Why Earls Fall in Love (27 page)

He opened his mouth to object again, but Georgie held up a staying hand. “That’s neither here nor there. I simply wanted to let you know that my response was not about what you said, but something that I’d been thinking about myself. That’s all.”

She smiled, hoping that he would let the matter rest. “Now, was there something you wished to say? I hope we aren’t making the others wait to go to Westgate Buildings. We are still going, are we not?”

To her surprise he thrust both hands into his hair and pulled. “Oh, dear, you are feeling put out with me, aren’t you?” she asked with trepidation. She had hoped that he’d be understanding about her position on her social standing or lack thereof.

“Georgina,” he said on a sigh, “I don’t know that put out is the way to describe what I feel for you.”

Before she could respond, he shook his head. “Do you think I lightly make love to whichever lady just so happens to be available in my aunt’s house?”

“Well, of course not,” she said, her brow furrowed. “That would be odd, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It would be odd. It would also be odd if I did whatever I could to help aforementioned random lady find out who was trying to frighten her, kissed her witless in the theater, defended her against an accusation of theft, and in general mooned after her in a fashion that is very nearly overtaking Archer’s mooning over Perdita as the most pathetic display of unrequited affection in the south of England.”

Her eyes widened. “Well, if you’re so unhappy about it, you can leave off with your foolish pursuit of me with my blessings.”

“That’s not what I want, or what I meant,” Con said hotly, standing up and approaching her chair. “I only meant to say that I am bloody over the moon for you and I want you to marry me and that’s why I’ve been such a deuced idiot about things and that’s also why I’m trying like the devil to keep you safe from whoever it is who wants you to suffer.” As he spoke, he very handily scooped Georgie up from her chair and, reversing their positions, deposited her upon his lap.

“Well, I don’t…” she began, but he took advantage of her open mouth to kiss her. Soundly.

“You’ve been driving me mad,” he said against her mouth, his hand roving down her back to cup her bottom.

“Not,” she said, pulling back a little to unwrap his cravat, “as mad as you’ve been driving me.”

“Then,” he said against her chin, and making his way down over her throat, “we should do something about it.”

“We are,” she said, giving up on the cravat because it was taking too much concentration.

“Something else,” he said breathlessly as he found a particularly sensitive spot on her collarbone. “Marriage.”

She stiffened against him. Pushing against him to regain some control, she said, “We can’t marry. Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”

Clearly he was still muzzy from lust. “Yes, you said we should…” He frowned. “I don’t remember exactly.”

Pulling away, she tried to get off his lap, but Con’s arms were wrapped around her. “I said that we come from different worlds and that you are from a higher station than mine.”

Blinking, Con looked more than a little confused. But his eyes narrowed and Georgie knew he understood. “Yes,” he said decisively, “you said that, but I didn’t get to say what I thought about it.”

“Which is?” Georgie asked, though she had a clue what he’d say.

“That it doesn’t matter a damned bit.”

She felt as if she were back in the army camp. “It does matter to me,” she said firmly. “Do you think I wish to spend the rest of my life being condescended to by ladies who are angry with me for having married an eligible earl they were hoping would marry one of their daughters?”

“That’s not even an actual thing that’s happened to you,” he said with a harassed look. “It’s just something you’ve conjured from your imagination.”

“It’s something I’ve seen more than once at the charity meetings Perdita and Isabella and I attend. Gentlemen might be more forgiving, but I have my doubts about that as well.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” he said. “But it won’t all be dealing with those women. They might be upset at first, but ultimately they’ll be forced to realize that if they want your approval—you will be a countess after all—they’ll have to be the ones toadying to you.”

“Oh, that’s so much better,” Georgie said with a reluctant laugh. She wasn’t purposely trying to find reasons not to marry him. She’d come to the conclusion sometime that night in her bedchamber at Lady Russell’s that she could quite easily spend her life with him. But she was so frightened that he’d marry her in haste and then repent at leisure. It would break her heart to know she’d trapped him into a marriage that would force his peers to shun him.

“It is better than the scenario you proposed,” he said with a grin.

He kissed the end of her nose, and then her cheeks and her eyelids. Then, gently, so gently, he kissed her lips.

