Georgiana was taken aback. Was he going to make love to her? Her mind whirled at the possibility. He’d been recently widowed; he was connected to her family; he had always liked her. Could it be?
She had only a second or two to think about it, but in that brief time she asked herself how she would answer him. Could she think of him as a lover? She concluded, in a mere moment, that she could not. Was she, then, going to be in the terribly awkward position of refusing a man—an earl!—whom she liked and respected?
“It is a delicate matter,” the earl continued, “and I am not sure how to broach it, so I will just jump in.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring blankly into the room, her mind racing to come to terms with what she thought she was about to hear.
The earl waited, and, in the silence, she turned to him. When he could look her in the eye, he said, “It’s about Mr. Barnes.”
She was thunderstruck. “Mr. Barnes?” she echoed helplessly.
“Yes, my dear. Mr. Barnes.”
Her mind was reeling all over again. Why on earth would this man speak to her of Mr. Barnes? It was a short hop from wonder to annoyance. What right had he to speak to her of Mr. Barnes?
The earl forged ahead. “Lady Loughlin told me some of what has gone on under her roof over the course of the last week. She was concerned for you, for your friend Miss Niven, and for the erosion of order in her household. She could not tell me of the threats without telling me also of your relationship with Mr. Barnes.”
Georgiana stared mutely, not having the foggiest notion how to reply.
This seemed to suit Lord Grantsbury. He had something to say, and it was perhaps best if he got it out without too much interruption.
“I have known your family since before you were born, and you since you were a baby. From your very first steps, which, if I may say so, were willful and determined”—here he smiled—“I have liked and admired you. And, although you have a perfectly serviceable father in my great friend Lord Eastley, that has not prevented me from feeling a very paternal concern for your well-being and your future.”
He sighed as he began on the substance of what he had to say.
“It gives me no pleasure to say this, and I would not say it unless I was certain that you understand that I have your best interest very much at heart, but you are behaving like an ass.”
Lady Georgiana bridled. She had, by this time, expected to be rebuked, but not in such harsh terms as this.
“An . . . ass, my lord?” she said stiffly.
“I’ve always called a spade a spade, and I shall always call an ass an ass,” he replied with a matter-of-fact tone. “Your stubbornness and pride are leading you into a situation that could very well be your undoing.”
Here her color started to rise, and her anger with it.
“My lord,” she said, controlling her tone with an effort, “your long acquaintance with my family and with me gives you license to talk to me in a way I would not stand for in others, but to call me an ass, and stubborn, and prideful, goes beyond what that license entitles you to.” She stood, and then vacillated as she tried to decide whether or not she should stalk out in a huff.
Grantsbury stood also, and motioned her back to the sofa. “Please, my dear, sit down. Try to see beyond your anger at the liberty I have taken, and think for a moment about the substance of what I have to say.”
She hesitated, and then sat.
Grantsbury was silent for a moment, giving her time to let her anger cool and her reason reassert itself. Then he began again.
“You are an earl’s daughter, and the world, which thinks much of nobility, will give you as wide a latitude as it can. There are limits, though, beyond which the world will not go. I believe that your liaison with Mr. Barnes will try the world’s patience.”
Georgiana could not hear this without protesting. “And why is it, my lord, that Mr. Barnes’s liaison—as you call it—with me does not try the world’s patience? Is he not as much a participant as I am? Yet the world says nothing to him.”
“He is a man, my dear. You are a girl.”
“And it is because I am a girl that I am to be censured, while he, or any other man, is to get off not just scot-free, but with a wink and a nod and a nudge that all say, ‘See what a fine, virile fellow he is!’”
“Yes,” Grantsbury said.
The simplicity of his answer took Georgiana aback. “And you think that is fair and just?”
“I do not.”
It took her a few moments to grasp this. “You do not think those constraints are fair or just, yet you condemn me and call me an ass for flouting them?”
“I do.”
She was at a loss. “But why?” she asked plaintively. “How can you be so inconsistent?”
“I am not being in the least inconsistent,” the earl said. “The issue isn’t fairness or justice; it is your best interest.”
“And is it not in my best interest to live in a fair and just world?”
“It would be, if it were possible. But the world is not fair and just, and there are times when we must do what the world expects of us, however unfair or unjust, for the simple reason that we will be made miserable if we do not. The rightness of your conduct will be cold comfort when the world turns its back on you. I am not saying you are wrong, only that you are profoundly imprudent.”
She sat perfectly still as she absorbed this. She could just make out the edge of a glimmer of truth in what he said, but she was reluctant to make the effort to bring the whole truth into clear view.
“But how ever are we to make the world more fair and just if we simply do as it bids us, out of fear of the consequences?”
“I think there are ways. You can speak against unfairness wherever you find it. You can befriend and defend people who defy the world’s constraints, and do your utmost to ensure that they are not made miserable. A voluble defender of the equality of women who is herself above the censure of the world will do more to forward the cause than one wayward earl’s daughter.”
“Can I not be both voluble and wayward?”
