Alec tilted her chin once more, and the tenderness in his gaze was as intoxicating as it was terrifying. “What you said in Venice. You were right about everything. About me. I spent all these years trying to make myself forget you. Trying to force everything I ever felt for you into nothingness.” Lottie tried to glance away, but Alec stopped her. “But it didn’t work. Lottie, it never worked.” He began to gently stroke her cheek and she remembered to breathe. “The morning after your ball, I came to Sir Alfred and asked to court you properly. I said that though I had always loved you, at some point I had fallen in love with you. Irrevocably.” His words were strangely humbling. How long she had ached to hear them. Lottie reached up and covered his hand with her own. Alec cleared his throat and looked away. “But then I walked away at the first sign of trouble.”

Lottie couldn’t stand the guilt that now seemed to consume him. “You were deceived.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “Sir Alfred said I could have told him to go to hell that day, and he was right. I could have told you the truth about my parents as soon as I found out, but I ran instead. I chose to put my life in danger rather than reveal any weakness to you. I told myself I was doing what was best for you. That it was a sacrifice. But I didn’t trust you to accept me. Because I was a coward. And I didn’t deserve you for that reason alone. Never mind the hundred other ones.” He raked a desperate hand through his hair, further rumpling the already disheveled waves. It looked as if he had barely slept in days. Just like her.

“I’ve spent all these years thinking—knowing—I wasn’t good enough for you. I always blamed it on things beyond my control—my circumstances, your uncle, my parents. But it was my fault all along.” He let out a weary sigh. “I let other people’s opinions determine our future when I should have fought for you. For us. Instead, I diminished your feelings and ignored my own. And I will always consider that the greatest mistake of my life.”

“Oh, Alec,” Lottie whispered thickly. She could not let him shoulder this burden alone. “I should have made more of an effort to understand your silence about your past instead of taking it so personally. I don’t blame you for keeping the truth about your parents to yourself. You were in an impossible position.”

“It’s no excuse,” he burst out, turning away in anger. “I destroyed everything between us that morning in your uncle’s study. Then again in Venice. And I wish to God I could take it all back. To start over with you, but I can’t––”

“You’re being much too hard on yourself.”