6. Chapter 6
Louis
Louis lined up his shot playing lawn bowl and tried not to look at Georgie for the fourth time in no less than three minutes.
She was on the terrace with Thea and Maddie, a glass of lemonade in her hand and her hair caught up in a loose arrangement that left the back of her neck bare.
She'd caught his eye once across the lawn, and shared a brief, private look—one that said she was thinking about their late night meetings.
It had leveled him so thoroughly that he'd missed his next two throws and John had stopped pretending not to notice.
Last night, she’d been extraordinary, same as every other night she'd come to his room.
But it was everything after that had him standing on the lawn unable to hold a coherent thought.
The talking. Lying in the dark with her hand in his, while she told him about her first lover and he told her about his mother.
His bloody mother. He'd shared that with exactly one person in his life, yet he'd handed it to Georgie Whitmore while she lay naked beside him.
The empty bed when she had left made his chest ache with something he wouldn’t allow himself to acknowledge. That was the part that frightened him.
“Your throw, Louis.” John stood with his arms crossed, watching him with a less than patient expression.
“Right.” Louis rolled the ball. It went wide.
“That's dreadful,” John said. “We should have wagered a bit of coin on this match.”
Louis shrugged. “The lawn is uneven.”
“Wesley's groundskeeper would weep at the accusation.” John collected his own ball and lined up his shot, releasing his throw—dead center. John did everything with a quiet competence that Louis found irritating on principle.
John retrieved the balls, and Louis's gaze drifted back to the terrace. Georgie was laughing at something Thea had said with her head tipped back and her throat exposed. The sight of it made him want to cross the lawn and put his mouth on the exact spot where her pulse beat.
This was not how an arrangement worked. He'd had them before, and none had involved playing the part of some lovesick fool.
Love? He wasn’t in love. That would be madness.
He knew it existed. He’d seen it in his friends. But that didn’t mean that it was something he was capable of. Or needed.
Wesley called Thea over to join him in their game. When she reached him, Thea leaned back against his chest and said something that made him laugh into her hair. An easy, unthinking gesture—the kind of touch between two people who'd chosen each other and kept making that choice.
Louis looked away. But Maddie, too, had joined them and was brushing something off John's shoulder. John caught her hand and pressed his mouth to her palm. Another instinctual gesture that only looked effortless because they'd fought for it and had come out whole.
It would seem he was surrounded by the joy of bloody matrimony.
He’d never allowed himself to want what they had.
And if he allowed himself to imagine it now, it would be far too easy to see Georgie in the life he would imagine.
And that terrified him, because wanting meant needing, and the last time he'd needed a woman, his mother, she'd climbed into a carriage with a stable hand and never came back.
A commotion near the front of the house pulled his attention. The crunch of carriage wheels on gravel and a voice he didn't immediately recognize carried across the drive.
Louis turned. A man was stepping down from a carriage, handing his hat and gloves to a footman with the ease of someone who expected to be waited on. Fair-haired, well-dressed, perhaps a year or two older than Louis, and a face that women would certainly find attractive.
Lord Dunblane.
Wesley crossed the lawn to greet the guest.
“My apologies for the late arrival. The roads from Dorset were abysmal.”
“Dunblane. Glad you could make it.” Wesley's tone was pleasant, even though the man had never been part of their circle.
“I wouldn't miss it. Your wife's parties are the talk of the county.” The man smiled, and the charm in it was polished and smooth. Louis recognized that sort of smile because he'd built his own version of it.
Louis watched him with the idle interest of a man assessing a new arrival. Nothing more. There was no reason for the prickle at the back of his neck, no reason to dislike a man he'd never met.
Dunblane's gaze swept the lawn and found Georgie. His expression changed into heated desire. The look of a man greeting a woman he knew well. Intimately.
He crossed the grass to her with a confidence that made Louis's hands tighten on the bowl he was holding.
“Lady Georgiana.” Dunblane took her hand before she'd extended it. “What a pleasure. It has been far too long.”
Louis hadn’t missed how Georgie's step had faltered for half a second when she saw him. But now she'd collected herself and grinned back at him.
“Lord Dunblane.” Her gaze narrowed on the man. “I wasn't aware you would be joining the party.”
“I would have been here at the start, but I was otherwise engaged.” He held her hand a beat too long, his thumb brushing across her knuckles before he bowed over it. When he straightened, he didn't release her. His other palm came to rest on her forearm—an intimate, familiar gesture.
And Louis seethed watching the display.
Georgie didn't pull away. She smiled and said something Louis couldn't hear across the lawn, and Dunblane laughed in response.
Louis's chest went tight.
