Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (17 page)

A smile played about her lips. “No. I do not think I’m wrong. I suspect, however, that even if you don’t yourself realize it, you care for her. With no malice or regret, I encourage your courtship of Abby.” With that dismissal, she turned her attention to Lord Sedgwick.

The logical portion of Geoffrey’s brain urged him to protest, to maintain his devotion to courting her.

The words wouldn’t come.

Lady Beatrice had rejected him. Quite simply and with a directness he’d not expected of the demure, gentle young lady. As Geoffrey sat there, he expected he should feel some regret or disappointment at Lady Beatrice’s rejection. Since he’d inherited the Redbrooke title, he’d become accustomed to acquiring everything and anything he desired. He’d employed a ruthless determination to business ventures, and matters of politics. Even his familial obligations where his sister Sophie’s future was concerned had been conducted with a needlelike precision and steely logic.

In a matter of days his world had been tossed upside down.

Instead of panic or regrets, Lady Beatrice had somehow freed him. He stared down at his plate of nearly untouched veal.

His mother, Lady Beatrice, they both spoke of his desire for Abigail.

He’d resolved to never give himself over to those fickle, unreliable sentiments. With Abigail’s outlandish interests, and her birthright as a servant’s daughter, she would never be considered a suitable bride.

Furthermore, ladies did not study matters of astronomy and astrology.

And young ladies in the market for a husband most certainly didn’t publicly denigrate their own dancing skills. His lips twitched. Even if one happened to be a more than poor study.

And yet…

This lady did.

“My lord?”

Geoffrey started, and looked to Lady Beatrice. “Yes, my lady?”

“The meal has concluded.”

Geoffrey blinked, and looked around. His cravat tightened with sudden embarrassment at the lords and ladies present who eyed him sitting there, staring at his plate like a moonstruck calf.

“Ahh, yes. Forgive me,” he said quickly, and rose, grateful when the gentlemen withdrew to partake in brandy.

He required distance from Abigail Stone. With space between them, it would be easier to forget the glimmer in her gray-blue eyes, or the way her bow-shaped lips curved up in a smile, or her endearing tendency to trod upon her dance partners’ toes, or…

He was a bloody liar.

He would never be able to forget the lovely Abigail Stone.

Following a formal supper, a gentlemen needs to strictly observe the after-dinner customs of withdrawing for port with his fellow gentlemen.

4
^th
Viscount Redbrooke

~15~

Abigail ignored the inane conversations about fripperies and soirées and everything else the young ladies and their mothers present happened to be discussing throughout the Duke of Somerset’s parlor. She wandered to the edge of the room, tugged the curtain back and gazed out at the night sky.

From the corner of the room, Beatrice sat conversing with several young ladies. They broke off into a fit of giggles. Abigail marveled that she’d ever been so very innocent. How greatly her life had changed in the span of a few months. She’d gone from blushing, innocent debutante to scandalized woman forced to flee the shame she’d wrought upon her family’s name.

Using the distractedness of those present, Abigail took the opportunity to skirt the edge of the room, and slip out the door into the silent hall. She closed her eyes, welcoming the bliss of privacy, and then wandered the length of the hall. She weaved her way toward the parlor that opened out onto her uncle’s meticulously maintained gardens.

As a relative of the host, her presence could easily be explained away. Her lips twisted. And if not, well, there were far greater scandals than excusing herself from company to steal a silent moment in the moonlight.

Abigail slipped inside the Chintz Parlor, resplendent in floral décor. From the rose-patterned curtains to the Aubusson carpet stitched with lilacs and lilies, it inspired a desire for a different setting than the dirt-laden streets of London.

She closed the door behind her and turned around.

“Abigail,” a deep voice murmured.

A startled gasp escaped her. She slapped a hand to her breast, and her eyes searched for his now familiar figure in the room lit only by the glow of the moonlight. “Geoffrey,” she greeted, as her eyes adjusted to the dark room. Abigail located him over by the doors leading onto the terrace.

His gaze remained focused out the window, on the grounds below. She chewed her lip, looking from Geoffrey back to the door behind her. If they were discovered, she’d cause a scandal to nearly match the one she’d fled back home.

Reason told her to turn around.

Reason told her to flee.

She took one step forward.

“Lady Beatrice has rejected my suit.”

Abigail froze, the tip of her slipper hovered a hairsbreadth above the floor. She completed her step. “I’m sorry, Geoffrey.” And oddly, she found even with the envy she’d felt over his honorable intentions for Beatrice, she meant it. She didn’t want to see him hurt.

Her words were met with silence.

Abigail took another step.

“I don’t like seeing you with Sinclair.”

She cocked her head. “I beg your pardon?” she asked quietly.

“That bastard Sinclair. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

“Oh.” Abigail blinked, stunned by his harsh pronouncement.

Geoffrey still remained stock still, his broad, muscular back presented to her. “I cannot explain my reaction. It shouldn’t matter who courts you.”

Her heart stilled.

“Yet it does, Abby. It matters for reasons I don’t understand…and for reasons that terrify me,” he said hoarsely.

She took a step toward him, and another, and another, until she hovered at the point just beyond his shoulder. He tensed, but she reached past him and pressed the handle of the door. Unseasonably warm spring air spilled into the room, and surrounded them with the sweet fragrant scent of roses and crocuses.

Abigail took him by the hand. “Come with me,” she said.

Geoffrey hesitated a moment, and she waited for him to do the proper thing and take his leave. Except, he continued to defy every preconceived notion she carried of him as a stiffly formal nobleman. He allowed her to pull him along to the armillary at the center of the garden.

“What…?”

“Shh,” she said, placing one finger against her lips, and then pointed her finger skyward. “That is Lyra.” Geoffrey’s indecipherable stare followed her finger, upward. Abigail studied the lute-shaped formation in the sky. “Orpheus was given the harp by Apollo. He would use the harp to play for his bride, Eurydice. Some say her playing was so beautiful, that when man or animal heard the sound of it, they would stop what they were doing and just listen.” Geoffrey remained silent. “Eurydice died suddenly and Orpheus was left broken-hearted. So he journeyed into the underworld, begging Hades to return her to him.” At one time she’d believed the stuff of legends, had believed that a man was courageous enough to fight to claim her as his, at all costs.

“What happened to her?”

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.