Chapter Fifteen
Marlow
My body groaned as I rolled to my side.
I’d fallen asleep with Cleo in my lap and the second volume of Udolpho on my chest, again awoken in the chair to a thunk when it fell to the floor, and moved in a haze to my bed. Usually, the sun persuaded me to rise every morning, but the clock struck ten, and still, I burrowed into my covers.
I did not want to rise and have to work and wait all day to see Georgiana again.
Vision still blurry from sleep, I had an idea grand enough to wake for. A reason to talk to her that wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary to a friend. Out of bed, I scribbled a note about the ghosts we’d chased last night, sent it with her copy of the book she’d left in the library, and a tea tray.
Then I dressed for exercise.
Mr. Portland sat waiting for me in the fencing room.
“Well rested this morning?” he teased as I strode into the room, an hour later than normal. He stood from his chair and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
I took my foil in hand and crossed the room. “I couldn’t sleep.”
He smirked. Nodded his welcome. “Nice to see you too. Should we talk about what has you losing sleep? Or should I say who?”
I blinked and Georgiana was there, in my mind’s eye. Racing ahead of me in the passageway, her skirts billowing behind. Taking my hand. Laughing with me under the moonlight.
No, I would not speak of Georgiana. She was mine. My secret. I raised my foil at him in answer. “En garde.”
He arched a brow, still smirking as he raised his own foil and rounded me. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
We clashed foils for an hour, rushing and retreating in a winding dance, my mind a blank slate, until my muscles ached and sweat saturated my shirt.
He threw a towel at me before he left. “Good work today. You ought to lose sleep more often.”
“See yourself out,” I said to his back, for he’d already turned.
He waved a hand over his shoulder.
Perhaps I would lose sleep tonight. If Georgiana felt like reading.
Had she awoken yet? I wouldn’t blame her for sleeping well into the afternoon after how late we’d stayed out.
After eating breakfast, a cool bath awaited me, and, alone in my room, I sunk into it. At this rate, I’d be working at my desk until dinner.
No, that would not do. Perhaps I could task Toole with some of the less important business.
Shaved, I took my time dressing, stopping in the mirror a final time to smooth my hair. Something was lacking. Smooth jaw, starched cravat . . . perhaps a little more scent?
Saints, I sounded like Gabriel.
Enough.
I barged out the door just as the clock struck one in the afternoon. I descended the stairs, heading toward my study as soon as my boots touched the ground, and went to work.
I tried to read the paperwork in front of me. Once, twice, even a third time. Squirrels jumped around out the window. Birds sang merry melodies. Cleo stalked in and out, over my boots.
I only made it halfway through before a knock sounded gently on my door.
Georgiana? My heart drummed against my ribs. No, it wouldn’t be her. What reason would she have to seek me out here? What would she possibly need of me?
I imagined her sauntering in. Wearing that pretty blue gown she’d worn to the Waymonts’ party.
Hair pinned up, cheeks rosy . . . lips painted red.
She’d come in slowly, watching me with that clear, golden-green gaze.
I’d sit back in my chair as she stopped just above my desk, her hip leaning against the oak, lips parted as she drew in that full, bottom lip—
Tap, tap, tap.
I blinked and swallowed hard. Devil take it, what was wrong with me? “Come in.”
I cleared my throat and raked a hand down my face. I’d overslept. I’d read far too late in the evening, and then I’d overslept. My mind was still a little fuzzy, that was all.
“Your Grace.” Toole stepped into the room. “Her Grace and company plan to walk Hyde Park in an hour. Your presence is requested.”
Blast and bother. What, now? “Who—” I cleared my throat again. Gads, something was stuck. “Who is expected to join?”
“Yourself, Her Grace, Mrs. Drexel, Mr. Brennan, and Miss Wood.”
Georgiana. She’d walk with Maggie because the whole point was to keep our distance. But seeing her at all outside of our evenings sounded appealing, even though it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be thinking about her at all.
“Very well, thank you.”
Toole nodded and started to turn, and I suddenly panicked.
I didn’t want to be alone in this room with only work to divert my mind from thoughts of the wrong woman.
For that was what she was—wrong for me. For the dukedom.
And yet the more time I spent with her, in every way she felt exactly right. I couldn’t explain it.
“Toole?” I called him back on impulse.
He stopped at the door and turned round expectantly. “Yes, Your Grace?”
I wasn’t even sure what I wanted from him. Answers, certainly, but I wouldn’t tell him the whole of my current problem, my inability to control my own mind. My weakness. Perhaps, though, he could give me a window into his. Understanding his feelings might help me sort out mine.
“That woman—the one you are hopeful to marry.”
His eyes brightened. “Mrs. Page, Your Grace.”
Mrs. Page. The widow. How to say it . . . “You said your feelings haven’t changed since you were younger, and I wonder—how can you be certain what you feel now is affection and not just responsibility? Something more than a desire to protect this woman you once knew and cared for.”
Toole looked surprised. He turned thoughtful for a moment, clasping his hands behind his back.
He smiled to himself. His lips parted, then closed.
Then he looked me straight on. “I’d be wise to invent some grand revelation in answer, Your Grace, to convince you to allow the marriage.
I assume you are still considering it. But the truth is simple: loving her was easy.
It still is. As effortless as breathing.
Not that she is without flaw or has never made me unhappy or upset.
No, she simply fits with me in a way no one else ever has.
I understand how she thinks and feels, and she, likewise, understands me.
After all this time, I have never stopped loving her.
Never stopped thinking about her. Now that she is back in my life, I simply want to be near her.
Whether or not the marriage is to my detriment, I am incomplete without her.
