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‘It wasn’t because of Jared,’ Faith said, remembering how it had felt, then, to be on the receiving end of that media fever. At least this time she’d actually slept with the guy. ‘Not entirely, anyway. I just wanted to be somewhere—someone—else. I wanted people to not care what I did, to be able to live my own life.’
‘Without caring what you left behind.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said, but she knew he was never going to understand. ‘And you never answered my question. Why does your reputation matter so much to you?’
His lips curved into a cruel smile. ‘Didn’t you say it yourself? It’s all I have.’
‘No, it’s not.’ She looked up at him, willing him to understand this one thing, even if everything else between them would forever be a battleground. ‘You have so much more. I saw it, that night in London. The real you. You’re more than just Lord Beresford. You’re Dominic, too. And you’re denying the real you just to keep up a façade in front of people who don’t even matter!’
‘Whereas you don’t even bother with the façade,’ he snapped back. ‘You just run away when things get hard. You pretend to be anyone except the person you really are. Don’t talk to me about denying my true self, Lady Faith. I doubt even you know who you really are any more. But it sure as hell isn’t this woman in pearls and evening dress.’
* * *
Faith’s skin burned pink above the fabric of her gown, and Dominic took a perverse pleasure in knowing he could still affect her that way. ‘Maybe not. But I know something else I’m not. I’m not going to be your scapegoat any longer. I’m not taking the blame for this. Life is risk. You fail. People leave. And until you take that chance, you’ll never be happy. You wanted one night with me, and you got it.’
‘And you always told me you were going to leave,’ Dominic said. ‘At least that was one thing you didn’t lie to me about.’
‘What, you expected me to stay? As your events co-ordinator, right? No thanks.’
‘I might have wanted more if—’
‘If I weren’t such a scandal? An embarrassment?’
‘That’s not it,’ he said, but even he knew he was lying.
‘Yes. Yes it is.’ Faith shook her head and reached for the balcony door. The buzz and noise of the ballroom filled his ears again as she stepped through. They were talking about them again. It seemed to Dominic they might never stop.
‘Goodbye, Dominic,’ Faith said, and he had to grip onto the railings to stop himself hauling her back, from making her finish this. He needed her to understand what she’d done to him, what it meant...
He watched as she made her way back into the crowd. Saw her put on her smile, the one that looked completely different to the quick, bright grins he’d seen when she was just Faith Fowler. And nothing at all like the slow, secret smiles she’d given him between kisses, on that last night.
He studied her a little closer. The tension in her shoulders, the slant of her head. The desperation in her eyes. All things he’d never seen before she became Lady Faith again.
She looked as if the walls were closing in on her, bricking her up alive. How hadn’t he seen that before? This life, here, was killing her. And he didn’t know how to live anything different.
No wonder she’d only ever wanted one night.
‘You know,’ Sylvia said, sidling up to him, ‘that wasn’t entirely what I meant when I said “be boring”.’
‘Faith doesn’t know how to be boring,’ Dominic said.
‘No,’ Sylvia agreed, staring out across the ballroom at Lady Faith Fowlmere, too. ‘I always liked that about her.’
‘Me too,’ Dominic admitted.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘SO. THAT WAS an interesting little show you and Lord Beresford put on for us all.’ Faith scowled out of the taxi window at her father’s words. Bad enough that the whole of London society had been watching through the glass. She didn’t need to deconstruct the misery with her father, too.
‘It wasn’t meant to be for public consumption.’ It should have just been her and Dominic, working things out. Making sense of everything that had happened between them. Not just trying to hurt each other without anyone else noticing.
‘Wrong venue then, buttercup.’ He patted her knee. ‘Come on. You know people are fascinated by you. By all of us, really. But especially by you.’
‘Maybe that’s why I left.’
‘And here I thought you didn’t care what people thought about you. Wasn’t that always what you used to say, when your mother would complain about another photo of you showing your knickers outside a nightclub?’ He spoke the words lightly, as always, but Faith thought perhaps there was something harder underneath this time.
