A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2) - Sarah MacLean Page 0,120

had vowed to protect. And so, when her brow furrowed in her confusion at his words, he gave them to her again, clearer.

“My school was paid for, but everything else cost money. Food. Drink. Linens. The wash. And the work I had done for it—it was suddenly unavailable; no doubt the cooks and cleaners at the school had been paid well to forget I existed. I could not survive without funds.” The memory of those months, desperate and hungry and angry, lying in the dark, wondering what would come next. “King would sneak me food and put my shirts in his laundry now and then, but I was proud and it felt like—”

“Friendship,” she whispered. “It was friendship.”

It had been. King had always watched for him. But—“It felt like charity.”

She nodded, and he saw the understanding alongside the sadness in her eyes. Alongside the pity. “It is hard to believe we deserve better.”

Did she not see? “Don’t compare us. You were never—”

“What?”

The frustration in the question unlocked him. He stood, forcing her touch from him, unwilling to bear it. Being here, in Lily’s little room, was the worst of it. Every word was wrapped in her, and even as he paced, he was barely able to move—his size reducing the space to a step. Two.

Finally, he stopped, thrusting his hands through his hair. He let out a long breath and said, “Peg came to me when I was fifteen.” He felt her still at the name. At the words. “It was Michaelmas holiday.”

“It is always Michaelmas,” she said, softly, and he did not understand. She did not give him a chance to ask. “Go on.”

“She was the older, very beautiful sister of another boy. I was hiding from the families who had come to visit, telling myself I required study.”

“But you were simply trying to ignore what you did not have yourself.”

He looked to her. “Yes.”

She smiled, small and sad. “I know that well.”

He ignored the comparison. Pressing forward. “She followed me. No one was in the library . . . and then she was.”

Lily’s gaze narrowed. “How old was she?”

“Old enough to have had a season. Old enough to know what marriage would be for her.” He thought of Lord Rowley, debauched and rich as a king. “She came to me and offered me . . .”

“I can imagine.”

“You can’t, though.” This was the bit he had to say aloud. It was the bit that would convince her that they were not for each other. That he would never be worthy of her. “When it was over, I did what was expected to be done. I told her I would seek out her father. That I would marry her.”

Lily’s attention was rapt, and he loathed it, the way she saw into him. The way she understood him more than anyone ever had. “She refused.”

He turned away. Looked out the window, over the dark London rooftops. “She laughed.” He paused, his own humorless laugh coming on the heels of the words. “Of course she laughed.” He put a hand to his neck, wishing he were anywhere but there, reliving the sordid past. “She was daughter to a viscount. Set to marry an earl. And I was poor and untitled and Scottish. And a fucking fool.”

“No,” Lily whispered.

He did not turn. Could not. Instead, he spoke to the city beyond. “Not poor any longer.” He was lost in the memory. “She paid me ten pounds. It was enough for a month of food.”

“Alec.” She was behind him now. She’d come off the bed, and he could hear the desperation in her voice. He had to turn to her. To look at her. To show her the truth.

And so he did, seeing the tears in her eyes, hating them. Loving them. What a life it would have been if it had been Lily who had found him in the library all those years ago. And instead . . .

“She sent her friends after that. Aristocratic girls who wished for an opportunity to play in the gutter. To quench their thirst for mud. To ride the Scottish Brute.”

He saw the words strike her. Hated himself for doing it even as he forced himself to finish. “They paid my way through school. And I played the whore. I suppose I should be grateful that, as a man, it was never the shame it would have been if I were a woman. I was revered. They whispered my name like I was their favorite toy.