no difficulty whatever.’
‘I...I...’ She blinked as her eyes started stinging. She wasn’t going to be a mother. Ever. Not if she couldn’t overcome her revulsion at the act that was necessary to get them.
‘I know your mother died in childbirth,’ he said gently. ‘But that need not be your fate.’
What? He thought that was why she’d asked him for a pretend marriage? He thought she was a coward?
‘It isn’t that,’ she cried indignantly. ‘I’m not afraid of that!’
‘Then what—?’
She tore her hands and her gaze away from him, her heart beating rapidly and her stomach squirming. She couldn’t tell him about...about Wilkins and Liza.
‘I just...cannot, that’s all.’
‘Yes, you can, Georgie,’ he said, walking round her until he was standing in front of her. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to. I can see that your stepmother’s influence has diminished your belief in yourself, but deep down, is there not still a spark of...that girl who was not afraid of what anyone said, or thought? The Georgie I knew—’ He reached out and with his forefinger lifted her chin so that she was looking into his face, rather than at his boots. ‘She would have taken London by storm. She would probably have done it by flouting just about every rule governing the behaviour expected of debutantes. She’d have acquired a large following of devoted admirers. And if any of them had tried to step out of line she’d have had no trouble giving them a leveller. Probably literally,’ he finished on a wry smile.
Her breath hitched in her throat. He admired all the things about her that Stepmama had told her were bad. He thought other men would find them attractive, too. That if she could just dare to be herself, they would flock round her, the way they flocked round Sukey.
For a moment, a vision of that Georgie, holding a swarm of suitors in the palm of her hand, flitted into her head.
But then she focussed on the way Edmund was smiling at her. And they all vanished. Because Edmund was the only man she wanted to smile at her like that. And find her fascinating. And look at her as a potential mother for his children.
Something happened to her insides. To her breasts. To her mouth. Something she’d never felt before.
But she knew what it was, all the same.
Oh.
It was like being slapped in the face by an enormous tree branch when galloping through a densely wooded area.
The ‘right man’, Stepmama had said, would make her feel differently. She had been speaking of some mythical Corinthian, the kind of man Papa would have liked for a son-in-law. But Georgiana was looking at the right man, right now.
It was Edmund.
And that was the moment she knew exactly why she’d proposed to him. Why she couldn’t think of any other man as a husband. It wasn’t because she was afraid of leaving Bartlesham, or devastated by the prospect of having to sell Whitesocks.
It was because once she married someone else, it would be over between them. Finally and irrevocably over.
She had never given up hope, she realised, that some day, somehow, he would return to her. Her Edmund.
She wanted him to love her. The way she loved him. Had always loved him.
Even as children, he’d been her favourite playmate. He’d been more intelligent, more sensible, more...everything than any other child in the area. It was why she’d been devastated when he’d left and apparently forgotten about her at once. Because she’d feared she hadn’t meant as much to him as he had to her.
And when he’d come back, as a handsome and healthy young man, she’d started loving him in a different way. How could she have denied the way her body had leapt to attention whenever she spied him? Only to curl in on itself when he’d looked down his nose at her, reminding her that he was a lord now and not her playmate. She’d told herself she was glad to see the back of him when he’d gone away to university, after spending only a few weeks in Bartlesham. That she hated him.
But it wasn’t true. Oh, it wasn’t true! It had just been easier on her pride to stomp round in a fury than to curl up somewhere and weep.
And now?
As though he was in tune with her thoughts and didn’t like them, he suddenly turned his head so that they were no longer gazing into each other’s eyes. Let go of her hands.
Then she could hear Sukey giggling over something one of the naval officers was saying.
Her cheeks flooded with heat.
‘We should join the others,’ she said through a throat that was squeezing shut with the force of the emotions roiling through her and marched swiftly across the room, not daring to look back to see if he was following. Because he was so clever, he’d surely see the longing, the inappropriate and unreciprocated longing in her eyes. And he’d start avoiding her again. The way he’d done in Bartlesham. Because he’d just told her he avoided the kind of women who stalked him like some form of matrimonial prey.
So she’d have to convince him she didn’t think of him that way.
At least while he thought she regarded him only as a friend, he’d feel safe keeping her company.
But if he ever guessed how she felt about him, he’d run a mile.
Edmund shifted from one foot to the other as he waited for his turn to hand in his ticket to Lady Chepstow’s charity ball. It was no use telling himself that the cause was a good one. He didn’t give a rap for indigent governesses, or whatever it was tonight’s takings would fund. He just wanted to see Georgie again. Ever since the conversation they’d had at Bullock’s Museum, about the way he’d felt when his mother had sent him into exile, he’d been kicking himself for not bringing up the topic of the intercepted letters.
He’d practically accused her of being too cowardly to grow up, yet he’d balked at bringing the truth out into the open. Out of concern for what the result would have been. He’d stood there, wondering if she’d be angry, or hurt, or, if she’d felt as deeply as he had about it, if she might not even have burst into tears. In the museum, of all places.
So he’d changed the focus of their conversation. Talked to her about the suitors she ought to be attracting, for heaven’s sake. When there were already far too many men hanging round her for his liking. With their tongues hanging out.
He slapped his ticket into the hand of Lady Peters, the gorgon presiding over admittance to Durant House for some reason, and then stalked past, ignoring her speech about the premises tonight’s profits would be used to purchase.
He needed to see Georgie for himself. To...
To do what, exactly, he wasn’t sure. He stomped up the staircase that led to the ballroom, his face rigid with self-disgust. Since the day she’d made that outrageous proposal it felt as if he’d abandoned every principle by which he’d ever lived. He might
