Then she spun on her heel and left.
Chapter Three
left standing in the middle of the ballroom, Edgington watched as Miss Hargrove—as Sofie—stormed away. She did not look back, quickly becoming lost in a crowd that tittered, gossiped and stared.
Once he could no longer see the green feather adorning Sofie’s hair, he turned his attention to the shocked, thrilled faces before him. They’d given the gossips much to discuss tonight, and no doubt by tomorrow the tale of how Miss Sofia Hargrove gave the Earl of Edgington the cut direct would be all over town.
Lifting his brows, he stared them down. Most dropped their gaze, and those that didn’t appeared suitably cowed. Satisfied, he took his leave of the ballroom, finding an empty chamber so he could let the facade slip.
Running a hand over his face, he exhaled. God. Sofie.
She was even more beautiful now than she’d been ten years ago. Her hair looked as silky as he remembered it, his fingers itching to bury themselves in the strawberry-blonde tresses. The smattering of freckles across her nose were the same and she no longer attempted to disguise them with powder, which he found unbearably erotic. She’d held herself proudly, as if daring him to do his worst, and then she had cut him and carried herself away like a queen.
He’d wanted nothing more than to haul her against him and cover her mouth with his.
It was the same as ten years ago, the same rush of emotion clamoring through him. She made him feel.... The feelings were so big, he didn’t know how to describe them. And he wanted her. Damn, how he wanted her.
That last night, he’d been desperate for her. They’d never kissed, never even so much as touched inappropriately, but he’d wanted to. He been drowning in desire for her. Unused to restraint, he’d kept his baser instincts under ruthless control for her, terrified of scaring her with the strength of his passion. Then, she’d leaned over, her eyes sparkling, and her lips had brushed his so hesitantly…. He couldn’t have contained himself after that.
It had all gone spectacularly wrong. They’d been caught, and he should have convinced the gossips they saw nothing, should have used his privilege to ensure they spoke not at all. Instead, he’d been so caught up in Sofie he’d let them leave, and within moments Sofie’s father had arrived to drag her away. From there, it had only been a matter of hours before it was the talk of the ton.
The next morning, he’d dressed to call upon her. He’d even gotten as far as her street before doubt crashed over him. What was he doing? He would ruin her, as he’d ruined everything else in his life. Panic had screamed through him, and he’d turned on his heel and left. He’d done her a favor, he told himself. She could not want him as husband, not the disreputable Viscount March. When he’d heard she’d left for the continent, he’d been certain he’d been correct. She was better off without him, and look how the years bore truth to his words.
Linking his hands behind his neck, he stared at nothing. He wasn’t better without her. He’d always known that.
A sudden thought occurred. Why wouldn’t she let him talk to her? It had been ten years. Surely her anger should have faded by now, enough to listen to him at least. True, he’d been the wicked Viscount March and blame for their disgrace could be laid upon him, but she’d agreed to meet him. She’d kept meeting him. She’d kissed him.
He needed to talk to her.
Turning, he left the room. She wasn’t in the ballroom, or any of the retiring rooms. She wasn’t in the banquet hall, or the foyer, or anywhere else in the house.
Exhaling, he looked out the window of one of the dozens of rooms she wasn’t in. Would she really go into the garden? It was freezing out there, the sky threatening snow...but she’d always loved the gardens.
Procuring his coat and his gloves from a passing footman, he set out into the night. The cold hit him as soon as passed through the door, slithering along the collar of his coat and pushing against his skin. Devoid of people, silence hung over the garden, a heavy expectation in the air…or maybe it was his own thoughts that made it seem so.
Deep in the garden, deep enough the lights of the house had faded, he found her. Her back to him, Sofie gazed out over the Thornton’s gardens, the emerald green of her gown a strip of color against the darkness of her cloak.
Stealing himself, Edgington approached her. “You always did like a garden at night.”
Sofie’s shoulders stiffened. She didn’t reply.
Standing next to her, he laced his hands behind his back. They stood silent, the faint strains of a waltz wrapping around them.
Finally, she spoke. “Why are you here?”
His heart sank at the derision in her tone. “I wished to speak with you.”
“I do not wish to speak with you. Surely that was obvious.”
“It was.” How could he get through to her? “I wanted—”
She whirled around. “And your desires are more important than mine? Your wants? I do not want to speak with you. I want to be left alone. I am in England for two months, and I want that time to be pleasant.”
Two months? She needed to let him speak with her. She needed—
Making a sound of frustration, she made to turn on her heel. His brain shut down and, panic rushing through him, he grabbed arm.
Immediately, her expression closed. “Remove your hand.”
The coldness of her voice chilled him more than the winter night. Immediately, he let her go. “My apologies, Miss Hargrove. It was not my intention—”
She laughed without mirth. “It never is.”
“It was not my intention,” he continued, ignoring the thread of annoyance her dismissal caused, “to deprive you of autonomy. I only ask....” He paused. How to say? “I should like to explain.”
“I should think we are past the stage of explanation, Viscount March.” As if realizing her error, she flushed. “I beg your pardon. My lord Edgington.”
“Nonetheless,” he said, persevering despite her glare. “I should like to explain. You did not allow me the opportunity before.”
“I did not allow you?” she said. “I did not allow you? How, sir, was I to allow you when I was dragged off by my father, half-dressed and humiliated? Was I to allow you when you did not call upon me? When you did not, in fact, seek me out at all? Tell me, sir, when was I to allow you anything?” Her lips twisted bitterly. “I believe I allowed you enough.”
“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 last 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, very 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 he had her ear, he had no idea what to say.
Chapter Four
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,” the earl 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 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 again smooth, he 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 spoke 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 went back to my old ways,” he said. “Indeed, I became worse than I ever had previous. 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 grey 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 remember 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 travelled, have conquered the Continent by all accounts. Why do you have 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.
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 collar bone, 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 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 away, but he caught her to him. “Sofie, you cannot know how I regretted it. I was callow and foolish, and I wish so God damn 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 nineteen, 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 just 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 have 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 to never 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...”
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