Chapter Thirty
Alone in the kitchen, silence hung like a shroud as neither of them knew quite what to say or do next.
Georgie was desperate to carry on kissing him but knew that was too dangerous after what had just happened outside. He had touched her. There. And it had felt sublime. Her body had opened for him like a flower. Blossomed beneath his fingers. Was now so aroused she could barely stand straight.
“Could this week actually get any worse?” Harry was the first to speak and he looked as terrified by this latest turn of events as she was. He sunk into a chair. “What the hell do we do now with them gone?”
“I can look after all the children’s needs in Ada’s abs—” Her words died at the intense heat of his stare.
“It’s not their needs that bother me. We almost… again… and now…” He threw up his palms, then buried his head in his hands. “Fate seems to want to torment us when I have to sail away.”
“I know.”
“If we… succumb… then I’d have to marry you and how the hell would I be able to sail away then?” When his eyes lifted again, they were bleak. “I wouldn’t be able to. I’m already more in love with you than is sensible…” The earth shifted on its axis, and her heart leapt. “… already dreading sailing away more than I can bear and I’ve already used up all the navy’s benevolence thanks to the last siren who bewitched me! I lost my first ship because I couldn’t sail away from blasted Elizabeth and she didn’t hold a candle to you.” His yearning gaze this time was molten, which was ironic because Georgie was melting, so seduced by his words she was undone.
“It took me years to earn their trust again! Years of hard work that will all be for naught if I can’t bring myself to sail away on the bloody Boadicea shortly as they all expect me to!” His head fell forward again and he fisted his hair in frustration. “I can’t turn down a blasted flagship—even if I wanted to.” Which rather suggested he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Irrespective of all his pretty words. “It’s a flagship, Georgie. There is no recovery from that. It would kill my naval career stone dead—and forever this time. Few get given that honor and the only way is up afterward.” He pointed to the ceiling. “All the way to the top. Everything I have worked so hard for. With the Boadicea it’s all there. Finally within reach.” His hands dropped between his knees in despair. “I’d have to throw all that away for you.”
“I do not recall asking you to!” Anger bubbled. Mostly at her stupidity for even briefly contemplating that a man in uniform might be capable of not putting his duty above all else. “I know how important the navy is to you, Harry! How important this promotion is to you.” Far more important than she could ever hope to be. “Just as I know I have no desire to shackle myself to the military again!” That door swung both ways, after all. “I loathed that life with every fiber of my being, growing up! It’s a miserable existence that wore down my poor mother until it killed her!” With every passing season, more of her dear mama’s light had dimmed thanks to the selfish colonel and his all-encompassing army career.
“You think I have a burning desire to repeat history, Harry? To watch you sail away, to goodness knows what, never knowing where you are, what you are doing or if you are ever going to come back? All the while stuck in some port, alone, living under the navy’s rules for months on end, amongst strangers where I have to start afresh? That is until they post you somewhere different and it all happens again?” A nomadic, isolating existence which echoed the transient life of a governess—but at least that was on her terms. Devoid of all the worry, resentment, and recriminations a union between them would guarantee.
Surely?
“Then I suppose asking you to wait for me is out of the question?” His gaze bored into hers. “Admiral and Lady Nugent seem to have found a way to make it work and maybe we could too?”
“To wait for what exactly, Harry? Your return? Your elevation to commodore? Vice admiral? Admiral of the fleet? Your death in battle?” She shook her head, irrationally furious at him for being who he was. For doing what he did. For reminding her of her miserable childhood on the only night she had ever felt like a princess.
For making her want all the things Miss P had trained her not to.
To dare to dream the impossible for a moment and then dash it in the next!
The moonlight caught the gold braid on his shoulder, and she had the overwhelming urge to rip it from his coat. “I’d rather die a spinster that live through that wretched purgatory again! I hate to agree with that awful Elizabeth on anything—but few military marriages are ever happy. My mother’s was a nightmare from start to finish but, thanks to smallpox, she was at least able to escape that living hell a lot sooner than I did!”
He balked at her vitriol. “Then where does that leave us?” He stood to pace, agitated. “What’s the solution?”
