by Anne Gracie
Emm, Cal and Aunt Agatha sat in silence. There was nothing more to say.
Just as Aunt Agatha was about to rise and depart, they heard the front door open and George laughing in the hall in response to whomever had opened the door.
The clatter of claws on the floor alerted them to the arrival of Finn. He nosed open the door and trotted over to Cal. George poked her head in, saw Aunt Agatha sitting ramrod straight on the edge of her chair, pulled a face and stealthily tried to withdraw but Aunt Agatha had espied her. “Ah, Georgiana, just the gel I came to talk to.”
“I need to change my clothes. I’m damp.”
“It won’t take a minute.”
“If I stay in damp clothes, I might catch cold,” said George who’d never had a cold in her life.
“I shall come upstairs with you,” Aunt Agatha announced majestically and rose from her chair. “We can talk as you change. A nice cozy chat between gels.”
George grimaced. A nice cozy chat between gels? As cozy as sitting down with a python. But her great-aunt was not to be denied. She followed George up the stairs to her bedchamber and watched critically as she changed her clothes with the assistance of Milly, the maid.
The minute Milly left the room, Aunt Agatha started on her. “I gather you are determined to repudiate the duke’s offer.”
“I have already declined it.”
Aunt Agatha’s lips thinned. “And your uncle and aunt by marriage refuse to intervene.”
Her words warmed George. Dear Cal and Emm. “Good.”
Aunt Agatha’s eyes were like gimlets. “Then if yet another Rutherford gel is going to jilt the Duke of Everingham and cause an even worse scandal, the least you can do, Georgiana, is to explain it to the duke’s mother—”
“The duke’s mother? But—”
“The duchess is in extremely poor health and is mightily distressed by the way her son has been treated by the gels of this family. The least you can do is to face her in person and explain your pathetic reasoning. That way the poor lady might understand, and it will perhaps give her a little peace of mind—relieve her of the suspicion that her son has been at fault—”
“But it is his fault. He’s the one—”
“Nonsense! He did the honorable thing and announced your betrothal. You’re the one who behaved like a hussy—worse than a hussy! I saw it with my own eyes! And now you are courting even more gossip and scandal by refusing him. Any other young lady would graciously accept her fate—what am I saying? Accept her fate? Marriage to a handsome young duke, one of the richest men in the kingdom is not a fate, it is a blessing! Any gel would be thankful to be in such a position, but not you! Oh, no, not my great-niece. I am ashamed, deeply ashamed, that a relative of mine could behave so shabbily.”
George gritted her teeth.
“So you must meet the duchess and explain that her son has done all he ought in this matter and is in no way at fault.”
George’s fingers clenched into fists. It was in all ways his fault. She’d told him she wasn’t interested in marriage and the horrid beast had taken that as some kind of challenge to his horrid masculinity. And then when he’d caught her, and kissed her just outside a room full of people, at the end of a concert—who had made the first move then? Not George. And then when everyone came spilling out after the recital, catching her locked in his arms—who was it who’d announced their betrothal without even asking her? Not George. And then he’d put it in the papers! Again without asking!
So why was everyone blaming her? She hadn’t wanted any of it.
To be fair, she did share some responsibility for the kissing. She hadn’t exactly fought him off. And perhaps she had become a little carried away—well, a lot carried away. She’d practically climbed him like a tree!
But she knew why that was and it wasn’t her fault. Nobody had warned her it could happen.
“This whole dreadful affair has quite cut up the poor duchess’s peace, and her health is fragile at the best of times,” Aunt Agatha continued. “If you would only talk to her, you could ease—”
“Very well, I’ll talk to her,” George agreed. Best to get it over with. Aunt Agatha was quite capable of going on and on and on about it all afternoon and through the night and probably for the rest of George’s life.
“Excellent,” Aunt Agatha said briskly. “I’ll let the duchess know to expect us tomorrow at three.”
“Us?”
“Of course, us. Who else would you take? That wretched animal?” Finn recognizing the reference, if not the sentiment, thumped his tail on the floor.
“No, of course not, but I thought perhaps—”
“Who? Rose and Lily have both gone to the country, Emmaline is in no fit state to accompany you anywhere, burdened as she is with the imminent arrival of The Heir. As for Dorothea”—she snorted—“no, I will accompany you and that’s that. I will call for you at twenty minutes to three. Be ready.”
* * *
* * *
George woke in the night, the bedclothes flung into twisted ropes, her nightdress scrunched up around her hips. She was hot, sweaty and restless. That dream . . . She blushed just thinking about it. She’d been kissing the duke again, her legs wrapped around his waist, only this time she was naked. And so was he . . . and his hands— No, she wouldn’t think about where they’d been and what they’d done.
She slipped out of bed, pulled her nightdress down, padded to the window and pulled the curtains back. Below her Berkeley Square was deserted, the gaslights blurry golden moons shining through the drizzle.
She pressed her hot cheek against the cold glass of the windowpane. Her body was afire, and not just for anyone. For the duke.
It was like a thirst that couldn’t be quenched, except by him, a hunger that only he could assuage. But would bedding him rid her of these restive, sweaty dreams, the craving for . . . for whatever it was she craved?
