“Yes,” Georgina murmured. She stared down into her half-empty cup of chocolate. “Very charming. You are right in saying that it has been a long time since I have met such an amiable man.”
“Not since—Jack?” Elizabeth suggested gently.
“Lizzie!” Georgina protested. “Jack has been gone for almost ten years. I have met many men since then. I even married two of them.”
“Old men you married out of desperation and pity,” Elizabeth argued. “Have you never thought of marrying again for affection or even love?”
Georgina laughed. “My dear friend, it is good of you to try to matchmake for me! But I only met Lord Wayland yesterday, and here you have us wildly in love and off to Gretna Green.”
“Not Gretna Green! St. George’s, Hanover Square.”
“Lizzie...”
“Oh, all right! I won’t say another word. But, Georgina, I do only want your happiness.”
“I am happy! I have everything I have ever wanted. I have my work, independence, wonderful friends, and a lovely home. I am quite content.”
“All those things are delightful, Georgie, as I well know. My own work is so vital to me. Yet a good marriage can make all those things even more splendid; it can make life complete!”
Georgina shook her head. “Good marriages are few and far between. I have ample proof from the horrid things my clients have told me of their husbands, as they sit for portraits.”
“I, too, hear dreadful things. Not every marriage, though, is like that. Nick and I are very happy, as are Peter and Carmen. You and Jack...”
“Marriages like those are rare. I had my one love. And I will never give up any portion of my delicious freedom for anything less!”
“No,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Of course you will not. You should not.”
“Excellent. Then, may we cease to discuss my matrimonial prospects, and decide what we want to do this afternoon?”
“We must plan my salon, of course! It is to be next Friday, and I have not begun a thing. But first, will you tell me one thing, Georgie?”
“What is that?” Georgina asked warily.
“Will you at least see Lord Wayland again?”
“Oh, yes. In fact, he is calling at four to take me driving in the park.”
Elizabeth caught up the folded copy of the Gazette and tossed it at Georgina’s laughing head. “Horrid girl! Not to tell me, me, your bosom bow, and let me rattle along like that!”
“Oh, Lizzie!” Georgina giggled. “I am sorry to keep it to myself. You just looked so very earnest and dear, arguing for matrimonial bliss.”
“Hmph.” Elizabeth looked over at Lady Kate, who was perched in the window seat, waiting for the day’s excitement to begin. “Do you see how shabbily we are treated, Lady Kate? After all our good attempts to assist!”
“Lizzie! I will cry peace. I will keep you informed of all my social engagements from now on. Now, I have something very important I should like your advice on.”
“Oh, yes? What is that?”
“What should I wear on this drive?”
Georgina studied the array of garments laid out across her bed, all of them neat and fashionable muslins and silks in every color of the rainbow. She held up first one then another in front of her, twisting about before the mirror.
“What I really need is something new,” she mused as she tossed another rejected gown onto the pile. “Something stunningly original!”
Except that a modiste would take at least a week to fashion something “stunningly original,” and Lord Wayland would be calling for her in an hour. And Georgina was already possessed of a wardrobe that was original, and overly vast to boot.
She flopped down before her dressing table. “Why am I being as fidgety as a schoolgirl?” she asked Lady Kate, who was peering out from beneath the hillock of frocks.
The dog’s ears perked up, and she tilted her head as if considering.
“I am thirty years old,” Georgina continued. “This is hardly the first time I have gone driving in the park with a handsome gentleman. And I have never thought twice about what to wear before!”
Lady Kate whined.
“Yes, quite! I suppose Lizzie has a point. There must be something unusual about this Wayland. Something—special.”
Lady Kate barked.
“Exactly! Therefore, I must spend more time with him. Either he shall prove himself to be no different from any other charming man of my acquaintance, or he will show what it is that makes him so special.”
Lady Kate’s tail wagged vigorously.
