Six
The second-floor ballroom wasn’t Georgette’s favorite place in Yorkingham House.
She liked dancing well enough, but only if there wasn’t anyone there to see her do it.
The music room, with its butterfly-style grand, held little charm for her since it could not be said that she played the piano.
It was more as if she pounded the keys into submission.
No, Georgette’s favorite place in her family’s spacious home was the library on the ground floor. The walls, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves, held more books than she could read in a lifetime.
Her secret haunt was a darling little windowed alcove fitted with a banquette of tufted cushions.
She could slip into that lovely corner with an apple and a couple travel books and be off to Zanzibar or South America or the frozen land of the czars.
Or she could lose herself in a Sir Walter Scott poem and weep into her lacy handkerchief for his unhappy lovers who must only adore each other from afar.
Her father seemed to have forgotten about coming to finish railing at her.
So after taking a luncheon tray in her room, she slipped out.
With any luck at all, Georgette would have the library to herself all afternoon.
She pushed through the tall double doors with hope in her heart and an apple in her pocket.
But the library was not empty. Nathaniel Colton had spread out one of her father’s detailed maps of the city on one of the large tables. He was leaning over it, tracing the winding streets with his finger.
He must not have heard her, for he didn’t look up. Instead he frowned down at the map. The years since she’d seen him last had scraped all excess boyishness from his face, leaving him lean and hard.
He’d always been a bit of a peacock, even when he was betrothed to her sister, dressing in tasteful, elegant lines. The cut of his jacket emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, and if she were close enough, Georgette was certain she’d see her reflection in his tall, gleaming Hessians.
Not that I wish to be that close to Nathaniel Colton.
“Come in if you wish, Lady Georgette,” he said without a glance toward her.
She blinked in surprise. “How did you know it was me?”
“Your scent. Even if two ladies are wearing the same perfume, every woman creates her own distinctive fragrance. Something to do with the oils in her skin, I’m told.
” He slanted his gaze at her. “You wear that violet water well. I find some perfumes a bit overpowering, but yours is just sweet enough to catch a man’s nose. ”
A little tingle crept down her neck, wiggled along her spine, and stayed to torment the small of her back.
He could smell her. There was something a tad indecent about that. It seemed far too intimate a thing for a man to tell a woman in a library.
“I have no wish to catch anything about you,” she said with a sniff. “Least of all your nose.”
“Then perhaps you should confine your toilette to carbolic soap.”
The man had no sense of boundaries whatsoever. “My toilette is none of your concern, and you will keep your nose to yourself.”
“You forbid me to smell your perfume?” He laughed. “I’d have to be a bit of a wizard to do that. A man may avert his gaze or stop his ears, but short of holding my nose whenever you’re around, which would undoubtedly occasion much comment, I can’t help but smell you.”
A frisson of irritation replaced the tantalizing tingle at the small of her back.
“Why are you still here?” she demanded.
He smiled at her as though her tone was welcoming. She’d made sure it wasn’t, but Nathaniel seemed impervious to her snubs.
“Your father invited me to stay at Yorkingham House as his guest for a bit. Since my family is still in the country till the Season officially starts, I suppose he thought the Colton town house seems a bit large for one person to rattle around in.”
“That’s an exaggeration, isn’t it? Even if your family isn’t in residence, there are no doubt any number of servants who keep the place,” she said as she advanced to the far side of the table and squinted down at the map. “So it couldn’t be said that you were properly alone.”
“Or perhaps I’d be improperly not alone.” He arched a brow at her.
She glowered at him. What was her father thinking to invite Nathaniel Colton to stay with them? Didn’t he know what Nate had become? She’d overheard whispers about his many light dalliances. And amorous abilities most men wished they possessed.
She swept those thoughts away with a stiff mental broom. Nate’s reputed bed skills were the last thing she should contemplate.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “A man like you is never alone.”
“A man like me? Are you inferring that I’d have feminine company?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I seem to have feminine company now, don’t I?”
He actually had the effrontery to wink at her.
“You won’t have it long,” she said with a huff. “Good day, milord.” She started toward the door. Sir Walter Scott and Zanzibar would have to wait.
“No, stay, Georgette. I apologize. I shouldn’t tease you,” he said. “But you make it so deucedly easy, you know.”
She shot him a glare that made him raise his hands in mock surrender.
“All right. You win. I promise to behave.” He turned his attention back to the outspread map, but lifted his hand in a summoning gesture. “Come. I’ve discovered something that may interest you, actually.”
She hesitated. Nathaniel’s kiss that morning wasn’t the sort of thing she could easily dismiss. She ought not to spend time with him.
Of course, it wasn’t as if that had been her first kiss.
Last Christmas, Lord Roger Fishwick had stolen a kiss from her under the mistletoe at her family’s house party.