“If you are wayward, no one will listen, and your volubility will be for naught.”
Georgiana knew, as she listened to this, that there had been a small voice in her own head telling her the same thing, but that she had silenced it before giving it proper consideration. Forced to consider it now, she felt chagrin.
The earl saw that she was wrestling with what he had said, and wanted to make sure she understood what the consequences of her behavior might be.
“Penfield is a very liberal place,” he said. “And that is to its credit. The people here are much more inclined to think as you do, and to see your behavior in its best light, than people you will meet again back home, and in London, and most other places you choose to go. What may be regarded here as a daring dalliance will be regarded elsewhere as an inexcusable transgression.”
There was a discreet knock at the door, and Bertram entered with tea and a rack of toast. Not a word was said as he put the tray down on a low table, looked at the earl, who nodded at him, and left the room.
As he poured Georgiana a cup, the earl said, “I know you have a lot to think about already, but I must give you just one more thing.”
She took the cup and looked up at him. “Now that I’ve come this far, I suppose I want to hear it all,” she said, bracing herself for this one more thing.
“It is Mr. Barnes himself,” said Grantsbury. “He may be very taken with you, or very taken with the idea of allying himself with an earl’s daughter, or both. If you have no intention of marrying the man, you may have toyed with his affections.”
Georgiana put her cup down and leaned back on the sofa. She looked at the ceiling as she said, “I don’t think Mr. Barnes attached any more significance to our relationship than I did.”
“You are in a better position than I to know that, and I won’t question you. I raise the issue only because I think any man, eve
n a man with the intention of keeping his distance, might find your charms to be too much for him.”
The earl leaned over to put his empty teacup back on the tray. “And that, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know, is all I have to say. You may take it for what you think it to be worth.” He didn’t want to stand up because he knew that gesture would be taken as one of dismissal, but he also wanted Georgiana to know he wasn’t waiting for an answer from her. “I’m sure this isn’t the most pleasant subject for you, and we need not say another word about it, if you choose.”
Georgiana looked at him thoughtfully. “I must give what you’ve said some consideration before I make any answer at all.” She stood. “Will you excuse me?”
“Of course.” He also stood, and opened the door for her. She went through it without looking at him again.
SEVENTEEN
Georgiana walked back to her room with a bevy of emotions competing for her attention. The fact that the earl had rebuked her left her abashed, but she wasn’t sure if she was abashed because she knew herself to be in the wrong, or abashed simply because he had been hard with her. She was also indignant because he had spoken to her in a way that no person who wasn’t a blood relative ever had before.
Then there were her feelings for Barnes. What, exactly, were her feelings for Barnes? And his for her? She had to sort through all these thoughts, and everything the earl had said, before she could answer that all-important question: What was she to do?
The door to her room was open, and she went in and closed it behind her. She sat on the bed to unlace her boots, and it was only when she had done that, and stood the boots under the bed, that she looked up and saw the large red letter A on her mirror.
She gasped with surprise. She felt primarily the sense of violation that comes of knowing that someone had been in her room unsanctioned and didn’t, at first, grasp the significance of the A. She looked at it for a moment, cocking her head. Suddenly she understood, and burst out laughing.
It was The Scarlet Letter! Someone knew enough to know that a red A branded a loose woman, but didn’t know enough to understand that the A was for adulteress, which Georgiana, being unmarried, couldn’t possibly be.
It was such a pathetic attempt at a threat. Not only could Georgiana not take it seriously; it colored her view of the previous incidents so she was more inclined to see them as the work of a bungling ignoramus rather than a malicious villain.
There was a soft knock on the door. She was about to ask her visitor to come in, but thought better of it. She didn’t want the whole house knowing of the defaced mirror. She padded to the door and opened it. There was Barnes.
Georgiana, thinking what a spectacular piece of bad timing this was, put her hand on the doorjamb and leaned her forehead on her hand for a moment. Then she looked up at Barnes. He was the last person she needed to see right now. It was hard enough to figure out what she ought to do without the man who was the source of the problem standing in front of her, exerting his draw over her.
She felt a faint flutter in her breast, the beginning of the feeling that told her she wasn’t wholly in control of herself, but it was a poor echo of what it had been. Every time she’d stood face-to-face with this man, she’d felt the same weakness, the same animal connection—until now. Somehow, her conversation with Grantsbury, if it hadn’t quite yet changed the way she thought, had effectively changed the way she felt.
“I’m sorry, Bruce, but I cannot see you now.”
He was surprised at this reception. “Do you have another visitor?”
“No, I am alone with my thoughts, but they are very preoccupying and I simply cannot see you now.”
“Then I shall come back when you can see me.” He did his best to take the rebuff in stride. “Perhaps after dinner.”
“No,” she said. “I must ask that you do not.”
“Why must you ask that I do not?” Here he asserted his physical presence by leaning toward her just a bit, and looking hard into her eyes.
It surprised her that his presence, which had been so powerful to her, had lost so much of its sway. She felt his heat, but the draw did not compel her. She found that he was not, after all, irresistible.
