She paced to the windows looking for wisdom in the brown grass and bare trees outside. He didn’t come! A parcel. He sent a bloody parcel. Her eyes strayed to the fearful thing. Some objects inspire hope along with the danger that hope will fail.
“Oh bother. Where’s your backbone, woman?” she asked herself.
It took one movement to reach the parcel and another to tear open the covering. A folded piece of ivory vellum covered in a strong dark hand as familiar to her as her own fell out.
Georgiana,
I couldn’t reach you to finalize the draft. I have taken the liberty of obtaining a publisher for the work. All final decisions about the disposition of the work are, of course, yours. I believe the terms of our partnership have been discharged, and that partnership is now at an end.
A. Mallet
Liberty? Insufferable liberty. It looked plenty final to Georgiana, bound in gilt and leather, heavy in her hand. The work had been hers to publish, not his.
And the letter–no words of love, no joy of greeting, only business. She threw it down. Is there truly nothing between us but the work?
“An end? Who is he to tell me when it is at an end?!” Her words echoed in the cavernous emptiness of Helsington.
She hefted the leather bound book again. It wasn’t large, but it had a comfortable weight to it. It felt familiar, soft and warm, in her hands. She ran a finger over the engraved gold letters: Poetry by the Female Authors of Ancient Greece.
She opened it and inhaled the clean scent of new paper, heavy linen pages. She admired the watermarked inner lining. That title was repeated on the title page: Poetry by the Female Authors of Ancient Greece.
She concentrated on the title before she noticed what was written below in smaller letters: “By an English Lady of Scholarship”—and in yet smaller letters—”With the assistance of A. Mallet, gentleman scholar of Cambridge.”
“‘An English Lady of Scholarship.’” A smile played at her lips, appearing and disappearing. It was, of course, impossible to use her name.
“‘A. Mallet, gentleman scholar of Cambridge.’” Anger flared again. “How dare he? How dare he make final arrangements without me? Only a man would violate a partnership in so odious a manner. I had the right to decide. I alone.” She chose to forget his message, forget that he said the final decision was hers to make.
She had no issue with him putting his name on it and leaving hers off or even with taking it to the printer, but he ought to have spoken with her first. The more she considered what he had done, the angrier she became. The beast. How dare he take it to a printer without consulting me!
Harley had left without waiting for a reply. She knew, without a doubt, that he was in league with the bounder. She sat to pen a reply anyway.
“She was there, all right. Fair put out she looked when I handed her the parcel.”
“Put out? Did she open it?”
“I put it in her hand like you said. You never said to watch her open it. She’s there.” Harley shifted a large crock and two smaller ones in his arms while he talked. “She has the package. Seemed to me like she expected a different messenger.”
A long and colorful string of Portuguese curses met Harley’s impudent remark.
“He has you there, I believe, Andrew.” Jamie didn’t pretend not to hear. He lifted an eyebrow helpfully and liberated one of Harley’s crocks.
Harley grinned at Andrew. “Haven’t heard that language in a while. Would make a sailor blush. One more thing, it looks like the lady is moving.”
“Moving? Where?” Andrew felt every sense go on alert.
“Don’t know. House stood empty. She opened the door herself.” Harley kept speaking, but he followed when Jamie gestured him back to the kitchen. “Boxes piled by the door—a fair number of them.”
She opened the door herself. “No servants?” Andrew was forced to follow.
“Looked like they all ran off. Bloody deserters.” Harley threw the words over his shoulder.
“Tell me, Harley,” Jamie asked, “what are these delicious smelling containers you brought back with you, and what tavern did you rescue them from?”
Andrew followed in silence, his face thunderous. Dinner did little to improve his expression. Jamie’s amusing stories did less and so did the bottle of French wine Harley had miraculously produced. She was leaving. He would send her notes to her, of course he would, but that would be the end.
Jamie savored the last of the wine, and Andrew scowled into the dregs of his glass when a loud knock echoed through the house.
Andrew strode to the door himself and threw it open.
“Damn. Couldn’t come herself?” Georgiana wasn’t the only one who hoped for a different messenger. A startled and wary William handed him a message. She must have sent him hard on Harley’s heels.
“C’mon to th’ kitchen. May as well be comfortable while he carries on.” Andrew ignored Harley’s impudent orders to the footman and Jamie’s avid curiosity, his attention riveted on the paper in his hands.
Andrew,
It isn’t for you to dissolve our partnership, particularly after the high-handed and completely unacceptable manner in which you appropriated my work. I will wait upon you tomorrow afternoon to resolve these matters.
Lady Georgiana Hayden
Andrew felt a grin spread across his face and then fade. She was in a royal snit.
You’re very welcome for the anxious and tedious efforts I have made on your behalf, Your high-and-mighty Ladyship.
Wretched woman. The final disposition of the work rested with her decision. He was pretty sure he had told her that.
He figured he probably deserved her temper, though. He overstepped when he got the book printed. Glenaire was right about that. Still, he had hoped for a chance to explain.
