My Lady's Pleasure (38 page)

The earl, seeing the kind of trouble Lady Georgiana was bringing on herself at Penfield, had summoned him in the hopes that everything could be set right if only Jeremy’s love could be returned.

Sitting in the drawing room, listening to Georgiana’s story, Jeremy was not at all sure he wanted his love to be returned. As a matter of fact, if he could have wished his love away at that very moment, he might have done it. He was dismayed, and he was angry. He was also jealous.

Georgiana, when she had told her tale, looked at him and saw the coldness in his eyes. His distance and his disapproval pierced her very being. Her regret at what she had done—which, up until this moment, had been somewhat grudging and resentful—suddenly became real and heartfelt and almost overwhelming. Her eyes welled, and she fought manfully to keep from weeping.

She almost succeeded, but two rogue teardrops betrayed her.

She put her head in her hands and shook it back and forth. It was as though a veil had been lifted. How could she have been such a bloody fool? How could she have failed to understand that you couldn’t gallivant through the world acting on your own impulses without regard either to what was expected of you or, more important, the feelings of the people with whom you gallivanted? How could she not have seen what was so clear to Lord Grantsbury?

“Oh, Jeremy,” she said, almost choking on the words. “I have been such an ass.”

Her distress tempered both his anger and his jealousy. When he handed her his handkerchief, it was not without some tenderness.

As she saw his coldness begin to melt she lost her grip on her emotions and wept like a child. He laid a hand on her arm and waited. Like a heavy thunderstorm that blows out as quickly as it blows in, her tears subsided in just a few minutes.

“I am so sorry,” she said, looking at the sodden handkerchief in her hands.

“You have done me no injury.”

“Have I not?” She looked up.

“We have explicitly said, all along, that we owe each other nothing. You are not bound to me any more than I am to you.”

She looked down again. When they had made that agreement, she had thought it both liberal and liberating. Now it sounded stupid.

“Perhaps our saying it doesn’t make it so,” she said in a small voice. She knew that she had taken his closeness for granted while she had it, and now that she was in danger of losing it she understood its value.

“Perhaps it doesn’t,” he replied.

They sat in silence for a few moments, each absorbing the meaning in the other’s words.

Then Jeremy stood up and extended his hand to Georgiana. “I have not seen the grounds here, and I should very much like to. Won’t you come on a walk with me?”

She took his hand and smiled. “Of all things, I think I should like that the best.”

As they were heading toward the front door, they encountered Lord Grantsbury, who had just come down in search of breakfast.

“Good morning, my lord,” Jeremy said, and Georgiana seconded the greeting.

Grantsbury looked at them with some satisfaction. “And good morning to you. Are you off to enjoy the grounds?”

“We are,” said Georgiana.

“Well, I am off to enjoy some coffee and cold ham,” said Grantsbury. “Have a lovely walk.”

The couple turned toward the door, but after they’d gone a few steps, Georgiana turned around and called to the earl.

He turned around. She walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

A
fter Jeremy and Georgiana had been gone for an hour or so, the house slowly began to come to life. Guests trickled down from upstairs, some looking refreshed and others looking rather haggard. Coffee and tea were in great demand.

Miss Niven, who made her way down sometime after noon, was not looking her best. She had been up for an hour or two already, and had tried to banish her headache and nausea with tea and toast, but had met with little success. Her memory of the previous night’s interview with Gerry was indistinct. She knew she’d told him she’d marry him, but she had no recollection of what had happened after that. She woke that morning in her own bed, wearing nothing but her shift, and she’d no idea how she’d come to be in that state.

She had no doubt that Gerry would not have made an assault on her honor, but she was worried that she might have embarrassed herself, or perhaps him. She was determined to find him and clear the air as soon as she could.

She found him breakfasting alone, looking a bit the worse for wear himself.

“May I join you?” she asked.

He looked up, and his delight at seeing her was evident.

“You need not ever ask,” he said, and gestured to the chair next to him. “How are you feeling?”

“I have certainly had better mornings,” she said a little ruefully, “but I daresay I can muddle through.”

“Would you like some breakfast or some tea?”

Her stomach churned at the thought. “I have tried that already, and it didn’t answer.”

Neither was sure how to broach the subject of last night’s conversation. They were quiet for a time, and then each started at the same moment.

“I must—” Alexandra said, and then broke off as she realized that Gerry was speaking also.

“I should—” he had begun, but also broke off.

Gerry gestured to her. “Ladies first.”

She took a deep breath. “I must tell you that, drunk as I was, I was most certainly in earnest last night.”

He smiled broadly, and she went on. “I am ashamed to have accepted your proposal, which was made in such a generous way, without the dignity and seriousness that it deserved.”

She took a breath to go on—she had a whole speech planned—but he interrupted her. “My dear, you could have accepted it while swinging from the chandelier in a monkey suit, and I wouldn’t have cared a fig! My only care is that you have accepted it.” There was wonder in his eyes. “You have accepted it!”

