Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous (27 page)

Geoffrey jerked his arm free. He pulled a kerchief from his jacket and held it to his nose. “I’m not leaving, Westfield.”

“By god, I’ll summon a team of servants to have you removed from this foyer if you do not leave immediately.” As if he’d been waiting in the wings for his master’s orders, the butler reappeared.

Geoffrey ignored the stocky servant. “Abigail…”

“Is dead,” Westfield spat, and with a curt nod to the butler, spun on his heel and marched purposefully back up the stairs.

Geoffrey stared up after him, unblinking. His heart thudded to a slow halt.

Dead.

Dead.

He took his head in his hands, and shook it wildly back and forth. Surely he’d heard Westfield wrong. Surely he’d know if Abigail had died because his heart would have known, and would have ceased to beat. Geoffrey dug his fingers into his temples and searched the foyer.

“Oh, God,” the agonized entreaty tore from deep inside him. The crimson stained handkerchief fell to the floor.

Geoffrey searched for purchase, and found none as the life drained from his legs. He collapsed to his knees. He dimly registered the butler speaking to someone, but the voices came as if down a long hall. Geoffrey sucked in deep, gasping breaths as his past and present blurred together with a dreadfully remarkable likeness.

Someone touched a hand to Geoffrey’s shoulder, and he snarled feeling like a caged beast set free.

“Lord Redbrooke?” The delicate, gentle female tone broke through the cloud of madness that gripped him.

He blinked. “Lady Beatrice,” he said, his voice hoarse.

Lady Beatrice glanced around, and said something to the butler. The servant nodded and with a bow took his leave. “I overheard your conversation with my brother. I do not approve of your treatment of Abby last evening, but my brother’s actions were unforgiveable.”

Geoffrey struggled to put her words into some semblance of order that made sense.

“Abigail is not dead,” she said.

Geoffrey’s eyes slid closed, as a prayer slipped from his lips. He grabbed Lady Beatrice’s hands in his. “Thank you.”

Lady Beatrice tugged him to his feet. “Hurry. My brother and father mustn’t find out. Come, I’ll take you to her.”

Energy filled his strides. “How is she?” he rasped.

Lady Beatrice shot a pointed look over her shoulder, and touched a finger to her lips. “Hush.” She guided him abovestairs and down the hall, past several wide-eyed servants. She stopped in front of a door, and looked up at him. “Abigail injured her arm. She suffered a head injury, and has not awakened since the accident. Now, you must be quick, my lord.” She reached for the door handle, and then hesitated. “She is…not well, my lord.”

Geoffrey reached past her, and pressed the handle. He entered the room.

Beatrice closed the door behind him.

His eyes struggled to adjust to Abigail’s dark chambers. He took a tentative step toward the massive, feather-down four poster bed at the center of the room.

“Abby,” he called quietly.

The popping of the embers within the fireplace hearth made the only sound in the ominously quiet chambers.

Geoffrey took several tentative steps toward the bed, and stopped when his knees knocked the white coverlet. He sucked in an anguished breath, and sank onto the stark white coverlet. “Abby,” he breathed.

Her face looked an artist’s palate of green, purple, and blue hues. A large, ugly, distended knot marred the center of her forehead. “Oh, Abby,” he whispered. He reached for her hand, and froze at the sight of a sling that had been fashioned to stabilize her arm. He wanted to toss his head back and hurl vile epithets at the heavens. And yet, he had no one to blame except himself. He’d done this. Just as he’d sent his father away, he’d sent Abby fleeing. An odd gurgling rumbled deep in his chest. Geoffrey’s vision blurred, as he realized the great, gasping sobs came from him. “What have I done?” he rasped.

The cruel emptiness of silence, his only answer.

Through tear-filled eyes, he studied Abigail’s injured arm and his stomach churned as he imagined the pain she’d suffered when the dislocated limb had been popped back into place.

Geoffrey reached for her other, uninjured hand. He picked up her delicate palm and turned it over in his hand, studying her long, elegant fingers.

His mind tripped back to the night she’d interlocked their hands and held them up to the star-studded skies.

That is Lyra.

