Surprised into a peal of laughter, Georgie swept from the room.
Good gracious! Beckenham flirting. Whatever next?
* * *
Beckenham didn’t know how he managed to keep his emotions in check throughout that maddening exchange. Only years of training in self-discipline stopped him from scooping Miss Georgiana Black up, striding downstairs, and tossing her into Xavier’s curricle willy-nilly.
Did she really think he was here on a polite social call? Far be it from him to fathom the diabolical workings of that woman’s mind, but he could have sworn she truly believed he hadn’t recognized her last night.
As if he’d be standing here now if he hadn’t, his patience nearly worn to a snapping point with the voluble nonsense her stepmother spouted. That had been perhaps the sole issue on which he and Georgie had thoroughly agreed. Her father had been mad to wed the silly widgeon.
Why Georgie herself hadn’t married long before now, if only to get away from her irritating relative, he didn’t know. Perhaps her engagement to him had put her off the estate for life.
Perhaps she’d been waiting for Pearce’s return.
That notion slipped into his mind like a poisoned dagger slid into flesh. He did his best to dismiss it. She was sincere in her low opinion of Pearce. He’d have wagered his life on that at the time of their parting, and nothing had occurred since to change his mind.
Jealousy was an unattractive and quite futile emotion. It hadn’t been jealousy that made him so furious with Pearce over that lock of hair.
If he’d been a jealous man, Georgie’s antics with her many admirers would have driven him insane. Instead, he’d thought of them all with the irritated impatience one feels about a cloud of gnats.
He checked his timepiece. The ten minutes were almost up. He experienced a stirring of interest in making good on his threat.
As his hostess rattled on, he wondered what he’d find. Images of last night scorched his brain. In his revisionist imaginings, Georgie’s fiery hair had been unpowdered, unbound, bright, and luxurious.
He didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry when, precisely twelve minutes after she’d left the room, Georgie reappeared.
He’d expected her to evince chagrin at his blatant attempt to control her, but she sent him a look that sparked with good humor and said, “Ah, you are a gentleman, my lord. You gave me two minutes’ grace.”
He narrowed his eyes. Had she waited those extra minutes, tense with anticipation, to see what he would do? She hadn’t dared wait longer, though, had she?
That made him feel almost cheerful.
The change of raiment had, of course, been a ruse to help her collect herself. Whatever she wore, she was stunning. He suspected sackcloth might do just as well, for no embellishment could surpass her exquisitely lovely face, nor the worst-cut garment disguise those abundant curves. She’d never seemed to understand this, taking such elaborate pains with her appearance, he’d wondered if she truly knew how beautiful she was.
But of course she did. Before Lady Arden had launched her on the Ton, Georgie hadn’t given a straw for what she looked like, hacking about the estate in an old riding habit and a floppy, broad-brimmed felt hat.
Her first London season had changed her. Irrevocably, it seemed.
“Shall we?”
He offered his arm and she placed hers upon it. But only after a slight hesitation, as if she were wary about touching him.
He was unsure what to make of that.
She couldn’t feel, as he did, that the slightest contact between them was like two wires conducting a current.
He experienced a jolt of it, but managed to cover his body’s reaction by bowing a farewell to Lady Black.
Outside, Georgie seemed to glow.
He remembered that about her now. While the London season had tried to turn her into some variety of hothouse flower, she’d always belonged in the wild, happiest outdoors, no matter the weather. He’d wager neither Pearce nor her other myriad swains knew that about her.
But he couldn’t let himself think along those lines. Certainly, as her neighbor and as the man who had been betrothed to her for many years in addition, of course he might claim to know her better than most. It didn’t alter his extreme reluctance to become entangled with her again.
Beckenham flipped a coin to the boy who had been walking his horses up and down the street.
When he’d helped her up into the curricle, Georgie raised her sleek eyebrows. “What, no tiger?”
She still held his hand, her eyes laughing down at him. He rather thought she enjoyed her superior position.
“Not today,” he answered. Of course not. He needed to be quite alone with her. “This is not my vehicle. I borrowed it from my cousin.”
“Which cousin?” she asked as he swung up beside her and let the ribbons run through his gloved hands.
“Steyne.” Was she feigning ignorance or had she encountered Lydgate last night? That was not a pleasant thought. Lydgate was damnably nosy, not to mention quick-witted and tenacious. If he had the merest whiff of intrigue, he wouldn’t rest until he’d discovered all the details.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I remember now. Your esteemed cousin owns a house here, doesn’t he?”
He shot her a quick glance. So that was her game.
Now that they were alone, he need not beat about the bush. “You must know that he does, for you were at his house last night.”
She did not betray herself by a flicker of an eyelid. So, she had put those twelve minutes to good purpose, then. He admired her composure even as he deplored the necessity of exposing her lies.
She tilted her head. “I have never visited Lord Steyne’s house before, to my recollection. Indeed, I hear the marquis throws shocking parties. Not at all the thing for an unmarried lady. Or a married one, come to that. Which, as you might correctly surmise, would not be considerations that often deter me. However, it so happens that kind of party doesn’t appeal to me.”