His joy was palpable, and her heart leaped. To be loved, to be sincerely loved, and by a sincere man who was worthy of the best she had to give.

Her speech and her headache were alike forgotten when he took her hand and kissed her gently, softly, on the cheek. “I will do everything in my power to make your life as happy as mine is this day.”

She knew that it was so, and she rejoiced.

As Alexandra’s future was being settled, Georgiana was feeling very unsettled. Walking the grounds with Jeremy, she felt very much as she always had. He was so familiar to her, and she was comfortable in his presence. Their walk had been subdued at the start, but they had soon fallen into the bantering style they were accustomed to.

For Georgiana, though, there was a difference. When she had told him her story and seen his anger, she had known that the casual nature of their intimacy was a sham. Her distress at the thought of losing him through her own bad behavior put her feelings for him in stark relief, and as they walked around the Penfield grounds she felt as nervous as a schoolgirl with a crush.

When he took her hand, she felt butterflies. When he kissed her, she felt her knees weaken.

They were by this time quite far from the house, walking along a stream that was almost a river in spring, but was now just a trickle. The path they took ran across the slope that went down to the water. It faced south, and the leaves on the maples and oaks were just beginning to turn. It was a lovely spot, and the solitude made Georgiana feel as if she were far, far away from everything that had caused her trouble at Penfield.

They were evidently not the first people to enjoy the hillside spot, though, as there was a gazebo built under a stand of trees just ahead of them. They made their way to it and admired the view of the stream and the nearby countryside.

Jeremy sat down on the bench, and Georgiana sat down beside him. He moved a little away from her, which startled her for a moment, but then he pulled her shoulders down to his lap and gestured that she should put her feet on the cushioned bench.

She lay on the bench, using his thigh as a pillow, and reveled in the sensation of having her hair stroked by his hand. She closed her eyes, and he brushed his hands against her forehead and rubbed her temples. It was an odd combination, she thought, the profound relaxation coupled with the nervous excitement.

He ran his hands over her cheekbones and massaged her earlobes. He curled the loose tendrils of her hair around his fingers, and then let them go. He fit the tip of his index finger in the little indentation over the middle of her upper lip, and then used that finger to trace the outline of her mouth.

She felt his touch running along her lip as though it were electric. While all the muscles in her body were at rest, her energy was focused on that one spot.

He moved down and traced her jawline. He stroked the soft skin of her neck and ran his hands across the ridges her collarbones made. Her dress was cut low enough that he could make out her top few ribs, and he traced each of those in turn.

Georgiana felt her breathing grow shallower and her muscles begin to tense. Jeremy ran his fingertips under the neckline of her dress, all the way from her shoulder to the hollow between her breasts and back up to the other shoulder. Then he did it again the other way.

By now she was on fire, with a heat centered deep inside her and radiating out. When he slid his hand under her dress and caressed her breast, it was as though his hand had a direct line to her very soul.

She couldn’t help comparing what she felt now with what she had felt with Barnes. Certainly he had excited her, piqued her, aroused her. But there was a connectedness with Jeremy that added depth and richness to her bodily sensations.

It was that thought that made her open her eyes. It was that connectedness that made her sure that this wasn’t right. What she felt was meaningful and important; it wasn’t the stuff of casual encounters in gazebos. She sat up.

“I don’t think we should do this,” she said quietly.

He gave her a questioning look.

“I have learned many things over the course of the last week. One of them is that I shouldn’t trifle with affections, either mine or someone else’s.”

“And whose do you believe you trifle with now?” Jeremy had just a hint of a smile as he asked this, but she answered him seriously. “My own,” she said. “I do not know about yours.”

“Do you not?” he asked, the smile gone.

She had an inkling, of course, and was searching for a way to say it, but Jeremy was too much of a gentleman to let her answer such a question.

“I love you. You must know that I love you.”

She flushed deeply, a blush not of embarrassment but of deep, fulfilled pleasure.

“I did not know. I could not know. I could only hope,” she said. “It was the fear that my missteps could have cost me you that made me realize how fervently I did hope.” She looked him in the face, her eyes shining. “And you must know that I love you.”

The pleasure, this time, was his. “I know it now,” he said.

He put one hand on each of her cheeks and brought her face to his. He kissed her deeply, warmly, lovingly, and then pulled back, keeping his hands on her cheeks.

“Marry me,” he whispered, but it was a compelling whisper, a whisper almost urgent.

She said nothing. She simply nodded, as though it were a conclusion foregone.

For a moment, they only looked at each other, absorbing their happiness. And then he let go of her cheeks and took her hands. He put them to his lips and kissed first one and then the other. “You will be my wife,” he said, as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and then he pulled her to him.

Lips had never felt so soft to Lady Georgiana. A tongue had never felt so warm, so right. She felt as though she wanted to be consumed, subsumed, to become a part of him.

She climbed onto his lap, facing him, and laid her head on his shoulder, her face buried in his neck. She sat there, still, for a few moments, feeling her own breath and his, absorbing his warmth.