Chapter 9
It took him half an hour, but he finally tracked her down, in the kitchen of all places, kneading bread dough.
A full apron tied around her pretty blue-and-white striped morning dress and her hands dusty white with flour, she didn’t look up, although he knew she would have guessed he’d arrived just by the gasps and curtsies from the kitchen staff.
He gave them all a nod of the head and tried his best to ignore the collective hostility directed his way.
He suspected they had no idea why their mistress was upset.
He also imagined they didn’t need to know.
All it would take was one look at the stark betrayal in her eyes and the furious beating she was giving that dough to tell the tale.
“May I explain?” he asked her.
She closed a fist and punched the dough right in the center. He suspected she was envisioning a particular person’s body part.
“Please?”
With a sigh and a glance up at the very large man across the room in white who was cradling a meat cleaver in his arms, Georgie cleared the room quite efficiently. That didn’t mean she stopped pummeling the dough.
“Interesting hobby,” he ventured, stepping closer.
She gave the dough another solid punch. He swore he felt it in his gut.
“It has saved the life of more than one family member,” she finally said, folding the dough and folding it again before sprinkling flour over it and covering it with a towel.
“I imagine I should be grateful it was convenient as well.”
“I suspect you should.”
She had a smudge of dust on her cheek. He fought an urge to wipe it away.
No, he admitted, trying to ignore his suddenly very interested cock, he wanted to lick it away.
This shouldn’t be the moment he realized that he would do anything to keep from losing her, but suddenly he knew that it wasn’t at all about the girls’ safety or the mission or the fact that Georgie could bake her own bread if need be. It was about her.
In that surprise burst of honesty, he realized that he suddenly couldn’t imagine his life without her in it anymore, and it had only taken him a week to realize it. He just didn’t think she would believe that right now.
He was feeling hopeful for a positive outcome until she finally lifted her eyes, and he saw not rage, which he’d expected, but devastation.
Her eyes were dry, but they seemed to hold a world of pain and disappointment.
Walking over to the sink, she washed the flour off her hands and very deliberately dried them before hanging the towel back up.
He couldn’t seem to move, that pain cleaving his own chest. “I was about to tell you,” he said.
She turned back to him with eyes that were once again bland and passive. He suspected she had a lot of practice covering her reactions.
“Were you?”
He saw it so clearly then, especially after speaking to her father.
Everyone in her life had done this to her.
Just assumed that Georgie would handle whatever they threw at her.
That Georgie would pick up the slack, cover the mistakes, supervise the mess somebody might have left behind on the way to whatever pastime they wanted to follow instead.
And she had.
Which made him even more uncertain how to go on. Because if he told her he understood, he suspected she would simply haul off and punch him like a half-risen lump of bread dough.
“Could we go somewhere to sit?” he asked. “I imagine your cook would like his counters back. And I would like to speak frankly, which I cannot do with the audience I suspect is waiting around the corner armed with cooking weaponry.”
For a long moment she just stood there staring down at the lump of dough and the towel that protected it as if waiting for it to advise her.
Trim and tidy, her hair sleek as silk, her posture impeccable, her blue-and-white striped gown—even the apron—flawless, and yet somehow, she made him think of a child who had just been left on a street corner.
He realized he’d lifted a hand toward her, as if to really pull her close. He let it fall.
Finally, without a word, she untied the apron and pulled it over her head.
Hanging it up on a nearby hook, she called a name, which he suspected belonged to the cook, and led Grey out the kitchen door to the garden he’d first visited only a few days ago.
Heading straight for the little arbor where he’d met her cousins, she sat and pointed him to the seat opposite. Not alongside.
He sat.
She settled, hands clasped primly in her lap, posture not an inch less rigid, her gaze unflinching. He respected the power of that focus. He wished he’d never had to see it directed at him.
For just a second, he considered popping off one of the irises that edged the garden. Handing it to her, as if that would make a difference.
“I wasn’t allowed to say anything,” he said instead, not moving. “It is a trip on behalf of the government.”
She considered him, as if weighing the truth of his words. “Why tell me now?”