And I do not wish to live another day that does not end with going home to her. ”
I watched the man, two decades or more my senior, his heart overfull for this woman in a way most men would die for, and dash, if I wasn’t halfway taken with emotion. I certainly didn’t feel an inkling of that for Lady Diana.
I envied my butler. Badly.
“What does it feel like? This love you speak of?”
“Sweet.” His gaze softened. “Painful.”
I nodded, looking down at my desk. Distracting? I wondered.
“It will change you. Perhaps even come as a surprise. Make you question everything. And you’ll never be the same.”
One moment, he made the idea sound like pure bliss, the next, like a disease. I could not fathom it. “Thank you, Toole.”
He bowed, stepping back. Then, before he rounded the door, “Your Grace?”
He looked determined. Perhaps he’d ask for my decision on his marriage. I’d have to make one soon. In truth, I’d only been thinking about myself asking after the whole arrangement. He made a dashed good argument, but could I let him follow this folly potentially at the expense of the dukedom?
I met his gaze. “Toole?”
“Do not make the same mistake I did. If you find yourself fortunate enough to find such a love, follow it the first time.” A nod, and he was gone.
Something flickered in my chest. Desire, perhaps. Hope?
I harrumphed to myself. Folly. That was all love was. A fool’s errand. A fiction.
No matter, for I had a duty, and that duty came above all else.
I realized my legs had started to bounce, and quickly ceased them. Whatever these strange new feelings were—likely some minor infatuation from having a beautiful woman in my home—I determined not to let them distract me from my duty. No woman was worth that.
“Work,” I muttered to myself, lifting a stack of correspondence I’d neglected.
The hour passed quickly, and just as quickly, I dressed and made my way to the drawing room to assuage my mother’s nerves. A short walk in Hyde Park several paces away from Georgiana ought to quiet the ton’s rumor mill.
I didn’t need to look in the mirror. Didn’t need any extra polishing.
I took the stairs with renewed confidence in finding a proper wife.
Perhaps she’d be out walking Hyde Park. Perhaps, I thought as I descended the last step and crossed the foyer, she’d even be distracted by me.
I was the Duke of Marlow, after all, and any woman I had any intention of courting would—
I stopped in the drawing room doorway.
Georgiana was laughing at something Gabriel was saying. Her eyes lit up, her smile so wide her entire face changed. I watched her, mind utterly blank, in some sort of trance. I felt the sight of her.
The soft ringlets of her golden hair pinned back were an ache in my fingertips. Full lips glossed with the slightest rouge, just enough to draw a man in, were a hitch in my breath. And her eyes . . . her light, green-and-gold-speckled eyes were a rampant beating in my chest.
“There you are!” Mother called, stalking toward me from the settee. “You are late by a quarter hour.”
Maggie moved closer. “Are you unwell, Marlow? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Georgiana’s lips twitched. Our eyes locked, and her smile was an arrow soaring through my chest.
I stared.
Mother took my arm and spun me toward the foyer. “We are already pushing the Fashionable Hour as it is. Come, now! Let us depart at once.”
I let her lead me to the carriage steps. I helped her up, unseeing, unfeeling. Gabriel helped himself.
My every sense was trained on Georgiana. Her footsteps. Her exact distance away.
Maggie took my arm, then my hand, and stepped up. Then Georgiana stopped at the foot.
Apples.
She smiled up at me, and time stopped. “Visiting hidden passages this morning without me, are you?” she whispered. You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.
I tried to smile. My muscles tightened as she took my hand for support. I felt a strange sick sensation in my stomach.
Undoubtedly, I was taking ill.
Overwarm. Sweaty. Heart drumming in my chest. I could almost swear something was lodged in my throat.
I said nothing as she settled on the far side of the carriage, between Maggie and the window. Nothing as we drove the short distance to Hyde Park. As I helped them all down. As Maggie took Georgiana’s arm and hurried ahead down the walking path.
Gabriel offered his arm to my mother, who seemed humored and pleased to walk with him, and I took a moment to compose myself.
It was her. Georgiana. She had done something to me. My mind was no longer my own. I couldn’t keep my eyes from following her, no matter how many times I commanded them.
It took precisely three minutes for someone along the walking path to stop us.
Mrs. Renworth and her eldest daughter, both with gaudy, overadorned hats atop their heads.
I smiled and nodded and clasped my hands together as the women conversed with my mother, glancing every so often ahead to see if Georgiana had stopped.
She stayed ahead for the whole first hour. Try as I might to bridge the gap between us, every few steps it seemed someone needed my attention. But as soon as the conversation stalled, my attention wandered . . .
I wanted to watch Georgiana. She was, perhaps, the most interesting creature on the planet. Especially when she did not think anyone was looking.
I had to bite back my humor with every glance.
The way she stooped low to smell a flower, then scrunched her nose in distaste.
When a bee got too close, she jolted forward, bursting into laughter with Maggie when the danger had passed.
When two gentlemen had interrupted their laughter, she’d bolted ramrod straight as though nothing had happened at all.
She spoke with her hands at her sides, but when she had something to say in earnest, they were used as half the story themselves.
I said “Pardon?” so often in my own conversations, that when Mother finally frowned at me, I made a concerted effort to be present.
The afternoon would never end—
The sun was too hot.
The company too loud.
Too slow.
Too boring.
My jaw ached, and I realized I’d been gritting my teeth.
“You aren’t yourself,” Gabriel whispered at my side. A warning as good as one of Maggie’s looks.
I grunted. “There is much to do at home.”
“Leave home at home.” He nodded toward Lady Diana and her mother heading straight for us.
Blast and bother.
I glanced ahead at Georgiana, standing with a few young ladies, apart from Maggie and an older woman. She looked small among them.
I could’ve sworn she was frowning.
“What fortuitous timing!” Mother trilled. “Marlow, look who I’ve found!”