Did she realize how close she came to babbling?
She folded her hands in her lap. “Indeed, Marcus, I wonder that you would—”
“Come now, Georgie. You’ll catch cold if you play that game. You were there. I saw you.” Touched you. Kissed you. Held you in my arms.
“I assure you I was not. You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
How could he? There was no one else like her.
Frowning his impatience, he said, “Let’s have done with this charade, shall we? I knew it was you the instant I walked into that bedchamber last night.”
That silenced her. He glanced down and realized she’d chosen her hat to good purpose. When she regarded her lap with a slightly bent head, he could see nothing except her chin and the delicious curve of her lower lip.
That lower lip had been all his last night. The rest of her, too. If he’d been insane enough to take her up on the offer.
Perversely, he was beginning to wish he had. Then their path would be clear now. No escape. He would have neither time nor luxury to consider how disastrous their union would be.
What sort of iron will must he have exerted to tear himself away from her last night?
The thought gave him a stab of regret. Honor could be damnably tiresome sometimes. Most of the time, in fact.
“You are mistaken,” she said in a strong, clear voice. “I might also tell you that I resent the aspersion you make free to cast on my character, sir.” She waved a graceful hand. “This talk of lewd parties and bedchambers. You must think me sunk low indeed to accuse me of such behavior.”
A bold counter, he’d give her that. But then, she’d never lacked audacity.
He might play along with her ploy and forget the incident. Another man would clutch at the straw she offered him.
But having once decided upon a course of action he knew was right, Beckenham never allowed himself to be swayed by uncertainty or base cowardice.
He would propose. She would reject him.
Then they could go on as before, and he would know he’d done his duty.
In a low tone, he said, “Don’t play innocent, Georgie. I know it was you.”
He observed her closely, had an impulse to whisk that charming bonnet from her head and toss it into the street for the horses to trample.
She evinced no reaction at all. Which of course spoke volumes. Not that he had an iota of doubt on the matter, but if she truly was innocent, his accusations would have produced a reaction of some sort. Fury, most probably. He’d never known a woman with such a temper.
“As I said, my lord, you were mistaken.” She put the faintest emphasis on the final words, and he received her message loud and clear.
She wanted him to take the hint, accept the lie, and leave her be. Damn her. She knew he’d like nothing more than to forget the entire incident.
She offered him the craven solution. If he took it, he would know himself for a coward. Worse, she would know it, too.
He wished, with sudden exasperation, that she’d make it easier for him, admit to her presence and let him get on with this damnable proposal. But when had anything that involved Georgiana Black been easy?
She left him in the awkward position of offering to right a wrong she refused to acknowledge they’d both committed.
“I know not why you seek to continue this pretense,” he said, checking his horses to let a dray lumber past them, “but I must tell you that I am not so easily diverted from my purpose.”
“No,” she said a little wistfully. “You were ever a steadfast type, were you not? Some might call it stubborn. Or pigheaded, perhaps.”
He ground his teeth.
She sighed, and in the voice of one humoring a child, said, “Very well, in the interests of concluding this delightful interview as soon as possible … let us pretend—for argument’s sake, you understand—that it was indeed I at this party, in this bedchamber, with you.”
She fanned herself a little with her gloved hand. “Goodness, I’m all aflutter just thinking of it.”
His frustration fired to anger. “Do you think this is a jest, ma’am?”
“Oh, the very cream of jests. However,” she continued, “let us pretend that all of this happened and it is not a figment of your imagination. What then?”
Her mocking tone stripped any desire to couch his proposal in terms that might make it acceptable to her.
“Obviously, I must offer you my hand in marriage,” he snapped. “For an intelligent woman, you are remarkably slow today.”
Finally, she gave him the full view of her face. Shock etched across her features.
For a bare instant, her plush lips quivered.
Then she laughed.
Threw her head back and laughed. A throaty, husky sound that filled him with all kinds of vengeful, thoroughly bawdy thoughts.
The struggle to keep his hands to himself, compounded by the frustration of bowling through populated Brighton streets, fully occupied with steering his strong-willed cattle, made the pressure build inside him until he bit out, “I take it your answer is no.”
Her chuckles ended on a long sigh. “Oh! My dear Lord Beckenham, you vastly underrate your charms if you think that.”
* * *
Georgie wished she might capture the expression on Beckenham’s face in her sketchbook. Ludicrous in its horrified disbelief, devoid of the iron control he’d hitherto displayed.
She was so utterly irate, she’d needed the short interval of appalled, well nigh hysterical laughter to marshal her resources.
If a less pleasant task than proposing to her had confronted Beckenham in the past six years, she doubted it. He couldn’t have shown his distaste more clearly if he’d written it in fireworks in the sky.
So of course, she refused to oblige him and give him the short sharp refusal such an ungracious, insulting proposal demanded.
She would punish him. It was only fair for the utter humiliation he’d put her through.
“That is, of course, a most elegantly expressed and advantageous offer, my lord,” she observed. “I am so overcome, I can barely find the words to reply.”
