by Lynne Barron
Driving his tongue deep into her mouth, Henry withdrew from her tight, clenching cunny, pressed his shaft against her belly and allowed the joy, the unbearable pleasure, to take over, coming long and hard in her embrace.
Chapter Seventeen
“Do you never sleep?”
Georgie looked up from the remnants of her life scattered about on the floor to find Henry sitting amid the tangled bedcovers, knuckling the sleep from his eyes.
“I’ve been thinking,” she mused, stretching her leg out to ease the stiff muscles after nearly an hour spent on the hard floor.
“A dangerous pastime, that,” he said around a yawn.
“To be sure,” she agreed, her gaze wandering over his sleep-tousled hair and whiskered face. He was too beautiful by half. And too bloody sweet for the likes of her.
“Your…er bottom isn’t sore, is it?” Henry flashed her a sheepish smile.
“Not at all,” she assured him.
“I apologize for that bit of rough handling. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never struck a woman in my life.”
“Another first for me,” she teased. “You needn’t apologize. I quite liked it.”
Henry ducked his head but still she saw the flush that spread over his cheeks. “What time is it, love?”
“Just past four.”
“Damn, I’ve slept the day away,” Henry groused. “Have you been awake all this time?”
“I closed my eyes for a time.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that,” she answered. “I set the kitchen to rights, had a bath, started a stew for your dinner.”
“What a domesticated little lady you are,” he said with a smile, the boyish, rather lopsided one that never failed to soften her heart, no matter how hard she tried to remain untouched by his charm.
“Don’t be fooled,” she warned. “I am only luring you into my web.”
“I am already ensnared in your silk threads.”
“Are you?” Georgie eyed him warily, suspecting the time had come to either reel him in or release him.
The smile drifted from his face as he tilted his head and studied her. “What’s amiss, love?”
“Are you going to help me to find my mother, Henry?”
“Have I not said I would?”
“Actually, you have not,” she said, fighting the sudden, inexplicable urge to rail at him. “You have said precious little all day.”
“I’ve been sleeping a good portion of it,” he replied, his voice cracking and she suspected he was fighting not to laugh.
“Precisely.”
“You are angry because I’ve been sleeping?” he asked and there was no mistaking his amusement now.
“I am not angry,” she answered with a sniff. “And if I were it certainly wouldn’t be because you’ve been sleeping when you might have been helping me. But you haven’t actually said you would help me.”
“Georgie,” he began, openly grinning.
“Don’t Georgie me,” she cried. “I’ve kept to my part of the bargain.”
“Yes you have,” he agreed.
“I’ve cooked and cleaned and played Betsy the maid,” she continued, the words pouring from her in a jumbled mess. “I braved the storm to tend to your horses and milk your blasted cow. I’ve given you food and fine wine and I would have fornicated with you seven times over had you not slept the day away!”
Henry tossed off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “How can I help you, love?”
“Oh, never mind,” she replied, flinging her hands in the air. “I don’t want your help if I must browbeat you in order to gain it.”
He rose naked from the bed to look down at her, a frown wrinkling his brow and pulling at his lips.
Georgie swept her gaze over his body, not the least surprised to find his shaft heavy and swollen.
“Georgie, what’s come over you?” he asked, his voice soft and hesitant.
“You are the randiest man I’ve ever encountered,” she grumbled, her pique falling away as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving a twisted coil of anxiety lodged in her belly.
“Only when you are about.” Henry stretched his arms above his head, the motion thrusting his cock out and she suspected he’d done so on purpose, the handsome devil.
“Put some clothes on, my lord,” she ordered, smiling despite the edge of panic she felt. “You aren’t going to distract me with your fine physique yet again.”
“Have I been distracting you?”
“Only every chance you get. We might have progressed to discussing my search after breakfast had you not diverted my attention with your games.”
“My games?” he repeated with a throaty chuckle. “I don’t remember asking you to play Becky the maid.”
“Betsy,” she corrected primly. “And of course you asked me. You practically begged me with your fond remembrances and wicked imaginings. What choice did I have? A mistress caters to her master’s every whim.”
“A perfect mistress.” Henry pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around his waist, tying the edges together over one lean hip. “You are certainly that. Perfect, I mean.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Georgie drawled. “To be sure, if you start believing that you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“You’re the perfect woman for me,” he argued, lowering himself to the floor so they were separated only by her most precious possessions between them.
Caught by the smile that curled his lips and the sleepy softness in his blue eyes, Georgie was slow to react to his sudden nearness. Before she could whisk her borrowed robe over her extended leg, Henry’s gaze found the jagged round scar just beneath her right knee and the long thin line of puckered flesh that bisected it and continued down her shin.
“’Tis nothing but an old childhood injury,” she said as his lips parted on the obvious question. “I took a fall down a flight of stairs.”
“Does it pain you still?” He reached out one long finger as if to touch the circle of raised and mottled flesh and the neat incision left by the surgeon’s scalpel.
