“I want you to marry me.”

Miss Georgiana Wickford has a plan to avoid the marriage mart—she’ll propose a marriage of convenience! She hasn’t spoken to the Earl of Ashenden since their childhood friendship was torn apart, but now Edmund is her only hope.

Edmund refuses to take any bride, especially the unsuitable country miss who abandoned him years ago. But when he sees beautiful Georgie at the mercy of society’s rakes, it arouses his protective instincts. And soon the earl is tempted to claim the daring debutante for himself!

“If you have no interest in becoming a countess, why have you asked me to consider marrying you?”

He was standing closer to her now than he’d done since they’d both been children. Close enough for her to see those blue flecks in his eyes which prevented them from looking as though they were chiselled from ice. This close, she’d swear she could see a spark of interest, rather than cold indifference. This close, she could even almost imagine she could feel warmth emanating from his body

Author Note

Some of you will already have met the Earl of Ashenden in my earlier booksin the library of his club, where he was having a delightful conversation with Mr Morgan about the insect life found in India. And you might recall how that conversation was so rudely interrupted by Lord Havelock, bursting in and demanding help with finding a bride in a hurry.

The Earl of Ashenden, being a man of science, suggested they draw up a list of what qualities said bride needed to have, and was very firm about his own intention one day to select a wife primarily for her intelligence.

‘I would hate to think,’ he said, giving Havelock a particularly penetrating look, ‘that I had curtailed my own freedom only to produce a brood of idiots.’

Naturally I could not allow him to settle for such a wife. Instead I decided to give him a heroine who would turn his ordered existence upside down!

If, after reading his story as told within these pages, you would like to know why Lord Chepstow was trying to brush off an imaginary stain when recounting his proposal to Honeysuckle, you can read about it in ‘Governess to Christmas Bride’, which appears in the anthology Gift-Wrapped Governesses.

And if you want to discover what measures Lord Havelock took to ensure Mary married him you can read about their courtship and the early days of their marriage in Lord Havelock’s List.

The Debutante’s Daring Proposal

Annie Burrows

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ANNIE BURROWS has been writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon since 2007. Her books have charmed readers worldwide, having been translated into nineteen different languages, and some have gone on to win the coveted Reviewers’ Choice award from CataRomance. For more information, or to contact the author, please visit annie-burrows.co.uk, or you can find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/annieburrowsUK.

Books by Annie Burrows

Mills & Boon Historical Romance

Regency Bachelors

Gift-Wrapped Governess

‘Governess to Christmas Bride’

Lord Havelock’s List

The Debutante’s Daring Proposal

Brides of Waterloo

A Mistress for Major Bartlett

Stand-Alone Novels

Regency Candlelit Christmas

‘The Rake’s Secret Son’

Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss

A Countess by Christmas

Captain Corcoran’s Hoyden Bride

An Escapade and an Engagement

Never Trust a Rake

Reforming the Viscount

Portrait of a Scandal

The Captain’s Christmas Bride

In Bed with the Duke

Once Upon a Regency Christmas

‘Cinderella’s Perfect Christmas’

Mills & Boon Historical Undone! eBooks

Notorious Lord, Compromised Miss

His Wicked Christmas Wager

Visit the Author Profile page

at www.millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

‘...to the one I love...’

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Meet me at our place.

G.

The Earl of Ashenden crumpled the note in his long slender fingers, his nostrils flaring with distaste.

Meet me at our place, indeed.

No signature. No polite salutation. After all these years of silence, just five words and her initial.

She hadn’t even bothered to state a time. Not that there was any need. If they were to meet, it would be when they’d always met, at first light, before anyone else was about.

If they were to meet? Good God, the woman had only to crook her finger and he was actually contemplating trotting along to see what it was she wanted.

He flung the note into the fire, braced his arm on the mantel and watched with satisfaction as the flames devoured her summons.

Did she really think he’d respond to a missive like that? After she’d turned her back on him when he’d needed her the most? Tossed aside their friendship without a second thought? And then greeted his return to England with an indifference that hadn’t wavered in all the years since?

And yet...

He braced one booted foot on the fender stool. If he didn’t go, he’d always wonder what could have made her break through that wall of silence and reach out to him.

Which was probably why her note had been so brief. He ground his teeth. She knew him too well. Knew that its cryptic nature would rouse his curiosity to such a pitch that he’d find it hard to rest until he’d discovered exactly what lay behind it.

He wouldn’t put it past her to presume that he’d feel guilty, too, if he ignored her note. Because she’d remember the promise he’d made: if ever she needed help, he would give it. Not that she’d actually stated she was in need of help. No, she’d been too cunning for that. She’d merely teased him with five words that could imply anything.

Edmund bent to take the poker from the stand and slashed it through the charred sheet of paper, scattering its ashes across the hot coals until there were no visible remnants.

But it didn’t make him feel any better. On the contrary, it only reminded him that ash was all that was left of a friendship that had burned so brightly for him, he’d believed he’d be able to warm himself at it his whole life.

He stared into the flames, remembering. How she used to pull faces at him over the top of the pew, from her side of church, once the dullness of the sermon had put most of the adults in the congregation to sleep. How she’d walked three paces behind his mother, mimicking the way she stalked down the aisle with her nose in the air.

How she’d rubbed her ear the day Blundell had clouted her for trespassing on to the Ashenden estate, but refused to leave until she’d found her dog, which had wriggled through a boundary hedge in pursuit of a rabbit. How she’d then charmed the gruff gamekeeper into letting her join in his fishing lesson. And subsequently returned the next day. And the one after. How she’d dared him to climb every tree on the estate. Demanded he teach her to fence and box and—

A reluctant smile tugged at his lips as he recalled her fury at the way his gangly arms always kept him out of reach of her fists. The wild way she’d swing at him after every time he got in a blow—until she’d learned to keep up her guard. After that, though she’d still never been able to land a punch on him, he’d not been able to break through her defence.

His smile faded. He turned his back on the fire. The uncomfortable truth was that the only good memories he had, from his childhood, centred on Georgiana. She hadn’t just been his best friend. She’d been his only friend. His mother hadn’t wanted him mixing with children from the village. Nor had she thought him strong enough to send away to school. And his father hadn’t cared enough to intervene. He very rarely visited Fontenay Court and when he did, he’d seldom done more than cast a jaded eye over his only surviving child, and perhaps taken a pinch of snuff, before ‘toddling off’ back to London, or the races, or whatever house party would provide him with the most ‘sport’.

Edmund went to the desk, sat down and laced his fingers together on the blotter as his memories carried him back to the winter he’d almost died. Or so his mother had always maintained. She’d kept him not only indoors, but in bed for what had felt like months on end. Even when spring sunshine had started to lengthen the days, he hadn’t been permitted out of that room. She’d come to inspect him every morning, wrung her hands and then, like as not, launched into one of her diatribes against his father.

‘You’d think he’d care that his heir is wasting away—but, no! Too lazy even to bother to reply to any of my letters, let alone actually tear himself away from his latest lover.’

A shuddering breath escaped him. His father hadn’t cared enough to visit him, even when his mother had written to inform him his only son and heir was at death’s door. But he couldn’t say that his mother’s obsession with keeping him alive at all costs stemmed from maternal love. She just couldn’t bear the thought of having to do her duty by a man she’d come to heartily detest. She’d blurted out that little gem whilst in the throes of yet another rant about his father’s failings, apparently forgetting that her audience was a product of doing that very distasteful duty.

Nobody had cared about him, not really him, rather what he represented.

Except Georgiana.

She’d been the only one to care enough to flout his mother’s embargo on visitors. And she’d done it by climbing up the drainpipe at the corner of the house and inching along the crumbling brickwork to his window.

The very last time she’d managed to get in to see him, she’d done it with half-a-dozen jam jars strung round her neck. Jars that had been full of the butterflies she’d spent all day collecting. For him.

‘I wanted to bring you something to cheer you up,’ she’d said with that impish grin of hers as he’d hauled her in over the windowsill. ‘It’s such a lovely day and it must be rotten being stuck indoors when all the world’s bursting into life out there.’

She had certainly been bursting with life. There had been bits of twigs and moss caught in the cap of black curls that crowned her head. Her nose had been sunburnt, her arms and legs scratched from briars and mottled where nettles had stung her.

‘I know how interested you are in all sorts of bugs,’ she said, her dark eyes turning serious. ‘So I thought of bringing you some beetles to add to your collection. Only then I thought I’d be bound to bring the wrong ones. Ones you’d already got, like as not. But then I thought these would be better. And anyway, they’re more cheerful, aren’t they?’ And then she’d grabbed his hand and drawn him over to his bed.

That was probably the moment he’d fallen in love with her, he reflected gloomily. Because he’d been convinced she was the only person in the world who not only cared about him, but really understood him, too.

‘Close the bed hangings,’ she’d said as she clambered up and unhooked the jam-jar strings from her neck. And he’d obeyed her command, meek as a lamb. He’d have done anything she asked of him, back then. Anything.

‘I’m going to perform an experiment,’ she’d said. And then tilted her head to one side, the way she did that put him in mind of a cheeky little robin. ‘No, actually, it isn’t an experiment. You’re the one who does experiments. And anyway, I’m not trying to prove anything. It’s...more of a sort of show for you.’ And then she’d shaken out the jars. And the gloom of his closed-up bed was transformed into something utterly magical as dozens and dozens of butterflies had fluttered up into the air, their wings flashing copper, and blue and white and orange.

He sighed and bowed his head against the memories. He owed it to that girl to see what she wanted of him. Even though she no longer existed except in his memory. Even though he heartily disliked the woman she’d become, that didn’t detract from the fact that he’d made her a promise. That very day. While she’d still held his heart in her rather grubby little fist.

‘If you ever need anything, Georgie,’ he’d vowed from the depths of his sixteen-year-old heart, ‘you know you have only to ask, don’t you? Oh, I know there isn’t much I can do for you now, but one day I’ll be the Earl of Ashenden and then I’ll be powerful. And whatever you need, I’ll be able to get it for you.’

She’d laughed. Making his cheeks heat, though at least it had been too gloomy within the tent of his bed for her to notice.

‘Just be my friend, Edmund, that’s all I need.’

