Roderick gave her a long, black layered look, not in the least bit amused. “You won. I lost. Are you quite finished?”
She paused. “Far from it. I told you I would make you crawl, and crawl you shall.” Erasing all emotion from her pretty powdered features, she breathed out a delicate, albeit dramatic, breath and regally settled herself back against the pillows. Draping the back of her gloved hand gracefully against her forehead, she fluttered her eyes shut. “Lord Seton is all things divine. As is his brother. I imagine it would be like getting two men for the price of one.”
His lips parted. By all that was twisted. She had not only learned the ways of a lady, but the ways of a seasoned actress! He leaned in and grabbed her nose, twisting it hard enough to ensure it hurt.
“Ow!” She winced and swatted at his hands, shoving them away from her nose. “That hurt.”
“I’m glad for it. That is for blatantly trying to make me jealous when I am clearly repentant.” He shook his head, scanning the pompous amount of shimmering large diamonds covering her throat. Those diamonds rested atop plump, cock-twitching breasts that pushed tauntingly against a very tight bodice. “My, my, my. What have you done to yourself? I have yet to decide what I think of it.”
She casually redraped a hand across her forehead, feigning boredom. “I intend to tote this with pride and make you squirm all Season long, which will give you plenty of time to decide what you think of it.”
His eyes clung to hers, daring her to make him squirm and crawl. “I don’t need time. And you will be kissing me and telling me that you love me in less than a minute, Georgia. So get to it. We’re done playing games.”
“You clearly don’t know Georgiana.”
“Oh, I think that I do.”
“Let us forget what you think. Let us talk about my breasts instead. You want to touch and fondle them, don’t you? Admit it. You do.”
She really was something. He waved his forefinger toward them. “In truth, I think they are overdone. I preferred them the way they were. Small. Less men notice small breasts. As such, I ask that you get rid of them.”
She feigned a laugh. “Sadly, they’re nonreturnable, because I’m not giving up my painted éclairs. I’d sooner remain a spinster than give up the few joys a lady is permitted without being considered a slut. Unless, of course, you think sucking on a painted éclair is the equivalent of sucking on your cock.”
He lowered his chin. Beneath all that finery, she was still his Georgia. Thank bloody God. “Enough. You have made your point.”
Georgia haughtily adjusted her draped hand against her brow and tossed up at him, “I don’t think I have.”
He swiped a hand across his face, glancing off to the side before shifting back toward her. “Jesus Christ, Georgia. Do you really intend to draw this out? I have suffered more than enough all these months without hearing a word from you and dreading you were going to show up at my door naked just to give the ton something to talk about. And the sad thing of it? I wanted you to do it. I wanted you to show up naked.”
She paused, peering up at him past her limp hand draped against her forehead. “That would have actually been a good idea. But I have bigger plans. Something that involves a lot more…suffering.”
Shifting against the bed, he leaned down closer toward her draped figure and growled down at her, “I dare you to draw this out.”
“Dare taken.”
Stripping his gloves, he whipped them onto the bed.
He then skimmed his hand across her throat and leaned down and kissed the smooth, powdered skin just above the upper round of her left breast. “I’m sorry.” The tantalizing scent of lemon blossomed from her heated skin as he dragged his lips across its softness. “Take me back, Georgia. For God’s sake, take me back. Take this idiot back so that he may spend the rest of his life making it up to you.”
She snorted. “You are going to have to do better than that, Yardley.”
He kissed the well of her throat, firmly pressing his lips against that throbbing pulse, and then licked its entire length, causing her to suck in a breath. “If you haven’t noticed, your Robinson depends on you for everything. It would be nothing short of cruel to deny him of you.”
“I’m not taking you back.”
He lifted his head from the heat of her throat and glared at her. “Georgia, Christ. Are you serious? I’ve barely been in your presence for forty minutes and I’m already exhausted.”
“Yes, well, I’m the one who is really exhausted after almost a year of ‘don’t do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ lest you be called a whore. Do you have any idea how hard it is being a lady?”
He lifted a brow. “Do you have any idea how hard it is being a lord? Especially after having met you?”
She sighed. “Now I do. ’Tis piss hard, is what. These bastards expect the world from us yet give us nothing, in turn, but superficial airs laced with misery.”
He bit back a smile, rather impressed she had already learned their role in society. “Whatever you want, you shall have from here on out. You have more than earned it, madam, and I look forward to crawling for the rest of my life.”
He grabbed up her hands, stripping her gloves, and kissed their softness repeatedly. He paused and held up one of her hands, fingering its smoothness. His gaze snapped to hers in disbelief. “Your hands.”
“I know. It took a lot of scrubbing and daily soaks. They’re still not what they should be, but in time, they will be.”
His heart squeezed as he glanced back down at those hands that seemed so small in comparison to his own. “Oh, Georgia.” He kissed the tips of her fingers and then those knuckles. “A part of me is so sad to know that I have forced you to change yourself and your life merely to be with me.” He kissed her hands again. “I will miss my Georgia. I will miss her so damn much and only pray she won’t entirely disappear.”
