how was it, then, that George found himself the next afternoon at half past two at Grosvenor Square, staring up at the impressive Beckington House with its row of windows that looked black in the afternoon sun? Utter, indefensible folly.
No one answered straightaway when George rapped three times, and he had all but turned about, prepared to make his escape when the door suddenly swung open and a man with thinning hair stood imperiously before him.
George fished a calling card from his interior coat pocket. “Mr. Easton for Miss Honor Cabot, if you please.”
The man nodded and disappeared for a moment, reappearing again with a silver tray, which he held out to George. When George had deposited the card onto the tray, the door opened wider. The man stepped aside and inclined his head, indicating George should step inside, which he did. Just over the threshold. He tentatively removed his hat.
“If you will kindly wait here, Mr. Easton, I shall inform Miss Cabot that you have called,” the butler said, and marched briskly away, the silver tray held high.
George looked up at the soaring entry and the elaborate chandelier hanging high above him. There were paintings on the walls, portraits of people, of landscapes. The marble floor was polished to a sheen, and gold candelabras with new beeswax candles stood in neat rows on a table nearby.
He heard the butler again before he saw him, his brisk walk echoing down the corridor he’d disappeared into. The man bowed. “If you will allow me to show you to a receiving room, sir,” he said, and carefully put aside the silver tray—empty now—and moved in the opposite direction from where he’d come, walking into the west corridor.
George followed. They moved down a carpeted hallway past polished wood doors and wall sconces and more beeswax candles. George was reminded of how pleased his mother had been when she could afford to buy one or two beeswax candles and rid their rooms of the smell of tallow for a time.
The butler entered the last room on the right. He opened the pair of doors wide, pushed them back and nudged a doorstop into place with his foot. He strode across the small room to the windows, opened the drapes, tied them back then faced George. “Is the comfort in the room to your liking, sir, or shall I send a footman to light a fire?”
“That won’t be necessary,” George said stiffly. “I do not intend to be long.”
“Very well, sir. If you require any assistance at all, the bellpull is just there,” the butler said, nodding toward a thick velvet braid of rope near the door. “Miss Cabot will join you shortly.” He quit the room.
George put his hat aside and examined a painting on the wall as he waited, staring up at the puffy face of a Beckington forefather. He always looked at the portraits in homes like these, looking for any similarity to himself, any hint that he might somehow be related. This man looked nothing like the late Gloucester, except perhaps for the slightly aquiline shape of his nose. George was so intent on that feature that he did not hear the advance of Miss Cabot until she swept into the room on a cloud of pale yellow, her train swirling out behind her as she twirled around to peek out the corridor and then draw the doors quietly closed.
She twirled back around, her smile luminescent, her hands clasped just below her breast, reminiscent of a choirboy preparing to sing. But all similarity to anything remotely angelic ended abruptly when he noticed that the gown she was wearing did not conceal her up to her chin like the one she’d worn yesterday. This gown was cut fashionably low, and creamy mounds of her breast appeared to almost burst from her bodice...a mishap George would delight in seeing.
She was oblivious to his fascination with her décolletage. “You came,” she said breathlessly.
Bloody fool that he was, yes. George inclined his head in acknowledgment of that.
“I scarcely believe it! I was so certain you’d not come, and I had no good idea of what I might do if you didn’t. But here you are!” she exclaimed, casting her arms wide. “You will help me!”
“Before you take flight with joy, Miss Cabot, understand that I came here not to help you in your lunacy, but to dissuade you from it.”
She blinked her lovely blue eyes. “Dissuade me,” she repeated, as if that were a foreign concept to her, which George suspected was highly probable. “But that’s not possible, Mr. Easton. My mind is quite made up. When I am fixed on something, I am very dedicated to it. Now then—will you help me?”
George couldn’t help but chuckle at her dogged determination. “No.”
“No?”
“It is madness, complete and utter madness,” he said. “It is a loathsome thing to do to a brother and a friend, and I feel it is my duty as a gentleman to direct you away from it—not abet it.”
Now her bright smile faded. She folded her arms. “Very well, Mr. Easton. You have done your gentlemanly duty,” she said, sounding irreverent. “Now will you help me?”
George stared at her. And then he couldn’t seem to help himself—he laughed. “You may very well be the most obstinate woman I have ever met.”
“Then perhaps you have not met as many women as I’ve heard tell,” she said pertly. “Do you think I make this request to you lightly? That this is a girlish whim? Not at all, sir. Monica Hargrove intends to turn my family out when she marries my brother. She has said as much to me. Further, I don’t believe for a moment that you came all the way here to tell me you won’t help me. You might have sent a note or ignored me altogether, is that not so?”
That was so, and it made George a bit uncomfortable for her to point it out so bluntly. He shrugged.
“That you did not suggests to me that you must have at least considered my request. Have you?”
He felt as if he were a naughty boy, caught in the act of mischief. She had him, this shrewd and wily young miss, just as she had that night in Southwark. And she knew it, too, for a smile appeared on her lush lips, ending in little dimples in either cheek. That smile was a small gust of air to smoldering ashes, and George felt a tiny flame ignite.
“It would seem we are agreed,” she said silkily.
“Not so fast.” He let his gaze slide slowly down her curves and up again. He would like to sink his fingers and his tongue into that flesh, to smell her hair. “If I cannot dissuade you—”
“You cannot—”
“Then it is now my duty as a gentleman to ensure you do no harm to Miss Hargrove.”
Miss Cabot beamed, knowing she had won. “How kind of you.”
“I am not the least bit kind, Miss Cabot. But I do have some principles. I’m not sure the same can be said for you.”
“I am touched by your concern for Monica,” she said sweetly. “My desire is only that she is made aware that there are other, perhaps more attractive possibilities for her so that she will not rush to the altar as she seems to want to do. No harm.”
“Debatable,” he said, his body caught in the snare of feminine mystique as he moved closer to her. “There is still the matter of what I will have in return for this...abominable favor.”
“Of course,” she said demurely, and folded her arms across her body tightly.
