Page 34 of Again, Scoundrel

He had something to say, finally. Something he thought she would understand. “I am sorry for the garden. You are innocent, and I should not have taken liberties with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Violet snapped. “I took liberties with you if I recall correctly, and that was my choice to make.”

“I pushed you,” Alistair argued. “I overcame your good sense.”

Violet closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “Lord Alistair,” she said, “I am an innocent, as you English like to say. But I am not ignorant. I can understand my own choices and hold my own responsibility for them. Ignorance and innocence are not the same thing. They should not be the same thing. Do you understand?”

He breathed in deeply and wished his head wasn’t spinning from the evening’s events and the bumpy carriage ride and the tempest that was Violet Goodwin. This conversation was slipping sideways, as it always seemed to do with her, veering into territory he didn’t want to cover. Like when he’d spoken of the Koh-I-Noor diamond and his failed career. Or when he’d practically begged her to like him, of all things. Why should he care at all if she liked him?

But he did.

In the end he just shook his head, at a loss for how this conversation ought to proceed.

“No,” he said. “I don’t understand.

Violet watched his jaw clench as he thought, and she knew she’d been right to ask exactly what he was sorry for. Alistair Crawford didn’t understand her at all.

“Alistair,” she said more gently this time. “I’m going to retire now. It’s been a long evening. I know you meant well, coming here, but I must ask you to please go home now. There is nothing more to say.”

“Tell me what you want to hear, and I’ll say it.”

She shook her head and spoke softly. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re a part of them, whether you wish to be or not. No matter how hard or far you run, you cannot escape the world that made you. And it is not my world. So, this is where we part ways.”

“Violet, please listen. I did what I had to.”

“No, you didn’t. You did what was easiest.”

Against her better judgment, she stood still for a moment longer to give him one last chance. Her heart beat hard in her chest; it wanted him to say she could be as skilled and trusted a medical professional as any surgeon might be. Perhaps even better. It wanted him to believe in her. It wanted him to announce that belief to the world.

But her heart was wrong to hold onto such a naïve and foolish hope, because he said nothing.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she murmured in the face of his silence. “I must be off to bed.”

“Violet, please.” He reached for her, but she stepped away from his outstretched hand with a firm “goodnight.”

Violet disappeared into the house, leaving Alistair to stand alone in the drive. He had failed this evening utterly, on every front. He’d double-crossed McGann, Violet was furious at him, and he’d made a scene in front of the entire ton that his father was sure to hear about.

He felt as if he could do nothing right, as if he was completely adrift in this world. It was the same way he felt the year he’d turned fifteen and snuck away to join the Navy. The year his entire family had turned pear-shaped for reasons he’d never understood. The year his father had begun to hate him.

He absentmindedly reached for the flask again, but it wasn’t there.

You’ve given up, he reminded himself.

And then a throat clearing from inside the carriage alerted him he wasn’t alone.

“I could use a hand out,” Catherine called. “If you don’t mind, your lordship.”

Chapter

14

Alistair made his way back to Waverly House on foot. He’d borrowed the Timsbury carriage for the evening and had to retrieve it. He stomped down the street, nearly running over some elderly gentlemen who called out “heel” in the wake of his passing. Alistair didn’t disagree. He was a heel.

All he wanted now was to go back home, drink as much as necessary to dull this strange ache in his chest and climb into bed. But he’d sworn off drinking, and when he arrived at his conveyance, Andrew McGann was leaning against the side of it, smoking a cheroot.

“That,” the Scotsman drawled as soon as Alistair came near, “was not well done of you.”

“McGann,” Alistair said. “I can explain.”