Four
I must have a sign on my forehead that reads “Please cart me away in the most undignified manner possible,” Georgette thought crossly.
The cobbles blurred as she bumped along. Twice in the last quarter hour, Georgette had found herself in this same ridiculous position, arms dangling, head down, bum to the sky. Only this time, she could scarcely draw a breath since her chest thumped Nathaniel’s back with each pounding stride.
Her bonnet ribbons came loose, and the cunning little capote flew free. She tried to catch it, but the long strips of satin slipped through her fingertips. The delicate lacy confection landed in the rivulet of yellowish slime, settling to float like a little boy’s paper boat on the Thames.
At least my slippers are safe this time.
Sounds of pursuit echoed through the narrow canyon of leaning structures, and intellectually, Georgette admitted Nathaniel was right about the need for haste.
But blast the man, he was not right about the way he manhandled her. And she’d tell him so.
As soon as she managed more than half a gulp of air.
“Quick, my lady,” Mercy shrieked from somewhere ahead of them.
As if I’m in control of how fast I go.
They burst out of dingy Lackaday Lane into the brighter sunlight of the wider street. Nathaniel shoved her through the open door of her carriage with no gentleness at all and clambered in after her.
“Close the door, Reuben!” Mercy ordered from the seat she’d taken next to the driver.
The coach door slammed so hard, its hinges rattled.
“Drive,” Mercy commanded in her best cockney screech, and the horses leaped into a jolting canter as the mob from Madam Bouchard’s spilled into the street after them.
Georgette wondered if there had been enough time for Reuben Darling to leap onto his customary place at the back of the carriage or if he’d been engulfed by the sea of ragged silks.
Her heart hammered and she dragged in a sweet lungful of the lavender-scented air inside her father’s carriage. She had been in danger. Only now did Georgette allow herself to realize how much.
“That’s a very capable lady’s maid you’ve got there,” Nathaniel said as he sprawled on the opposite squab.
By rights, he ought to have been as out of breath as Georgette, but instead the infuriating man merely spread his arms across the tufted back of his seat and cocked a brow at her. “You should listen to her more often.”
“And you should have listened to me. Do you realize that now I shall have to go back?”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Because we didn’t even have a chance to speak to Mercy’s friend before we were set upon by the bully.”
“Who’s Mercy?”
“My maid. The one with whom you’re so impressed.” Georgette let her gaze flick around the small interior, not trusting herself to look directly at Nathaniel.
She’d often imagined what it would be like to be alone with a man in an enclosed coach. In her mind’s eye, the imaginary fellow would spout sonnets and gaze at her admiringly. At the end of the idyllic ride, perhaps he’d ask for one of her gloves as a memento.
Perfectly correct. Perfectly honorable.
She sighed. Like all her romantic fantasies, the one about being alone with a man in a coach always left her with a satisfying rosy glow in her chest.
Reality, by contrast, made her insides jitter.
Nathaniel Colton was too big, too hawkishly handsome, too real to be so near in this confined space.
And his fixed gaze, while definitely admiring, could not be counted either correct or honorable.
Something about the way he looked at her, as if her clothing were suddenly transparent as wet muslin, made her skin flush with unaccustomed heat.
“What possessed you to stray down Lackaday Lane in the first place?” he asked.
This was safe ground. Georgette chattered nonstop through Leicester Square and Piccadilly about her goal of improving the lives of fallen women.
By the time the carriage slowed in the wider, blessedly familiar streets of St. James’s Square, she was building to an impassioned finish that would have done credit to a country vicar with Methodist tendencies.
“My maid Mercy is a prime example. When offered the opportunity for change, she took it. So you see,” Georgette said, lacing her gloved fingers together, “I’m convinced that many of these young women want to leave their lives of shame for something better.”
“And that something better is learning to empty your chamber pot?”
Georgette drew her lips into a tight line.
That was one of Mercy’s responsibilities, but certainly not the defining duty for a lady’s maid.
Besides being indelicate for him to bring up such a thing in polite conversation, it was hardly fair to single out that demeaning little chore as an example of Mercy’s new life.
“Her domestic duties aside, my maid’s situation is much improved since she came to work for me instead of Madam Bouchard,” Georgette insisted. “Mercy is very clever. I’ve even been teaching her to read.”