He met her limpid gaze, and a gleam of understanding showed. He’d never been slow on the uptake.
“You flatter me,” he said briefly.
“On the contrary, my lord. It is rather you who flatter me. Not many ladies may say they’ve been engaged to an earl twice.”
Truly, what woman could resist?
Even now, she was sorely tempted. She might well have given in to weakness and accepted him if the manner of his proposals hadn’t utterly lacerated her pride. Reminded her, if she’d needed reminding, that he’d never thought of her as anything more than a duty. A tiresome one, at that.
But for a few heated minutes last night, there’d been no thought of duty, had there? If he had indeed known it was she all along.
Oh, her head ached with the permutations, the implications. And what did he think her reasons might have been for allowing him such liberties? Did he think she’d done it to extract this proposal from him?
Beckenham had always been singularly unaware of his devastating effect on women. Would he believe she’d been unable to resist him? That there’d been no guile on her part when she let herself be swept up into the maelstrom of his passion, no logical thought in her head at all.
Unlike Beckenham, Georgie had never been ignorant of her own charms. She’d flexed her power over men like a fairground strongman flexed his muscles. She still received declarations of undying devotion on a weekly basis. Her house was always as full as a flower market of the posies and bouquets her admirers sent her.
But her feminine charms had never brought her the things she most desired: true love and a purpose in life.
She’d lost any chance of the first when she fixed her sights on a man who would never return her regard. The second, she’d lost first to her father’s indifference, then to Lord Beckenham, and finally, to her sister.
The wholly unwelcome notion popped into her head that Beckenham might still want that inheritance. Was that the reason his proposal had come so swiftly? An unpalatable thought. She might choke if she had to swallow any more insults today.
With only a slight hesitation, she said, “You know I don’t stand to inherit Cloverleigh any longer, don’t you, Marcus?”
The words came out in a rush, sounding a little breathless. How irritating that she should be so anxious for his answer.
“Yes, I did know it,” he said. “My offer springs solely from my wish to do the honorable thing. Your reputation if anyone discovered what had happened between us—”
“Nothing happened between us.” That came out too sharply. Something large and merciless seemed to be crushing her skull.
He drew rein, and the curricle came to an abrupt stop.
Turning in his seat, he said fiercely, “Did you really think I wouldn’t know you? Anywhere, in any guise? Even with a mask and hair powder, I recognized you immediately. Why did you do it?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His hands flexed; the horses shifted restlessly. She knew he dearly wished to shake her. She wanted him to. She longed to feel his hands on her again, even in anger. The thought filled her with fury and shame.
After last night … Oh, she’d thought she was safe from him at least, if not from Pearce.
But he’d known her from the very start. Why, then, had he spoken to her in such a manner, kissed her like that? Touched her in ways she blushed to recall? He must have been driven by … What? Rage? Disgust, probably. A wish to teach her a lesson she’d been too overcome with longing and excitement to learn.
One thing was certain. At least for a brief space of time, there’d been no mistaking his desire.
She burned to ask him what had made him stop, but that would mean openly admitting her part in the business. Instinct told her if she maintained her denial, he would eventually accept her rejection of his suit. Perhaps
not with a clear conscience, but he’d leave her be.
If she admitted her part, he’d demand answers she couldn’t give him. He might feel obliged to act in a way that would force her to accept his hand in marriage. She’d no doubt he’d succeed. He could be ruthless when his honor was at stake.
There was another tack she could take. It rather turned her stomach, but she grew desperate. “If I were this mysterious masked woman,” she said, “do you think you are the only man I met in a dark bedchamber last night?”
His face hardened to stone. “Yes. I do think it.”
She forced a spurt of low laughter. “Oh, my lord. You are too trusting of mysterious masked ladies.”
“I am, am I?”
She nodded. “Really, I don’t think there’s any more to discuss, do you? I reject your proposals, my lord. I would thank you for the honor you do me, but since you accused me of wanton behavior in the same breath, I find it impossible to do so.”
In a low, hard voice, he said, “My proposals were honorably made. I do not deserve that they be thrown in my face.”
She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be absurd. You came here today with the utmost reluctance. You paid your addresses in such a manner that any woman with an ounce of backbone must refuse. Do not attempt to take the high ground now and act as if I’m a fool to say you nay, my lord. You don’t want to marry me any more than I wish to wed you.”
His face froze. Then it relaxed as he set the horses in motion again.
She ought to feel triumphant. Instead, her chest was at once hollow and filled with pain. She couldn’t resist a final shot. “You have salved your conscience by making the offer, misguided though it was. You may return to your normal, well-ordered existence now, Lord Beckenham, with your precious honor intact.”
Chapter Six
Beckenham said no more as he guided his horses back to Georgie’s lodgings.
Well, she’d rejected him. As he’d known she would. He ought to be relieved. Now he could go on with his plans for marrying a nice, quiet lady who would slip into the steady stream of his nice, ordered life with nary a ripple.
The Greatest Lover Ever Page 7
