One Night of Passion (3 page)

Georgie came barreling out of the dining room and nearly tripped over her thirteen-year-old sister, Kathleen, who was kneeling at the closed door.

“Kit!” she whispered, not wanting her aunt and uncle to discover her sister eavesdropping. It would only add to their always growing list of the sisters’ unpardonable sins.

She caught her young sibling by the arm and pulled her away from the dining room and toward the stairs. “How many times have I told you listening at doors is going to get you into trouble!”

Ignoring her sister’s admonishment, Kit shook herself free and launched right into the situation at hand. “What are you going to do, Georgie? You can’t marry that awful man!”

“I don’t know,” she confessed. Then she glanced away from Kit’s worried expression, and hurried up the stairs to their attic refuge in the long-unused Brockett nursery.

“Uncle can’t do this to you. It isn’t fair,” Kit complained, following hot on her heels.

“There doesn’t seem to be much choice in it,” she told her as they entered the room.
At least not right this minute.
Georgie closed the door behind them and let out a long, desperate sigh.

Pacing across the threadbare carpet, she tried to think of some way out of this despicable betrothal. But what could she do in so short a time? And what would she do in the morning when Lord Harris’s personal physician arrived?

Georgie’s stomach lurched anew, so she settled down onto the shabby window seat, hugging her trembling legs to her chest. Lady Finch’s letter, still clutched in her hand, fluttered to the floor.

Kit followed and flounced down on the carpet near Georgie, taking up the dropped correspondence and smoothing out the wrinkled pages. “What reason did Uncle Phineas give? I couldn’t hear everything.” She smiled sheepishly at her admission, but offered no apologies for her behavior. “Surely he can’t mean to force you into this—even if he is our guardian, he is still family. And family wouldn’t do that to one another, would they?”

At this Georgie laughed, a weak and bitter noise. She turned and gazed into Kit’s earnest and fearful gaze. “Family may not, but our relations have never considered us such. As it is, the problem lies in the fact that Uncle Phineas isn’t our real guardian. Aunt Verena let slip that Father left the legal responsibilities of our care to a Lord Danvers. Apparently this marriage is his idea.”

“Lord Danvers? Who is he?”

Georgie shook her head. “I haven’t the least notion. Tonight was the first time I’ve ever heard of him.”

“Do you think Mrs. Taft knew of this?”

“No,” Georgie said. “Of that I’m certain.” Mrs. Taft might have been deficient in many ways as a foster parent, but if she had known that someone other than Uncle Phineas had held the purse strings, she would have moved heaven and earth to see that “her girls” had been allowed the privileges and tutelage that other young ladies of their rank were afforded. Money had always been scarce in the Taft household, as the captain was often away on long voyages, and any extra money he did bring home was usually invested back into his ship.

No, there was no way that Mrs. Taft had been aware of this Lord Danvers.

But now that Georgie was, and once she’d undone her engagement, she’d find this scurrilous man and see to it that he never presumed to order her life in such a high-handed manner again.

Or Kit’s either.

“You can’t let this happen,” her sister said, looking up from Lady Finch’s letter. “You just can’t. We could go to this Lord Danvers and appeal to his sense of honor.”

“I doubt he knows what the word means,” Georgie told her. “Apparently, he was court-martialed today by the Admiralty. Obviously, dishonorable conduct is second nature to the man.”

Kit frowned. “Oh, that was what was being said about someone being a traitor. I thought you were referring to Uncle Phineas.”

Georgie smiled. “That goes without saying.”

They both laughed.

Kit took Georgie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’ll just have to find this Lord Danvers and convince him of the error of his ways. Look how well you’ve done with me. I hardly ever eavesdrop now.”

Georgie’s gaze rolled upward. If only eavesdropping were Kit’s lone sin. She also had a penchant for stealing, but thankfully today her talents had resulted in the retrieval of Lady Finch’s letter from Uncle Phineas’s desk before he could toss it away, as she suspected he’d done with several other of the dear lady’s missives.

“Rest assured, I plan on finding this rogue, and when I’m done with him, he shall possess a full understanding of the meaning of honor and duty. But first I have to find a way to stop this engagement.”

