Page 49 of Engaged to London's Wildest Billionaire

‘That’s not my question to answer.’

It was whether he could find some good in himself that was important.

‘Some would call me irredeemable, for things I’ve said.’

The breeze in the little lane picked up, a few late autumn leaves skittering about their feet. His words to her in their final conversation still pricked at her consciousness. He’d wanted her to walk away without a thought of turning back. He’d ensured it. So why did she crave to run to him and hope he caught her now?

She wrapped her arms round her waist, needing to leave but fixed to the spot. She looked towards the exit of the lane, anywhere except Lance. In the distance a small group began drifting down towards the tourist store.

‘I should have thought you’d be happy with that. Your reputation soiled even more than before. Isn’t that what you were trying to achieve?’

‘Once, perhaps...’

A couple of people looked from her to him, as though in recognition. She didn’t want this to become some spectacle, but didn’t want to walk away either. She’d dreamed about seeing him, about what she’d say, since shortly after she’d left his house. Strangely, now it was as if her tongue was tied in knots. Then the truth began screaming loudly at her. Even after everything, she still didn’t want an end. She wanted a beginning.

Lance frowned as someone in the crowd raised their phone as if to take a photograph. He turned his back on them and manoeuvred himself so any view of her was blocked by his height and breadth.

‘Whilst I deserve public humiliation, you don’t. Is there somewhere we could talk in private?’

Two equally tempting answers, yes and no, pitched a battle inside her. It was a terrible position to be in, wanting to toy with fire but not wanting to be burned.

‘Are you going to be cruel to me again?’ She tried to sound firm, but her voice was quiet and cracked.

He shut his eyes for a brief moment and flinched as if in pain. When he opened them again the intensity and heat in his gaze almost incinerated her on the spot.

‘Never.’

That one simple word ground out of him with vehemence.

She was like Icarus, hurtling directly into the sun. She didn’t care about the consequences. In the end, the side of her entirely disinterested in self-preservation won over common sense.

‘Then follow me.’

‘Are you going to be cruel to me again?’

Since his sister’s marriage, Lance had spent his life trying to live without any more regret or self-recrimination. Now, Sara’s words cut through him, jagged and deep, representing one of his greatest shames. He’d hurt her, calculatedly, deliberately. He’d played on her insecurities and fears in a misplaced desire to protect her from himself. At the time, it had held a twisted kind of logic. Then she’d walked out of his house with her head held high, like the Queen she had once been destined to become, leaving behind her engagement ring, her clothes, and a perfectly pressed handkerchief embroidered with his initials on his bedside table...

It was the handkerchief that had almost undone his resolve in that moment. The realisation that she’d kept it with her since the wake, like something precious. A memory of him. Still, in the days after she’d left, he’d kidded himself into believing that what he’d done had been in her best interests. It was only much later that he’d come to realise he was as bad as her family or Ferdinand, because he’d not given her a choice. He’d taken it from her in a moment of breathtaking arrogance and paternalism, treating her as if she were a child, and not an adult woman who could make decisions for herself about what she wanted in life. Even worse, he’d done it because he was a coward.

The mere fact that she was still willing to speak with him now showed a graciousness he wanted to deserve.

‘Was finding me today a chance, or deliberate?’ she asked.

He could lie, but truth was all he had left, even though it exposed him. He’d tortured himself over the past months, agonising over Sara’s wellbeing. Whether she was safe from the machinations of her family. Whether she was doing well. In the end, appraisal of unwanted items from the Lauritanian royal collection had given him an excuse to be back in the country, and being back in the palace where she worked had made it easy to find out what time her shift finished today...

‘Entirely deliberate.’

She sighed. ‘Well, that’s something, I guess.’

Good or bad, he couldn’t be sure, when the full extent of the truth was that he’d been unable to stay away.

Lance followed her like a man being led to his doom, but the barest hope of reprieve kept him putting one foot in front of the other. Even now, she was like a beacon, with her golden hair vibrant in the dim lane ahead of him, wearing a coat the same vivid blue as Lake Morenburg. She had always been the light in his darkest places. Only he hadn’t realised it till he’d forced her away and all the light had simply been snuffed out.

He’d learned then how much he loathed the darkness.

They stopped at the door of one of the stone terraces for which the old town was famed. She looked over her shoulder at him, her teeth grazing her lower lip. ‘This leads to my apartment. I hope that’ll do.’

He’d been desperate to see what she’d made of her life. Rafe and Annalise had been his only means of answering that question, and they’d been naturally protective, telling him little other than confirming that Sara had a job in the palace, curating the art collection, and a place to live.

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