Georgina knelt down beside the bed to receive a doggie kiss on the nose. “You are the best conversationalist I have ever met, Lady Kate. Most understanding. Best of all, I know you will never tell anyone of my cabbage-headed behavior today! Will you?”
Lady Kate sighed.
“You are not going to wear that coat, are you?” Hildebrand said, around a mouthful of Alex’s leftover luncheon beefsteak.
Alex look down at his completely respectable, as he had thought, green coat. “What is wrong with it?”
“My dear fellow, what is not wrong with it?”
“The color is bilious,” offered Freddie.
“The cut all wrong through the shoulders,” said Hildebrand.
“And the length... !” sighed Freddie.
“Oh, very well!” Alex tore off the offending coat and tossed it onto a chair. “What do you suggest I wear in its place?”
“Where are you going?” asked Hildebrand.
“Not that it is any of your business, pup, but I am going driving in the park.”
“Alone?”
“With a lady,” Alex growled.
Hildebrand and Freddie glanced at each other speculatively. “Mrs. Beaumont!” they cried.
“My dear fellow,” clucked Hildebrand. “You cannot escort such a dashing lady dressed like a country curate. Where are your other coats?”
“There.” Alex pointed at an abandoned pile on the carpet.
Hildebrand left his steak and went to poke at the pile with the toe of his boot. “Do you mean to say that you tried on every coat you own, and that that green thing was the best you could find?”
Alex’s jaw was taut. “Yes,” he answered shortly.
Hildebrand clucked in dismay. “Wayland! You must hie to Weston immediately, at once!”
“Hildebrand. Even if I could fly out the door and land at Weston’s doorstep, it would not help me this afternoon. I am due to call on Mrs. Beaumont in less than an hour.”
“If only he could still wear his regimentals!” Freddie lamented. “Ladies find them demmed attractive.”
“If only. It looks as if you’ve had these shabby bits since before you bought your commission, Wayland!”
“I have. Most of them,” Alex said.
Hildebrand shook his head. Then he plucked up the blue coat from the top of the pile. “Wear this one, then. The color at least is good, and it looked fine the other day. Then tomorrow, Freddie and I will take you to the tailors ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Freddie. “Can’t be shabby if you’re going to dangle after an heiress.”
Alex froze in the act of shrugging into the blue coat, and turned a glare onto the hapless Freddie. “I am not dangling after anyone. I am merely going for a drive in the park with a lady.”
“Of course, of course,” Freddie stammered. “N-no insult meant, Wayland. None at all.”
Hildebrand turned Alex toward the door, away from the hapless Freddie. “Well, Wayland, you should be going! You will be late, and ladies do not like us to be late. Do they, Freddie?”
Freddie took a gulp from his wineglass. “Not at all!”
Alex glanced at his watch, and saw that he was indeed about to be late. He gathered up his hat and gloves, and turned one more stem glance onto his friends. “Very well. Just try not to drink all my wine while I am gone.”
“No! Of course we would not do that.”
“Of course.” A
lex paused at the door. “And one other thing—I want to have a talk with the two of you about that ridiculous wager you concocted.”
“Wager? What wager?” Hildebrand cried, all innocence. “You really should be going now, Wayland.”
“Very well. I will speak with you later, then.” Then Alex left, closing the door softly behind him.
Hildebrand and Freddie ran to the window, to grin and wave as Alex’s curricle drove away.
“D’e think he fell for it all?” Freddie asked anxiously.
“Of a certes,” said Hildebrand in great satisfaction. “We will be toasting our friend’s health at his wedding breakfast before the Season is out!”
Alex glanced up once to his window before he guided his curricle into the traffic, and saw his friends waving and smiling like a pair of bedlamites.
They were up to something, he could tell. Ever since the three of them had first met at Eton, Freddie and Hildebrand had always behaved like the silliest clunches when they were concocting a scheme. Sometimes it had been smuggling a toad into a don’s bed, or coaxing a larger allowance from their fathers, or trying to catch a pretty opera dancer’s attention.