“Careful. You may tread on some self-important toes,” Nathaniel warned. “There are those who deplore education for the lower classes.”
“More shame to them.”
“But you can see their point, can’t you? If a maid knows how to read as well as her mistress, it takes all the fun out of emptying her chamber pot.”
Georgette balled her handkerchief in her hand. The man was beyond exasperating.
“You’re missing my point entirely. Mercy didn’t have to become my maid.
With the proper education she can become a shop girl, or a milliner if she has talent in that direction, or whatever she jolly well chooses.
The point is, she has options.” Georgette leaned forward to lend weight to her argument.
“Mercy was trapped in an existence filled with debauchery. She has exchanged it for a life of respectable work. What woman in her position wouldn’t make that choice? ”
“Depending on the position”—he lifted a suggestive brow—“it’s been my experience that some women enjoy a little debauchery.”
Georgette gasped in surprise and that confounded flush started in again, heating her neck and creeping upward. “That’s the most deplorable thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Truly? Your conversations must be deadly dull, then. You really must get out more.”
“Of all the cheek!” What had her sister ever seen in this lout?
Besides his wickedly handsome face and cobalt eyes, of course.
“It’s that sort of debasing attitude that keeps women down, that keeps them from developing their God-given potential.
The fault is not in our gender that our place in the world is smaller than a man’s.
It is in lack of education. Women are kept in the most shameful state of ignorance and—”
Without warning, he reached across the small space, cupped her cheeks with both hands, and covered her mouth with his.
Her eyes flared in shock and she would have pulled back, but he was so much stronger than she.
After all, he’d just carted her down the street in full flight without raising so much as a bead of perspiration on his brow.
Any protest she might make over this kiss would be as fruitless as when she pounded on the bully’s back.
Besides, a secret part of her didn’t want to protest. That rebellious bit inside her wanted to revel in this exciting new sensation, devil take what was proper.
His eyes were closed as he slanted his mouth over hers, deepening their kiss, but Georgette kept hers wide open. Her heart hammered so hard, she felt each pounding beat in her ears. Nathaniel’s hands were firm, but his lips were surprisingly supple, conforming, melding to hers.
The tip of his tongue traced the seam of her mouth, and a wicked little thrill rippled over her.
Her lips parted softly and he drew all the air from her lungs in a swoosh.
Then he replaced it sweetly with his own and followed the warm breath with his tongue.
He tasted of coffee, bracing and strong.
When his tongue pulled back, she felt strangely bereft.
Mercy had complained of an ache in her “nethers” earlier. Now warmth pooled in Georgette’s. A soft, liquid sort of heat she’d never felt before.
Then Nathaniel’s eyes opened and he released her mouth. He was still close enough that his warm breath feathered across her lips. She suddenly realized that the carriage had come to a stop, but neither of them moved.
“Why…did you do that?” she whispered. Her stays were definitely too tight. She could scarcely breathe.
He gazed at her for several heartbeats, his expression questioning, as if he’d never seen her before. Then he leaned back in his seat and exhaled noisily.
“I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “At the time, it seemed the best way to stop you from talking.”
She made a low growl in the back of her throat and demanded that Reuben open the carriage door. Then she turned back to glare at the man across from her.
He ought to be thankful that looks, indeed, cannot kill.
“Do not fret yourself, Lord Nathaniel. You will not be subjected to the sound of my voice for one moment longer.”
The carriage door opened and Reuben handed her down.
“It wasn’t the sound I objected to,” Nathaniel said as he climbed out after her. “It was the words. Have you considered that men wish to protect women from harm and that’s why you’re kept in ignorance about certain things? Your risky sojourn into Covent Garden is a case in point.”
If he was angling for a thank-you for carting her from Madam Bouchard’s, he was destined to drown that worm. He’d treated her as if she weren’t a thinking, rational being. As if she were a child.
Except for that blasted kiss…and even that was to keep me quiet!
“I may be safer here in St. James’s, but how can I remain willfully ignorant of the circumstances of my less fortunate sisters in other places?” She strode toward the door of Yorkingham House.
The irritating man matched her pace.