Clearing the grotto had yielded greater benefits than he’d expected, thanks to the mural.

Fifty Ways to Sin had been a last-minute addition, and one he worried about, but that, too, had pleased her. A book wasn’t enough, even though there was no one to whom he’d rather give one of his few remaining mementos of his mother, and he thought-hoped-Abigail would appreciate it. And Sebastian began to feel that he would be a very great idiot if he ignored this chance.īut he had treated her badly, and there was only so much he could do to atone. She was kind and patient enough to forgive his cruel parting the first time at the grotto. She felt the same irresistible attraction he felt.

Sebastian hadn’t thought of those long-ago happy days with his brilliant, eccentric, exciting father in years. She asked what his father had been like, before, rather than focusing on the scandal surrounding his disappearance. Not only was she undaunted by his attempts to warn her away, she persisted in trying to know him. It was lonely, but it enabled him to survive.īut now there was Abigail. The whispered charges of patricide and thieving stung, though there was nothing he could do about them, and eventually he grew a hard shell of indifference. He’d learned to cope with a lame leg, a meager income, the solitude of being a pariah. The last seven years had been about endurance, as everything he’d once counted on had been stripped away. Sebastian wasn’t entirely sure what his visit to Hart House had gained him, but he was glad he’d gone-and that astonished him.

It Takes a Scandal by Caroline Linden