Kit perked up. “Lady Finch mentions an examination,” she said, pointing to the paragraphs in which the horrified lady had informed Georgie of Lord Harris’s legendary and nearly fanatical insistence that his brides be virgins. “She says Lord Harris will only have you if you can be ‘verified as unbreached and untouched.’ ” Her sister paused, glancing back over the words one more time, a puzzled look on her face.

“You shouldn’t be reading that,” Georgie snapped, snatching the overly informative pages away from her all-too-curious sister.

Kit smirked and grabbed the pages back before Georgie could stop her. “Well, what if you were? Touched, that is. You know, ruined.” Her eyes sparkled with a devious blaze. “Lady Finch says quite clearly that Lord Harris will only marry you if you are free from such a blemish of reputation. If all you have to do, Georgie, is ruin yourself, then what are you waiting for?”

“Kathleen Oriana Escott, you shouldn’t even know about such things, let alone suggest that your own sister engage in them,” Georgie said, trying to use her most severe tone, though in the back of her mind she chastised herself for not thinking of it first.

Kit got up from the floor and curled up into the opposite corner of the window seat. “Aren’t you already ruined, as it is? That’s what Aunt Verena said when you went out walking by yourself that one morning.”

“No, unfortunately I don’t think a solitary walk in the park will be enough.”

“You’d have thought you’d been touched by half the men in London by the fuss Aunt Verena kicked up. And just for going for a walk.” Kit sighed. “I wish we were still in Penzance.”

“So do I.” Their uncle’s house was so very different from the sunny and comfortable cottage where Mrs. Taft had made a home for them, Georgie sat back in the seat, laying her cheek against the cold windowpane. The chill ran all the way to her soul.

For even if it was possible to become ruined in one night, it would preclude her from ever having the kind of life she’d hoped one day to find.

For in her heart of hearts, she’d always dreamt that eventually she’d find her own small piece of love. That she might feel the same windswept thrill she got from watching the grand ships sail out of Penzance into brilliant sunsets, bound for exotic lands and adventures that she could only imagine.

And imagine she had. For when Captain Taft was in port, he’d given the girls free rein on his ship. During those precious weeks, Georgie would indulge her dreams by “sailing” his ship, the
Sybaris,
to a myriad of exotic countries.

Her imaginings were only fed further by the captain’s exaggerated tales of adventure, while his rough-and-tumble crew had taken the orphaned girls to their hearts, spoiling them like a bevy of indulgent uncles. From them, Georgie and Kit gained an education in knots and lines, in sea lore, in climbing to dizzying heights atop the mainmast, until they both put many a man to shame with their rare talents.

And at night, when the stars twinkled above in a glittering array, Georgie had cast up just as many wishes that one day she’d find a man who’d indulge her dreams of adventure and faraway places—this improbable knight would take her far away from England, as well as from the poverty and obscurity that ruled her life.

On the deck of that foreign-bound ship, her admirer would gaze at her with rapt attention, he’d love her for who she was, not for the maidenhead she possessed.

As her parents had loved each other.

Her uncle could make all the ugly accusations he wanted about her parents. But she knew the truth—they had loved each other deeply, and their tragic deaths had been the result of treachery . . . but not from each other.

Whenever she thought of that horrible night her parents had died, she forced herself to remember her sweet mother tucking her into bed, cooing a soft, soothing prayer in French, her father standing in the doorway of the nursery, dressed in his greatcoat and holding a lantern.

But the rest of her memories from that fateful eve, Georgie kept locked tight in her heart, for she feared them more than this impending threat of marriage.

And like her parents, it seemed so was she about to lose herself in the duplicity of others.

If only they had lived. Then she would have had her Season like other girls.

Oh, to have a Season in London. Not that she ever would now, but it was a nice dream. To have one chance to gracefully enter an elegant ballroom . . . to look about the refined crowd and have her gaze meet that of a roguish, devilishly handsome man, and
just know.

Just know that he is the one who will understand all her secrets. All her desires. All her hopes.

“Why is it impossible for you to get ruined?” Kit was asking, breaking into Georgie’s wistful musings. “You aren’t so bad-looking that you’d scare away one of those horrid rakes Lady Finch warned you about in her last letter.”