He raised her hand to his mouth, and brushed his lips along the inner portion of her wrist. “Oh, Abby, I love you.” He studied her blackened eyes for any sign of awareness but she remained in the thick haze of slumber that had stolen her from the now, and kept her in the darkened world at the edge of death. “I have loved you since the moment I knocked over Lord and Lady Hughes’s servant’s tray of champagne and nearly toppled you to the floor.” He dropped to his knees beside her bed. “I am nothing without you.” His words broke. “Do you know Abby, I thought the greatest crime I’d committed against my father lie in failing to honor my responsibilities. Only now,”
too late
, “do I realize, how very wrong I’ve been. My greatest offence lies in not listening to him, and now…you. Forgive me.”

The door opened and closed.

Geoffrey didn’t take blurry gaze from Abigail’s swollen, bruised eyes.

“Lord Redbrooke. You must go,” Lady Beatrice whispered.

He managed a jerky nod. Except, he could not make his legs move. “I can’t leave her.”

The soft pad of her slippered feet upon the hardwood floor filled the quiet. She stopped next to Abigail’s bed. “You must, my lord. I promise I’ll send word.”

“Why would you help me in this way?”
Why, when I am the contemptible bastard who treated Abigail like the refuse upon my boots
?

“Because you love her. And she loves you.”

Or she had. His eyes fixed on her too-still form. She had to get well. Because the alternative would break him down until he was nothing more than an empty shell of a human-being. There was no life worth living if she were not part of it and when she opened her eyes, he would spend the rest of his days proving himself worthy of her, proving himself different than the bastard who’d stolen her innocence and viciously betrayed her. And she would open her eyes. He willed the words to truth.

Geoffrey stood on shaky legs. “Thank you, my lady.”

She nodded. “Now, follow me.” Lady Beatrice started for the door.

“And you’ll send word?” Geoffrey asked, as he walked beside her.

“Every day,” she promised.

As Geoffrey slipped from the duke’s townhouse like a silent thief absconding with the Crown’s jewels, Geoffrey resolved to become the man Abigail deserved.

And propriety and respectability could both go to the devil.

A gentleman should recognize when he errs, and is not too proud to then make his apologies.

4
^th
Viscount Redbrooke

~26~

Abigail lived in a world where reality blended with dream; where pain blended with terror. She thrashed upon her pillow as fingers poked at her person. A cry gurgled up her throat and spilled past her lips as large, sure hands prodded at her shoulder.

She registered the Duke of Somerset conversing with another man. The tormentor; the prodder whose excruciating touch filled her with agony, murmured something to the duke.

Head injury.

Accident.

Dire.

Unlikely she’ll live.

Who did they speak of? Pity filled her for the poor, unfortunate soul who fought for her life. Abigail struggled to open her eyes and form words…as with a mounting horror, hideous memories crept in.

Geoffrey.

The numbing throb behind her eyes, intensified until nausea boiled in her stomach and she remembered.

Geoffrey’s derision.

His rejection.

The accident.

Oh, God. The poor soul they spoke of…

It is me.

I hear you. I can’t die
. But the fingers of unconsciousness tugged her back into its inky black folds, and this time she gladly sank into the slumberous state.

She wavered in and out of a murky consciousness, filled with a desperation to see her family and assure them she would survive. In the deepest yearnings of her suffering, Geoffrey came to her, knelt at her side, pleaded forgiveness. And then, the soft, loving gentleman would transform into a derisive, sneering figure she didn’t recognize. Through it all, Abigail remained trapped in the silent state.

Until at last, she blinked her eyes open.

A guttural groan wrenched from deep inside and increased the throbbing pressure behind her eyes. She turned her head slightly, taking in the darkness of the still room.

Abigail closed her eyes again in attempt to rid herself of the piercing pain that pounded at her skull.

Someone gasped.

Abigail tried to look toward the frantic patter of footsteps. The click of the door echoed around her aching head, and she forced back nausea. Abigail rested her head upon the pillow and stared up at the cherubs dancing on the mural above her bed.

Then…the door opened again.

“Abigail.”

She sorted through muddied thoughts as she tried to place the voice. Then, taking a slow breath she turned her head on the pillow.