‘I will, I will...’ he’d breathed. ‘Always.’

He stood up abruptly and, grim-faced, strode to the door.

He was the Earl of Ashenden now, he reminded himself. Going to their meeting place, in response to her request, did not mean he’d become a weak and green youth again, an idiot who’d do anything in return for one of her sunny smiles. He’d long since grown immune to women’s wiles. So he had nothing to fear from going to meet her. On the contrary. She was the one who needed to beware. If she wanted him to help her, she was going to have to answer a few questions first.

He paused, his hand on the doorknob. Frowned. Actually, interrogating her over something that had taken place ten years earlier would be an admission that he cared. That he still hurt.

And he didn’t.

He was over her.

Completely.

He was only going to meet her because of the sweet memories he cherished of the girl she’d once been. And because of the vow he’d made.

It was a matter of honour. She was finally calling in the debt he owed her and, once he’d done whatever it was she was about to ask of him, they’d be quits.

And he’d be free of her.

* * *

Where was he? Georgiana paced along the bank of the trout stream, the train of her salmon-pink velvet riding habit looped over one arm, swishing at the dried-up reeds with her riding crop in frustration. Four days since she’d smuggled her note into the pile of his letters waiting for collection from the receiving office in Bartlesham. And every day since, she’d been here, at their stream, at first light.

He must have read it by now.

Which meant she had her answer. He wasn’t coming.

She didn’t know why she’d ever thought he might. She was such an idiot. When was she ever going to accept that Stepmama was right? Men like the Earl of Ashenden didn’t make friends with people of her class. Let alone women of her class. He’d tolerated her when he’d been a boy, that was all, because he hadn’t had any other playmates.

She sank down on to the log, their log, where they’d spent so many hours fishing and talking. At least, he’d fished, she reflected glumly, and she’d talked. She’d chattered, actually, like a little magpie while he’d listened, or pretended to listen, with his eyes fixed firmly on the fishing line. She leaned her chin on her fist, gazing unseeingly at the gravel bed beneath the rippling water that made this part of the stream such a good spot for trout. Had he been bored by her mindless chatter? Irritated? She hadn’t thought so, but then it was so hard to know what he’d been thinking. Because he’d never said.

Except that last day they’d had together, when he’d promised her that when they grew up, and he became the Earl, he’d still be her friend.

She lifted her head to look at the pollarded willows on the opposite bank, to fix them in her memory, since it was becoming clear that memories were all she was going to have to sustain her in future. Later in the year those trees would form a thick screen that would hide this spot from the path that wound round the lake into which this stream fed. There would be a thick carpet of bluebells beneath them and wild irises cheekily pushing up their heads amidst the reeds which were, today, dry and dead, and flattened in places by recent spates of floodwater.

Like her last hope.

She sighed. It wasn’t worth waiting for the stable clock to chime the hour, as she’d done every other morning. Or hang on until the last note had faded to nothing, the way she’d clung to a desperate shred of hope that she could trust him, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. He wasn’t coming. She was going to have to accept defeat. After all, he’d only been a boy when he’d promised he’d always be her friend. And in the years since he’d clearly thought better of it.

And why shouldn’t he have done so? When her own family found her such a disappointment? If they didn’t think she was good enough as she was, and were constantly urging her to change, why should he?

So that was that. She’d have to stop clinging to ridiculous dreams that there might still be one person in the world who’d keep faith with her. Hadn’t she learned by now that the only thing she could count on was that she couldn’t count on anyone?

She was just getting to her feet when she heard the sound of a dog barking. And in spite of telling herself it still didn’t mean Edmund was on his way, she spun round to face the path along which he’d come, if it was him, so swiftly that she almost lost her balance.

She flailed her arms to try to avoid slipping into the water, as her left foot sank deep into the mud on the bank. She muttered a string of extremely unladylike words as she struggled to extricate her foot from the sucking grip without losing her boot in the process. How typical that having taken such pains with her appearance, whoever it was approaching was about to discover her either standing on one leg with her other, bare foot in the air and her boot in the mud, or more likely flat on her back in the reed bed.

And if it was Edmund, who never had a hair out of place, she’d...she’d...probably throw the muddy boot at him. At least he wouldn’t forget her again as easily as he’d done the last time.

But then the boot came free from the mud, with a slow sucking plop, just as the dog burst over the embankment. It came pelting down the slope and circled her ankles, the whole rear end of its body wriggling in greeting.

‘Lion?’ She bent to stroke the elderly spaniel’s ears. If it truly was Lion, then Edmund couldn’t be far behind. She straightened up just as a vision of sartorial elegance came sauntering leisurely along the path from the lakeside. His boots shone in the pale spring sunshine, his coat fluttered out behind him as he walked, giving tantalising glimpses of a beautifully cut jacket and snowy white neckcloth. His light brown hair was cropped so severely that not a single lock could venture out from beneath the brim of his hat.

But his eyes were hidden by the way light reflected off the lenses of his spectacles. He’d probably worn them to create a physical barrier between them. As if she needed to be reminded of the immense gulf that separated them nowadays. Because he couldn’t possibly need to wear them for any other reason, not when he was walking about his own estate.

Not unless his eyesight had deteriorated an awful lot since they’d last been on speaking terms.

The Earl of Ashenden came to a standstill and swept her with one of those cold, imperious looks designed to put the lower orders in their place. A look designed to impel her to drop a curtsy and beg his pardon, and go back to where she belonged. A look that made her acutely aware of her windswept hair, her mud-caked boot and the fact that her gloves had worn so thin in parts they were almost in holes.

A look that made her wish she really was holding a muddy boot in one of her hands, so that she could throw it at him and knock that horrid, supercilious, unfeeling, inhuman look off his face. She was just picturing a boot-shaped stain splattering the front of his expensively tailored coat when Lion wheezed and flopped down at her feet.

‘I cannot believe you made poor old Lion walk all the way up here,’ she said, since she didn’t have any other missile to hand.

‘I did not,’ he replied. ‘We came in the carriage as far as the alder copse.’

‘You came in a carriage?’ Now it was her turn to look at him with scorn. What kind of man took a carriage out to drive a mere mile, especially when he had a stable full of perfectly splendid hunters?

As though she’d spoken those thoughts aloud, his head reared back. ‘I thought Lion would be pleased to see you,’ he said, with just a touch of emphasis on the spaniel’s name, which conveyed the implication that the dog was the only one who regarded this meeting as a treat. ‘It is too far for him to walk, at his age. Also, he enjoys riding beside me in an open carriage.’

As if to prove his master right, Lion chose that moment to roll on to his back to invite her to rub his tummy. She bent and did so, using the moment to hide her face, which she could feel heating after his rebuke. She couldn’t really believe that his attitude could still hurt so much. Not after all the times he’d pretended he couldn’t even see her, when she’d been standing practically under his nose. She really ought to be immune to his disdain by now.

‘Did you have something in particular to ask me,’ he asked in a bored tone, ‘or should I take my dog and return to Fontenay Court?’

‘You know very well I have something of great importance to ask you,’ she retorted, finally reaching the end of her tether as she straightened up, ‘or I wouldn’t have sent you that note.’

‘And are you going to tell me what it is any time soon?’ He pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked down at it. ‘Only, I have a great many pressing matters to attend to.’

She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I do beg your pardon, my lord,’ she said, dipping into the best curtsy she could manage with a dog squirming round her ankles and her riding habit still looped over one arm. ‘Thank you so much for sparing me a few minutes of your valuable time,’ she added, through gritted teeth.

‘Not at all.’ He made one of those graceful, languid gestures with his hand that indicated noblesse oblige. ‘Though I should, of course, appreciate it if you would make it quick.’

Make it quick? Make it quick! Four days she’d been waiting for him to show up, four days he’d kept her in an agony of suspense, and now he was here, he was making it clear he wanted the meeting to be as brief as possible so he could get back to where he belonged. In his stuffy house, with his stuffy servants and his stuffy lifestyle.

Just once, she’d like to shake him out of that horrid, contemptuous, self-satisfied attitude of his towards the rest of the world. And make him experience a genuine, human emotion. No matter what.

‘Very well.’ She’d say what she’d come to say, without preamble. Which would at least give her the pleasure of shocking him almost as much as if she really were to throw her boot at him.

‘If you must know, I want you to marry me.’

Chapter Two

The Earl of Ashenden took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses.

The way he’d always done when he was trying to think about exactly what to say before saying it. If she wasn’t trying so hard to convince him she could act the part of a grand lady, she would have done a little victory dance. Because she’d succeeded into shocking him into silence. Edmund Fontenay. The man who was never at a loss for a clever remark.

‘While I am flattered by your proposal,’ he said, replacing his spectacles on his nose, ‘I must confess to being a touch surprised.’

Hah! He didn’t need to confess any such thing. Not to her. Not when she knew exactly what the whole spectacles removing and wiping and replacing routine was all about. She’d stumped him. ‘Would you mind very much explaining why you have suddenly developed this interest in becoming...’ he paused, his gaze growing even colder than it normally did whenever it turned in her direction these days ‘...the Countess of Ashenden?’

She sucked in a sharp breath at the low blow. ‘I have no interest in becoming the Countess of Ashenden. It isn’t like that!’

‘No?’ He raised one eyebrow as if to say he didn’t believe her, but would very graciously give her the chance to explain.

‘No. Because I know full well I’m the very last person qualified to hold such a position.’ At least, that’s what his mother would say. And what Stepmama had said. Countless times. That it would be useless to set her cap at him—even if she’d been the kind of girl to indulge in that sort of behaviour—since the next Countess of Ashenden would have a position in the county, and the country, for which Georgiana simply didn’t have the training. Let alone the disposition.

‘In fact, I would much rather you weren’t an earl at all, but just...my neighbour.’ But unfortunately he was an earl. And he hadn’t been her neighbour for some years. He came back to Bartlesham as rarely as possible. His interests lay in London, with the new, clever friends he’d made. Her real neighbours had begun to wonder if he was going to turn out just like his father, who’d only ever returned to his ancestral seat to turn his nose up at it. ‘Oh, what’s the use? I might have known this was a waste of time.’

‘You might,’ he said.

