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...”
He gathered her in his arms, whispering comfort and of how he was sorry, he was so damned sorry. “I should have come after you. I should have followed you to the Continent and made you listen. I should have done it any time these last ten years. I’m sorry I didn’t. Sof, you’ve not notion of how sorry I am.”
“Fat lot of good sorry does me,” she hiccupped, attempting a scowl but certain she failed miserably.
A smile. Finally. “Ah, Sof. How can I resist you when you say things like that?”
Hiding against his chest, she shook her head.
A gentle finger under her chin forced her gaze to his, and her breath caught at what she saw in his gray eyes. “Sof. You know I love you, don’t you?”
She bit her lip.
“I do.” He brushed her lips with his. “I love you.” He kissed her cheekbone. “I love you.” The hollow of her throat. “I love you.”
She closed her eyes. She wanted to believe him. She did. “How can we feel this way? We’ve been.... It’s been ten years, Michael.”
His lips feathered over her right brow. “Sof. You need time. We need time. Tomorrow, I will call upon you, and then I’ll pay my address to your brother. I’ll ask his permission to court you. No decision needs to be made. We’ll take it as it comes.”
“I don’t know if—”
Pulling back, he took her by the shoulders. Jaw tense, he said, “Tomorrow, Sofie.”
Words deserted her at his intensity, at her own foolish hope. She wanted that, so badly.
“Believe me, Sof. Believe us.”
There was so much against them, so much— “Stephen will thrash you. He’ll keep you from me.”
Michael set his jaw. “He’ll try.”
A sudden, blinding happiness took her, surely too bright to last, but she would grab it while it burned. She brought his hand to her cheek, kissed the long, sensitive fingers. “Tomorrow.”