“I know this thing between us has happened quickly,” he said, leaning his forehead against hers. “Believe me. I know. But I’ve been drawn to you from the first day I met you.”

“When you were betrothed to Perdita?” she asked, surprised.

He nodded, looking sheepish. “It’s one of the reasons I wasn’t very upset when she broke things off with me. I had committed myself because as a man of honor it was my duty, but I would always have wondered about what might have been.”

She stared at him, tilting her head to look more closely at him. “I would never have guessed it for a minute,” she said with a gasp. “You truly are a romantic, aren’t you?”

“I like to think I’m a man who knows what he wants,” he said with a look of challenge. “And what I want, is you.”

She stared into his eyes, which had become so familiar to her in the past days, and she wondered what she had done to deserve the affection of such a good man. She thought about the worst days of her marriage to Robert. And how she’d longed more than anything in the world to escape him somehow and to find a kind and honorable man who would cherish her in a way she suspected Robert was incapable of. Someone she could cherish in return without fear of having her every kindness thrown back in her face as proof of some imagined infraction on her part. And yet, something made her pause.

Looking down at his shirtfront, unable to meet those oh-so-trusting eyes of his, she said, “I don’t know how I can possibly admit it to you, when you are being so terribly sweet. But I find I cannot go forward in this without telling you the truth.” She swallowed, knowing it might make him change his mind about her. But also realizing she had to say it. “The truth of the matter is,” she said quietly, “that I am afraid.”

She felt the sure stroke of his hand over her back. “Of what, sweeting?” he asked, his voice just as gentle as she’d known it would be. Making her feel all the more like a coward.

“I am afraid to risk it,” she said. “I’ve been in this position before. I fell in love with a man, and within a year I was in misery.” She leaned back to look him in the eye. She had thought to see him look offended, but all she saw was patience. And understanding. “I don’t think you are even capable of the sort of violence that Robert used against me,” she said finally. “But when I first married him, I had no notion that he was capable of such a thing either. The naked truth of it is that I don’t trust my own judgment. I mean, look at the way Mary Kendrick fooled me. I want to believe that she’s a good woman who was manipulated into a bad situation, but at the heart of things, part of me believes she’s as guilty as you all think she is.”

“Georgina,” Con said, his voice calm and sure, “if you weren’t a bit afraid to trust again after what happened with Mowbray, I’d think you were a simpleton as well as a glutton for punishment. No one who has endured what you went through could emerge without some sense of skepticism about the people around them. It would be impossible not to.

“But,” he continued, “there is a great deal of difference between skepticism and blind trust. And I do not require your blind trust.”

“How can we have a marriage that will possibly work without trust?” she asked, wanting to believe him but still afraid.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I said nothing about a lack of trust. Just a lack of blind trust. Neither of us is going to trust the other blindly until we’ve got a few years of acquaintance built up. Until I’ve proven to you that I’m not the kind of man who would turn on you as Mowbray did.”

“And that doesn’t frighten you?” she demanded. “It doesn’t make you question whether we can make it work?”

“Not a bit,” Con said, kissing her on the forehead. “Because I do trust you. And I will spend every moment of the rest of my life proving to you that I deserve your trust.”

Her eyes welled and Georgie buried her face in his neck, breathing in sandalwood and his own special scent. “I don’t think it will take that long,” she said finally. She pulled back a little and kissed him. “It won’t take that long at all.”

“But that won’t stop me from trying,” he said. “Now, I hate to end what might become a most enjoyable interlude. But I suppose we should go back downstairs before the afternoon is gone.”

Georgie sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in coming back up here tonight,” she said coaxingly. “I sincerely doubt that Perdita is as scrupulous as Mr. Lowther’s landlady.”

Con kissed her on the mouth with a resounding smack. “I was afraid you’d never ask,” he said, allowing her to stand and reaching up to straighten his cravat.

“Well, we should probably wait until we are wed—” she began, then stopped herself, realizing he hadn’t actually asked.

“Say no more,” Con said. “I will most assuredly be asking you properly. But now we have a mission we must undertake and I refuse to embark upon a proposal of marriage when there is not a solid block of time set aside for um…” He paused. “Celebration,” he said finally, making Georgie laugh.