She still hadn’t softened her stance. She looked instead like the goddess of judgment, her posture unbending, her aristocratic nose a bit in the air. And he hurt for her and wished he could just pull her into his arms. A worse idea than the iris, though, from her posture.
“Besides the fact that I just asked you to put your life into my hands?”
“Besides that.”
“Because I found out your father already knew. And because for some reason I trust you more than the government.”
A smile? No. He didn’t dare risk it as stern as she still looked.
“The government?”
“The government asked me...well, strongly suggested I go.”
“Why? I know you don’t go to a battlefield. We have recently dispensed with those. What else demands such alacrity?”
He shrugged, feeling more and more uncomfortable. This had all been so clear to him when he realized how well the marriage would serve him.
Serve him.
But it meant so much more now. He wanted to hold her. To lay her head against his shoulder and promise that she would always have his support. She would never have to carry another burden alone.
But she would, of course. In a matter of little more than a week.
“Because I trust you,” he said, not pausing when he heard the disbelieving huff, “I will share what I am not supposed to.”
“And it will be the truth.”
His instinctive reaction was to bristle.
One look at the brittle expression on her face convinced him not to.
“It will be the truth. From now on, it will always be the truth.” He took a breath and a quick look out to the blooming flowers, peonies and primrose and lilacs.
And useless damn iris. “When I was on the Continent, I was asked to perform a few...extra...commissions beyond my duties. I am fluent in French, German, and Spanish. It came in handy.”
“I imagine it did. Was it during these extra commissions you kept running across my brother and cousins?”
Well, that took his breath. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “I suspected. Things they said to each other when on leave.” Finally, she afforded Grey a wry smile.
“Men have a disconcerting habit of underestimating the comprehension of women. We kings figured it out long ago.” She stopped for a moment, as if struck by a revelation.
And not a happy one. “Oh, lord. You’re part of Drake’s Rakes, aren’t you? ”
Grey opened his mouth and yet couldn’t seem to get anything out for the longest time. “Drake’s…how do you know?”
She huffed in frustration. “I’m fairly certain every girl who attended Last Chance Academy knows about Drake’s Rakes. Except I thought they were only the sons who weren’t allowed to fight on the Continent who helped the government in…shall we say, other ways. How did you come into it?”
“Last Chance…?”
She waved him off, much like her father would have. “The nickname for our boarding school. You are a member of Drake’s Rakes, then?”
He shrugged. “I’d call it more a cadet branch.”
“And my brother and cousins as well.”
He nodded, feeling more than a bit disconcerted. “I also served with them on the line. They are fine officers.”
“If a bit reckless and impulsive.”
He smiled. “If that.”
“And now that Napoleon is on Elba?”
His first instinct was to lie. He truly wasn’t used to breaking confidences, especially if they were state secrets. But if he could not trust her with this, he could not trust her with his children. And if he did not tell her the truth now, she would never be able to trust him again.
“Possibly an even worse problem. We have caught whispers of Napoleon having received aid from some highly placed British citizens, who, it seems, might well be working to help him escape. One of our men who has been working undercover has gone missing. I am to go to Paris to evaluate the situation under the guise of being a military liaison to Wellington as he settles in as ambassador.”
She took a moment to let that sink. in. “When?”
“When? Well, they want me to go now. I told them I needed a week.”
“And how long will you be gone?”
He drew in a breath. “I don’t know.”
“Days? Weeks? Months? Years?”
All he could do was shake his head.
After a tense moment, she nodded. “How convenient, then, that you found yourself compromised with a woman who had long experience in childcare so you could continue your adventures.”
So, he wasn’t about to be forgiven.
“What would you have me do, Georgianna? I have done my duty for this country for ten years. Do you expect me to walk away from it just because I find myself in my cousin’s shoes?”
She huffed again. “If you expect me to help you this way, you could at least do me the courtesy of calling me by the name I requested. My name is Georgie. Georgianna is the Duchess of Devonshire, and I most certainly am not she.”
“Good, because I don’t want her. I want you.”
She froze, eyes widened, breath frozen.