Now, it obviously had something to do with him.
But right now, Alex had weightier matters to consider than what those loobies were about. Matters such as Georgina Beaumont. And why he was so very anxious to see her again.
Perhaps it was only that he had been gone from England for so long, and then immured at Fair Oak when he did return. He had been in company with his fellow officers’ wives in Spain, of course; and in Seville there had been a lovely innkeeper, Concetta. Yet it had been a long time since he had spent any amount of time with a pretty, unmarried Englishwoman.
Yes! he thought in relief. That would account for it. He had simply formed an infatuation for the first lovely woman to smile at him. In the clear light of a respectable afternoon drive, without the excitement of a swim in the river or the glitter of a ball to distract, he would see that really she was quite ordinary. Then there would be no more hours of anxiously thinking about her, of waiting until he could respectably see her again.
And he could get on with more businesslike and unpleasant matters—such as trying to raise some blunt.
Alex drew up his curricle outside Lady Elizabeth’s town house and leaped down, much relieved by his thoughts. Now he and Georgina could enjoy their afternoon, without any silly romantical thoughts interfering!
Then he saw her again.
She emerged from the house before he could even ascend the front steps. She was wearing an afternoon dress of sunshine-yellow muslin, with sheer, gauzy white sleeves and a gauze Vandyke collar. It seemed she was made of light today; the late afternoon sun reflected on her brilliant hair and the yellow of her gown, and Alex’s eyes dazzled as he looked at her.
She put on the bonnet she held, a white straw confection tied with wide yellow ribbons, and then came toward him, her hand outstretched. Her merry smile could have eclipsed even that sun.
Alex knew then, with a desperate, sinking sensation, that the feelings that had struck him when first he saw Georgina had not been mere gratitude for her attention, or his long deprivation of female company.
Those feelings had come from her, and her alone. From the sheer force of her beauty and her vibrant personality. She was unique, she was—special.
“Oh, Lord Wayland!” she said, taking his hand in her own gloved one. “How very good of you to rescue me from madness.”
Still much struck by these new and strange emotions, Alex assisted Georgina into his curricle and climbed up beside her. He had never been so glad of anything than he was to have the reins and the driving to distract his thoughts. “Madness?” he asked.
“Yes. You see, Lizzie has decided to launch her own salon. Every Friday evening she will invite painters, writers, singers, what have you to her drawing room.”
“It sounds delightful.”
“Oh, yes! No doubt it will be. But she intends to hold the first one next Friday, and this afternoon she is in an uproar trying to decide exactly who to invite, and what food to serve.” Georgina sighed. “Right now, the butler, the cook, little Isabella, and Lady Kate are all gathered together, offering their opinions, and Elizabeth is nay-saying them all. I tell you, I escaped only just in time. Perhaps, if we are gone a very long time, all will be settled by the time I return.”
Alex laughed, his heart lightened, his doubts forgotten. As he had the day before, he quite forgot all his worries the moment he was in her company. Money, marriage, his family—there would be more than enough time to worry over those when he was deprived of her presence.
“Then, Mrs. Beaumont, I shall endeavor to take the long way about the park,” he answered with a grin. “If there is a long way.”
“If there is, I am certain we can find it.”
“And, when the salon does come off, I am sure Lady Elizabeth will have a mad crush on her hands, and invitations will thereafter be highly sought for her Friday evenings.”
“Of that I have no doubt. Certain high sticklers do not entirely approve of Lizzie, but she is the very center of a younger, more dashing set here in London. The salon will be a great success, and fun as well.” She smiled at him. “You will be invited, of course. As will your friends, Mr. Marlow and Viscount Garrick.”
“Now, that invitation I happily accept! I cannot speak for my friends, though. They are good enough fellows once you get to know them, but not precisely what one might call artistically minded.”
