Second Chances: A Romance Writers of America Collection (Stark World 2.50)

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," Edgington 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 s

arcasm, 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 the 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 once more smooth, he again 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 spoken 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 returned to my old ways," he said. "Indeed, I became worse than ever. 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 gray 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 remembered 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 traveled, have conquered the Continent by all accounts. Why do you 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.