigail scrambled to her feet so quickly, the room spun. She gripped the edge of the sofa, her nails pressed into the upholstered fabric. “Why would he do that? Why?” Her voice steadily increased in volume. “Why?” she cried.
Alexander at last turned around, a sad, bitter smile on his lips. “Come now. You know your parents never approved of me.” He glanced away, and then back to her. “Your father believed I cared more about your dowry than your heart, and set out to prove as such.” His face contorted as if in pain. “And how easily you believed his lies.”
Bile burned like fire in her throat. “He wouldn’t do that.” Mama and Papa’s had been a love match. They defied the late Duke of Somerset, been forced to start anew in a new country. Her father would not be so cruel as to prove Alexander’s unsuitability by orchestrating the events that followed her ruin.
The note.
Her heart shuddered to a slow halt.
As much as we’d wished for you to have a marriage based off love, we realize your comfort and happiness requires you to find a suitable gentleman who will properly care for you.
Her stomach turned over as the sudden depth of her father’s betrayal sank into her mind. “I’m going to be ill,” she whispered.
Nathaniel touched her shoulder, and she shrugged his hand off. “Did you know? Did you know he planned to separate Alexander and I?” she asked, her words harsh to her own ears.
“Of course not, Abby.”
Then there was Alexander, who, through all this, remained stoically silent. She looked to him. How many days and weeks and months had she spent hating him for his betrayal? Resenting him for not loving her enough?
When ultimately, she had been the fickle one for doubting his love.
Nathaniel cleared his throat. “I’ll allow you and Alexander an opportunity to speak.”
She dimly registered the soft tread of his booted footsteps along the floor, the opening and closing of the door, and then silence.
Abigail and Alexander continued to study one another. Odd, how she’d given so much to this man, had known him nearly all her life, but in that moment, with the veneer of ice that fairly seeped from his tautly held body, he might as well have been a stranger.
“Alexander…I…”
Her words died as he arched an icy brow.
“I didn’t know,” she implored him to understand.
Another sad smile formed on his lips. “I believe that is what hurt the most, Abby. Your willingness to have believed the absolute worst of me.” He averted his gaze. “But then, I’m the blackguard who took your virtue outside the confines of marriage.”
And in doing so, he’d cost Abigail her good name. She, however, had been complicit in that act.
Her throat bobbed up and down, as she continued to stand there looking at him. And perhaps she was nothing more than a feckless, faithless woman, for in that moment, with her past and present now converged, she accepted that she’d never truly loved Alexander. The pain of that realization gripped her; it sucked the life from her legs. She sank into a puddle of satin skirts on the nearby sofa. She’d been so besotted by him, this, her brother’s friend, a dashing gentleman she’d known and admired as a child.
But she’d not loved h
im with a woman’s heart.
And she hated herself for it. Because he deserved far more than her.
“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.”
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