5. Chapter 5 #2
Louis didn't say anything for a long moment. His thumb had stopped moving on her side, and when she glanced at him, there was an unexpected tension in his jaw.
“Does Max know?”
“No. And he will never.” The words came out with an edge. “It was a long time ago, Louis. And I don't need anyone fighting battles that are already over.”
He held her gaze, and she could see he wanted to say something—something protective and probably infuriating—but he swallowed it. His thumb resumed its track along her side.
“Your turn,” she said, turning onto her side to face him. “I've allowed you to invade my privacy. So I think you owe me something about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why hasn't the most charming viscount in England ever married?” She kept her tone light, but the question wasn't. She'd wondered about it since before their arrangement.
Louis Prescott enjoyed women, admired them, bedded them, but never kept a single one.
He could have anyone he wanted. “Women throw themselves at you every Season. Half the women in London would accept a proposal before your knee hit the floor. So what is it?”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. “Perhaps I also simply enjoy my freedom.”
“But is that the real reason?”
His jaw tightened, and it was his turn to look away. The firelight played across his face, and she watched him war with himself as he found his words. She could read him better than he realized, and there was something more to Louis Prescott.
“My mother left when I was seven.” He kept an even tone, his throat working as he spoke.
Her hand found his, and he surprised her by closing it around hers.
“She ran off with another man. A stable hand, I believe.
My father told everyone she died. It was easier to manage that lie than the scandal that would come by admitting she'd abandoned her family and title.”
Georgie went still. She felt the tension in his fingers even though his voice did not show it.
“We were never allowed to speak of her. Father didn't rage or grieve or explain—he just carried on as though she'd never existed.” Louis fixed his gaze on their joined hands. “He always wanted me to marry, to have an heir. But he made sure I knew not to expect anything more. And if that’s all marriage would be, then I hardly see the point.”
The words sat in the darkness between them. Georgie's chest ached—not with desire, but with a need to tell him that he deserved to be loved. That was, at least, what she used to believe for herself.
“Does Max know?” Her voice was quiet as she asked him the same question he’d asked her.
“Only Maddie knows. She's known me since we were children.” He finally met her eye, and the rawness in his expression made her breath hitch. “And now you.”
She should say something lighthearted. Something that would ease the weight of what he'd just handed her and restore the comfortable distance she'd maintained with every man she'd fallen into bed with.
She should make a joke about his mother's taste in men or tell him that his father sounded like a miserable old goat.
They would laugh, and then she would leave.
Instead she lifted his hand and pressed her mouth to his knuckles. One brief, quiet gesture that said more than she'd intended.
His fingers tightened around hers.
They lay there for a long time after that, talking about smaller things—the wager, Thea's dominance at vingt-et-un, happier stories from their respective childhoods.
The conversation was easy and warm and nothing like what she was used to.
The men before Louis had been bodies in the dark.
She'd never stayed long enough to learn what they thought about anything, because she'd never wanted to. And in truth, neither did they.
She wanted to know everything about Louis.
That realization hit her while he was telling a story about Max getting thrown from a horse at Eton—something involving a dare, a hedge, and a lecture from the headmaster.
She laughed with her face pressed into his shoulder and his hand on her bare hip.
It felt so natural that the sheer ease of it frightened her.
It was past two in the morning when she made herself leave.
She pulled on her night rail and robe while Louis watched her from the bed, one arm behind his head, the sheet low across his hips.
He didn't ask her to stay longer. But the way he looked at her as she tied the sash—steady, warm, stripped of the charm he wore for the rest of the world—made her fingers fumble the knot.
“Goodnight, Louis.”
“Goodnight, Georgie.”
She checked the corridor and slipped out, closing his door behind her with a soft click. The walk back to her room had never felt so long.
She climbed into bed, pulled the covers up, and stared at the ceiling the way she had that first night.
Except this time, the ache in her chest was caused by something worse than unresolved desire.
It was the feeling she'd sworn off at eighteen, when a charming man had taught her that trust, once broken, didn't mend.
But hers had been broken by someone who hadn't deserved it in the first place.
Louis was different. She'd known that before tonight—known it in the way he touched her, in the patience he showed when she deflected, in the hundred small moments that didn't fit their arrangement.
But hearing him talk about his mother and seeing the look on his face when he said it—that was the thing she couldn't undo.
Because now she knew him. Not the charm and the grin and the witty remarks that made every woman in a ballroom swoon.
The real one, underneath, who'd been taught the same lesson she had by someone who should have loved him better.
She pressed her face into the pillow and closed her eyes, telling herself that this was still manageable.
She could enjoy him as long as she could and then walk away when it was over.
She’d go back to the independent life she'd built—the one with walls high enough to keep her safe and a heart locked tight enough that no one could reach it.
But the lie she kept telling herself was getting harder and harder to believe.