She slowly smiled, watching him kiss her hands. Releasing her hands, he dragged his own down the length of her body and back up again, reveling in the feel of her softness and the smoothness of her silk embroidered gown.
His chest tightened, along with every muscle in his body, realizing that this and she were real. She was here in London. With him. “God, did I ever miss you,” he whispered. “I waited and I waited for you to come. It was torture of the worst sort. I cannot believe you did all of this for me. I am beyond honored.”
She raked her hands and nails through his hair. “I can’t believe it, either. You owe me.”
“I know I do.” He leaned in, angling his mouth toward hers. “Be forewarned, this is about to get rough.”
“Now, now, keep it all buttoned up.” She sat up on the bed, daintily scooting out of his reach and away. She scrambled out of bed, hopping down to the floor with a soft thud and rounded the bed with the click-click-click of slippered heels as she sashayed her way to the closed door.
He paused and then swung toward her direction, the linens dragging up and shifting beneath his movement. “Wait. What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“This isn’t Orange Street, you know. I have a reputation to uphold and I don’t trust you any more than I trust myself.” Opening the door, she pushed it wide with the graceful thrust of a gloved hand. “That will ensure we don’t get into trouble.”
She paused, glancing toward the empty corridor beyond the open door, and then turned toward him, dragging up one side of her gown. Gathering the vast amount of material, she exposed the shapely length of a leg draped in a white silk stocking that was held in place above her knee with a tied bright red garter. “Do you like my stockings? I just bought them. They’re silk. After we marry, you may take them off. If you’re deserving of it, that is.” She primly dropped her skirt with a rustle and rearranged her gown.
He slid off the bed, his muscles roaring in lust. Only Georgia could ever make him crawl and make him love every moment of it. Striding toward her, he purposefully towered before her.
She snapped her gaze up to his face
.
He grinned. “How about we close the door and tell London to go to hell?”
She stepped toward him and poked him hard in the chest. “Go get Robinson before I dirk you, Yardley.”
He tsked and grabbed her by the waist, and holding her firmly against himself, he grazed the tip of his finger across her powdered cheek. “It appears I’m not the only one going by more than one name, Miss Georgiana Colette Tormey.”
Georgia smacked his shoulder and lowered her voice all the more. “Georgia is no more until after we marry. Do you understand? There is to be no touching or kissing until I legally become Lady Yardley. You hear?”
“I hear,” he murmured, searching her face. “Will you at least please pass on one last message from me to Georgia, Miss Tormey? Given that I won’t be seeing her again until my wedding night?”
A smile touched her lips. “What is your message, my lord?”
Glancing toward the door and the still-empty corridor, Roderick leaned down, grabbed her face and kissed her, aggressively parting those soft, warm lips with his own. Closing his eyes and giving in to an ecstasy he never thought he’d know again, he kissed his Georgia passionately and lovingly and erotically, tracing her teeth and her tongue and her lips before releasing her.
He stepped back, opening his eyes, and hissed out a breath, wishing it didn’t have to end. “Tell her that I love her.”
Georgia lingered before him with her eyes still closed, and her chin tilted upward, those full moist lips parted as if half expecting his return. She eventually opened her eyes and whispered, “I’ll be sure Georgia knows.”
Quick footfalls echoed from down the corridor heading their way. “Yardley?” the duke yelled out, those steps now breaking into a run. “Yardley!”
Her eyes widened. She gathered her skirts and dashed back to the bed, her slippers skidding across the wood floor. Scrambling up and onto the mattress, she frantically arranged herself and her skirts around her, before draping herself calmly and demurely onto the bed.
Roderick dragged in a much-needed breath. He doubted any woman had ever gone this far for a man in the name of love. “I ardently hope you feel better soon, Miss Tormey. I would hate for you to have come all this way only to never see past a bed. Though I have a feeling illness may overtake me soon, as well, and we will both be confined to the same bed. What will London say?”
“Shh!” Her head jerked up to give him a reprimanding glare before settling herself back against the pillows.
He grinned.
“Yardley!” The duke skidded into view and stumbled into the doorway, his face panicked and flushed. “How is Georgia?”
“Quite well, Your Grace,” she called out, a hand darting up into the air before it dropped back down onto the mattress. “No need to panic.”
The duke huffed out a breath. “Good. One less thing to worry about. This night is about to turn into a mess.”
Roderick’s grin faded as he swung fully toward his father, his pulse roaring. “Does someone already know about Georgia?”
“No.” The duke jumped toward him and seized him by the lapels of his coat, shaking him. “Atwood arrived into town. He’s downstairs. He approached his father just this morning, demanding he fess up to what had led to his disappearance, but the man is denying everything, along with his legitimacy, and there appears to be no goddamn proof of his likeness anywhere. I haven’t told Atwood yet, but I mean to help him. I mean to help him in the name of your mother. So, God save me, I am about to not only publicly turn against your mother’s family, but I am about to dig up that portrait that was buried with her thirteen years ago to prove his likeness and who he is. Are you with me in this? Will you see me through this, knowing Atwood is all we have left of your mother?”