Curling her leg back, tucking the unsightly scar against the soft Turkish carpet, she lifted a frayed letter and offered him the single greatest truth of her life along with the lie that had colored the last four years of it. “Most days I hardly remember my fall or the folly that led to it.”
“What’s this?”
“Connie’s letter to my father and further proof that I am no one’s perfect woman, should you need it.”
Henry tilted the paper to catch the meager light that trickled through the windows. “Hmm…I should like to make you aware…you might have guessed as you do not make a practice of negating the chances…” he looked up with a frown.
“Go on,” she urged. “You’d best read the entirety of it.”
“Lydia does not concur, seeing as you abused my trust in so despicable a fashion but as she also betrayed me…announce the arrival of…What the bloody hell?”
“Announce the arrival of your son, George, who was born on this, the third day of March, in the year of our Lord 1811,” Georgie finished. “Until I was sixteen I believed the date of my birth to be the fifth of March.”
“This makes no bloody sense,” he spluttered, tossing the missive to the floor. “How did your mother come to believe she’d given birth to a boy?”
Instead of answering him, she sifted through the rubble of her past until she found the small purse of worn leather. “This was tucked into my blanket when Lady Hastings delivered me into Millie Graham’s arms.”
He took the purse and balanced it on his palm as if measuring the worth of the coins within.
“Ten sovereigns,” she said. “I was conceived on a wager, two in fact, the first a pound a piece from various gentlemen, most of whom were related to you.”
Henry’s finger curled around the purse and a frown pulled at his lips but he made no reply to her revelation.
Henry remained silent, his gaze steady on her and his jaw clamped tight.
“How he deduced Lady Hastings would choose Connie is anyone’s guess. Perhaps that part was blind luck, but when her choice was made he saw an opportunity to double his winnings. He wagered his gains that he could seduce the newest angel.”
“With whom did he place this second wager?”
“Your mother.”
Henry tossed the purse to land atop the letter as if the coins within were live coals.
“It’s rather funny, isn’t it?” Georgie paused a beat on the chance he might see the humor, continued when he only looked at her in silence. “I owe my life to your mother.”
Henry tilted his head to study her as if she were an oddity he’d spied at the circus.
“Millie made this the first night I spent at River’s End,” she continued when he remained silent, offering up a charcoal sketch on a torn piece of foolscap.
Henry barely glanced at it.
“A rather crude rendering I know, but certainly the Hastings’ crest.” Georgie drew in a deep breath, nerves skittering. “If you’ve any further doubts as to the friendship between our mothers, as to whether they spent Connie’s confinement on one of your estates, you might consider reading your mother’s diary.”
His gaze shifted to some point above her head and she suspected he was still pondering the letter, taking in the ramifications and attempting to fit them, fit her, into his orderly world.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, Henry,” she exclaimed, tossing her hands in the air. “It is not so terribly complicated. There are only three plausible reasons for the mistake.”
“I cannot think of a single plausible reason,” he replied, his words precisely measured and his voice strangely hollow.
“One.” Georgie held up a single finger. “My mother never looked to determine the gender of her babe and, knowing she intended to give the child away, the midwife did not offer up the information.”
“Not even remotely plausible.”
“Two—”
“Leave off with the fingers. I can count.”
Georgie curled her fingers over her palm and brought her fist to rest over the pit lodged in her belly. “She wanted to punish my father by telling him she’d born him a boy child, knowing men hold sons above daughters.”
Henry gave a sharp nod. “Somewhat plausible. And the third reason?”
“She somehow knew the Grahams,” she began only to stop and drag a broken breath past lips that felt stiff and unwieldy. “Connie knew that Millie had recently birthed a sixth daughter and that Himself flew into a rage at being denied a son yet again.”
“And what?” he demanded. “Your mother thought to pass you off as the much desired boy?”
“It is not so farfetched as it sounds,” she replied with a shrug and a smile that hurt as it formed. The hurt, the piercing pain traveled from her lips to a spot just beneath her breast when Henry surged to his feet, nearly tripping over the sheet before he flicked it out of his way to storm across the room.
“How long before they figured it out?” His fingers clenched in the curtains and she half expected them to come tumbling down, rod and all.
“Millie knew straight away as I was delivered to her in a wet nappy.”
“And Mr. Graham?”
“Some time later,” she replied, hoping he would not delve any deeper.
“Goddamn it to hell.” His voice was soft, might have been lost to the wind and rain battering the windows had she not been listening intently, waiting for his reaction to this, her most carefully guarded secret and the first step along the twisted path that led to her greatest shame.
Henry released the drapes and spun around. “You have left out the most plausible reason of all.”
“And that would be?” she asked as she came to her feet, balancing her weight on her left leg as the right was horribly sore from the time spent on her hands and knees with only the soft Turkish carpet beneath her.
“It seems rather obvious.” He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving the tawny waves standing up on his head. “My mother was there. Need I say more?”
