Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
He didn’t come.
Andrew always arrived at one in the afternoon.
Georgiana depended on his punctuality. She needed the dependable, the familiar, the comfort of habit more today than ever.
She needed work to restore her balance. She needed to work while they talked, while they reasoned, calmly and logically, through what had passed between them. She needed Andrew. She didn’t get him.
Instead, the long form of her brother Richard lounged with sophisticated ease on her gold brocade settee. He had arrived a day early.
Damn you, Richard. She knew with total certainty that everything in Richard’s world happened by design. He invaded my privacy for a purpose, the traitorous swine.
Georgiana’s ormolu clock chimed the quarter hour, fifteen minutes after one and no sign of Andrew. With Richard here, relief warred with desperate disappointment.
“You look well, Georgiana.”
She needed Andrew, not Richard. She needed work, not this foolish pretense of civility. What she got was her brother, his silk-clad legs stretched across her fine Axminster carpet, and awkward conversation. She forced herself to respond to his small talk.
“Thank you. Your suggestion of Mr. Peabody was a blessing. He has been a lifesaver in every sense of that word.”
Georgiana poured herself another cup of tea. “Your color is excellent,” her brother went on, “and you appear more animated than when last I visited.” Richard had declined tea in favor of a fine sherry, which he held gracefully in the slender fingers of one hand.
Richard’s eyes, so like hers in color, lacked her warmth and revealed nothing. The same could be said of his words—no light and little warmth.
“I take the air with more regularity,” she responded.
“And Mr. Peabody’s regime has had a salubrious effect.
” Georgiana’s mind wandered. Does last night’s adventure show plainly in my face?
Where is Andrew? I hope he doesn’t come, not with Richard here.
I don’t want to face them together. Drat it, where is he?
“I understand you order kegs of water from a particular spring in Yorkshire. Fascinating that iron in water could—”
“What brings you here so suddenly, Richard?”
Her brother raised a well-bred brow at the interruption but didn’t comment on it. “There is to be a house party at Murnane House. The Earl of Chadbourn, you may recall, is the Duchess of Murnane’s brother. He is to marry a distant connection.”
“Will is getting married? I am glad for him. I wish him happiness.” William Landrum, the Earl of Chadbourn, was one of a handful of Richard’s true friends, his boon companion when they came up from Cambridge before the war—like Andrew.
“Her Grace wishes you to attend, and I have been commissioned to bring you there directly.”
“Absurd.” Georgiana put her cup down with enough force that it teetered in the saucer.
Richard’s cultivated brows rose simultaneously. “I beg your pardon.”
“Mother hasn’t wished my presence at Mountview these years, much less at a house party.”
“She wishes it now.”
“She does or you do?”
One of his rare smiles, slight but sure, lit his icy Hayden eyes. “Does it matter?”
“Certainly. If she doesn’t wish to see me, she won’t see me, even if I’m in the same room.”
“That doesn’t become you, Georgiana.” She noticed he didn’t answer her question. “Chadbourn was once your friend, too.”
She acknowledged the truth of that; Georgiana genuinely liked Chadbourn, but she was never close to him—unlike Andrew. “Does Will wish my attendance?”
“He is too besotted to know what he wants.” Richard’s tone spoke his disapproval. “He has succumbed to the most banal and mawkish of sentiments.”
“You mean he has the poor taste to be in love with his intended?” It amused her. The Haydens had long savaged those whose sentiments were plebeian, those with sentiments like the ones Andrew expressed last night.
“Who is she?” she asked.
“She is—she is respectable.”
“Mother doesn’t approve.” It wasn’t a question. “She is ‘no one who is anyone’?”
“That is correct.”
Chadbourn has fallen in love with a commoner, how intriguing.
Georgiana was stunned to silence. The thought that her mother might wish her to witness the distastefulness of an uneven match occurred to her.
She wondered if it was Richard’s intention also.
Georgiana puzzled over the possibilities.
Perhaps Richard wished her to lend support to the bride.
She once thought she could read her brother but not now, not now that she knew what he did to her eleven years ago. It clouded her view of him.
“Mother—” he began. She didn’t let him finish.
“Why is my presence required?”
“You stay too long in your own company.”
“That isn’t our noble mother speaking. What is really on your mind, Richard?”
“Chadbourn’s wedding and your duty to your station.” His chin rose, and his tone became icy. “A lady doesn’t avoid the marriage of a peer and a friend when invited.”
