Chapter Twenty
Sitting beside Georgina in the sunny, airy, and artful space with its windows she’d left undressed in order not to obstruct her view of the ocean, Teddy couldn’t help feeling like he was experiencing a little piece of heaven on earth.
He searched her eyes, awed, and more than a little mystified, by what he saw in their silvery depths.
This woman. This utterly feminine, delectable enchantress who had a need for no one thanks to her own inner fortitude and an innate ability to manage her life on her own terms, had, for some reason, gifted him with her abundant, intoxicating, addictive love.
She was doggedly loyal, fiercely protective, and evidently determined to see in him qualities he did not begin to possess.
Oh, perhaps he knew a thing or two about charming the fairer sex, but what was that to boast about in the grand scheme of things?
She claimed her brother, Drake, thought him loyal.
He batted back a wave of dread that washed through him conjuring the man’s smiling visage and called to mind instead the dream from which he’d awoken this morning.
It had seemed less like a dream than a memory.
Lady Catherine’s words implied the two of them had engaged in, at a minimum, some heavy flirtation.
What would Georgina say if he told her he’d likely poached her brother’s territory?
Not that he had any intention of telling her.
And what of her brother, Drake? Had he suspected? Was that why his closest friend had warned him off of her? Damn this inability to know anything for certain.
He drew his hand to his temple and rubbed at the burgeoning headache suddenly trying to emerge.
Whatever the case, he knew, somehow to his core, that he did not deserve her charitable view of him, nor her ferocious defense of him against any adversary he might face, nor her love.
But did that mean he meant to argue her out of her stance? Not a chance.
He slid her a considering look. “It seems I’ve inadvertently pulled you from your writing, wife.” Of course, he had. More proof of his selfishness. He’d known she’d be in here, nose in one of her notebooks, creating one of her imaginary worlds. He simply hadn’t had the fortitude to resist the draw.
In fairness, for all practical purposes, they were newlyweds.
She sent him a guileless smile that hit him like a fist to the gut. “That’s all right. I can use the break.”
Had she always been this sweet to him, he wondered? So eager to please?
“No way, Ted. Look away,” Drake warned and grabbed his arm to stop him from pausing on the park promenade to speak with Georgina whose path would intersect with theirs in another few seconds if they’d but stopped.
Ted laughed under his breath, returning Georgina’s wave, and kept pace with Drake. “What? Can’t I wish your sister a pleasant good afternoon?”
Drake sent him a mock, stern smirk. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been eyeing her the last few weeks. You’ll only encourage her and you know she’s not for you.”
“Whyever not?”
“Teddy? What is it?”
The memory—and it had to be that—had come at him, all at once, rather like a bat to the head. Now, he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, uncertain if he aimed to hold onto the disturbing vision, or block it out.
Georgina edged closer, her delicate rose-petal scent wafting up at him.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t want to explain.
Frankly, he didn’t see the point. He’d asked her about Drake’s disparaging view of the two of them, and she’d made up some silly excuse about her brother not believing her worthy of Teddy.
Any fool could see she was every red-blooded man’s dream, and then some.
She knew something she wasn’t telling, but maybe, just maybe, he ought to be content to let sleeping dogs lie.
You are Lord Theodore Arlington, a future earl, not some sniveling, plebeian upstart. Never permit the world to scent your unease, boy. Shame yourself and shame me.
He jerked, the words in his head like a back handed slap—then another realization dawned. He was a future earl. He remembered.
It was a small thing. A fingernail’s clipping of knowledge. But he knew, suddenly knew he was Viscount Helmsley the future Earl of Ainsworth. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured.
“Teddy, I demand you tell me what’s happening in your head this instant.”
He drew himself upright and smoothed his lapels. “I’m the future Earl of Ainsworth.”
She tsked. “Yes, of course. That’s hardly news.”
“No,” he said, drawing out the word. “I’ve been told who I am, repeatedly. But now, I know.”
Her lush mouth opened to make a perfect o.
“And there’s something else,” he added, instinct overruling his earlier intention. “It’s the damnedest thing, but I’ve experienced one or two visions, perhaps memories, that I find confounding and slightly off.”
She blinked. “Oh?”
He studied her a long moment. Telling her of Lady Catherine offering to let him “do that thing” to her, again, or about Drake dragging him away from Georgina in the park, was proving difficult.