He read and reread the final sentence. “I will wait upon you tomorrow.” She was in a snit, and she was coming to make war. Andrew spent eleven years learning how to make war. She would come to make war on his home ground. Joy rose in a mighty torrent—joy in the steely control of a man determined to have his way.
When he sat back down to his dinner, his eyes had a marshal gleam.
“Prepare the camp for battle, Harley. We shall have a visitor tomorrow.” Settle matters, we will.
Promptly at two o’clock in the afternoon, Lady Georgiana appeared at the door. A suspiciously well-groomed Harley showed her to a seat in the front parlor. He bowed respectfully and told her he would announce her before disappearing up the stairs. That alone should have warned her to be careful.
Far too busy keeping the balance between two conflicting desires—the desire to put her lying cheat of a partner in his place and the desire to fall into his arms—she failed to notice Harley’s strange behavior. She lost all ability to think clearly.
The sound of two pairs of boots on the enclosed stairs caused the pounding in her ears to get louder and made coherent thought even more difficult.
“Get on with it, man, hurry up!” she snapped.
Her eyes widened at the sight of Jamie Heyworth’s toothy grin descending the final step.
“Lady Georgie, glad you are so anxious to see me! I didn’t realize you knew I was here.”
“I didn’t. I thought …” The ludicrous sound of Charles Harley aping a proper butler spared her the need to reply.
“Mr. Mallet will see you.”
The declaration forced Georgiana to troop around Heyworth, still grinning like an idiot, to the stairs. With every wary step upward she reviewed what she should say to the upstart above.
“How dare you proceed without my permission” seemed to her correct but colorless.
“You, sir, are no man of honor.” Too pompous.
“You’ve wounded me, sir, with your perfidy.” Too dramatic.
“You are a worm and no man.” Too Shakespearean.
By the middle step, she prepared to argue ad hominem. “Your man, sir, is a trumped-up monkey and no proper servant” Not f
air to Harley.
“Damn it, Andrew, what were you about?” Better.
“Where the devil have you been?” Definitely not.
“Oh, Andrew, how could you? I thought we were partners.” Worst of all. She would not show weakness.
Her last thought just before the door opened on the top step was “You reprehensible son of a horse thief, you stole my life’s work!”
“Ah, Lady Georgiana, you didn’t have to come to offer your gratitude in person.” Andrew stood in the center of the room. He was laughing.
“Gratitude? You insufferable toad! For what should I be grateful?”
“The work, my lady. The fine gold letters, the linen paper, the gilt edges. Didn’t you receive it?”
“You know I did. You arranged it without me—and you took credit.”
“Arranging your work was, I admit, a mistake.” He looked serious but only for a moment. “No harm done. I came to my senses. Five hundred copies sit patiently in John Bailey’s storage room awaiting your decision. Sell them, burn them, give them away. The work, as you say, is yours to do with as you wish. As to credit”—his confusion would have been endearing if it wasn’t patently false—”I fear you are mistaken. I’m not a Lady of Scholarship.”
“Not that, you fool. Your name is on the cover, not mine!”
“My dear Lady Georgiana”—she saw a twinkle in his eyes—”I didn’t realize you wished to have your name on the cover. You gave me the impression you wished your identity to remain anonymous. Does this mean you plan to sell the books?”
“You have Jamie Heyworth running tame in your parlor. You might as well stand in the street and announce my work to my parents.”
“Normally, yes, I agree. The very voluble Major Lord Heyworth would serve as a town crier, but in this regard he has been quite mum. He seems to enjoy the subterfuge. I believe he enjoyed tweaking your brother Richard—at least until the latter gentlemen made his own inquiries and inserted himself into the plot.”
“Richard knows?” It was a gasp of outrage.
“I fear so. We discussed it and–”
“And the two of you decided what was best for me.” Fire roared in her heart. She expected it to flame out of her eyes.
“Am I to understand that you wish to take full credit?” He was trying to change the subject. “That’s easy enough to arrange. A word or two in the right ear, and all of London—”
“No! I, that is, no.”
“Well, you may want to wait until there has been some reaction, a review or two perhaps, before you decide to take credit.”
She didn’t answer.
“You do plan to publish?”
Georgiana stared at the lace on her slipper, unable to raise her eyes from her feet, unable to formulate an answer.
Several silent moments passed before he said, “It is quite good, you know.”
She did not look up.
“It is fine work,” he went on, his voice a caress. “You can be proud.”
She looked up to find him inches from her, uncertain when he had moved so close.
“You did brilliantly.” He closed the final distance and took her mouth in a gossamer kiss that barely touched her body, yet seared her to the core.
Names flew to her mind: “Toad,” “Wretch,” “Traitor,” “Thief,” but the erratic heartbeat, engendered when his embrace turned her insides to molten iron drowned out the voices in her head. All that reached her mouth was “Andrew. Oh, Andrew.”
He pulled away and attempted to speak. She found the puzzled expression on his crooked face endearingly sweet, but she needed him, needed to draw him back, needed his closeness. When her hands began to tug at his shirt, he helped her free it, opening himself to her exploring hands.