“Is it not enough that I ask that you do not?”
“After what has passed between us? No, it is not enough. I believe I am entitled to a reason.”
As little inclined as she was to talk to him just then, she did see the fairness in his request.
“Then I shall give you one, but I shall not give it to you now.” She sounded imperious even to her own ears, and changed her tone. “You have come at a bad moment, but I will find a better moment and give you a better explanation. I promise.” She looked at him with a pleading expression tinged with regret, but it did not touch him. He gave her one more hard look, turned without a word, and walked away.
Lady Georgiana sighed heavily and closed the door.
Barnes stalked down the hall, his temples burning with anger. He would not be condescended to! That she could lie naked in his arms one day, and talk to him like that the next!
When he’d entertained the possibility of making an alliance with an earl’s daughter, the idea of an earl’s daughter became much to him. Now the idea of an earl’s daughter turned to ashes in his mouth. She could never forget her rank, or his. She could behave as though they were equals as long as everything was going well but, as soon as there was any fly in the ointment, her sense of what was due her rank reasserted itself.
He played her words back through his mind over and over. Her words had insulted him and her tone had infuriated him, but there was more. He knew, as a man does know, that he had lost his hold on her. Every time he’d met her, he’d been able to close the physical, social, and emotional distance between them simply by standing close, looking her in the eye, and speaking softly. This time, though, he could not.
He had lost her, and he felt regret, but the regret was overridden by anger. In rejecting him, in breaking his hold on her, Lady Georgiana had humiliated him, and Barnes felt the fury of a man unmanned.
Almost automatically, his steps took him down to the kitchen and through to the scullery. Had his better judgment been in command of him, he would have avoided all company and gone to his cottage, alone, to recover his equanimity. But he was being piloted by the need to reassert himself as a man.
There he found Maureen putting things in order for the dinner service. She was surprised to see him; he would know she was busy at this time of day.
“Ah, Maureen, just who I’ve come to see.” He tried to disguise the blackness of his mood, but Maureen knew him too well to be fooled.
“What ever is the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing is the matter.” He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him. “Nothing, at least, that can’t be set right very easily.” He buried his head in her neck, and she felt him pulling her flesh in between his teeth.
She tried to push him away. “It’s busy here. I’ve work to do, and there will be people coming in and out in herds!”
He was not to be pushed. “Then let’s use the jam cupboard.” He pulled her in the direction of a small closet lined with shelves that the household used for the jams and preserves that were put up every fall. They’d used it before, when they were afraid of company in the scullery.
Maureen didn’t like the way this was going. He was often rough, and his roughness was part of what attracted her to him, but this time he was rough with an abandon that was a little frightening. Still, she let herself be led into the jam cupboard. They went in and Barnes closed the door.
There was a high stool in the cupboard, used to reach the uppermost shelves, and Barnes had her skirts lifted and her ass on the stool almost before the door was closed. He maneuvered her drawers down and pulled one of her feet, still booted, through one of the legs. The other he left on, so the garment dangled from her right calf.
Without preamble, he unbuttoned his trousers and pulled out his throb
bing cock. He stepped between her legs and took her breasts in his hands. He closed his eyes as he squeezed them, and rubbed his cock between her legs.
This aroused her intensely. When they had gone into the closet, she had thought this was perhaps going to lead to an unpleasant scene, but she had been wrong. He was exercising his power over her, but she did not feel like a victim. Powerlessness, her affair with him had taught her, was heady and intoxicating.
There had been other men in her life before Barnes, and none of them would ever have dared something like this. Rough it might be, but it was proof of his strength, of his confidence—and she thought strength and confidence were the very essence of manhood.
And so, when she felt the calluses of his hands against the soft skin of her breasts as he held them so tight it almost hurt, it felt firm and forceful to her. He was pushing against her so hard she had to hold on to the sides of the seat of the stool to keep from tipping backward, and all her muscles were engaged in keeping her body next to his. She was answering his force with her own.
She had never in her life felt so aroused so quickly. His need, his immediacy, had become her own, and she wanted nothing but to have him enter her and complete her.
This he had been ready to do from the moment they stepped into the closet. When she spread her legs to accommodate him, he was inside with one thrust. The wetness that was welling up inside her hadn’t worked all the way down to her labia, and there was a moment when the friction of his penis entering her caused pain. But the pain seemed to work like the powerlessness, fueling the crescendo that was building inside her.
She gave herself over to him. She watched him and she felt him taking her as though she were a possession. Taking her as though it were his God-given right. Taking her as though the laws of nature dictated that it should be so. But she knew he wasn’t really taking. She was giving. She was giving and it was so erotic, so arousing, that it took her breath away. As his cock thrust in and pulled out, thrust and withdrew, she gloried in it.
Her body knew his urgency and fed on it. She caught his rhythm and matched her pace to his. She came to the verge of climax faster than she ever thought possible, and was there, coming with him, when his explosion came. It was acute and all-consuming, and it reverberated from her toes all the way up to the back of her neck.
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