“Then I will wait until you deem the time is right,” she said saucily. “Now, you’d better go look in the pier glass for I fear your poor cravat will never be the same.”

Somehow neither of them seemed to mind.

*   *   *

“Now remember,” Perdita reminded the others as they rode the short distance from Laura Place to Henrietta Street. “We are meant to be on our best aristocratic behavior.” In deference to their mission, she’d chosen one of her most elegant afternoon ensembles, which included an ermine-trimmed cape to guard against the chill in the autumn air. “Do not be swayed by their attempts at toadying. We are here to ensure that they change their minds about Georgina and that means that we can take no quarter. It is do or die! Or something…”

“These are Con’s relations you’re talking about, Perdita,” Georgina reminded her. “And I happen to hold Lady Russell in some affection.”

“Don’t mind me,” Con called to Perdita from his seat beside Georgie. “Though I don’t put it past some of my relations to toady. Cousin Philip especially. But I agree with Georgina. Do not be rough on Lady Russell. She is old and infirm.”

“She is quite mad, isn’t she, your sister, I mean?” Trevor said to Isabella in an undertone. Though he was a duke, he had until recently been a country farmer, so he wasn’t quite used to grand displays of ducal power, the likes of which they now embarked upon.

“Oh, heavens, yes,” Isabella responded, “but she is ours.” She smoothed the edge of his cravat a bit and turned his stickpin to face outward. “I must admit you look rather delicious in all your ducal finery.”

“No flirtation,” Perdita ordered, the ostrich plume in her hat wagging at them like a finger. “We need to keep our wits about us.”

“I dislike calling attention to it,” Archer said with a frown, “but you do realize that we are calling upon the gout-ridden widow of a baron, do you not? I hardly think she will meet us with a volley of cannon fire or whatnot.”

“An excellent point,” Con agreed, offering his friend a tip of the hat. “I can assure you that there is no cannon in Lady Russell’s house at present.”

Perdita scowled. “Are you attempting to dissuade me from doing our level best to protect Georgina’s reputation, Archer? Con? Is that what you’re doing?”

When both men shrugged, Perdita’s brows snapped together. Georgie was reminded of Lady Russell’s spaniel, Percy, when he was deprived of a treat.

“Never mind,” Perdita continued. “I do not wish to hear your argument, Archer. You’ve far too much experience philosophizing for Parliament. If there were a way to get around you, it would have already been done. And so far as I can tell it hasn’t.”

“My dear duchess,” he said with a grin. “I hadn’t realized you’d noticed.” He pressed a hand to his chest in mock humility. “I have been told by some that my philosophizing could convince a robin to hand over the eggs from his nest. Though of course I would never ask such a thing. Poor dear little creatures, birds.”

“I’m feeling bilious,” Isabella said suddenly.

Perdita gasped, her mask of haughtiness slipping. “Oh, no, darling, is it the child?”

Isabella rolled her eyes. “No, it’s this ridiculous conversation. I vow you and Archer are so full of hot air you could make the carriage rise from the earth like a balloon.”

“Oh!” Perdita made a sound of mocked affront. “See if I show you sympathy for your weak stomach again, Sister.”

“You must admit we are a bit bombastic at times,” Archer said with a shrug. “I don’t blame her for complaining.”

“That’s mightily gallant of you, my lord,” Con said, doffing his hat to the other man, who doffed his own hat in return.

“This has to be the most absurdly long carriage ride in the history of man,” Isabella muttered. “Why is it taking so long to go two streets over?”

“I believe I heard the coachman complaining about an overturned cart ahead,” Trevor said helpfully. “I can get out and check if you’d like,” he said to Perdita.

“No.” She waved his offer away. “I suppose we can wait a bit. But it does steal one’s thunder when instead of a swift ride across country you arrive instead at a snail’s pace across macadamized roads.”

It took some minutes more but finally they arrived before the entrance to Lady Russell’s house in Henrietta Street. And they took advantage of all the pomp and circumstance their positions could entail. They descended from the carriage, allowing the footmen to hand the ladies out with the gentlemen following behind.