‘Well, we cannot all be as clever as you,’ she retorted. ‘Some of us still do stupid things, hoping that people won’t let them down. You might as well say it—some of us never learn, do we?’

‘Some of us,’ he replied, slowly advancing, ‘would be more inclined to assist a...neighbour in distress if that neighbour would explain themselves clearly, without flinging emotional accusations left, right and centre. If, for example, you have no interest in becoming a countess, why have you asked me to consider marrying you?’

He was standing closer to her now than he’d done since they’d both been children. Close enough for her to see those blue flecks in his eyes, which prevented them from looking as though they were chiselled from ice. This close, she’d swear she could see a spark of interest, rather than cold indifference. This close, she could even, almost, imagine she could feel warmth emanating from his body.

She got the most inappropriate urge to reach out and tap him on the shoulder, to tag him and then run off into the trees. Only of course, he wouldn’t set off in pursuit nowadays. He’d just frown in a puzzled manner, or look down his aristocratic nose at her antics, and shake his head in reproof. The way Papa had started to do whenever she did anything that Stepmama declared was unladylike.

Just then Lion yawned, making her look down. Which shattered the wistful longing for them to be able to return to the carefree days when they’d been playmates. Smashing the illusion that he’d just looked at her the way he’d looked at her then. As though she mattered.

When the painful truth was she’d never mattered to him at all. Well, she’d never mattered to anybody.

Still, it did look as though she’d succeeded in rousing his curiosity.

She peeped up at him warily from beneath her lashes. He was studying her, his head tilted slightly to one side, the way he so often used to look at a puzzle of some sort. Her heart sped up. And filled with...not hope, exactly. But a lightening of her despair. And she wondered whether it would be worth explaining why she’d considered making the outrageous proposal, after all.

‘Look, you know my father died last year—’ she began.

He flinched. ‘Yes. I did mean to offer my condolences, but—’

She made a slashing motion with her hand. It was far too late for that now. And she couldn’t bear to talk of it. It was bad enough that she’d turned out to be such a disappointment to the bluff, genial man she’d adored. That his final words to her had been an admonition to try and be more like Sukey, her stepsister.

‘I don’t wish to go over old ground,’ she said, proud that a slight hitch in her voice was the only thing betraying how very much Edmund’s absence, his silence, last year, had added to her grief. Which had been foolish of her, considering they hadn’t spoken to each other for several years. Why had she thought a bereavement would have made a difference to the way he dealt with her?

‘The point is,’ she continued, ‘that now we are out of mourning, Stepmama has decreed we go up to London, so that Sukey and I can find husbands.’

‘And?’

The impatience bordering on irritation he managed to inject into the single word cut her like a rapier thrust.

‘And I don’t want to go! I don’t want to have to parade around before a lot of men who will eye me up like some prize heifer at market.’ She bit back the painful admission that she could just imagine what they’d say of her, all those smart London beaux. They’d sneer at her, no doubt, and scoff and turn their noses up at her. She couldn’t imagine any decent man actually liking her enough to propose marriage. Not when she’d been such a disappointment to her family that they’d spent years trying to turn her into something she wasn’t.

‘I don’t want to have to accept an offer from some horrible man—’ who’d probably be deranged; well, he’d have to be to want to marry someone who struggled so hard to behave the way a lady should ‘—who will probably take me heaven knows where...’

The Hebridean Isles, like as not. Where there would be nobody to talk to. Because nobody lived there. Which was why the wild and hairy Scot would have gone to London to find a bride. Because there simply weren’t any women in those far-flung isles. And that would be the only reason she’d look like a good choice—because he wouldn’t know any better.

‘You may meet some man who is not horrible,’ he replied in a flat voice that cut right through her deepest, wildest imaginings. ‘That is the whole purpose of the Season, I believe? To meet someone congenial?’

She took a deep breath. Counted to five. ‘Whoever they are, they will take me somewhere...’ Somewhere remote, so that nobody could criticise him for his poor choice. Or populated with odd people who wouldn’t notice her own failings because they were practically savages themselves.

But because her fears about her future would sound pathetic when voiced aloud, she finished limply, ‘Somewhere else.’

‘Then all you have to do is refuse all offers,’ he said in a condescending tone, ‘return to Bartlesham and live out your days as a spinster.’

Spinster! Ooh, how she hated that word. She much preferred the word virgin. A virgin was pure. Unsullied. A spinster was...a sort of dried-up husk of a person.

‘If you had spent any time at all down here since Papa died,’ she spat out, ‘you could not have just said anything so fatuous. Six Chimneys is entailed. And my prig of a cousin who inherited only gave us leave to stay on here for the year of mourning. Once we leave and go up to London, there will be no coming back. It’s marry some stranger, or...or...’

Oh, no. Her eyes were prickling. She’d sworn she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Edmund. She turned away. Slashed at the reeds with her riding crop a few times to relieve her feelings. Turned back, her spine stiff.

‘Look, I know I’m not much of a catch,’ she said in a voice that only quivered just a little bit. ‘I’m not an heiress and I don’t have a title or anything, but I wouldn’t interfere with your life, like some wives would. You could leave me down here once we’re married and go back to London. I wouldn’t even put your mother’s nose out of joint by trying to take over running the house, or trying to outshine her at county affairs, or anything like that.’ Well, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t know how. But neither would she embarrass him by gallivanting all over the countryside like the hoyden she’d used to be. At least she knew better than that, now. ‘I’d keep out of everyone’s way, I swear!’

He looked her full in the face for the space of what felt like an eternity, though it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t anything good, since he’d got that flinty look again.

‘It is of no use looking up at me,’ he said eventually, ‘with those big brown eyes of yours, the way Lion does when he’s begging for scraps. I am not soft.’

‘I know that. Nobody,’ she said bitterly, ‘knows that better than I.’

‘Which only confirms your unsuitability to become my wife. You wouldn’t come to London with me, you wouldn’t even run the house if I left you down here alone. Just what, exactly, are you offering? What will I get out of this ridiculous marriage you claim to wish to make?’

‘Well...I don’t...I mean...’ She swallowed. Lifted her chin. Forced herself to say it. ‘That is, I don’t know if you remember, but you promised me, you did, that when you grew up, you’d do anything to help me if I needed a friend. And I’ve never needed one more than I do now...’

‘When I made that promise I was a boy,’ he bit out, his mouth twisted with distaste. ‘A callow youth. And I never imagined that you’d expect repayment this way. By demanding I make you my Countess!’

Georgiana sucked in a deep, agonised breath. The...the...brute. Didn’t he know what it had cost her to break through all the years of estrangement and write to him, begging him to meet her? Couldn’t he see how desperate she must have been to have broken all the rules by proposing to him?

‘I’m not demanding anything,’ she protested. ‘I was just hoping...’ She shook her head. That was the trouble with hope. It might raise your spirits for a while, but when someone tore it away, it left a ragged, gaping wound in its place. ‘I can see it was foolish to expect you to keep your promise. I might have known you’d find some way to wriggle off the hook.’

His nostrils flared as he sucked in a furious breath.

‘Don’t you dare accuse me of breaking my promises Georgie. Or trying to wriggle out of anything—’

‘But you just said you wouldn’t marry me. That you wouldn’t do anything to help me at all.’

He darted forward as she made to turn and leave, seizing her by the upper arm.

‘I never said anything of the sort,’ he growled. ‘It’s just that you didn’t offer me the one thing that might make me consider your...offer.’

Her heart kicked at the inside of her chest. There was something about the way he was looking at her that made her feel...weak. And sort of...trembly inside.

‘W-what might that be?’

‘Heirs,’ he said. ‘The only reason I will ever marry, any woman, is to fulfil my duty to provide heirs to take over my responsibilities when I’m gone.’

‘But that would mean...’ A vision flashed into her brain of how babies were made. It still made her feel ill to think about that day she’d gone into the stables and seen Wilkins lying face down in what had looked like a bundle of rags, with his breeches round his ankles, pounding that bundle of rags into the straw. There had been a pair of female legs spread grotesquely on either side of his hairy bottom, legs, she had discovered a few months later, which had belonged to one of their housemaids. The whole episode left a bad taste in her mouth, especially since, no matter how hard Liza had wept, Stepmama had insisted on turning her off, for being a bad influence on the daughters of the house.

And, by the way Edmund thrust her from him angrily, her disgust over the whole affair showed plainly on her face.

‘What, did you think I’d accept a marriage in name only?’

Once again, her face must have given her thoughts away, because he flinched.

‘My God, you did, didn’t you?’ He whirled away from her, his coat fanning out like the wings of a storm behind him. ‘What kind of man do you think I am?’ He paced back, his eyes glittering angrily. ‘You believe all those stupid things your idiot of a father said about me, don’t you? That I’m not a real man at all, because I prefer observing living creatures to galloping about the countryside in pursuit of them? That I have ink running through my veins, not hot, red blood?’

‘Papa was not an idiot,’ she said, since she couldn’t deny she had hoped he might have been willing to accept her terms. Which made her an idiot, too.

‘And that is the kind of man you wish to marry, is it? A man you don’t think is a real man at all?’

‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘That’s the only kind of man I could imagine being able to tolerate marrying. A man who’d let me have a marriage in name only.’

He stepped smartly up to her and took her by both shoulders.

‘When I marry it won’t be in name only. I want heirs. Several, in fact. I am damn well not going to have only one son, then carry on with my life as though he doesn’t exist.’

Her heart went out to him. Because she could see exactly why he was saying that. He’d been such a lonely child, of course he wouldn’t want to inflict the same fate on his own offspring.

‘And my wife will not be willing to let my mother carry on reigning over the county. She’ll have to take up the position herself, not try to stay out of everyone’s way. She’ll have to be strong enough to stand at my side, her sword metaphorically drawn, not cower in the background lest she put anyone’s nose out of joint.’

And then he flung her from him as though touching her had contaminated his hands.

‘Y-yes, I see,’ she stammered. And what she saw was that, yet again, she didn’t measure up. Not as a daughter, not as a possible wife, and not as a woman. ‘Oh, God,’ she whimpered, seeing her last hope slipping through her fingers. ‘You are going to make me go through with it, aren’t you? I’m going to have to go to London and face the humiliation of—’ she broke off before voicing her fears that no man with any sense would want her as a wife.