Her uncle strode over to the bed and sat in the empty chair beside her, his somber gaze moving over her. “Thank God, Abigail. We had feared you would not recover.”

The memory of that thunderous night went ripping through her thoughts, and she gasped as she recalled the horror of Geoffrey’s rejection, the mind-numbing terror of the carriage accident, then the unbearable soreness of her head and body.

She wet her lips.

“Would you care for water?” He reached for a pitcher that sat beside her bed.

Her stomach churned at the thought of filling her belly with anything. “No,” she said, that one word hoarse, and near unrecognizable as belonging to her.

He froze, and sat back in his seat.

“How long have I been asleep?” she whispered.

“Nearly three days, Abigail.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Do you recall what happened that evening?”

God, she wished with the pain the accident had brought her, it could have managed to somehow shake loose the all too familiar sting of Society’s rejection, and worse, Geoffrey’s disdain.

For the remainder of her days she would recall the precise moment when the warm, caring look in Geoffrey’s eyes had been replaced with the cool, flinty ice of a man who’d found her actions unforgiveable. Her heart twisted with a bitter resentment. “I remember.” Until she drew her last breath she would love him, but she would not, could not forget how easily he had turned her out.

“You injured your arm quite badly.”

She touched her fingers to the sling over her left shoulder that restricted her use of the limb. The screams of horror as the arm had been tended to by some faceless doctor filtered through her remembrance.

“You suffered a very serious injury to your head. The doctor feared you’d not recover.” He leaned over and touched the fingers of her uninjured hand. “You have too much of your mother’s strength and courage to die that way,” he said, his words gruff.

If she were truly strong and courageous she would have never humbled herself at Geoffrey’s feet on that stormy night.

A sudden onset of guilt besieged her as she silently confronted the shame of all the turmoil she’d visited upon her uncle and his family, and for what? A man who didn’t love her? A gentleman who had treated her like the refuse upon his boots?

The duke had taken her in, treated her as another daughter, and she’d repaid that kindness with the scandal of her past and the recklessness in going to Geoffrey.

Abigail embraced her burning resentment because it kept her from weeping useless little tears for a man not deserving of those salty droplets.

“Would you care to speak of him?” the duke said quietly. The hiss and pop of the embers within the hearth filled the quiet.

Not of the stormy night, but rather, him.

Geoffrey.

No. She’d rather bury the memory of Geoffrey with all the other painful, shameful sins of her past. Instead she said, “There is nothing to speak about.”

“It is my understanding he turned you away.”

Her uncle would not let the matter rest. Abigail turned her head, and looked toward the heavily curtained windows. “Yes, he did.” Geoffrey had more than turned her away; with his vitriol he’d reduced her to the broken and shamed creature she’d resolved never to be again after Alexander’s betrayal. She cringed in shamed remembrance.

“If Redbrooke hadn’t sent you away…”

“But he did,” she said with a steely rage she’d not felt even after Alexander’s betrayal. She didn’t want to speak of Geoffrey.
I can’t.

She wanted to begin throwing bits of dirt upon the memory of him until he was nothing more than a dream of what-ifs.

Her uncle leaned over and touched her hand. “I believe he does care for you, Abigail.”

Abigail looked away a moment. She winced as pain radiated out from her forehead and raced down the side of her cheek, and along her jawline.
I should not have gone to him.

She wondered if in the light of a new day, if he’d had time to reflect, would Geoffrey have been more forgiving?

The memory of him as he’d been— hard, unyielding, with, his stiffly held shoulders and a flinty expression in his blue-green eyes confirmed the emptiness of that possibility. No, she thought with more hurt than he deserved. His reaction would not have been different.

Abigail took a deep breath. “I should never have gone to him.” For so many reasons. “I just…”

“You just love him, Abigail.”

She closed her eyes again. “I am so very sorry,” she whispered. For too many things to put to words. “I repaid your kindness with this great scandal.” She seemed incapable of bringing anything but shame to those she loved.

“Abigail, I’m a duke. My family is capable of weathering far greater scandals than this.” Ducal arrogance leant credibility to his words.