A Good Debutante's Guide to Ruin_The Debutante Files

He held up a hand, shaking his head. “Let me guess. It involves Aurelia.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with her.”

He angled his head, his gaze on her sharp, feral. “So this was all you.”

She gulped, wishing she could deflect his wrath, but she deserved every bit of it. She had deceived him.

“Very well,” he bit out. “It’s clear that we need to continue on our present course and see you wed before it’s too late and you bring ruin upon yourself.”

She nodded. “I—I—” She stopped and looked down at her hands, twisting her fingers until they were bloodless and numb.

There was nothing to say. No argument. She would not protest. She would not drag her feet. Dec knew of her masquerade. Just as she had feared. It was mortifying. She could scarcely look him in the eyes.

“Say something,” he demanded.

She moistened her lips and searched for her voice. “What do you want me to say?”

Everything was out in the open between them. She had said enough. Done enough.

The look in his eyes . . . it was too much.

He didn’t want her. Now he knew it was her, the woman from Sodom he had practically begged for, and he didn’t want her. She wasn’t enough.

He was already talking about her marrying someone else even though she had stood before him with her heart in her eyes.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked again.

He stared at her so intently, his eyes jade-dark, searching, reaching inside her, touching that part of her she had worked so hard to hide and protect. He saw it now. He saw her. “Why? Why did you do it?”

She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling, squeezing her eyes tightly. Her chest ached from the pain of it all. From him looking at her, hating her, not understanding. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

It was easier than the truth. Easier than explaining that she had needed something more than the life he was arranging for her with such cold calculation. An empty future without excitement. Without passion.

Without love.

She had wanted love. She claimed it was merely adventure she was seeking . . . a taste of life. A first kiss. But it was more. And she had found it. She had found it in him.

The thought struck her like a slap. Love. She loved him. Dear God.

Her legs suddenly felt wobbly. She gripped the edge of a shelf behind her for support.

“Was it all a game?” he demanded. “Was I a game? Were you laughing at me this entire time?”

“No!” The word choked from her lips.

It was never a game. Those nights it was him. And it was her. Nothing else. Nothing more. That was enough. That had been everything. She fought to swallow the lump in her throat.

How couldn’t he know? He had to know. Didn’t he feel that it was her on those nights? Hadn’t some part of him known when he looked into her eyes that it was her? Somewhere, buried deep? Had her shaking fingers on his skin revealed nothing?

He shook his head swift and hard. “You would risk everything . . . a chance for a good marriage. Your reputation . . . for dim-witted sport.”

The words sliced deep. She couldn’t breathe. It had not been sport to her. She loved him. And he despised her.

She turned to flee the room, panicked at her thoughts.

“Where are you going?” he demanded, catching up with her at the door, forcing her around. She resisted, struggling, and that only brought them closer. He wrapped both arms around her, hauling her close. His body, this nearness, was familiar and foreign at the same time. It had never been the two of them, so honest and exposed before. That was new. His eyes swept over her face, piercing and intent.

“Let me go,” she muttered. “I’m leaving.”

“Where? Where will you go?” he bit out, his lips curling in a cruel smile that was no less devastating to her senses. She felt it all the way to her toes.

She shook her head. “Anywhere but here.”

He laughed then—the harsh sound stung her like needles to the skin.

“There’s only here, Rosalie. There is only me. You have nowhere to go. You have no one else.”

“I have my mother. She’ll take me back if for no other reason than to spite you.”

His smile slipped. “And you’d want that? To go back to her . . . to suffer the advances of her lover.”

She raked him with her gaze—at least what she could see of him from the shoulders up. Too much of him, really. The square jaw and straight, sharp line of his nose over well-carved lips. He was too beautiful and well he knew it. She shivered in his arms. Wasn’t Satan said to be the most beautiful of God’s angels? “Some poisons are worse than others.”

His nostrils flared. “Meaning I’m poison?”

She nodded despite the tightening of his jaw. His eyes sparked fury. “You’ve the right of it. I am poison . . . brewed at the hand of your mother. I am to be feared and avoided.”

She ceased to breathe as his words sank in. He was hard and merciless and she had fallen in love with him. How was it possible?

Because you saw another side of him. You saw something other than this spiteful creature.

So which one was real? This man or the other?

He was holding her tightly, practically lifting her from the ground. Her slippered toes grazed the carpet. Her arms were trapped between them, mashed into his chest.

“Let me go,” she whispered, trying to pull her hands free.

Something indecipherable glinted in his eyes. He angled his head, studying her oddly, his dark eyebrows drawn tightly.

“Unhand me,” she added, relieved her voice held steady even as sensation slithered along her nerves. She was achingly conscious of his bigger body. Her softness melded into all his hard angles.

“So you can leave. Run away to your mother?”

“Or I can leave with Aurelia,” she snapped defiantly, knowing she couldn’t stomach being under that roof again. “She’d take me—”

“She’s my cousin, subject to her brother, and he will not go against me.”

Outrage bubbled up in her chest, blinding her to reason. “If I want to go, I will. I’ll find a way—”

“Fine. Go,” he practically snarled, releasing her abruptly.

She stumbled back a step, staring at him as he swung around and stalked toward the massive mahogany desk. She gazed at him uncertainly. His back was to her, his head bowed like he was reaching for something deep inside himself—like he couldn’t stand the sight of her.

And that hurt most of all maybe. That she was something he could not even bear to look at anymore. Shaking her head, feeling battered and a bit broken inside, she turned to leave.

And then she stopped. Took one staggering step and froze.

Turning around, she stared hard at the back of him, resolve firing through her. She would not leave him. Not like this. Not without at least trying to dispel whatever awful thoughts he harbored of her. He wanted to know why she went to Sodom. Then she would tell him.

Lifting her chin, she approached slowly, her slippers whispering over the carpet.

“I went to Sodom,” she began tentatively, her voice growing stronger as she drew closer, “because for once in my life I wanted to do something . . . I wanted to make a decision that was my own. I wanted to choose who I gave my first kiss to.”

His back stiffened and she knew he was listening. He lifted his bowed head and stared straight ahead, still not looking at her.

She stopped directly behind him, almost tempted to touch the rigid expanse of his back but daring not. Talking to his back was easier. Cowardly of her, but there it was.