Chapter 1 #2
Dex tunneled his hand in his trouser pocket and caressed the chunk of lapis lazuli he’d found on a geological assignment in India last year.
Lady Georgiana Collins—he shook his head, no, it was Whitcomb now—had eyes that color if memory served.
The ton had gone wild over the girl, and those eyes, her first Season.
Seizing on the success, her father had promptly auctioned her off to the highest bidder to save his estate.
To save his arse, to be blunt. Then Anthony died.
And Dex left Derbyshire, banished because he wouldn’t follow his father’s directive to stay and manage the duchy.
Dex hadn’t considered stepping in as a friend of the family, proposing a different course of action for Viscount Thimley’s daughter, Georgiana.
There were other men of means who’d sought an heir, a beautiful wife.
Dex could have produced a list of younger, kinder candidates with scant effort.
The Earl of Winterbourne had been neither young nor kind.
Nodding to a passing acquaintance, Dex followed the crowd into the salon, memories weighing his step.
It was only later, with an ounce of wisdom added to his emotional balance scale, when he’d started to miss her, miss Derbyshire like his very breath, that he recognized he hadn’t been a particularly good friend. To Anthony. To her.
He’d realized a lot of things that were pointless to realize now.
Taking a standing position along the back wall with the men who expected to escape to the billiards room when the musicale began, his gaze tracked Georgiana as she smoothed her skirt and settled gracefully into one of the chairs half-circling the pianoforte.
Candlelight from the chandelier washed over her as she fussed with the glass in her hand, trying to decide where to place it.
Her hair was darker, honeyed wheat instead of the white blonde of their youth.
Her gown was unremarkable, yet the shimmering silk clung to each gentle curve.
And he’d gotten a brief look at her face. Beautiful as ever.
When everything had changed, nothing had changed.
A wave of tenderness mingled with annoyance rolled through him.
Dex grabbed a tumbler from a passing footman, hardly caring what the cut crystal contained, as drinking provided pointless activity set to keep him from following the disastrous impulse to approach his deceased best friend’s little sister.
He frowned, tapping his finger on the glass.
Though he’d never considered Georgie a sister.
His displeasure deepened. Dex took a sip of what turned out to be excellent Irish whiskey, closing his eyes to the satisfying burn.
Why was he torturing himself? He’d been halfway around the world when he heard about her marriage, no way to stop what was already in motion, although his heart gave a vicious thump as it did whenever he thought of her. About Anthony. About his dying father.
Bloody, blasted Derbyshire, he seethed and tossed back the rest of his whiskey.
“Why the glower, Markham? Christmastide celebration and all. Food, spirits, music, although that forebodes to be repellant. It looks as if Lady Marshall is going to once again insist on punishing us with her talent. The pianoforte is not her friend.”
Dex turned before he reconciled the look on his face. He wasn’t often in polite society, and his feral edges were glinting like a blade in the sun. “It’s Westfield. The duke lives.”
The man at his side, a baron he’d shared a faro table with years ago at White’s, took an instinctive step back. “Apologies. Word in the village is the situation at Markham Manor is dire. I simply assumed…”
Forcing his lips into a smile, Dex waved away the rest of the coxcomb’s justification. “A logical conclusion. No matter. I’ve recently arrived from Italy, a bit short on sleep. My terseness is uncalled for. Ignore me.” Please .
“The Ice Countess,” the coxcomb whispered with a nod in Georgiana’s direction. A brandy-scented dash of air slid from his lips. “Gorgeous but frightening. I wouldn’t go there if I were you. Men are deathly afraid of her. And her dashed society.”
Dex shifted uncomfortably, gathering others had seen where his gaze had settled. “Come again?”
The baron cocked his head, a lank of flaxen hair falling across his brow.
His pale eyes lit with excitement when he grasped Dex had no idea what he was talking about.
“My sister went to her school before she married. Or joined her club or whatever. The Duchess Society, the countess calls it. I don’t know what she teaches because Emmaline had already attended day school or some such idiocy, but now Emma talks about a wife’s rights.
As if they have any. Had her husband set up a trust before she’d sign the betrothal agreement.
Can you believe it? But Patridge needed her dowry to save himself, so I guess that’s his mismanagement, ain’t it? ”
“Indeed,” Dex murmured, examining this information from all sides like he would a fossil.
Ice Countess, he thought, glancing back at her.
Georgiana’s head was bowed, perhaps to send the off-key musical notes over her head instead of into her ears.
The nape of her neck was sleek, strands of hair escaping her chignon to curl delicately against her skin.
She looked positively regal sitting there in the gilded light, the untouchable woman they imagined her to be.
When the girl had been cunning, even lewd at times, intelligent to a fault, up for any challenge, any dare.
Dirty hems and scraped knees and effervescent charm.
Nothing icy about her.
“I told Mother, don’t send Emma to a woman who’s vowed never to marry again herself.
What’s the use in that? Got a crusader returned to us, so I was right.
As men usually are.” The baron traced the toe of his patent shoe over a swirl in the Aubusson rug, a dance step with himself.
“My betrothed, when I secure her, and I have my eye on a few lovely ladies, I do, because the walls are closing in on me, isn’t going near any Duchess Society.
No sir. I’ll write that in my agreement. ”
Dex paused, holding back comment because this young buck knew little about life and even less about women.
Never marry again? Georgiana couldn’t be more than twenty-five to Dex’s thirty.
Undoubtedly, she had an income from her marriage, possibly a dower residence, maybe even a townhouse in the city, so she didn’t have to remarry, he supposed.
But what about love, passion, children? The girl he’d known had wanted a family.
When Lady Buxton staggered into the salon carrying a massive tub of raisins soaked in brandy and asked who would not only light the dish but try to catch the flaming fruit between their teeth, Dex shoved off the wall with a frustrated oath.
He’d seen the injuries resulting from this beguiling parlor trick before.
“I’m done for the night. Happy Christmas,” he said to the baron whose name he couldn’t for the life of him recall and angled his way through the crowd, wondering why this many people wanted to spend their holiday in Derbyshire.
Wondering how he’d ended up in the same country manor as Georgiana Whitcomb.
A situation possessing dangerous potential.
Because the eager boy racing over moors and climbing towering oaks and sleeping in limestone caves was inside him, and young Dexter was tempting him, telling him to follow the inclination to halt in the salon’s doorway and stare at Anthony’s capricious sister until she, in turn, noticed him, a tried-and-true game they’d played before.
Which, after a hushed, pulsing trice, like a cord connected them and he’d given it a yank, she did.
He tipped his chin over his shoulder. Meet me outside .
Georgiana glanced at the glass in her hand, giving the crystal a firm squeeze. Then she looked back at him, her eyes precisely the color of the lapis wedged deep in his trouser pocket.
An earl of ill repute took the flaming raisin challenge, inadvertently setting his coat on fire. Georgiana’s lips pressed as she tried not to laugh when the salon erupted in raucous shouts and absurdity. After a moment, with resignation he noted from across the room, she shrugged. Okay.
Dex nodded and backed into the hallway, feeling lighter than he had since coming home. Lighter than he had in years. That dangerous potential revolving like a top inside him.
Though he’d have liked to deny it, the anticipation of talking with Georgiana again sent a burst of exhilaration through him, warming him more than any whiskey could.