With a grunt of frustration, he turned his gaze from her to absently scan the paper—the one he hadn’t really been reading since he’d come in here intent on gaining access to Georgina and nothing else.
But now, one name in particular jumped off the page. He snatched up the paper—the society section, as it happened—and read the fine print.
She gave his shoulder a playful swat. “Teddy, I really must insist—”
“It seems the earl has taken ill.”
“The…earl?” she asked.
“The Earl of Ainsworth,” he said, evidently nonplussed by her non-grasp of the situation. “My father.”
“You remember him, as well?”
He shook his head. “No.” Increasingly, he’d heard echoes of the man’s voice in his head, which he recognized as belonging to the earl, having spent a good month under the man’s roof, but, as yet, had no distinct memory of the man himself.
He scanned the article in front of him. “Not from before, at any rate. It appears he’s missed the last several parliamentary sessions and, according to this article, that’s unusual.
An undisclosed source says he’s had an apoplexy of some sort. ”
He lowered the paper and eyed her.
She wore a distinctly guilty expression. This day was full of surprises.
“I see. You knew.”
“I didn’t.”
“Clearly, you did. You didn’t think this was something I might need to know?”
Wringing her hands before her, she answered. “I only heard a rumor. I wasn’t cognizant of any details and so I…” She broke off and licked her lips. “I wrote to my mother to see if I could learn anything more than just gossip.”
A cold sensation permeated his insides, banishing the heady warmth that had infused him listening to Georgina singing his praises. Evidently, everything she’d said had been balderdash.
“So. You decided I needed cosseting, because clearly, the damaged man I am, I couldn’t possibly handle knowing my father might have an affliction. In essence, you lied to me.”
She ducked her head. “You make it sound so sordid.”
“No, I make it sound exactly as it is. Georgina, I am not a child in leading strings.”
“I know,” she intoned softly.
“In point of fact, despite my infirmity, I am a grown man, the future Earl of Ainsworth. I do not require my wife to wrap me in swaddling like some goddamned namby-pamby imbecile.” He braced for whatever manipulative response she would manufacture.
Then, she lifted her head and met his gaze.
Her expression was nothing he would have expected. Her eyes didn’t burn with the misplaced ire of the guilty, suddenly found out and on the defensive, nor had she turned on tears like a watering pot on demand.
“I’m sorry. I had no right.” Her quiet contrition melted some of the ice forming inside him, revealing another, less appealing sensation. Shame.
Because she hadn’t lied in order to trick him. She simply hadn’t trusted that he had the strength to weather any further blows. Perhaps, she’d had good reason.
“No more lies,” he bit out. “Promise me.”
Her silver eyes went wide, the pupils turning huge. Abruptly she sprang to her feet and hastened for her desk. “I really haven’t any more time for this conversation.”
He stood, slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
Scrubbing her hands on her skirts, she rounded the corner of her desk. “I’m behind on my work. My editor will arrive any day now and will expect me to have made more progress.”
He stalked toward her and grasped her elbow, urging her to face him. “What else?”
She had the look of a cornered fox. She knew something.
“Georgina, why didn’t your brother approve of us?” he asked, his query surprising even him.
Now, her eyes welled with tears which she scrubbed away with both hands. “I already told you why.”
“Damn it, Georgina, I told you, no more lies.”
Chin quivering, she met his gaze. “I’m not lying.”
Damn. He’d known he didn’t want to open this particular box. He grasped her shoulders. “What did he say, exactly?” he asked, quite certain he didn’t want to hear the answer.
“He told me to look elsewhere and wouldn’t say more. He didn’t need to. I understood. You were Lord Theodore Arlington, the golden boy, whom everybody loved. He knew you could reach higher than me, and didn’t want to hurt me by spelling it out.”
Teddy shook his head, eyeing the plastered ceiling, then he gave her a little shake, then he yanked her into his arms.
After loosing a startled gasp, she twined her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his chest. “So you see? I didn’t lie,” came her muffled words.
He ran his hands up and down her back, feeling insanely grateful for the ability to prove her ridiculous assumption wrong, even though it meant telling her what a cove he’d been. “You little fool. That is not what he meant.”
She tilted her head back to frown up at him, her bold, dark brows furrowing. “How would you know?”