a rueful shake of her head. ‘Stepmama says that single ladies cannot be friends with single gentlemen. It isn’t proper.’
He was about to say that was nonsense, when he recalled that actually, it was true. It wasn’t proper. So he clamped his mouth shut.
‘And that being so,’ she said, ‘I think you ought to return me to Stepmama now. Don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t. We still haven’t made any progress in defining what sort of man you could tolerate marrying.’
‘What, you still think I ought to draw up some sort of list?’
‘It couldn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘As a mental exercise, it would certainly help you to get your thoughts in a less chaotic state than they are in at present.’
‘My thoughts are not in a chaotic state.’
‘They are. Otherwise,’ he said, when she drew breath to object, ‘you would not think it a good idea to marry Major Gowan, nor would you be talking to a man about what mistresses he keeps whilst in the same breath implying—’
‘Implying what?’ She looked up at him in confusion.
He felt a touch confused himself.
He never blurted out what he was thinking—or to be more precise, feeling. Especially not what he was feeling. He could normally keep a cool head during any debate, no matter how heated other participants might become.
‘Never mind what I thought you were implying,’ he ended up saying, since he was definitely not going to explain that one, some men did not find women attractive, two, he’d thought she’d thought he was one of those men, three, he resented her assumption, and so on and so forth. It would take far too long and only end in embarrassment all round.
‘It is time I returned you to your stepmother.’ He’d lost track of time whilst bickering with Georgie. Any moment now his mother would be hauling some husband-hunting debutante up before him and insisting he dance with her.
‘I shall call upon you in a few days,’ he said, taking her by the elbow and steering her out of the refreshment room at a brisk pace. ‘Which will give you time to set your thoughts down on paper. And then I can see what I can do to match you up with your...ideal man.’
She shot him a look of resentment.
‘You do not need to bother.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ he said firmly. ‘If you think I’m going to have a moment’s peace, if I stand back and watch you throw yourself away on the likes of Major Gowan, then you are very much mistaken.’
‘But, Edmund—’
‘But nothing, Georgie. He’d make you miserable.’ And so would Lord Freckleton, albeit in an entirely different way.
And he didn’t want her to be miserable.
He walked her back to her stepmother, was aware she said something, and he said something back, and that people were chatting and laughing and somewhere in the background music was playing. But he was only half-aware of any of it. Because he was reeling at his last unspoken thought. He’d meant it, too, with every atom of his being, without even knowing he felt that way.
And it made no difference what she’d done, or not done in the past, or even what she thought of him now.
He couldn’t bear to think of her being miserable.
Of all the high-handed, arrogant, supercilious...men! Georgiana glared at Edmund’s back as he sauntered out of the ballroom, his mind already clearly elsewhere. She spent the rest of the evening fuming. By the time she reached their rented house, all she could remember of the ball were the moments she’d spent with him. Being lectured and dragged round and forced to drink lemonade, and lectured again, and then tossed aside as if he’d grown bored with her antics. And all whilst trailing two feet of spangled floss trimming.
Georgiana tore off her ball gown, wincing as one of the pins she’d used to repair the damage scored her ankle, kicked off her slippers and brushed her hair so vigorously that sparks crackled. When Sukey dreamily bade her a goodnight and wafted to her room on a cloud of happy reminiscences, she grunted a brief response, shut her bedroom door with exaggerated patience and then flung herself on to her bed, thumping the pillow for good measure.
He was a beast to speak to her that way!
The worst of it was more than half of what he’d said made perfect sense. Drat him. She had been foolish, thinking she might as well accept Major Gowan’s proposal—if he ever made one—simply to get the business settled.
But Edmund had no idea what it felt like to have a sword hanging over his head, or the terrible strain of being braced for the moment it finally fell.
Oh, she should have said that to him! Why hadn’t she come up with that clever analogy when it might have impressed him?
She buried her face in the pillow and screamed her frustration into it. And then, since she was never going to be able to sleep, the way she felt, she rolled off the bed and went to her window, and sat on the sill with her knees drawn up, looking out at the night sky.
As she watched the last few stars still valiantly twinkling in the face of approaching dawn, it occurred to her that at least he hadn’t had things all his own way. Once or twice she’d had the satisfaction of shaking him out of his cool, superior attitude. He’d blustered instead of making his point in a clear, concise fashion.
Her lips curled up, just a touch, as she recalled the moment when he’d halted mid-sentence and then gone off on a completely different tack. It was a small victory, but a victory none the less. And all the more valuable since not many people ever managed to shake his utter certainty in himself, these days.
But then Edmund was so very often right. Even she could concede that it was a good idea to think seriously about what would make a husband tolerable and discovering if any man in London possessed those qualities, before settling for the likes of Major Gowan.
If only he wasn’t expecting her to apply reasoning to a problem that stemmed from her emotions. Whenever she bent her mind to the act of getting married, it was her body and her heart that shied away from it. The prospect of letting any man do what she’d seen Wilkins doing to Liza made her feel physically ill.
She hugged her knees, trying to imagine Major Gowan...
Ugh! No. She couldn’t bear that.
Edmund was right. She couldn’t marry a man who would expect that of her. Who would be disappointed, and probably hurt, too, when she responded to his embraces by... She pressed her hand to her stomach.
So what was she to do?
Think—that was what. About what sort of man she might be able to stomach.
Funny, before coming to London, she’d thought only some sort of savage would deign to consider her, but in fact, several perfectly respectable and well-mannered men appeared to find her attractive. Not Edmund, though. She knew, thanks to Bartlesham’s gossip mill, that every