“So I have gathered, from our very brief acquaintance!” Georgina laughed. “But I’m sure they would add an interesting element to the guest list.”
“Then I will pass the invitation on to them.”
Alex watched Georgina from the corner of his eye as she laughed and turned her face up to the warmth of the sun.
“You really are very lovely,” he blurted, before he could even think.
Then he felt his face burn.
Chapter Seven
Georgina looked at Lord Wayland in shock, wondering if perhaps her ears had deceived her. A compliment, from the so-perfect duke? And a blush from him besides!
She found herself hopelessly, absurdly delighted. She even had the most unaccountable urge to giggle. Several swains in Italy had composed poems to her “emerald” eyes; some had even written songs and then sung them beneath her window. No flowery tribute had ever moved her so much as the fact that Lord Wayland thought she looked lovely today.
How very curious.
She waited until the need to giggle and simper had passed, then said, “Thank you very much, Lord Wayland! What a very kind thing to say.”
He smiled at her, a wide white flash against his sun-bronzed skin, and Georgina once again felt the giggles coming upon her.
She covered her mouth with her gloved hand.
“I speak only the truth, Mrs. Beaumont,” he answered. “But I am sure that you must hear how lovely you are every day.”
“Oh, not every day,” Georgina answered lightly. “Every other day only, Lord Wayland.”
“Then, I shall have to make it every day,” he said. “If you will but do one thing for me.”
“What might that be?” said Georgina, hoping against hope that it might be a kiss.
“Will you call me Alexander? Or Alex. Lord Wayland makes me feel too fusty! It makes me look about for my father.”
Georgina smiled. Well, it was not a kiss, but it was a very nice thing nonetheless. “Very well. Alex suits you so much better than Lord Wayland. And you must call me Georgina.”
He smiled in return. “Done.”
As they turned into Hyde Park and joined the parade of worthies, Georgina thought that Alex seemed more at ease than he had when he first arrived at Elizabeth’s house. When she had emerged to greet him, she had had the very odd sensation that he had not quite been expecting her to be there; as if he had arrived to escort someone else and had gotten her by mistake. He had looked quite sur
prised.
In the midst of all her excited anticipation, she had felt a small prick of uneasiness. She liked him so very much, had so carefully prepared for their drive. What if he did not like her so much? What if all the easy accord she had sensed the night before had been all in her imagination? What if she was making a wigeon of herself over a man who could have no regard for her?
The confident, sophisticated artist existed only in front of the scared, lonely, awkward orphan she had once been. At the thought of looking foolish in front of this man, little Georgie Cheswood completely took over Mrs. Georgina Beaumont.
But not now. Now Alex seemed more the man who had fished Lady Kate out of the river, who had waltzed so vigorously with Georgina. He was smiling, at ease, seemingly happy as he nodded to the people they drove past.
So Georgina, too, relaxed, and set herself to enjoying the sunny afternoon and the lovely man beside her.
“Your horses are very grand,” she said.
“Scylla and Charybdis. They are not perfectly matched, I fear,” Alex answered ruefully. They were, in fact, a pair that had once belonged to his brother, and were now almost all that remained of the Kenton stable. “Not at all fashionable.”
Georgina examined them, one perfectly chestnut and one with a white star on its brow and white socks. They were prime goers, even if not perfectly matched. “Perhaps not. But they are strong and healthy, and very graceful. Good-looking, too.” Much like their master, she reflected. “I should love to have some like them for my own curricle.”
Alex looked at her, one brow raised in surprise. “You own a curricle., Mrs. Be—Georgina?”
“Oh, yes. It is not here, of course. It is at my villa. When I want to drive here, Elizabeth’s husband gives me the loan of his.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I did hear that you and Lord Pynchon were to have a race.”
Georgina laughed. “So you have heard of that! Yes. That silly popinjay was spouting off about how women should never drive, because we are so slow and such menaces on the road. So I asked if he cared to make a small wager on that point.”
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