She disposed of her pelisse; his jacket landed near it. His waistcoat, and then his shirt were gone. When they reached the bedroom door, strong hands yanked her gown from her shoulders. It slithered to the floor and lay in the doorway. His trousers fell inside the room, quickly followed by his small clothes nearer to the bed. He was gloriously naked, but she still wore her stockings and underclothing when he rolled her under him on the bed. His mouth took her breast through the delicate lace chemise, while his hands found the opening in her pantaloons. By the time she realized he wouldn’t wait to remove the rest of her clothing, she didn’t want him to.
The fierceness of their joining was as much Georgiana’s doing as his. She knew he would pull back if he thought she wanted it, but she wouldn’t let him. Weeks of separation and confusion were pulverized by the pounding need of this moment. One shattering moment later Georgiana lost all sense of her surroundings in the exquisite moment of release.
She felt him continue to move in her, hard and fast, while she slowly regained awareness. She experienced the moment of his pleasure and his own release in full awareness; the joy of it overwhelmed her. Her own satisfaction in watching him transformed by desire rocked her. Tears stung in her throat and rolled down her cheeks. This moment, this private, special moment belonged to them. She wished he could leave it at that.
Chapter 24
Andrew took several minutes to come to full awareness. He opened his eyes and began to smile. The smile froze, and his heart stuttered.
“Tears? Dear one, I am so sorry, I—”
“Don’t be a damned fool. It was wonderful.” She sniffed adorably.
He hadn’t intended to kiss her. Harley’s performance, Jamie’s presence, his preemptive verbal strike, and the solitude of the study all discomforted her exactly as he intended. He forgot to watch his flank. Her very presence had discomforted him more than he anticipated; it overran his common sense.
Here they were, and he knew it was his fault they were in his bed and she was crying. What a muddle!
He could not understand the workings of her convoluted female mind. Foolish woman. She wanted freedom. He offered his heart on a platter. All she had to do was take it. He watched her quietly for a few seconds too long–long enough for her to hear pots banging and voices below.
“Jamie!” She leapt from his bed.
She ran about his room gathering the remnants of her clothes, and he lay back to enjoy the sight. She was adorable and quite astonished when she turned to see Andrew stretched out on the bed in his nakedness, not moving an inch.
“You’re amused? But Jamie!”
“Too late, love. This house is too small to mask the kinds of noise you make.”
“I don’t! I do? Odious man. You are laughing again.”
She slipped into her gown and turned so he could lace it. “Oh, do hurry.” Another laugh escaped him; his hands caressed her back, and his lips brushed the back of her neck. “If you insist.” He began to dress.
She put on her shoes and recovered her pelisse from the floor of his study, when a thought struck her.
“Was it?” Her eyes were remarkably wide.
“Incredibly pleasurable? Yes.” He fastened his waistcoat.
“Not that.” She colored brightly. “The work. Was it really good?”
“‘Is’ not ‘was.’ It is quite good.” He stopped with one arm in his jacket. “Haven’t you read it?”
“As printed? No. Too angry.”
“Angry. Months of work and you were too angry to even read the blasted book? Five hundred copies sit in Bailey’s storage waiting for your decision, but you are too angry to read it. I think it is I who should be angry. It’s your work Georgie, and it’s damned good. Thank you for allowing me to share it.”
“But?”
“But nothing. The work felt good. It’s over.” He shrugged into the jacket, letting her stew about it.
Tears welled in her eyes. He hoped she wept in sorrow that the work, their partnership, had ended. The sound of voices at the bottom of the stairs brought alarm to her expression. She breathed very deeply, turned her back to him, and approached the stairs, the very picture of a vengeful warrior princess.
“Oh, no you don’t!” He reached her in a qu
ick movement and hopped on one foot to ease the cramp it caused. “If the fox truly is in the hen house, we’re going down there together.” She turned a look filled with a mix of emotions to him. He thought he saw gratitude among them.
“Easy now, head high,” he whispered behind her as they descended the stairs. “That’s my lady.”
Two steps, three, and they were blinking in the bright sun of the sitting room.
Two expectant pairs of eyes, Jamie’s vastly amused and Harley’s sardonic and knowing waited for one of them to say something. There, by the door, stood another visitor. Geoffrey Dunning had a look of total shock on his face. Georgiana had neither maid nor chaperone; she was utterly compromised. Andrew certainly hoped she understood that. She opened her mouth; what came out resembled a croak. Andrew gently urged her toward the door, his hand on her upper arm.
“Lady Georgiana can’t stay to visit this afternoon, I’m afraid. She has reading to complete.” He watched the back of her neck turn scarlet.
“Yes, I, that is, I didn’t intend to stay. My conveyance is waiting.”
Stayed rather longer than she intended, he suspected. Her eyes looked large and unfocused; he had to pick up her hand and place it on his proffered arm in order to escort her out.
He handed her into a hired carriage and spoke softly into her ear as he did. “No partnership, Georgie. I don’t make love to business partners. You have to decide what it is, this, this thing between us.” He made sure she didn’t see his smug smile when he turned away, but he couldn’t disguise his sense of triumph. She was his. He knew it. He just needed to help her admit it.
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