It was as though the desire had sprung from some outside source, a fever, an infection in her blood. And the duke was the source.
Was he also the cure?
She’d always thought she understood what passed between men and women. Even as a child she’d known how animals did it, and had supposed men and women weren’t much different. It seemed odd and uncomfortable and not something she ever thought she’d want.
Emm had told her that people were different, and that the pleasures of the bed could really bring a husband and wife closer. George was skeptical, but it did seem to have worked for Emm and Cal. Cal had only married Emm because he didn’t want to be bothered with Rose and Lily and her.
His attitude had certainly changed, but how much of it was because of whatever happened in the bedchamber?
Lily and Rose had talked about it too. They said it was lovely, but George had never really thought about what lovely meant.
She wondered now.
It didn’t feel “lovely” at all; she felt raw and uncomfortable and hot and desperate. But she apparently craved it—whatever it was—even in her dreams. It was horribly inconvenient. She craved it—craved him and how he could make her feel—but she didn’t want him. Didn’t want to want him.
Half a dozen mind-stealing, dizzying, knee-melting kisses, and already she was having hot and steamy dreams of him. Was she addicted? How much more was there to feel?
She curled up on the window seat, pulling her nightdress over her knees and leaning against the window frame. Rain spattered in hard little pellets against the glass. Rainwater rattled down through the pipes.
She thought about the raptures Lily and Rose went into whenever they’d talked about lovemaking with their husbands—though with frustratingly little detail. Did she really want to go through life without ever experiencing that for herself?
She didn’t. She wanted to feel, wanted to know.
She knew well the purpose of this frantic
inner urge to mate—procreation. She didn’t know much about babies—only about puppies and foals and kittens and kits and chicks—and she wasn’t sure she even wanted a baby.
Could she risk it? Risk falling pregnant outside of marriage?
It was very tempting, but . . . no. She’d been called a bastard often enough in her childhood to know bastardy was a dreadful thing to inflict on a child. If she were going to find out for herself what it felt like to lie with a man, it would have to be in wedlock.
But marriage to the duke? Despite the raw, ravening, uncontrollable desire that seized her whenever he touched her—oil to her flame—he was cold, cynical, autocratic and selfish.
She stared out into the night, watching the rain making ever-changing runnels down the window. Her mind and body were in turmoil.
Marriage? Giving up control of her money, placing her fate in the hands of a man—a man she didn’t like? She couldn’t do it. Not even to know what passion tasted like.
This rampant desire would fade—it was just a matter of waiting until the urgency passed.
Chapter Ten
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
—JANE AUSTEN, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Aunt Agatha’s carriage pulled up outside the duchess’s house promptly at three. George was a little surprised. She’d expected to be taken to Everingham House, but this house was altogether smaller—though by no means small—and prettier.
“The duke moved his mother here when he decided to get married,” Aunt Agatha said in a disparaging tone when George commented on it.
It would be a much more pleasant house to live in than grim old Everingham House, George thought, but she said nothing. She was absurdly nervous. She didn’t know the duchess—she had seen her, of course, at various events leading up to Rose’s wedding to the duke, but had never actually spoken to her, apart from “how do you do.”
It was bound to be awkward. Aunt Agatha rang the bell and the butler instantly opened the door.
“Her grace is expecting you. She is upstairs, in her bedchamber,” he intoned in a solemn voice.
In her bedchamber? George glanced at Aunt Agatha, who showed no surprise. They followed the butler up the stairs.
He knocked on the door, then opened it, saying softly, “Lady Salter and Lady Georgiana Rutherford, your grace.”
Bracing herself, George stepped into a dimly lit room. The curtains were drawn, candles were burning, and—she sniffed—was that incense? Or medicine? The atmosphere was suffocating.
The bedside table was crammed with jars and bottles and vials and strange-looking medical paraphernalia. A woman dressed in gray sat in the corner, silent and self-effacing. Some kind of attendant or nurse. She wasn’t introduced.
And there were flowers, so many flowers in vases all around the room.
Aunt Agatha had said the duchess was fragile and poorly, but clearly she was a lot sicker than that.
It looked like a deathbed.
The duchess, slender and frail looking, her skin a livid pasty white, lay propped up on pillows in a vast four-poster hung with heavy brocade. Her eyes were huge, red rimmed and haunted looking. She put out a thin hand. “Lady Georgiana,” she murmured weakly. “So glad . . .”
“How do you do, your grace?” George spoke softly, feeling awkward to be so healthy with this pallid husk of a woman lying before her.
The duchess sighed. “Oh, well, life is . . . uncertain,” she murmured. She gave a tremulous smile, then a coughing fit took her, as if simply to speak those few words had exhausted her. The attendant hurried forward and fussed around the duchess, then a few moments later was dismissed with a feeble wave. She went back to her corner.
“Now, Georgiana, tell the duchess what you came here to say,” Aunt Agatha said in a brisk voice that seemed far too loud in this otherwise hushed room.
“Oh, yes, you’re going . . . to marry my son, aren’t you?” The duchess gave her a wan smile.