“There isn’t one.” She couldn’t allow history to repeat itself. Wouldn’t put herself or him through that torment. Even if they could be happy when they were together as the Nugents had managed to do, she would still have to spend weeks, months, maybe even years alone again waiting for him to sail home, and that would be torture when she already loved him more than was sensible to. “We occupy different worlds, Harry. You have to sail away next month as the navy expects, and I have to leave next week and let you. That is how it should be. How it was always meant to be.” How it had to be. “Tonight was the fairy tale, not our reality.”
“And what just happened was…?”
“Yet another dreadful mistake.” It hurt to say it, but there seemed little point in prolonging the agony when they had finally reached the end of the rope. “Good night, Harry.”
He didn’t immediately follow her upstairs. Georgie had been sitting on her mattress and staring into space for over half an hour when she heard the weary climb of his boots on the stairs and then the soft, resigned click as his bedchamber door closed. She hadn’t expected him to argue with her because there really wasn’t anything else to say. He had his life and she had hers and, in all normal circumstances, never the twain should meet. But in a strange twist of fate they had met, like ships passing in the night, and they both had to accept that that was all they could ever be. Theirs was only ever destined to be a short and transient relationship. Separated by the reassuring barriers of station, money, and duty. In a moment of madness, they had crossed that boundary, thoroughly muddied the waters, and now they were both paying for it.
Georgie supposed the ache in her heart would fade, given time, just as she supposed he likely wouldn’t remember her in a year from now. Why would he, when his star was rising and his destiny was so far removed from hers it was laughable? Better to stop it all before things got out of hand—as they almost had outside in the yard. Her body still ached from that revelation and likely would all night. She would just have to ignore it.
In an attempt to do just that, she sloshed cold water from the jug into her washbowl and then wrestled with the laces of the beautiful borrowed evening gown. As the emerald silk puddled around her feet, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and sighed aloud at the state of her hair. The exhilarating sail home had completely destroyed Ada’s efforts and it hung loose in a wild tangle about her shoulders. She ran impatient fingers through it to remove the last pins, then remembered how he had twirled his finger in it on the sand, bewitched as if he liked it.
And he must like it, she realized with a start, because he had called her both beautiful and a siren tonight on two separate occasions and both unprompted. Had he always liked it?
Was that why she always caught him staring at it?
Why Felix, Marianne, Tom, and Ada had all mentioned the way he looked at her. Why even Lady Nugent this evening had commented upon it, and none of them would have done that if there wasn’t a single grain of truth in the accusation.
Would they?
She stared at her reflection again, trying to see herself through his eyes, and was shocked to realize that in just her stays and her shift, her hair loose and lips kiss-swollen, she no longer resembled the awkward, sturdy, freckled sixteen-year-old whose reflection had always disappointed her.
She was a woman now.
The freckles had faded over the years and gave her pale skin a healthy glow in the candlelight. She had curves. Some cleavage. Bosoms. Sensitive, needy bosoms which had enjoyed being in Harry’s hands as much as he had enjoyed holding them. He had groaned when he’d cupped them over her gown in the garden and she had watched his gaze dip to them when he had first seen her this evening.
Curious suddenly about her own allure she unlaced her stays and wriggled out of her shift, and to her complete surprise, wasn’t appalled by the sight of her naked body. She turned a circle to view it from all angles, taking in the hourglass shape of her figure. Tested the weight of her breasts, traced the shape of her nipples. Watched them pucker to points in the glass as her unfulfilled body wished it was his hands on her instead. Felt the tiny knot of nerves his fingers had caressed between her legs buzz with anticipation. Her womb tighten with need. Her womanhood moisten. The walls of her vagina throb.
Good heavens, but she wasn’t going to get any sleep in this state!
She dipped a finger between her legs in the hope it would take the incessant ache away, then instantly withdrew it because it did not feel as intoxicating or as sensual as Harry’s decadent touch.
It was in that moment that she realized that no matter how impossible their situation was, or how transient, Lottie was right.
Georgie was resigned to waving him goodbye.
Resigned to him sailing away to more naval greatness, because that was his destiny. Resigned to never seeing him again. Resigned to him forgetting her even if she knew she would never forget him. She was even resigned to meeting her maker without ever having a ring on her finger, as that was the governess’s lonely destiny, but it genuinely would be a tragedy if she went to heaven in a package marked UNOPENED too when he was mere feet away.
Perhaps still as aroused as she was.
Was she really prepared to waste that precious gift when her ripe body wanted his so very much—and might never have the opportunity to ever feel this way ever again?