‘I am not making you do anything. This has nothing whatsoever to do with me,’ he said, making a slashing motion with his hand.

It was as though he’d landed a blow to her very heart. It was the final proof that he’d changed beyond all recognition. Either that, or her memory of him had been very deeply tinged by wishful thinking.

‘I might have known you’d take that attitude. Out of sight is out of mind with you, isn’t it? You don’t care about anything but what is right under your nose.’

A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘You are deliberately twisting my words.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m just forcing you to see what you are doing to me! You. Yourself. Because you refuse to help me, some strange man is going to gain rights over my body. He will paw at me and...mount me...and...I will have to...endure it.’ Her stomach lurched in revulsion. ‘God, how I hate being a woman,’ she said, pressing her hand down hard on the centre of the nausea.

‘Georgie,’ he gasped, clearly shocked by her explicit description of what marriage meant to her. Her outrageous admission that she hated everything about being female. ‘Listen to me...’

‘No. I don’t want to hear any more stupid platitudes. The only thing you could possibly say that I want to hear is that you are going to marry me. Will you? Will you marry me?’

The look on his face said it all. It was a mixture of shock and distaste, and withdrawal.

‘No, you won’t, will you? Well then, I will stop wasting your precious time,’ she said, dashing her hand across her face to swipe away the one tear she hadn’t been able to blink back, and bent to pat Lion one last time. Then she turned and stumbled from the riverbank.

He didn’t reach out a hand to try and stop her. He didn’t call out her name. He just stood there, coldly watching her flee the scene of her humiliation. At least, she assumed the look on his face was cold. She wasn’t going to betray any weakness by looking over her shoulder to find out.

* * *

‘Well, Lion, what do you make of that?’

The exhausted spaniel flopped down on the hearthrug with a sigh and closed his eyes. Even when Edmund nudged him with the toe of his boot, the dog did not react.

‘You are not being any help,’ said Edmund, gazing down at the almost-comatose dog. ‘You are the one person—I mean creature—who knows her as well as I, since you were there for many of our escapades. Have you no useful advice to give me?’

Of course Lion didn’t have any advice to give. He was a dog. By heaven, he was actually talking to a dog, instead of sitting down and going over the encounter with Georgiana in a rational fashion.

But how on earth could he possibly go over the encounter in a rational fashion, when it felt as if he’d been beaten about the body all day by a series of highly irrational explosions?

First, the letter had infuriated him, dredging up as it had a whole host of insecurities and hurts he’d deliberately buried beneath years of strenuous denial.

And then there had been his visceral reaction to seeing her again, standing in the place that represented a sort of oasis during his childhood, wearing that figure-hugging, vibrant pink gown that stood out like a beacon against the background of all those dead reeds. His entire body had leaped in response. That was what it had felt like. Almost the same as the feeling he’d had when taking part in those experiments with galvanism. An involuntary reaction in his muscles that had nothing to do with his brain, his intellect.

And then she’d shocked his mind too, with that completely unexpected proposal. But what had been most shocking about it was the fact that, for a moment, he’d actually considered it. Even though he’d assumed she’d only proposed out of ambition to become a countess.

Which had made him twice as angry as he might have been when she’d explained that the reason she wanted him was because, primarily, she didn’t think he’d be interested in bedding her. She might as well have spat in his face. Which had, in turn, provoked him into telling her exactly what he wanted from marriage. The words had come pouring out of his mouth like a dam bursting, in spite of never having actually sat down and thought it through.

He strode to the sideboard and wrested the top from the decanter.

He couldn’t believe, now, that he’d become angry enough to grab her. Grab her! Which meant that he’d been so close to her that when he’d drawn breath, he’d unwittingly filled his nostrils with the scent of her. And had, at the same time, become aware of the warm contours of her shoulders, rising and falling under his palms.

He shook his head as he poured himself a large brandy. If he didn’t habitually keep such firm control over himself, he’d have flung her to the ground right there and shown her exactly how normal and healthy his appetites could be.

What man wouldn’t react that way to having such a slur cast on his masculinity?

He downed half the drink and slammed the glass back down on the sideboard.

And how on earth had she reached the conclusion that sexual congress was a revolting act that would humiliate her, anyway? Though at least he now could see why she’d wanted the sterile union she’d imagined she’d have with him.

He whirled away from the sideboard and strode to the window. What was he doing, taking brandy at this time of day? Five minutes in her presence and she’d driven him to drink.

And yet...

She’d turned to him. She might have insulted him in the process, but she had practically begged him for help.

He braced his hands on the windowsill and gazed out in the direction of their stream. If only he’d stayed calm and cool and rational, he could have walked away from that encounter feeling like a victor. Instead of which...

An image of her face swam before his eyes. Her face, not as it had been today, all pinched up as she struggled not to cry, her whole body rigid with the effort of sacrificing her pride and begging him to rescue her from being bedded by a Real Man, but alight with laughter as she hung upside down by her legs from a tree.

‘I still miss her, Lion,’ he whispered, bowing his head in defeat. ‘Where did she go? What happened to that girl who wasn’t afraid of anything, or anyone, to turn her into the woman she is today?’

And, more importantly, what was he going to do about it?

Chapter Three

Nothing. That was what he was going to do. Not until he was able to think straight. He’d learned at his mother’s knee that giving way to an emotional appeal, out of pity, or guilt, or a sense of indebtedness, or...whatever, only resulted in him committing what he’d later regard as an error of judgement.

But in spite of constantly reminding himself that he had far more important matters to think about, Georgiana’s outrageous proposal, and, to his mind, his even more disgraceful reaction to it, kept on pushing everything else aside.

They even affected the way he dealt with estate business.

‘I do not care what my mother says,’ he found himself saying, shocking both himself and his steward by pounding his fist on the desk. ‘I am the Earl of Ashenden. I am running this estate and all my other holdings. And if I wish to...to plant the whole of the water meadow with pineapples, she has no right to gainsay it.’

Rowlands’s jaw dropped. ‘Pineapples, my lord?’

‘It was merely a hypothetical example,’ Edmund bit out. ‘The point is, my word here is law. Or should be.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Then why do you persist in coming to me to report that work has not been done because the Countess would not like it? I do not,’ he said, rising to his feet and leaning forward, resting his palms on the desk, ‘wish to hear that excuse ever again. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Rowlands, twisting the sheaf of papers he held in his hand into a tight screw.

Edmund wiped his hand across his face. Devil take it, he was losing his temper with a subordinate. Shouting at a man who had not the liberty to answer back.

It was because he was tired, that was what it was. He’d fallen asleep with Georgiana on his mind, then been plagued all night by dreams in which he’d watched her being dragged to the altar by a variety of unsavoury-looking characters. Worse still, he was always present during the subsequent wedding night. Time and again, she’d turn her big brown eyes to him as the men had been stripping her naked and pushing her on to the bed, pleading with him to come to her rescue. But he never could. Either his legs had remained stubbornly immobile, no matter how hard he’d struggled to get to her. Or he’d reached out to thrust the shadowy bridegroom away, only to find his hand was pushing at empty air. At which point he would awake, sweating, and roused, and ashamed. Because he couldn’t be sure that his motives for getting to Georgiana were completely honourable. Had he been trying to rescue her, or did he simply want to replace the man in her bed?

Self-disgust had him getting up hours before his hapless valet could reasonably have expected a summons, ordering a breakfast which he couldn’t manage to eat and then marching down to the boathouse.

He must have rowed upstream for the best part of an hour. But no matter how hard he pushed himself, he could not achieve the clarity of mind that being out on the open water normally bestowed.

Infuriated to find that he couldn’t even escape her out there, he allowed the current to carry him back to the boathouse, and stalked to his study in the hopes that he could bury himself in work. And this was the result.

‘I appreciate you are in a most awkward position, Rowlands,’ he said as he sat down. ‘I am asking you to carry out orders of which she does not approve. I know that she comes here far more often than I and that you have been used to doing her bidding for some considerable time.’

Rowlands flushed. ‘We were all that grateful she took up the reins when your father dropped them, my lord,’ he pointed out. ‘Begging your pardon for saying so.’

‘No need to beg my pardon for that. She did a sterling job, considering. I am well aware that had it not been for her, I may not have inherited estates that were in such good working order.’ And he really ought to feel more grateful to her than he did. ‘Nevertheless, she has not studied modern farming methods, the way I have. Nor is it her place to run things now that I have reached my majority.’

‘No, my lord,’ said Rowland. And took a breath, then closed his mouth.

‘Yes, what is it? You may as well tell me, so that we can clear the air once and for all.’

‘Well, it’s just that with her ladyship being so used to getting her own way, in these parts, it might be helpful to all of us down here if you would have a word with her.’ His face went beetroot-red.

‘Point taken,’ said Edmund.

It was for him to tell his mother to cease interfering with his plans. With an effort, he returned to discussing estate business with the poor man who would have to carry out those plans in the face of probably strident opposition from Lady Ashenden. But he could only manage to keep part of his mind on turnips, drainage and potential yields. The other part kept straying back to Georgiana and the way she’d looked in that gown. The wild, almost primitive surge of lust he’d experienced after breathing in her pure, undiluted scent. His insane desire to prove to her, right there on the riverbank, that he was just like any other red-blooded man.

No wonder his sleep had been so disturbed the night before after a scene like that. Especially as she’d told him that she would hold him personally responsible for whatever happened to her in London.

And as the day wore on, and his mind kept straying to Georgiana’s proposal, a couple of other things she’d said started to niggle at him. For instance, she’d flung the words, ‘Out of sight is out of mind with you, isn’t it?’ As though she was accusing him of turning his back on her. Which made no sense. For she was the one who hadn’t answered any of the letters he’d written to her. Apart from, ironically, the first. The note he’d thrust into the gap between the stone wall and the gatepost of the main drive, which was where they’d always left messages for each other if they couldn’t meet at their place for any reason.

Dr Scholes has persuaded Mother that I need to live in a warmer climate if I’m going to reach adulthood. I am leaving tomorrow. But I will write to you. Please write to me, too.

She’d written back.

I will. I will miss you.