Georgie sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you not to read other people’s correspondence?”

“You wouldn’t have those letters if I didn’t pinch them from Uncle Phineas’s study,” Kit grumbled.

She had Georgie there. For how could she truly complain when Kit’s larceny had revealed her impending and unwanted betrothal?

“Still, it seems to me,” Kit was saying, “that the best solution is for you to ruin yourself.”

“I don’t see how, Kit,” she told her. “Lord Harris’s physician is coming in the morning. It would be impossible to find a likely man on such short notice. We haven’t been allowed out even for social calls, let alone the type of ball or assembly where I might be able to find a willing candidate.”

That seemed to quell Kit’s enthusiasm, at least for a few moments. Then suddenly her sister sat up. “What about this ball? The one Lady Finch talks about here?” she said, holding up the last page.

“The Cyprian’s Ball?” Georgie sputtered, this time taking away the letter for good.

“Yes, that’s the one.” Kit nodded, already off the window seat and dancing into the middle of the room. “It’s perfect. And according to Lady Finch, it’s tonight. You could be ruined inside of an hour, or however long it takes, and be back before you were missed. Why, from the sound of it, every man in town will be there, and I am sure that includes all the ones who are adept at despoiling young women.”

While Georgie spent the next five minutes lecturing Kit on all the reasons it was beyond the pale even to consider such a notion, inside her breast her heart hammered with the possibility that London’s most notorious bacchanal offered.

The Cyprian’s Ball.

It was a crazy, impossible notion. Lady Finch had only mentioned it as a warning to Georgie not to allow herself to be led astray, or she could end up one of the wretched and lowly unmentionable women who attended such scandalous affairs.

And yet, that fate was the only thing that could possibly save Georgie from marrying this horrible man.

For a wild moment, Georgie considered Kit’s suggestion, then just as quickly shook it off.

No, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t consider it.

And yet . . .

“You could sneak out the back,” Kit was saying, her hand on her chin as she laid out the possible means of escape. “That is, once Cook passes out from the Madeira she steals from Uncle’s cellar. But once she’s snoring, you can easily take the backstairs, then slip out the garden gate—it’s never locked according to the scullery maid, because Uncle lost the keys years ago and doesn’t think anyone knows.” Kit’s gaze rolled heavenward as if to say that their uncle was the stupidest man alive. “From there,” she said, continuing her plans, “you could go directly to the corner by the park and hail a hackney. No one will ever know you’ve gone.”

“Kit!” Georgie said, trying again to sound severe. Really, she should be shocked that her young sister could so easily come up with such an elaborate plan or have such knowledge of their uncle’s household after only three weeks of living under his roof. “Where do you get such notions? How do you know such things?”

Her sister had the audacity to look affronted. “I listen. And I ask questions. And if you weren’t always sitting around with your nose buried in a book, or gazing at that atlas of yours, you’d hear what the maids talk about. This house is very ill-run. Quite slipshod. Apparently the staff has been stealing Uncle Phineas and Aunt Verena blind for years.” Kit dismissed that revelation with a careless wave of her hand. Then she glanced at the old clock that ticked loudly, and somewhat inconsistently, on the mantel. “We’ll have to wait until after eleven, for according to the parlor maids, it takes Cook at least three or four glasses to get good and truly foxed.”

With that Kit grinned, and Georgie couldn’t help feeling her sister’s infectious spirit prodding her into this impetuous and dangerous notion.

Ruination. Why, the very idea sent shivers down her spine.

If anything, since she wasn’t going to get her Season, wasn’t going to get her dreams of love and adventure, she might as well live one night, dancing at the edge of Society, throwing herself into the arms of impropriety.

Dancing.
Oh dear, she’d need dancing slippers. And so much more.

Georgie looked down at her own sensibly shod feet and frowned. Up from her frayed hemline rose the same poorly fashioned plain poplin gown she’d been wearing for nearly four years, which she’d recently died black in honor of Mrs. Taft, who’d been like a mother to them, and deserved to be mourned as such. Georgie knew that draped as she was in an ill-fitting, poorly dyed gown, she would hardly fit in with a roomful of elegantly attired Cyprians.