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Percival shook his head, and when it pounded all the harder, stopped. “I’m not certain I can forgive this, Nia.”
“I don’t blame you.” The look she bestowed upon him brimmed with empathy. “My name is Lavinia. Now that I’m your countess, I’d like you to call me by the full name.”
“Noted.” He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. Exhaustion swept through him. This was only the beginning. “Why did you agree at all?”
She heaved a long sigh and came to a halt near one of the windows. At another time, perhaps a different day, she would have made a fetching picture, and if he hadn’t been so damned hung over, he might have taken her against that window. Burying himself into her honeyed heat had always provided a welcome escape. But would it now when she was at the crux of his current mess? “You have no idea what it it’s like to survive in this world for women like me.” Shadows filled her eyes. “I wanted more than that life. Last night provided a path I previously never had access to.”
“You used me.” Annoyance speared through him. “Perhaps I wanted more for myself as well. That’s dead now.”
“Yet you chose to drink your problems away, which landed you into bigger ones.” A smile softened the words. “You’ll never meet your potential while you continue such behavior. Don’t destroy the rest of you because of it.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I know enough from this past year.” As she came close to him, the faint scent of jasmine wafted to his nose. “You are wounded and hurting, haven’t properly grieved the death of your wife, have no idea how to come up to the mark your father left, and you are quite lost.” She settled onto the arm of his chair, and he wished to gravitate toward her warmth, listen to her counsel, but he was too damned angry. “The first step into the light is pulling yourself out of the bottle.”
Had she always been so wise? Beyond bedding her, he had no idea, having never taken an interest in her beyond what she could do in the bedroom. The conversations they’d enjoyed had never touched on her personal life.
More’s the pity.
“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted in a choked whisper.
“Why?” She brushed a shock of hair from his forehead.
His eyes shuttered closed at the light touch. “I’m afraid.” What the deuce was wrong with him? Never had he felt as vulnerable as he did now.
“Of?” Her eyes were kind; the brown depths so inviting.
“Remembering and then regretting.” The hand resting on his knee curled into a fist. “Of forgetting. Of never being enough… for anyone.” It was shocking, that revelation, but then, the last day hadn’t exactly been normal.
Before Lavinia could answer him, the butler appeared in the doorway.
“The Duke of Bradford has arrived to see you, Your Lordship. He is demanding an immediate audience.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The situation had gone from bad to worse.