Miss him—hah!

The footman, who’d been about to remove the cloth and bring in the port, flinched. Which alerted Edmund to the fact he must have actually said the word, rather than just thinking it.

Which infuriated him even more. Dammit, he couldn’t even sit down to dinner in peace because of her. He hadn’t been this unsettled since...since he’d first gone to St Mary’s. And waited for letters that never came. Six months it had taken him to accept the fact that she wasn’t going to keep her word. That she didn’t miss him at all.

He unstoppered the decanter which his footman had placed, warily, at his left hand and poured himself his usual measure. When he thought of the hours he’d spent, walking along the beach, howling his protests into the wind so that nobody would witness his misery, he couldn’t help grimacing in distaste.

It had taken a stern talking-to from Dr Scholes to put an end to it.

‘It is as well you learn what fickle creatures females are,’ the elderly scholar had told him. ‘Not that they can help it. They may well mean whatever it was they said at the time they said it, but five minutes later another idea will come into their head and they will forget all about the first one. Or simply change their mind.’

The explanation had made so much sense it had made him feel like the world’s biggest fool. He should already have learned, from the example of his parents, that men and women never said what they really meant, but only what they hoped would get them out of hot water. But it had been Georgie’s casually broken promise that had made him vow never to trust another person so much that he became that vulnerable, ever again.

And until he’d gone to the stream in answer to her summons, he had kept that vow.

He got to his feet abruptly, waving permission to the hovering footmen to clear the table. There was no clarity of thought to be found in port. What he needed was a good night’s sleep. But he was not likely to get it, not with his head still so full of Georgiana.

So he went to his study, sat down at his desk and out of habit when first considering a complex problem, drew out a fresh sheet of paper and trimmed his pen. But what to write, when it came to Miss Georgiana Wickford?

Why is she angry? he wrote. As though he’d betrayed her, not the other way round. What could possibly make her think that? He hadn’t chosen to leave. To leave her alone. So it couldn’t be that. But...

He closed his eyes, and concentrated. And another inconsistency popped up.

If she was so angry with him, why had she asked him to marry her?

It made no sense.

Especially not when she’d told him she’d almost expected him to wriggle off the hook.

From where, he wondered indignantly, had she acquired such a low opinion of him? He was a man who kept his word. Why, he’d even gone to the stream, in answer to her summons, because of a promise he’d made when he’d been too young to know any better. Even though she’d broken hers to him.

Angrily, he scratched another question mark. And put the matter aside. Because all he was doing, by concentrating on Georgiana, was getting even more angry than when he was trying not to think about her at all.

* * *

The next day, during the hours when he was supposed to be going over the accounts, his mind wandered to Georgiana’s peculiar view of what a London Season would be like. And he got a vivid flash of himself, as a bewildered youth, being put on a coach and shipped off to St Mary’s.

He leaned back and twirled his pen between his ink-stained fingers. She was clearly as scared as he’d been back then, about going to what was, to her, a foreign country. He seemed to recall that he’d even had the odd notion that he was being sent into exile, for some crime he hadn’t been aware he’d committed.

That same fear might explain why she had acted so irrationally and said so many other things that made no sense. Perhaps all she needed was reassurance. Perhaps he would not feel so guilty about not being able to accede to her ridiculous demand she marry him, if he could explain that, for him, going to the Scilly Isles had turned out to be the best thing that had happened to him. Once he’d stopped bewailing her betrayal, that was. Dr Scholes had encouraged him in all his studies, even going so far as helping him catalogue the incredible variety of moths to be found on the Isles at various times of the year. He’d encouraged him to row, regularly, which had improved his physique to no end. He’d allowed him to mix with the locals, too.

There, that was something he could do. Encourage her to look upon her London Season as an opportunity, rather than a form of torture.

Because he couldn’t leave things as they were. His conscience wouldn’t permit it, no matter how often he told it to be silent. It kept reminding him that he’d made a promise. And even though he couldn’t keep that promise in the way she thought she wanted him to, he ought to find some other way to prove he was not the sort of man to wriggle off the hook.

* * *

The next morning, when he was out rowing on the river, he came up with an answer that was so utterly perfect he couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t suggested it to her at once.

There were men who, for various reasons, did seek out the kind of marriage she’d asked him to contemplate. He couldn’t actually foresee that much difficulty in arranging such a match, if she was so sure that was what she wanted.

There. That was something constructive he could do. He could suggest she look, in London, for the kind of man who did want a paper marriage. Perhaps even offer to discreetly put out feelers to that end.

And then, once Georgie’s future was settled, maybe he’d be able to get a decent night’s sleep again.

* * *

Later that day, therefore, he sent for his carriage, heaved Lion up on to the seat beside him and set off for Six Chimneys. Lion had been a great help during their last interview. More than once, the old dog had inadvertently diffused the tension building between the two humans.

Besides which, Lion had enjoyed seeing her and she’d enjoyed seeing him.

It was the only thing about her, apparently, that hadn’t changed since their childhood—her love of dogs.

As the carriage bowled along the winding lanes that separated Fontenay Court from Six Chimneys, Edmund wondered what could possibly account for the drastic changes between the girl he’d loved and the woman who...irked him so much. Yes, irked him. Because, although she looked like a grown-up version of the girl who’d captivated him, she had none of the spark. Miss Georgiana Wickford was all...cool detachment and elegant deportment.

The very minute he’d left Bartlesham it was as if she’d turned into someone else.

Was there a connection between the two? He’d never really considered that the one might have been connected to the other, but it was most definitely the case that a, he’d left and then b, she’d changed. Apparently overnight.

Well, he’d changed, too. He was no longer the wounded adolescent in the throes of what he’d believed was his first and one true love. Even if he had behaved like one down by the stream, by grabbing her and shouting at her, and sending her away in tears.

Today, he was a rational, adult male who was in full control of himself.

And he wasn’t going to let her reduce him to...that state, again.

He gave the Tudor manor house a keen perusal as Benson drew the carriage up by the front gate. He’d never actually visited before. As a boy, he reflected ruefully as he lifted Lion down and strolled the few steps from the carriage to the front door, he’d rarely left the estate except for church on Sundays. As a man, he’d spent as little time as possible in Bartlesham, and—he paused with one booted foot on the front step—he rarely left the estate then, either. He stayed at Fontenay Court only long enough to attend to any urgent estate business, then retreated to London.

He raised the knocker and let it drop. After only the briefest pause, the door was opened by a ruddy-faced housemaid who was completely unfamiliar to him.

‘If you would please to come this way, your lordship,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy, ‘Mr Wickford will receive you in the parlour.’

He blinked. For two reasons. Firstly, though he was sure he’d never clapped eyes on the woman before, she clearly knew exactly who he was. Did he spend so little time down here that he no longer knew who inhabited the place? Georgiana had accused him of being ignorant of things he ought to have known.

It was definitely time to remedy that. The next time he came down here, he would devote at least one day to do a little mingling with the locals. Which would not only enable him to keep abreast of local news, but also convince his tenants that he intended to be an effective, efficient landlord.

Secondly, Mr Wickford? Whenever anyone said that name, he immediately thought of Georgiana’s father. The rather shabby, sporting-mad squire of Bartlesham, who always seemed to have a pack of dogs tumbling round his feet.

He and Lion followed the maid across the hall and into a small, sunlit room, where a short, fair-haired man, who had a vague look of Georgie’s father about his jawline, was standing.

‘Good morning, my lord,’ he said, sweeping a heap of what looked like curtain material from one of the chairs and wadding it up into a ball. ‘It is so good of you to call, to welcome us to the neighbourhood. An honour,’ he blustered, tossing the bundle of fabric behind the sofa. ‘Totally unexpected, I do assure you.’

Totally unexpected on Edmund’s part, too. Not that he was going to alienate the fellow by admitting he hadn’t come here to see him at all.

‘Oh, sit, please, do sit.’ The man he assumed must be the Mr Wickford the maid had meant indicated the chair he’d cleared of curtaining. ‘At sixes and sevens,’ he said apologetically. ‘Not really ready for visitors, Mrs Wickford would say. But in your case, of course...’ He petered out.

Edmund sank slowly into the proffered chair and Lion lay down at his feet with a sigh as the facts settled into order. This man was evidently the cousin of Georgie’s father, the one who’d inherited the house and land. The one who’d given her a year before evicting her.

And Mrs Wickford must be Georgiana’s stepmother.

‘She will be wishing me at the devil,’ he said, with what he hoped was a sociable smile. ‘Calling upon you all when she must be so very busy planning her removal to London.’

‘Removal to London?’ Mr Wickford gaped at him. ‘Whatever made you think...? Oh, I have it!’ He chuckled. ‘You are referring to my cousin’s widow, who has already left for Town. She and the girls moved out as soon as we moved in.’

They’d left? While he’d been getting his thoughts in order, they’d left? Before he had a chance to make amends for the way they’d parted?

Edmund went cold. Georgie had gone off to Town, believing that he’d completely repudiated her. That he cared so little about the fears she’d confessed to having that he’d left her to deal with them alone.

Even though he’d promised she could always consider him her friend.

No, he shook his head.

He wasn’t the kind of man who broke his word.

He hadn’t been trying to wriggle off the hook.

And he couldn’t bear to think that Georgie must now believe he was.

Chapter Four

Edmund’s first instinct was to get to his feet and set off for London in pursuit. To explain...

What, exactly?

Meanwhile, the young Mr Wickford was sitting down heavily on a pile of curtaining on the chair opposite and spreading his meaty fingers over his knees. ‘Yes, Mrs Wickford senior is going to launch her daughter into society, now they’re out of mourning. Has great hopes for her.’

‘Does she?’ said Edmund, as a matter of form, since he was only half-attending. He was far more concerned with imagining how Georgiana must have felt, having this man and his wife turn her out of doors a matter of hours after he’d so brutally turned down her proposal.

‘Shouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t do very well,’ Mr Wickford was saying. ‘A taking little thing, is Sukey.’

‘Sukey?’

‘Ah, should more properly refer to her as Miss Mead, I suppose, but then she’s such a friendly sort of girl, it’s hard to stand upon form with her. Not a bit like Miss Wickford,’ he said with a shake of his head.