Bloody hell. All of London’s mightiest bridges were about to come falling down. Roderick swallowed against the tightness overtaking his throat and half nodded in a daze, knowing he had no idea what he was getting himself into. “Yes. I am with you.”
“Good. Good. I want you to go to him. Go! He is in the study and I have to tend to my guests lest this turns into a circus. I’ll join you as soon as I am able. Keep him in the study, and for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see him. The man will only scare people. I told him he really needs to do something about his appearance. Now go. Go to him. I’ll be there in about a half hour.” His father turned and jogged back out.
Glancing back at Georgia, who had sat up, Roderick pointed at her. “Stay where you are. Keep playing the game. I’ll be back.”
He dashed out of the room and sprinted down the corridor after his father, knowing full well he was going to finally see the face of a man he had yet to remember. The face of what had started this all.
Pounding down the stairs and weaving past guests that were lingering outside the ballroom, he jogged toward the closed doors of the study. He slid both doors open and quickly stepped in, sliding them closed behind himself.
The solid broad back of a tall man, whose shoulder-length, disheveled black hair bore whispers of silver, lingered before the portrait of his mother, the Duchess of Wentworth. The one he, his father and Yardley used to pray before every Sunday after church. It appeared Atwood was praying, too, the way he stood in silence. The black boot-length riding coat he wore was heavily frayed to gray and even bore a rip at the curve of his shoulder. It was as if he had crawled out of the Five Points itself.
By God, he was about to meet and face yet another blank he had never regained. It was eerie. The floorboards creaked beneath Roderick’s boots as he slowly made his way toward Atwood. He paused several feet behind him.
The man continued to blankly stare up at his mother’s pale face and those soft gray eyes as if in a trance.
“No portrait did her justice.” Roderick’s voice echoed in the room, sounding a bit more nervous than he intended.
Atwood turned and fully faced him. The yellowing glow of the study’s candles illuminated a shaven, lean face framed against disheveled, shoulder-length black hair. Cool ice-blue eyes that bespoke of a hard life held Roderick’s gaze. His large gloved hand gripped the hilt of a dagger that was sheathed and attached to the leather belt resting on his hip.
“I’m your nephew,” Roderick offered to reassure the man that the blade was unnecessary. “Yardley.”
“I know who you are,” Atwood replied in a low but casual tone that was laced with an accent that appeared to be an odd combination of American and British. “We met. Back in New York.”
Roderick swallowed. “Forgive me for not being able to remember. I had an incident that—”
“I know. You needn’t worry. I’m not all that memorable, anyway.” Atwood eyed him. “Allow me to get to the point of my visit tonight, nephew of mine. One I have yet to convey to your father. After a less than constructive meeting with my father this morning, who refused to let my mother see me, I have decided to kill him. Tonight, actually. After he leaves this house and heads into his carriage. And I intend to have all of London witness it. Why am I telling you this? Because when you are brought before the jury, I don’t want there to be any doubt as to what my motives were. Tell them it wasn’t revenge but a savage need for peace.”
Roderick stared, not knowing what astonished him more. Those words or how casually he had said them. “Don’t do this. Killing him will only see you hanged.”
“Exactly. Peace.”
Oh, no. No, no, no. The man was not about to do this and drag him and his father into another nightmare. He edged toward him. “Killing him and then getting yourself hanged will change nothing.”
Atwood flexed his leather-gloved hands. “I know.”
Hell, the man was serious. Not to mention absolutely insane. “Uncle. If you do this, you will not only destroy yourself, but you will ruin my father, and me, as well. You’ll also be destroying the wife I hope to take and the children I hope to have. All we would ever know and hear and see would be the blood you rashly spilled and the mess you left for us to mop
up.”
His uncle pointed a gloved finger to his own head. “I am not going to live inside this head a breath more.”
It was as if he were meeting a deranged version of himself prior to regaining his memory. “No one understands you more than I. Believe me. Living within a head you would rather step out of is a curse of the worst sort, but there are ways to allay the misery. But not like this. You will find it through the support and love of your family.”
Atwood’s face darkened. “The Sumners are not my family.”
“Right you are in that. The Sumners are not. But we are. I am. My father is. My father loves you given all that you represent. He loves you enough to unearth his own wife’s remains, which I know will kill him considering what she meant to him. Despite that, you mean to dirk him? You mean to dirk the last person who remains standing in your corner in order to entertain some morbid urge for revenge?”
Atwood searched his face. “He means to disturb my sister’s grave? I won’t have it.”
“’Tis the only means we have of proving your legitimacy. My father told me about my grandfather denying your legitimacy, but this would prove it. ’Tis the only known portrait of you in existence with a label of your name and it lies buried with my mother.”
Atwood momentarily closed his eyes. “She was buried with my portrait?”
“That she was. She carried you upon her lips and within her heart until her last breath was taken and spent her entire life wanting to find you. If you don’t mean to honor the living, Uncle, I ask that you at least honor the dead. My mother deserved as much.”
Atwood’s features twisted as he swung away. After a long moment of silence, he turned back and wordlessly unfastened the leather belt from around his hips. He folded the belt around the sheath of his dagger and held it out. “Take it before I use it.”
Forever and a Day Page 28