It was a command, an order to attend, but she still didn’t know who had issued the order. The wedding itself might not be so bad. Distantly she heard her brother fill in details of his plans, assuming she would comply.
She might like to meet this respectable-but-common woman Chadbourn had the poor taste to love. She thought she would like that very much. There were other ties, however.
“I can’t leave Cambridgeshire at this time.”
“What ties you here?” He leaned forward, his look probing.
“Work. I have my work.” She did, but it felt foolish to tell him that.
He dismissed her work with a sardonic grimace and a wave of his hand. “Jamie has told me that you continue to work on your poems. There is paper in Devonshire, and ink.”
There is Andrew. She couldn’t say it. “My books are here.”
“I gather you attempted to find some assistance in the University community.”
“If you know that, you know I was rebuffed.”
Richard raised an elegant brow at her plain speaking. “Yes. Quite.”
Her throat tightened. “One goes forward with the work as one can.” Her eyes defied him to continue, to put into words what was on his mind.
A light scratch on the door interrupted them. “Mr. Andrew Mallet has arrived, my lady.”
“Show him in, Chambers.” Georgiana hoped that she showed no sign of discomfort or concern but knew the heat she felt creeping up her neck probably meant she revealed a pink color. She held her brother’s gaze. It registered no surprise at her visitor.
“I am sorry, my lady, but I have shown him to the workroom as is your customary practice. Shall I ask him to attend you here?” The butler looked uncomfortable.
“No, that will be all. Please tell him I will join him in a moment.”
“Customary practice, Georgiana?” Richard drawled.
“My work, Richard. ‘One goes forward as one can.’ Your old friend Mr. Mallet is an excellent tutor.” I hope you don’t discover how true that is.
“His assistance has improved my work significantly. If you will excuse me, I have a longstanding appointment with him this afternoon. I will see you at dinner.”
She crossed the finely polished parquet floor of the foyer with as much dignity as she could muster before turning down a small corridor. She felt her brother’s eyes on her back every step, but she forced him from her mind.
Other concerns flooded her, chief among them was deciding how one should greet a lover who has parted in anger in the depths of the night after hours of glorious lovemaking.
It will be simplest, I think, to throw myself into his arms. She made sure she shut the door securely behind her.
* * *
He planned to keep her at arm’s length, but she flowed into his arms and began to kiss him before he could speak.
He wanted to speak to her soberly about the changes between them.
Need battered common sense down once again; it pummeled emotion and laid waste to rational thought.
Reality was her sweet mouth and the lush body pressed against him.
Delicate hands explored the skin under his shirt which had inexplicably come loose from his waist. When those hands began to undo his waistband, he became suddenly, painfully alert and took her wrists in an iron grip.
“What are you doing?”
The triumphant smile of a woman well loved, who knows she is desired, was the only response. She leaned forward to kiss him again, but he restrained her. He pressed her into a chair with elaborate gentleness, but he held her there firmly.
“Stay.”
“Shall I bark for you?” Her lips quirked, and he almost relented; but he refused to be drawn in by her nonsense.
“You’re making this difficult, Georgiana.” He ignored her jibe about barking, turned his back, and moved as far away from her as their small workroom permitted.
“Actually, it seemed easy to me,” she replied smugly.
He set his clothing to rights, and bile rose in his throat. “Is this it then? Sex and desire on the workroom floor followed by—what? Scholarly pretense? A return to our proper places for dinner until you can sneak out again into the night?”
That wiped the smugness from her face.
“You are angry.”
“Yes. No–confused.” That was a lie. Anger built steadily. “We are collaborators. Partners. It is my understanding that you wish for nothing more. One does not undress one’s collaborator.”
“No, I...”
“You what?” he spat. “You planned a different role for me?”
“No! Us. Different for us.”
“How different? We’re not equals. Marriage, you tell me, is out of the question. How am I to address you then—my lady?” He could hear his voice rise.
He was entertaining the household, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t stop goading her. He shouldn’t have come. He was still too angry for reasonable conversation.
“I never said that. I never said ‘not equals.’ I didn’t, I can’t. That is I—the work is still important.”
“Yes, the work, of course. Lady Georgiana’s true love,” he said bitterly.
“Not fair, Andrew! Not fair by half. I thought you valued it too!”
He ran his hand up the back of his head in exasperation.