‘What,’ said Edmund, his hackles rising, ‘precisely, do you mean by that?’

‘Oh, well, you know,’ said Mr Wickford, waving his hands.

‘No, I am afraid I don’t.’

‘Of course, you will hardly know her, will you? Well, let us just say that she is a strange, awkward girl. Not that she can help it, I don’t suppose, given the way she was brought up. The mother died in childbirth,’ said Wickford, which was something Edmund already knew. But the reminder jolted him. Was that why Georgiana didn’t want a normal marriage? Could she be afraid of having children? ‘Disappointed my cousin immensely,’ Wickford was droning on. ‘Wanted a boy, d’you see? Well, that’s natural enough, ain’t it? Trouble is, he went and treated the girl as if she was the boy he wanted, instead of facing facts.’

That was not how it had been. Georgie’s father had simply allowed her to act exactly as she wished. Well, Edmund amended, he might have encouraged her love of horse-riding and outdoor pursuits by praising her skills. But he had definitely not attempted to mould her preferences beyond that. If she had shown an interest in...say...dolls and dresses, he was pretty sure the man would have bought her bolts of satin and lace back from the market, rather than new riding boots or a crop.

‘It was only when she got to the age where she really needed a mother,’ said Mr Wickford, leaning forward in a conspiratorial sort of way, and winking, ‘that he saw his mistake. Which was why he married again. Needed a woman to knock the rough edges off. Make her behave like a lady. And, of course, providing her with a sister like Sukey, who could set her a shining example of femininity, was an added bonus.’

Was that what people hereabouts thought had happened?

Was that, in fact, what had happened?

But—why would a man who’d allowed Georgie to run wild for so many years suddenly try to change her? If that even was his motive for remarrying.

‘And Mrs Wickford is the sort of woman who enjoys knocking the rough edges off, I take it,’ said Edmund, feeling his way forward tentatively.

Mr Wickford chuckled. ‘Do you know, whenever anyone says Mrs Wickford, I still think they mean my mother. But there’s my cousin’s widow now, as well as my own wife. Though that is taking some getting used to. Only been married a fortnight.’

‘My felicitations,’ he responded automatically and without enthusiasm.

Mr Wickford beamed at him. ‘Thank you, my lord. I do consider myself most fortunate. Couldn’t think of marriage at all before I came into this property, let alone to a woman like Sylvia Dean. Took some persuading, none the less...’

‘Indeed?’ He leaned back and raised one eyebrow, inviting further confidences. Not that he had the slightest interest in this fellow. But he’d already learned far more about what had gone wrong in Georgiana’s life in five minutes with the loquacious fool, than he’d done in ten years.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Wickford, smiling fatuously. ‘Courting her took up pretty near all my time. If it wasn’t for Mrs Wickford senior being so willing to stay on here and keep the place running smoothly, I’m not at all sure I’d have taken the trick.’

Edmund didn’t think he’d reacted, but he was not all that surprised when Lion emitted a low growl. The man had admitted that permitting Georgiana and her stepmother to remain in what was, after all, their own home had not been an act of compassion at all. Instead, it had been very much to his advantage. And as soon as their usefulness had come to an end, he had promptly evicted them. In Georgiana’s case, from the only home she’d ever known. He glanced round the room as Wickford continued to enthuse about his new bride, noting, everywhere, traces of her heritage. Her father might very well have chosen the hunting prints on the walls and most of the furniture looked as though it had been handed down through several generations.

At which point, he saw another reason for the distress which had prompted her to run to him with her outrageous proposal. Not only was she being forced into taking a step which she found abhorrent, she was also losing everything she’d ever called her own. He must have seemed like her last chance to salvage something—a sort of metaphorical clinging to the wreckage of her life in the faint hope of finding a refuge that was at least familiar, if not what she really wanted.

But instead of being man enough to listen to her, really listen with a view to understanding, he’d rubbed salt into what he could now see were very deep and grievous wounds by getting angry with her. Shouting at her. Rebuffing her.

She hadn’t deserved such treatment. Even though she’d hurt him in the past, she’d been scarcely more than a child at the time. The worst she’d been guilty of was thoughtlessness. She had not deliberately set out to hurt him, he would swear to it.

His antagonism for her promptly abated. And as it did so, he could scarcely credit that he’d carried it into his adult life, or nursed it with such devotion. To repay her, as an adult, by standing back and watching her suffer, or even adding to her woes, was out of all proportion to the initial offence.

Sickened at himself, he got to his feet.

‘You will excuse me,’ he said, as a chill swept up his spine and lodged in the region of his stomach. ‘I cannot stay longer.’

‘What? Oh, dear,’ said Mr Wickford, leaping to his feet as well. ‘Mrs Wickford will be desolate to have missed you. The moment she saw your carriage stop at the foot of our drive she ran upstairs to make herself presentable. I’m sure she won’t be but a minute longer...’

‘What a pity,’ he replied mendaciously. He had no wish to meet the cuckoo who’d thrust the true chicks out of this nest. ‘I have urgent business which takes me back to London tomorrow,’ he added truthfully. Because he had to see Georgiana again. Apologise. Tell her he meant to make it up to her, somehow. And London was where she had gone. ‘So I have much to accomplish today.’

Mr Wickford wrung his hands, swallowing and looking nervously in the direction of the stairs as Edmund made his way to the front door. But he didn’t care. He didn’t even wait for the man, or his maid, to open it for him. He just needed to get away from here, so that he could think things through.

Georgiana’s past was looking very different from the way he’d imagined it. He wouldn’t have believed that her father, a man who’d always laughed at her antics, had married a woman specifically to knock her into shape. Or worse, brought another girl into the house to show her how she ought to behave. She must have been devastated.

He frowned as he stalked down the path, Lion lumbering at his heels. Surely, she would have needed to write to him more than ever? But it had been from his mother that he’d learned of her widowed father’s remarriage. His mother, who, in spite of all her flaws, had written faithfully. Back then, it had been one more sin to lay at Georgie’s door. But now...

She must have been crushed. And since he had no longer been there, she would not have had anybody to turn to. Because, now he came to consider it, not only was she his only friend, but she spent so much time with him that she hadn’t had any other friends either.

So why hadn’t she?

And why hadn’t she run to him, on the few occasions he’d returned to Bartlesham, instead of flouncing out of the shop when he’d walked in, her purchases abandoned?

It had puzzled him from the moment he’d returned, still hurt by her decision not to write to him, but determined to make the best of things, and at least attempt to treat her with courtesy. But then, on his first Sunday in Bartlesham, she’d refused to return his greeting when he’d been magnanimous enough to accord her a nod across the aisle of St. Bartholomew’s. And stalked out with her nose in the air when the tedious service had at length ground to its conclusion.

And so he’d washed his hands of her. He’d really and truly left her behind when he’d gone up to university.

And then, as he was lifting a wheezing Lion into the carriage, he recalled her accusation, that out of sight meant out of mind, for him. As if she was the one who hadn’t received any letters.

Good Lord...could it be...if the stepmother had seen it as her duty to knock Georgie into shape—in other words, to turn her into the proper young lady she appeared to be nowadays—then she would not have approved of them corresponding. Single females were not, strictly speaking, supposed to write to single men to whom they were not related.

Yes, that would explain why he hadn’t received any letters from her, in spite of her promise to write.

But...he shook his head. It didn’t explain why she’d been so angry with him when he’d returned for a visit, briefly, before going up to Oxford.

Unless...

What must she have felt, when he’d given up writing to her? Had she felt as betrayed as he had, when he hadn’t heard at all?

She might have done.

It was certainly the first hypothesis to explain her behaviour over the past ten years that made any kind of sense.

He sat bolt upright as a frisson of insight flickered in the depths of his brain.

The stepmother.

Could she have been the one to fill Georgiana’s head with the kind of stories that resulted in her now regarding the act of conceiving children as nasty and brutish?

Who else could it possibly have been?

Georgiana definitely hadn’t known anything about that side of life when he’d left Bartlesham. And he couldn’t imagine her father describing marital relations to her in such a way that...actually, not in any way at all. It wasn’t within a father’s remit to educate his daughters about that sort of thing.

But...he blinked, taking in his surroundings for the first time since he’d left Six Chimneys and saw that he was almost halfway home.

‘Dear God, what a fool,’ he groaned. He’d been in such a hurry to get away from Georgiana’s repulsive cousin that he hadn’t ascertained where exactly, in London, she was staying. And there was no way he was going to turn back now and ask him.

* * *

‘But, Mama,’ said Sukey, holding a length of blue ribbon up to the side of her face, ‘don’t you think this would bring out the colour of my eyes?’

As if to emphasise her point, Sukey widened those cornflower-blue eyes in appeal. The pleading expression would have melted the hearts of any of the young men of Bartlesham—indeed, Georgiana had witnessed its devastating effectiveness on many occasions. Unfortunately for her, Stepmama not only had the same kind of blue eyes, but had also been the one to teach Sukey how to wield them.

‘The blue ribbon may be very flattering,’ said Stepmama distractedly, merely glancing up from her perusal of the latest box to arrive from the modistes, ‘but tonight you will be wearing white. All white. That’s what proper young ladies of the ton wear for their first Season, and as we are finally going to attend a ton event I won’t have either of you doing anything to set tongues wagging.’

She’d certainly worked hard enough to get them this far. For the past two weeks they’d toadied to people Stepmama said were essential to their chances of being accepted in society. They’d invited those same matrons to their rented house and plied them with tea and sandwiches, while Stepmama had extolled Sukey’s prettiness, and Georgie’s pedigree, in the hopes of getting invitations in return.

All to no avail.

Until she’d discovered that some girls who lived two streets over, and one across, who they kept on bumping into at the shops, or crossing the square, had a connection to a viscount. And then, all of a sudden, Stepmama declared they were Sukey’s best friends and would never go shopping without inviting them along. And since they were as keen as Sukey to shop, and pore over the fashion magazines, and all the other rigmarole to do with the snaring of husbands, they’d grown inexorably more intertwined.

Resulting in tonight’s invitation to Durant House. Home of said viscount.

Where Sukey was hoping to captivate a man with a title and lots of money.

