“I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“I know,” he said, softening a little. “Don’t worry. We’ll find you a husband who’s worthy of you. Perhaps Sherbourne or Prince Nikolai will still agree to the match. No one need ever know about the mistake you made tonight.” He pressed an awkward kiss on the painful bump on her temple, and then hurried away.
Mistake.
She shut her door and undressed by herself, unwilling to call for her maid when she needed privacy so badly. Her movements were stiff and awkward, and her head still ached from the fall she’d taken.
Father was right; it had been a terrible mistake to meet Dylan in the garden. Her gullibility shamed her, as did her passionate response to his sweet kisses.
He’d played her like a musician strums an instrument, said all the things she wanted to hear, and led her irrevocably into a trap of her own making. She shouldn’t have believed his pretty words. After all, she’d heard the rumors about his many affairs. She’d known no woman had ever managed to capture his attention for more than a moment or two.
But she’d wanted to fall in love so badly.
So, she’d constructed a phantom hero, someone who met all her criteria and just happened to be named Captain Dylan Blake. Then, when the actual man came along, she’d tried to force him into a suit of armor that had never quite suited him.
She should have trusted her first instincts and listened to her head, not her heart. She’d known he wasn’t the man she wanted him to be the very first night she’d met him. Why hadn’t she been more careful? Why hadn’t she thought things through before behaving so rashly? She should have chosen someone else on whom to bestow her kisses. Someone manageable like Viscount Sherbourne.
With a sigh, she hung her wilted gown over the back of a chair for the maid to take care of in the morning. Finally, redressed in a warm flannel nightgown, she slipped into her bed and took several long deep breaths, trying to calm her frazzled nerves.
It was no use. She couldn’t stop thinking about Dylan, couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Merely a trickle at first, they quickly gained momentum as she mourned her lost innocence.
When Dylan looked at her, he had made her feel like the center of his world. She’d been thoroughly taken in by him, so she supposed she deserved whatever fate her father chose to hand her. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for a pair of mysterious eyes and a cocky grin.
Stupid. So very stupid.
When all her emotion was spent and she laid in her lonely bed, staring up at the ceiling with dry burning eyes, all she could think about was that kiss. She couldn’t forget the way Dylan’s hand had felt upon the tender slope of her breast. In his arms, she’d felt gloriously alive.
Her worst fear was living the rest her life without ever again knowing that feeling.
* * *
After his confrontation with Michael, Dylan returned to his rented rooms. He spent the rest of the night drinking himself into oblivion, trying to forget the utter mess he’d made of his life.
It didn’t work. Every time he closed his eyes, thoughts of the people he’d betrayed haunted him. Michael—finally washing his hands of his black sheep brother, once and for all. Natalia—her beautiful green eyes filled with reproach, her professed love turning to bitter anger.
In the end, he didn’t even have the bloody 200 pounds to show for the whole debacle. He’d never gotten Natalia to agree to a second dance. Instead, he’d compromised her beyond his wildest dreams, after promising Michael he wouldn’t.
He couldn’t blame Natalia and his brother for hating him. And he couldn’t blame Mrs. Tweed for finely serving him with an eviction notice.
Fumbling in his breast pocket, he drew out Natalia’s pilfered gloved. He lifted it to his face and inhaled her faint scent. His life had been empty for a very long time, but until tonight, he’d never realized how much he longed for what he’d glimpsed in Natalia’s eyes. Friendship. Love. Hope.
The mere thought of what he’d lost made him sick with yearning, so he made a conscious effort to turn his thoughts away from Natalia. Instead, he distilled his pain into anger and focused it on his father.
As happy as he’d been to learn his grandfather had left him Aldabaran, it killed him to know he’d spent twelve years in the army for nothing. How could his father have kept something like that from him?
He’d struggled all his life to discover the innate flaw that turned everyone who should have loved him away in disgust. Even his mother had abandoned him.
Michael had counseled him to go to Aldabaran immediately, but he knew he couldn’t leave London without confronting his father. Perhaps he was a glutton for punishment, but he needed to focus on discovering why the earl had hidden the inheritance—it was far less painful to think about confronting his father than to dwell on the look in Natalia’s eyes when she discovered the truth about the wager.
* * *
“Natalia, darling. It’s time to wake up.”
Natalia groaned, covering her head with the blanket, and tried to ignore Clarice for as long as possible. Her head felt as though it been trampled by a herd of elephants. When she explored her scalp with her hand, she found a large bump near her temple. She winced. How had that happened? Bad memories hovered at the edge of her consciousness, but instinct warned her not to examine them too closely.
“Natalia, wake up.” Clarice would not go away. She pulled relentlessly at Natalia’s blankets, until there was nothing left to hide beneath.
With a sigh, Natalia opened her eyes and found her stepmother hovering next to her bed. “What time is it?”