He watched Dunblane lean closer to say something near her ear. His hand was still on her arm. Georgie's smile stayed in place, giving nothing away.
She knew this man. And Louis didn’t like it one bit. He fought the urge not to rush between them and punch the man square in his bloody nose.
Dunblane released her, his hand trailing along Georgie’s arm as he stepped away, and moved toward the house with Wes.
She stood on the lawn and something crossed her face before her expression smoothed. Louis wasn’t certain what it meant. Then she turned and walked toward the house without looking in his direction.
Louis set down the bowl and followed. He caught her in the entrance hall, the cool shade of the house closing around them after the brightness of the lawn.
“Who is Dunblane to you?”
“No one.” She didn't look at him. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find my mother before luncheon.”
She walked past him without meeting his gaze. He reached for her arm—not grabbing, just a touch at her elbow—and she stepped out of his reach without breaking stride.
“Georgie—”
“Not now, Louis.” Her voice was quiet and firm and it shut him out. Slamming a door in his face would have been kinder.
He stood in the hall and watched her disappear down the corridor. His hand was still extended where she'd sidestepped it, and he let it fall to his side.
Last night she'd pressed her mouth to his knuckles and told him things she'd never told anyone. She'd stayed in his bed for hours, laughing, talking, letting him see the woman she was. And now she wouldn't look at him.
Louis replayed her words from last night. A couple of lovers. Chosen with care. And one who wasn't—the first, the one who'd made promises and disappeared. He'd assumed that man had hurt her. What if she avoided attachment because she'd been waiting for him to come back?
Dunblane had touched her with the confidence of a man who'd done so before. And Georgie had let him.
The thought sat in his stomach and curdled there. He needed to get to the bottom of this.
That would prove to be a more difficult endeavor than he anticipated.
At luncheon Georgie sat between her mother and Thea, and she didn't glance in his direction.
In the afternoon, Dunblane found her near the rose garden.
His hand settled on the small of her back as he guided her around a puddle on the path.
She let it rest there for three steps before moving away.
Three steps. Louis counted each one of them from across the lawn, his jaw aching from how hard he was clenching it.
She didn’t appear ready to take the man to bed, but she wasn’t pushing him away either.
At dinner, Dunblane was seated near her, leaving Louis to push his food around his plate as he watched the man fight to keep her attention. She answered something Dunblane said with a single word Louis couldn't hear and then turned to the woman on her other side.
Louis gripped his wine glass a bit too tightly but reminded himself that shattering it would cause a scene.
He tried to catch Georgie after dinner. She was ahead of him in the corridor, and he matched her pace, falling in beside her as other guests filtered past. She headed toward the stairs, bypassing the salon where the guests were gathering.
“Georgie.”
“I'm tired, Louis.” She didn't slow down. “It's been a long day.”
“It would appear so.” He kept his voice low, as he caught up to her. “You’ll come to my chamber tonight like usual, yes?”
She glanced at him and he saw a glimpse of a pained expression in her eyes, but it was gone just as quickly. Georgie looked around them and then released a small sigh. “Goodnight, Louis.”
She hurried up the stairs without looking back.
He watched her go and told himself it was nothing.
They hadn’t exactly slept as much as they should have since the party began.
She'd come to his room tonight, the way she had every other night, and he'd ask her what was wrong.
And she'd tell him, and then he'd make her forget about Lord Dunblane and whatever history the man thought he had with her.
The idea of playing cards held little appeal. He could drink brandy in his room without having to make polite conversation. So he decided to retire to his chamber. He wanted to be ready when Georgie came to him.
Once inside his room, he filled his glass from the bottle on the desk, unfortunately placed right beside the letter from Max. Then he settled onto the settee doing his best not to count the minutes.
A few hours had passed. The house settled into silence. He’d finished a couple more fingers of his drink.
She hadn’t come.
He told himself she'd fallen asleep. That was the reasonable explanation—she'd said she was tired and she'd meant it. He stared at the door and willed it to open. But it didn't.
Another hour. The fire burned low, and he didn't stoke it. Max's letter sat on the desk taunting him. If Max wanted to kill anyone, it should be that bastard Dunblane.
His mind did the thing he'd been fighting against all day. It put the pieces together.
He knew she’d been with other men.
What if she wasn't in her room at all?
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he couldn't unthink it. There were three doors between his room and hers. How many between hers and wherever Dunblane was staying? Had she walked past Louis's door on her way to someone else's?
He pressed his hands flat against his thighs and held them there to keep himself from breaking down her door to see if she was in her bed.
He pushed his father’s voice out of his thoughts. He’d just shake his head and mock Louis if he could see him now. The late viscount wouldn’t hesitate to call him a fool.
He sat there until the fire died. She never came.