Whereas she... Georgiana tugged at the bodice of the gown she was wearing with utter mortification. And plucked up the courage to voice a protest.

‘If we are not to set tongues wagging on our first appearance at a tonnish event, don’t you think I ought to wear something a bit more...modest?’

‘There is nothing immodest about your gown, Georgiana,’ said Stepmama. ‘I have told you before, ladies do reveal a little more of their shoulders and bosom in the evening than they would do by day. I have seen girls much younger than you showing a lot more of themselves than that,’ she said, indicating the upper curves of Georgiana’s bosom which were thrusting proudly from the closely clinging bodice.

‘Yes, but Sukey is dressed far more demurely...’ she began, plucking at her bodice again. Only to have Stepmama step up, slap her hands away and ruthlessly tug it back into place.

‘Sukey is pretty,’ she said. ‘Men already take notice of her.’

‘Oh, Mama!’ Sukey dropped her ribbon on to the dressing table. ‘Georgiana is pretty, too. In her own way. I mean, that is, there are sure to be some men who prefer larger girls, with thick black hair and brown eyes,’ she said staunchly, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

For not one of the youths of Bartlesham, or any of the nearest towns, had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in her. Even though Stepmama had taught her to behave like a lady, the manners and the clothes were all only a thin layer of top dressing. No matter how hard she tried, she was always going to look big and clumsy in comparison to her dainty little stepsister and rouse entirely different feelings from the males of the population.

Stepmama sighed. ‘Men who prefer larger girls will want to get a glimpse of her best assets, then, won’t they? I wouldn’t have thought I’d need to remind you, Sukey, that all women have to make the best of what God has given them, if we are to survive in this harsh world.’ She waved her hand at the wads of tissue paper, lidless boxes, gloves and shoes littering every flat surface of the dressing room the two girls shared.

And Georgiana’s protests died on her lips. She knew, deep down, that Stepmama was doing what she saw as her best. It was just...well, she hadn’t wanted to come to London in the first place. And, as she’d feared, it was proving to be like living in a desert.

There were no fields, no woods, no streams. Nowhere suitable to gallop, except a stingy little formal bit of parkland. Not that ladies were permitted to gallop even there.

Not that she could, anyway, not now Stepmama had sold Whitesocks. Her lower lip wobbled. Whitesocks had been Papa’s last gift to her. The last horse in the stables over which they had any legal rights. According to Stepmama, it made far more sense to sell the animal they couldn’t afford to stable in London anyway and put the money towards meeting the expenses they wouldn’t be able to escape.

Georgiana had hoped, right up until the last minute that something would happen to prevent the sale. That she’d be able to keep that one last link to Papa—but, no. Even her last-ditch appeal to Edmund had come to nothing. Not that he’d heard the whole story.

Which was, she’d eventually decided, her own fault.

She should have kept a cool head and explained her reasons for asking him for help in a rational manner. That’s what she should have done. Perhaps even presented him with a written statement, in which she’d listed all the points she wished to make in alphabetical order, which he could have taken away and considered at his leisure. At least he would have treated that kind of appeal with respect. And then he might have been a bit more amenable to making some kind of deal.

She might, at the very least, have persuaded him to buy Whitesocks so that she would have known he would have a good home.

Instead, she’d spent the time waiting for him brooding over past hurts and present problems, so that by the time he arrived she’d been ready to explode. And had done so. Acted in a way that was practically guaranteed to alienate him.

If it was even possible to alienate someone who’d become a stranger. A cold, unapproachable stranger who merely happened to look a bit like the boy who’d been her favourite person in all the world. A stranger who had never once attempted to renew their friendship, as adults. Who had, on the contrary, occasionally even cut her in the street.

She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

‘Oh, please don’t cry, Georgiana,’ said Sukey, rushing to her side to give her a hug. ‘Mama, could we not let her tuck a fichu into the neckline, or something?’

Georgiana slipped her arm round Sukey’s waist, and returned her hug. Dear Sukey. She was so sweet-natured. Every time Georgiana was upset, over anything at all, Sukey would shed sympathetic tears. Indeed, she’d been more upset over the frequent beatings Georgiana had received when Stepmama first took her place as Papa’s bride than Georgiana had herself. She’d come and sit at her bedside, and hold her hand, and plead with her to just try and be good, because she couldn’t bear to think of her being beaten so very often. Until in the end, it felt as if every time she misbehaved, it was Sukey who got punished.

Between the pair of them, these two women had crushed her desire to rebel against all the rules and regulations that governed the behaviour of young ladies. Besides, what had been the point of carrying on the way she’d done before Papa remarried? Edmund had gone, so there was nobody to box or fence or fish with. The local boys might have stopped teasing and tormenting her for being different to the other girls, once she’d knocked a couple of the biggest of them down, but that didn’t mean they would allow her into their ranks. At that time, Sukey had been the only person who appeared to want to spend time with her. In fact, Sukey had followed her round like a little puppy, declaring that she’d always wished for a sister.

‘A fichu? And have her look like a dowd? Absolutely not! If we are going to find a husband for Georgiana, we are going to have to make men look at her.’

‘But,’ Georgiana said, plucking up all her courage, ‘I don’t really want to find a husband.’

‘Oh, heavens, not this again,’ said Stepmama wearily. ‘Respectable women have to marry, unless they have family who will take them in and care for them, that’s all there is to it.’

‘I know, but—’

Stepmama held up her hand to silence her. ‘I promised your father I would find you a good husband and that is exactly what I will do.’

Georgiana sank on to one of the dressing stools, the impossibility of protesting about her father’s last wishes completely silencing her.

‘A Corinthian, hopefully. Isn’t that what your papa always said? That only a notable Corinthian would do for you? Someone who could match your energy and horsemanship?’

‘Yes, Papa did say that,’ she admitted glumly. Though what he’d actually meant was that he hoped that was the kind of son-in-law she’d bring home one day. If she couldn’t be a boy, the next best thing would be for her to marry someone who was exactly the sort of son he’d always wanted.

And that wasn’t the sort of man she wanted to marry, if she had to marry anyone. Men who liked sport, and horses, always smelled of the stable—which invariably put her in mind of that disgusting scene she’d witnessed. Which she could never think of without remembering Liza’s tears when she lost her job and home as a result.

And it was all very well Stepmama saying that Liza should not have let him do what they did until they were married, but Wilkins had been doing it as well. In fact, he’d been doing all the work, from the look of things. And not only had he entirely escaped any form of punishment, but he hadn’t shown the slightest bit of remorse when Liza had been sent packing, either.

‘Besides, you want to have children, don’t you? Of course you do,’ Stepmama continued ruthlessly, before Georgiana could say a word. ‘It is in our nature.’

‘Then I must be a most unnatural sort of female.’ She sighed, because the way a man got a woman with child had to be the way she’d seen Wilkins treat Liza and it had looked perfectly revolting. She didn’t ever want to let any man do...that to her. The very thought made her feel sick.

‘You will feel differently once you meet the right man,’ said Stepmama. ‘In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if you met someone tonight who overturns all your silly girlish fears and fancies with one look.’

‘I should,’ said Georgiana gloomily. ‘Because the kind of men who will be attending a tonnish event will only want to marry girls with a title, or a dowry. And I don’t have either.’

Stepmama froze. ‘Georgiana! I thought you understood about the way I have spent what money your papa left for your future. It was his dearest wish to have you presented at court. And had he lived, I am sure he would have arranged things himself.’

Georgiana wasn’t convinced. If he’d wanted her presented at court, surely he would have mentioned it? When she was at an age to have a come-out? Instead of only imparting his wishes to his wife, so that the first she’d heard of it was after his death.

‘I...I admit, I did not quite foresee how very much it would cost. What with having to hire that woman, instead of...well—’ Stepmama shut her mouth with a snap. ‘I hadn’t budgeted for that. Not to mention the hoops and the feathers, and the jewels to make you both at least look as though you had every right to be there...’

Sukey shot Georgiana a pleading look.

Georgiana, yet again, stifled any resentment she felt and said what she knew was expected of her. ‘I know, Stepmama. I know you are doing your best in...trying circumstances...’

‘Trying? If only you knew the half. It is bad enough that imbecile cousin of your father’s rented us a house out here, in Bloomsbury for heaven’s sake, when I specifically requested a fashionable address...’

Stepmama glared round the cluttered little room the two girls were being obliged to share, with loathing. It was almost enough to lift Georgiana’s spirits. So much for Stepmama’s insistence that men were much better at handling that sort of thing. She’d been obliged to eat her words the moment their carriage, and the wagon containing all their worldly goods, had drawn up outside. For Bloomsbury was not the slightest bit fashionable. Their neighbours were retired admirals and captains of industry, not marquesses and earls. Stepmama might have forgiven the address if the house had been bigger, but upon inspection they’d discovered that although the reception rooms were generously proportioned, the rooms on the upper floor, where they were going to have to sleep, were so small they could have served as cells for monks.

Georgiana hadn’t minded that at all. On the contrary, it meant that for the first time since Papa had remarried, she was going to have a bedroom to herself. There was no alternative. Nobody could squeeze two beds into any of the rooms on the upper floor. Let alone cupboards and dressers and shelves for all the fripperies they were buying.

But Stepmama had been livid. She was banking on Sukey landing a peer of the realm. A peer who would be so smitten by her beauty and charm, and so rich, that he would think nothing of providing for both Georgiana and herself, as long as he could get his ring on Sukey’s finger.

But the chances of accomplishing anything so ambitious from an address in Bloomsbury were as slender as their box-like bedrooms.

‘Now,’ said Stepmama briskly. ‘I want no more nonsense from either of you. Sukey, you will be wearing unbroken white, as befits a debutante in her first Season. And, Georgiana, you are old enough to get away with revealing your charms so as to attract gentlemen who prefer someone a little more...’ She made a gesture outlining Georgiana’s fuller figure. ‘More.’

With that, she bustled out of the girls’ dressing room to prepare herself for tonight’s outing.

There was a moment of silence, during which Sukey touched the blue ribbon with the tip of her finger, wistfully. And Georgiana stared at her own reflection with disquiet.

‘Aren’t you the least bit excited,’ said Sukey, who must have noticed the expression on Georgiana’s face, ‘about attending our very first ton party?’

