Chapter Three #2
“Are you not worried about being shunned by polite society?” Georgie asked.
Her father’s fixation on the Ashcombe place in society had gone from being one of pride to obsession over the course of Georgie’s life.
Once upon a time, during her grandfather’s time, the family had been a paragon, and the estate one of the richest in the kingdom.
Over the decades, that had slipped away, to the point that each Hawthorne sibling was expected to marry well to protect the family’s fracturing reputation.
Her elder brother Marcus, the heir, plagued by illness of late, had to put his matchmaking plans on hold.
Gabriel had left entirely, no longer willing to bear their father’s anger over his lack of propriety and interest in the estate.
It had been left to Georgie to marry. But her father’s choice?
“I am not one for society,” Miss Morehouse replied, the brightness replaced by defiance that tensed her jaw and lifted her chin. “I will be very happy to retire to the country, tend to my gardens, and involve myself in whatever local affairs catch my fancy.”
“That sounds lovely indeed,” Miss Duigood answered.
“Indeed,” Georgie parroted. In truth, she was unsettled, the tension of doing her father’s bidding to soothe him and the repulsion of a life with a man her grandfather’s age, pulling her toward the impossible choice.
Impossible, at least, for a girl who’d not only followed the rules, but spent far too much of her life making sure others had too.
“Shall we continue our walk?” Miss Duigood asked, as if sensing Georgie’s unease.
“I would like to see the heart of the maze,” she admitted.
“It is very pretty,” Miss Howard said. “There is a small fountain at the center that is quite pleasing.”
A little running water might have been exactly what she needed to calm her fraying nerves. Bidding Miss Morehouse and Miss Howard a good afternoon, they started farther into the maze.
“You are having second thoughts,” Miss Duigood said.
“Am I so transparent?” Georgie asked, ruing her decision not to wear a bonnet that might help shield her from her companion’s keen observations.
Miss Duigood was a relatively new acquaintance, and whether it was because Georgie had no true friends or her companion’s naturally warm disposition, she felt at ease to speak more freely than she normally might.
“Perhaps,” Miss Duigood replied. “But given your circumstances, I believe your trepidation is to be expected.”
“Expected, but not comfortable.”
“When we are reaching out past the world others have drawn for us, it can be scary.” Miss Duigood guided Georgie toward a cherry tree, the young fresh leaves already providing a canopy as it waited for the blooms that were not quite ready.
She rested her fingers on the bark, smiling at it with a tenderness one might reserve for an old friend.
“Its seed dropped here years ago. To stand this long, its roots had to reach out into the unknown. And now look at it, a thing of beauty, flourishing.”
Georgie looked up at the tree, its thick trunk covered in dark rough bark. Soon it would be a glory of pink blossoms. Could she take a chance and blossom too?
“Thank you,” she said, thankful for this new acquaintance in her life.
“I shall fetch you a glass of lemonade or tea,” Miss Duigood said. “You can explore the maze and catch your breath, and I’ll be but a few moments.”
When Miss Duigood left, Georgie turned toward the maze.
The design led her down one or two false paths that, in the evening, would no doubt provide the perfect place for a scandalous rendezvous after dark.
Indeed, given the reputation of the Lyon’s Den, she worried she might come across a couple not willing to wait for nightfall.
Luckily, she encountered no one, and she credited Mrs. Dove-Lyon with keeping such activities out of bounds, given the presence of three society ladies in search of husbands.
After retracing her steps one more time, Georgie took a different path, following the distant sound of water that may have been the fountain Miss Howard had alluded to.
Confident she’d found the right direction, she picked up her pace, rounding the corner where she expected to see the water feature.
Instead, she found herself crashing into a rather solid, very masculine form.
“Excuse me,” she said at the same time she heard a deep masculine voice.
“So sorry.”
Mortification cut through the sensation of fine wool and finely embroidered jacquard, wrapped around a wall of chest muscle. Bayberry and bergamot mixed with the lingering scent of tobacco—very intoxicating and so very male.
She pushed herself away—an act much more difficult than it should have been—and looked up, preparing to excuse herself to the stranger she’d so intimately collided with.
Blue eyes greeted hers. Blue eyes she knew.
She stepped back, shock making her movements clumsy. Her limbs felt heavy and light all at once as the shock of seeing him again played havoc with her senses.
It hadn’t been a ghost she’d seen in the shadows on the gaming floor.
He was larger now, his boyish features filling out into the harder angles of manhood.
He wasn’t smiling. And the blue eyes she’d remembered as mischievous and warm had grown cooler and serious.
But it was him, somehow. Clad in a beautiful plum coat of fine Melton wool, pulled across his impossibly broad shoulders.
Breeches stretched over long taut thighs, capped in black hessians polished so thoroughly they gleamed.
This wasn’t the happy-go-lucky son of a steward in a hand-me-down coat. This was a gentleman. This was—
“Tom?”