“Oh, dearest,” she crooned, shaking her head as she stepped toward him. “You cannot lay this upon your mother. I know she was mad there at the end—”
“She was mad as long as I can remember,” he interrupted.
“I find that rather hard to believe.”
“Believe it,” he insisted.
“You really ought to read her diaries.” Reaching him, Georgie laid a hand on his chest, felt his heart beating furiously beneath her palm.
“Diaries? As in more than the one you stole?”
“Borrowed,” she chided softly. “There are dozens of them, chronicling her life from childhood until just before she passed.”
“And you read them all?”
“Gracious, no,” she replied. “I hadn’t time, what with you refusing to fall asleep until the wee hours and the threat of discovery from early rising servants looming. No, I only read the one that marked the year I was conceived. I did skim through the others to see if she made mention of Connie. Alas she did not.”
Henry covered her hand over his heart.
“Please consider reading her diaries,” she whispered. “She wrote quite eloquently and honestly of her life, of her hopes and dreams and disappointments.”
“I don’t need to read about all of that,” he replied, his voice shaking. “I lived it with her, remember? I know all about her hopes and dreams. And believe you me, I know well enough of her disappointments.”
“Perhaps it is too soon,” she mused. “You are still grieving.”
“I assure you I am not grieving,” he countered.
Realizing she was treading on thin ice, Georgie chose to back track, to lighten her lover’s mood. “I know you believe it dangerous for me to think too long on any given matter. But I do like a certain amount of risk in my life so I’ve been thinking nonetheless.”
“We’re in trouble now,” he replied with a strained smile.
Lifting onto her toes, she brushed a kiss over his lips. “Now, just hear me out, my lord Henry.”
“Have I any choice?” he quipped and he almost sounded cheerful, the poor dear.
“None whatsoever.” Stepping back, she took his hands in hers and led him to the bed, pushing him to sit and climbing into his lap, sighing with relief as she stretched her injured leg out beside him on the bed.
Winding her arms over his shoulders, she nuzzled his neck. “I’ve decided I shall host a gathering upon my return to Town.”
“A capital idea,” he praised, sweeping one hand up her back while the other curled around her hip, tugging her tight against him. “I’ll show you off to all of my debauched friends and their less than perfect mistresses.”
“Not that sort of gathering,” Georgie replied with a laugh, remembering the bacchanals Killjoy had hosted whenever he was in residence at The Mount. “A proper dinner. With proper guests.”
“Do you know any proper people to invite?” he asked doubtfully.
“To be sure, I don’t,” she agreed, smiling against his warm skin as she trailed her fingers over his shoulders. “But you do.”
“You just said I wasn’t to invite my very improper chums,” he reminded her.
Georgie leaned back in his loose embrace, her gaze finding his. “Your relations, silly. I shall invite your relations.”
“Pull the other leg,” he said with a grin.
“I’m quite serious.”
Henry smile fell away and Georgie’s heart missed a beat.
“You must know that is impossible, love.” His wor
ds were delivered in the gentlest tones imaginable and still she heard them as clearly as if he’d shouted.
“I don’t see why,” she answered, her heart rate increasing as if desperate to make up for that one missed beat.
“A gentleman does not invite his family to dine in the home of his mistress.”
“Is that all?” she asked with a laugh, relief making her almost dizzy. “We’ll simply host our gathering at Hastings House.”
Henry shook his head, his gaze shifting away.
“Why ever not?” she asked, battling to hold on to her dizzy relief.
“Georgie, I cannot introduce my mistress to my relations. It simply is not done.”
“Says who?”
“Says everyone,” he replied as patiently as if he were speaking to a child and Georgie gave up on dizzy relief. “It would offend the ladies’ delicate sensibilities and the gentlemen…let’s just say they would not treat you with respect.”
“Lady Easton was his lordship’s mistress before they married,” she pointed out. “Do your menfolk treat her with anything less than the upmost respect?
“Beatrice was not Easton’s mistress,” Henry replied in genuine surprise. “Their courtship was all that is proper.”
Oh Lord, he truly was naïve, well beyond a tad, if he believed that bit of nonsense.
“And I suppose a certain countess was not found in a carriage pleasuring a gentleman not yet her husband?” she asked. “And do not even get me started on your cousin who has taken half of London to her bed while her husband slept just down the hall.”
“See here, Olivia was a widow and she married Bentley. And Alice is a respectable married lady,” Henry said, his eyes gleaming and Georgie realized that she’d taken a wrong turn. She would get nowhere by maligning his female relations, never mind that she suspected they hadn’t a speck of delicate sensibility between them.
“You can hop from bed to bed without a care for the gossip or the offense it heaps on the delicate sensibilities of your female relations,” she replied, forcing her lips into a smile even as her temper unraveled around the edges like snagged lace. “You can dally with twenty-six women, have your affairs written of in the papers, but you cannot introduce one woman to your family?”