“Um, n—”
“I wanted to meet you . . . before,” the duchess continued. “In case . . .” She gestured vaguely toward the array of medicines on the bedside table.
“Your grace, I—”
“It made me so happy when I learned . . . that my son was to marry after all. That time he was left at the altar . . . So distressing.” She pressed a vein-lined hand to her chest. “Your sister, wasn’t it?” She gazed at George out of tragic, red-rimmed eyes.
George shriveled inside. “My aunt.”
The duchess nodded. “Yes. One of the Rutherford gels . . .” She sighed again. “I’ve been so worried, you see, that . . . my boy will be left all alone when I . . .” She sighed. “When I go . . .” She dabbed a wisp of lace to her eyes, and when it came away, big fat tears rolled slowly down her hollow cheek.
George bit her lip. She hated it when people cried. She hardly ever cried herself, and then, only in private. When others cried, she felt mildly alarmed and quite helpless.
She glanced at Aunt Agatha, who gave an unhelpful shrug, as if to say, “It’s your responsibility, you deal with it.”
The duchess wheezed on. “I was so . . . distressed when dearest Agatha told me you were having . . . second thoughts—” She broke off to cough into the lacy handkerchief.
Second thoughts? George had never even had first thoughts. She’d never wanted to marry the duke. But how could she explain that to this poor lady? It seemed somehow brutal.
“For my son to be jilted twice . . . and by girls of the same family . . .”
Rose hadn’t jilted him. She hadn’t known Thomas was still alive. Nobody was to blame. And if the duke hadn’t publicly announced their betrothal without asking . . . But who could argue with a dying mother?
“Everyone will assume that there is some ghastly flaw in my son . . .”
There was. He was arrogant and cold and high-handed, George thought. Though his kisses . . . She forced her thoughts back to the moment.
“No decent lady would want . . . to marry him then. And I have so little time left . . . to see him wed and settled.”
George bit her tongue. Did this lady not understand? If the duke were cross-eyed and hunchbacked, was subject to fits and drooled he would still have women lining up to marry him just because he was rich and a duke. But it wasn’t the kind of thing one could say to a dying mother.
Liquid, red-rimmed eyes fixed pleadingly on her.
George felt trapped, stifled, a bird mesmerized by a snake.
“But here you are . . . so slender and pretty and . . . charming, the very image of the girl I would have . . . picked out for my dear son. I nearly died, giving birth to him . . . did you know? I was never the same . . . afterward, but then . . . what does health matter? We mothers live only for . . . our children.” She gestured and the attendant came forward with a glass of some dark liquid. The duchess sipped, coughed, then sipped again.
When she had recovered, she beckoned George closer and took her hand in a surprisingly fierce grasp. “So tell me, dearest girl . . . you will make me happy, won’t you? You’ll marry my son . . . and become my daughter?”
George swallowed. She wanted to fling open the curtains, let in some light and fresh air—even London air—but she was trapped, held fast by a bony grip and a pair of tragic eyes.
The duchess continued in a faint, plaintive voice. “It was always . . . my dearest wish . . . to dance at his wedding, and although that pleasure . . . has been cruelly wrested from me, you will . . . give me your promise, won’t you?” She gazed beseechingly at George. “Promise me you’ll . . . marry my boy. And let me go . . . in peace. Please?”
She gazed at George through those huge, haunted eyes and waited.
George bit her lip. She’d never had a mother; Mama had died when George was a baby. Bu
t she could imagine a mother’s love for her child. Emm hadn’t even given birth yet, but George knew she already loved her baby.
This poor lady only had one son. How dreadful to be dying in such a worried state of mind.
George thought about all her reasons for not wanting to marry the duke. He was autocratic, haughty, cynical and aloof—though not when he was kissing her.
She thought about the way he’d invaded her dreams, and how she really did want to know what it felt like to lie with a man.
Would it be so bad?
Aunt Agatha said he didn’t want the usual kind of wife, that as long as she bore him children, he would let her live an independent life in the country, as she’d always planned.
If she married him, she could find out for herself what it was like to lie with a man—and rid herself of all those tantalizing, disturbing, crazy-making sensations that invaded her dreams. That made her lose all sense of herself when he kissed her. And climb him like a tree.
Her cheeks warmed. These were not the thoughts to be having in a dying woman’s bedchamber.
The duchess’s thin fingers gripped hers. The haggard, haunted eyes bored into her.
George writhed inside.
There were agreements to be signed before a marriage; she remembered that from Lily’s marriage. Aunt Agatha had implied that they would live more or less separate lives, except when congress was necessary to conceive an heir. If he would agree to that in writing . . .
The duchess’s bony grip tightened. Her eyes filled with tears. “Please, my dearest girl . . . Tell me what I need to hear. Let me go at last . . . in peace.”
All through her childhood George had brought home wounded creatures—mending birds’ wings, nursing orphaned fox kits, rescuing creatures caught in traps, and kittens left to drown.
It was simply not in her to crush the last hope this poor woman had. She’d been ready to resist all the other pressures that had been brought on her to marry the duke, but how could she refuse a dying woman’s last wish for her beloved son?