Even with copious amounts of rum punch thrown into the mix and the frivolous holiday atmosphere, the kiss wasn’t very remarkable.
Roger’s lips were wet and slippery, like the underside of a lily pad.
The memory of his kiss certainly didn’t make her toes curl inside her shoes.
Not like her toes curled now just looking at Nathaniel Colton. She didn’t dare lower her guard with him, but his absorption with the map piqued her curiosity.
“What is it you think will interest me?”
“I believe I am the proud owner of the property across the lane from that brothel you and I exited in a hurry this morning. Take a look at this.”
Against her better judgment, she drifted back toward the table and the outspread map. “How did you come by this property if you don’t know for certain where it is?”
“I won it in a poque game at White’s.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not surprised in the slightest.”
“Don’t be so gloomy, Georgette. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m not gloomy.” She wished his hair didn’t curl behind his ears in a way that made her fingers itch to smooth it down. “I’m disapproving. There’s a difference.”
“Is that another way of saying you care that I waste my time gambling?”
“It matters not a bit to me how you waste your time.”
“Then if you don’t care, stop frowning. Your face will grow like that and it’d be a shame.” He shot her a quick grin before looking back down at the map again. “It’s such a pretty face, you know.”
Was he teasing her again or did he mean it? He’d seldom been serious as a boy. Now that he was a man, it was hard to tell when to take him at his word.
“Well, your frown over my gambling aside, this was one game of chance that wasn’t wasted.
Here’s the legal description of the property.
” He dropped a yellowing piece of parchment on top of the map.
“If I’ve interpreted this correctly, its location is here.
” He pointed to a parcel on Lackaday Lane, that same narrow alley in Covent Garden where Mercy’s friend was trapped at Madam Bouchard’s House of Pleasures for Gentlemen of Quality.
“You seem inordinately enthusiastic about a property that is likely in a sad state of repair,” Georgette said.
He shrugged. “A property can always be improved. I’m a second son, remember, which means I must make my own way in the world.”
He fisted his hands at his waist and for a moment, Georgette imagined him at the prow of a pirate ship, piloting his own future.
He’d make a proper rogue with an eye patch, she decided with an inward sigh.
Then she resolved to put her imagination in a drawer while she was with Nathaniel Colton. Could be dangerous.
“Collecting rents strikes me as a fine way to support my gambling habits,” he said, obviously trying to get another rise out of her.
“Congratulations,” she said dryly, refusing to take the bait. “You probably own a house of ill repute.”
“You may be right.”
“Which means the rents you receive will come at the cost of abject misery for those young women who are bound to that degrading life.”
“As I recall, you are enthusiastic about women making their own choices. If this property is a brothel, the women who work there made theirs.”
“No, not all of them. Many have no other way to survive,” she said.
Nathaniel looked up from his map again. A frown marred his brow. “You seem to know a great deal about this subject. How is that?”
“I’ve read accounts.”
He snorted. “Mostly in tabloids and scandal sheets, I’ll be bound.”
He was right, drat the man! Frustrated, she began to pace, knotting her fingers together as she went. “Usually I ignore those gossipy rags, but occasionally even a blind squirrel finds a nut of truth.”
He left the map and fell into step with her around the spacious room. It made her feel like a rabbit in a walled garden, cornered by a large dog.
“I suspect most of those stories have been highly romanticized in order to touch soft hearts like yours,” he said when she stopped by the bust of Cicero on a waist-high Doric column.
“Next I suppose you’ll claim I’m softheaded, too.”
“No, just too na?ve to know better. People generally do what they want to do. If it eases their conscience to say they were pressured or tricked into bad behavior, I’ll let them say it.
” A hard expression flicked across his features, a tightening of his mouth and a tick of the muscle in his cheek.
Then it disappeared as quickly as it came.
“But I won’t be fooled by it. We all make our own choices and must live by them. ”
He advanced on her slowly, boxing her into a corner between her father’s collection of rare medieval codices and her mother’s copious gardening books.
“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to help those girls out of that life,” Georgette said, trying to ignore the fact that it was hard to draw a deep breath. She really ought to have had Mercy loosen her stays.
He leaned a palm on the bookshelf near her shoulder and Georgette’s bum pressed against the book spines. He ran the knuckles of his other hand over the hollow of her cheek and then brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. The sensitive spot tingled in his wake.
“Georgette.”
She’d never much cared for her name. It had always seemed too harsh, too masculine. But when he caressed the syllables with his deep bass, he made it sound soft and feminine.
“You’re getting yourself in a tizzy over something you can’t change,” he said.
He was so close she could smell his scent—all spicy bergamot with an undernote of burnished leather. She inhaled him all the way to her curled toes.
“Saying I can’t change things isn’t a very effective way of trying to silence me. It only makes me more determined.” She met his gaze and her insides melted at the heat of it. “Or do you intend to kiss me again to keep me quiet?”