She blinked. “I have no notion what you mean.”
“Your prettiness—inside.”
Babette had been talking to him, clearly.
“You are kind, Annabelle.”
“You think I’m kind?”
“I know you are. And compassionate. And fair-minded.”
She did not know what to say.
“You might be a tad overconfident. You might enjoy the fruits of your disproportionately advantageous winsomeness a little too much. But one can hardly fault you for being born ravishing…”
She opened her mouth to inform him that she hadn’t always been attractive. But he went on.
“And so my sister informed me on numerous occasions following our first meeting—even though I did just that. I also labeled you conniving, manipulative, grasping, and let us not forget, shallow.”
She glared at him, regretting her impulse to broach the subject.
“According to my family, I’m…particularly quick to judge. Especially where the ladies of thetonare concerned.”
“I see.” She wanted to hold on to her pique, but her curiosity got the better of her. “I assume there’s something behind that?”
He studied her, the corners of his eyes tightening as if he weighed the merits of revealing his secrets to her. “There was an incident that, shall we say, predisposed me against women who display certain tell-tale traits.”
“You refer to the incident Lady Caroline mentioned, the one involving your friend?”
His entire body went rigid beneath hers. “She had no business discussing that with you.”
“She did not divulge any details, my lord.”
“Hm.”
“If you do not care to tell me, it’s no affair of mine,” she said, striving for a cavalier tone.
Several seconds ticked by. Then, to her surprise, he started his tale. “I was eighteen or nineteen. A man, physically, but not in the ways that matter. I thought I knew everything, of course. Thought my crowd the pinnacle of enlightenment. We were master philosophers, chivalrous heroes, and honorable knights.
“And leading the pack was Dillon—Lord Ramsey, future Earl of Greywood. He was the best of us. Wise beyond his years. Everyone wanted to know him. Everyone wanted tobehim.
“A perfect life seemed laid out before him. He would inherit a vast estate, control untold wealth, all with a perfect countess on his arm. Lady Constance Merriweather, with whom he had a longstanding agreement.”
“What happened?”
“Shedid.”
A sick feeling pervaded her stomach.Thiswas the woman of whom she reminded him.
“She thought it fun to play games with men’s lives. Though promised to Dillon, she chose to dance the waltz, twice, with an out-and-outer, an industrialist, new on the scene, named Lawrence Biddington.”
A newcomer. Not someone like Sterling’s family and all the others of theton, with longstanding titles and wealth. No. Biddington was new wealth and new to Society. Likeherfamily. Guilt, or maybe more aptly, shame trickled through her, because she was like Biddington. For Sterling.
“Dillon called the man out for his disrespect. A duel ensued. Dillon died. And did she mourn? Did she rue the day she’d flirtedand danced and made a spectacle of herself, and by default, Dillon? No.”
Bitterness underscored his every word, even after all these years. He stared off into the distance, seemingly somewhere else.
Caroline had implied he’d changed after the event. She’d also—just once, but Annabelle had never forgotten—very plainly stated she thought Sterling suffered a guilty conscience over it.
