Page 7 of How to Start a Scandal

No, that wasn’t right. He was no longer Mr Sinclair. He was an earl.

Lord Dalton.

She put her fingers to her mouth to cover an unseemly gulp and hastily brushed at her lips in case any crumbs or frosting remained. He watched her with a half-smile, as handsome as ever.

Perhaps even more so.

His dark hair had a habit of being unruly, but rather than giving him an unkempt appearance, it lent him a boyish, rugged charm. His time at war had chiselled his face and his body, carving with time and experience what had once been soft with youth. And it only made him all the more alluring.

More than the appeal of his appearance, however, his eyes were always what had left Violet totally and utterly captivated. With irises so dark one could not make out the pupil, his was a gaze that held all the emotion his features repressed. Right now, that stare was bright with interest and genuine delight.

At her?

Truly, it was unfair how intensely attractive he had always been. His were the good looks that made one recall every deficient attribute in themselves by comparison.

Soon-to-be spinster, nearly on the shelf, dies from the sheer handsomeness of newly minted Earl upon his return from war.

‘Lord Dalton,’ she said at last. ‘Forgive me.’

‘I intruded upon you,’ he replied.

At least they could agree on that.

‘What are you doing among the spinsters and old women?’ he demanded.

Violet’s eyes widened. ‘They might hear you.’

‘They know what they are,’ he said, but did so with at least a lowered voice. ‘Why is your husband not sweeping you across the dance floor?’

She wanted to close her eyes and truly fade back into the wall until she turned entirely invisible. But such a thing was impossible. Instead, she squared her shoulders and met his gaze despite the heat burning her face. ‘I am unwed.’

He lifted a brow. ‘You can’t be serious.’

This is where she ought to say something witty and poignant. Except that she had dulled the point of her humour over the years, grinding it away in an attempt to slip unseen into the background where she would not be noticed. No doubt she’d come up with a charming reply somewhere between three and four in the morning when it wouldn’t serve her a whit of good.

Instead of an intelligent reply, she offered a helpless shrug and inwardly rolled her eyes at the action. Could she be any more of a dullard?

‘It’s been six years since you came out,’ he said. ‘That would put you nearly on the shelf.’ His gaze reflected something she didn’t care for. Was it disgust? Pity?

In that moment, she was able to remember more than just how his handsome looks stole her attention and how his flirtation made her pulse stutter. Times when they were children and he had crushed her spirits with words that sliced deep. Like referring to her as hearty or commenting that she wasn’t skinny like other girls.

The angry hurt swirled around the small cake in her empty stomach and snapped some steel into her spine.

‘Perhaps it’s because I’m so hearty,’ she shot at him. She wished she had been completely calm when she said it, that her heart wasn’t hammering with frantic, erratic beats when she ripped those painful words from her memory, but she’d be lying.

His eyes narrowed at her. ‘I feel as though you’re being cryptic.’

‘I assure you, I’m being quite blunt,’ she replied. ‘You said that to me when we were children.’

He lifted a brow. ‘You remember that?’

She met his eyes. ‘I recall many things you said to me when we were children. And even when we were older.’

A muscle ticked in his cheek, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a show of apparent discomfort. ‘I believe,’ he said slowly, ‘that I was rather an idiot in my youth.’

‘And you’re a better man now?’ The disappointment of that night slammed into her anew, tearing open the old wound she’d thought long since scarred over. He’d held her heart by a string then, dangling it, toying with it. And she’d so readily handed him the end of that string, so eager for love, so desperate to be seen as more than a minor flirtation. Perhaps that was why she’d been so easily swept off her feet later.

‘I certainly hope to be a better man.’ Lord Dalton’s gaze softened and he regarded her with such earnestness, such heartfelt emotion, that her defences relaxed.