‘No,’ she replied bluntly. ‘I am dreading it.’ Nausea had been swimming in her stomach ever since Edmund had turned her down. She’d known it was a forlorn hope, attempting to breach his walls and enter the citadel which would have provided her with sanctuary. And sure enough, like so many soldiers in charge of such an endeavour, she’d been cut down before she’d got anywhere near her objective. Brutally.

‘Besides...’ She turned to concentrate on Sukey and a new worry that had taken up residence of late.

‘Oh, Georgiana, not this again!’ Sukey pouted.

‘I’m sorry, Sukey. I know that you get on like a house on fire with Dotty and Lotty, now. But I still feel horridly guilty for the way Stepmama practically stalked the Pargetters after she learned that some cousin or other of theirs recently had the good fortune to marry a viscount.’

‘She did not stalk anybody.’

‘We never became so friendly until your mama discovered the viscount in their background.’

Sukey giggled. ‘I suppose it was a little...’

Ruthless, Georgiana thought, but didn’t say. ‘And haven’t you ever wondered what will happen if the three of you all fall for the same man?’

Sukey shook her head, adopting an expression so very like her mother’s that for a moment Georgiana half-expected to get a scold.

‘We will all wish each other well and do our best to be the winner. Heavens, Georgiana, don’t huntsmen do the same sort of thing in the field? And nobody expects them to fall out over a bit of sporting rivalry.’

Now it was Georgiana’s turn to be shocked. ‘You regard men as your quarry?’

Sukey giggled again. ‘At the moment, yes, why not? It’s fun, Georgiana, taking part in this sort of game.’

‘It’s not a game, though, is it? It is...our life.’ Dread at what she was about to face squeezed at her heart, making it hard to breathe.

‘Exactly. And we ought to enjoy it to the full.’

‘But—’

‘Be sensible, Georgiana. All women have to marry—’

‘Which is the problem, in a nutshell. If only I were a man, I wouldn’t have to rely on a husband.’

Sukey shrieked with laughter. ‘I should hope not!’

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ said Georgiana, though unbelievably she couldn’t help smiling at the way Sukey had deliberately misinterpreted her. That was the thing about Sukey. Even when Georgiana was at her most despondent, her vivacious little stepsister could nearly always manage to raise her spirits. It was how, in some ways, she’d managed to fill the void left by Edmund’s defection. Though Edmund, she reflected wistfully, had never been shocked by her behaviour, or puzzled by her opinions.

‘If I were a man,’ she continued, though she knew it was hopeless to say so, ‘I could learn a trade and earn my own living, and run my own household...’ In fact, that was what she’d hoped to be able to do with the money her father had left her. Buy a little cottage somewhere and live simply. Just the three of them. Without having any men at all complicating everything.

But Stepmama wouldn’t hear of it. She had an ingrained belief that women needed men to take care of them, which nothing could shake. Not even the house in Bloomsbury.

‘Georgiana, really! If Mama were to hear you say that...’

‘I know. She’d say I wasn’t too old for the switch.’ Georgiana sighed.

‘No, she wouldn’t,’ said Sukey. ‘Because you are too sensible to say anything so silly within her hearing.’ She shot her stepsister a knowing look.

Fortunately, Sukey wasn’t the kind of girl who told tales, either. Even so, Georgiana sighed heavily. ‘I am sorry, Sukey. I know you are very excited about getting an invitation to such an exclusive party and I have no wish to ruin your evening with my fit of the dismals.’

‘You’re just nervous, I expect,’ said Sukey charitably. ‘Heavens, I’m nervous myself. I cannot believe that Mrs Pargetter somehow managed to get our names on her niece’s guest list, when everyone knows it’s supposed to be just family and close friends. I hear there’s going to be at least two viscounts there and heaven alone knows who else besides.’ She gave the bunch of blue ribbon one last regretful look, then turned her gaze upon Georgiana.

‘I suppose at least if we are both all in white, we shall match.’

‘It’s very kind of you to say so, Sukey.’ It was her way of showing solidarity. ‘But nobody looking at us standing side by side could ever mistake us for sisters. Not that there will be much standing side by side. You will get swept away from me on a tide of chatter and giggles as soon as we arrive and will end up at the centre of the liveliest crowd in the room. While I will be looking about for the quietest, most secluded corner in which to hide. I hope the Durants go in for potted palms.’

‘Hide? You cannot possibly waste the opportunity Mama has worked so hard to procure for us, hiding away behind a potted palm.’

‘It’s all very well for you,’ Georgiana protested. ‘But you aren’t going to have every man in the place addressing every single remark to your breasts. Men actually remember what your face looks like—even what colour eyes you have, I shouldn’t wonder. But not one of them has ever looked at anything above my neck since I grew these.’ She gestured in despair to the front of her low-cut gown.

Sukey clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.

‘I am sure that is not true, but anyway, if they do attract a man’s notice, that is all to the good, surely?’

‘There is nothing good about them. They are too big and too heavy. And, and...downright uncomfortable when I go out riding.’

‘Well, only because you will go everywhere at full gallop. I’m sure if you rode in a more decorous manner...’

‘Why should I ride in a decorous manner, just because I sprouted these on my thirteenth birthday?’

‘Because it is the ladylike thing to do,’ said Sukey with a puzzled shake of her head before walking back to the mirror to admire her reflection.

Leaving Georgiana convinced of only one thing. No matter how lovely and feminine and sweet Sukey was, deep down, she held the same convictions as Stepmama. Which was why, in spite of feeling a great deal of affection for her, she had never seen the point in confiding in her.

Not the way she’d been able to confide in Edmund.

But then he’d been the only person, apart from Papa, who’d accepted her as she was.

Until he’d been sent away.

Which had changed everything.

Everything.

Chapter Five

Edmund pushed his way through the cluster of people gathered by the railings of Durant House and gave his name to the burly footman stationed there.

He’d known tonight’s event would rouse interest in certain circles, but had not anticipated it creating quite such a stir. He had underestimated the amount of people who had nothing better to do than gossip, obviously. Though Lord and Lady Havelock, the owners of Durant House, had certainly done plenty to create it. Lady Havelock had been a complete unknown before their marriage, which had taken place just before Christmas, while most of the ton had been spending the Season on their country estates. And, according to the very few people who’d been on terms to visit since the couple had taken up residence, she had performed an almost miraculous transformation upon one of the gloomiest town houses known to the haut ton.

What was more, before this mysterious woman could take up her place in society, her lord had proved equally efficient in his own endeavours at siring an heir. Her appearances in public therefore were few and far between and invitations to Durant House were scarcer than hen’s teeth. Which meant that everyone who hadn’t seen inside wanted to know how the young Lady Havelock had managed to effect the sort of improvement upon her new home—that those who had been privileged to see it were raving about—without bankrupting her husband in the process.

‘You are expected, Lord Ashenden,’ said the footman, before stepping aside to allow him to pass.

A smile tugged at Edmund’s lips as he mounted the steps to the front door which swung open as if by magic. Georgiana’s stepmother must have been cock-a-hoop when she received her invitation to this ‘informal gathering of friends and family’, especially once she’d seen how many others were not being admitted to the select gathering. After tonight, the three Wickford ladies would be invited to all sorts of events hosted by ladies whose determination to discover the latest gossip about the interior of Durant House knew no bounds. They would not even be deterred by their humble origins, if anyone ever bothered delving into their antecedents.

Edmund handed his hat and coat to the footman who’d opened the door to him, and made his way across the wainscoted hall to the staircase that swept up the left wall, via a series of half-landings, to the gallery spanning the next storey. The hall was massive. And could have been imposing, but somehow felt welcoming, in spite of Lord Havelock’s forebears scowling down at him from their heavily gilded frames.

That was possibly because he didn’t care about the opinion of long-dead nobles. To be frank, he didn’t give much for the opinion of living ones either. The only person whose thoughts interested him in the slightest, at this moment, was Georgiana.

She was bound to be angry with him after the way they’d parted. Though at least this time he knew why she was angry with him and had a perfectly sound explanation to offer. At least, he intended to explain why he hadn’t called upon her before she’d left Bartlesham. He was tolerably certain she would understand his need to think things through. And that she’d forgive his earlier offence once he demonstrated his willingness to be her friend once more, if not her husband.

What he was not going to do, however, was offer any explanation as to why he hadn’t called upon her now that he was in Town as well.

A flush crept up his neck as he mounted the stairs, brought on by the recollection of the impetuous way he’d stormed out of Six Chimneys before he’d gathered all the information he needed. And then the difficulty he’d had attempting to track her down. By the time he had done so, it was far too late to simply pay her a morning call, since she was bound to have known exactly how long he’d been in residence at Ashenden House. Various newspapers regularly reported his movements, for reasons that remained a mystery to him. It would have looked as though he’d been too busy, or too indifferent to call before.

Besides, he’d reasoned, they wouldn’t have been able to converse privately anyway. He could just imagine the scene in her drawing room, with her shooting dagger glances at him, while he would have been unable to explain anything to his satisfaction. Not with her stepmother in earshot. For he was certain the woman could not have known about their meeting by the trout stream. If she’d been brought into Georgiana’s life to teach her how to behave, then one of the first things she would have taught her was the impropriety of meeting single gentlemen without a chaperon.

Once he’d come to that conclusion, he had then briefly wondered how Georgiana had managed to engineer the meeting at all. But only briefly. For she had been wearing a riding habit and there had been no sign of a horse. Somewhere close by there must have been a groom who had somehow been persuaded to let her out of his sight for a few minutes.

He shook his head. The stepmother must be completely hen-witted if she thought she could trust Georgiana out of her sight with only a groom to guard her. Didn’t she know what a wild, free spirit dwelled in that shapely body?

Which reflection made his heart speed up considerably.

Or perhaps it was simply that he’d just climbed several flights of stairs and would soon be walking into the reception room in which Georgiana must surely be by this time of the evening. He’d deliberately arrived late, telling Lord Havelock that he would ‘pop in’ on his way back from another engagement. ‘It would be best to commence my association in London with Miss Wickford by meeting as if by chance,’ he had explained, ‘at some event where we have mutual friends.’

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