The Betting Season (A Regency Season Book)

by Knight-Catania, Jerrica

  He’d arrived at Vauxhall in search of Georgie, who was supposed to be with Pippa Casemore and her brothers. Yet when Cedric went to their supper box, neither Georgie nor Pippa was present. Lord Harrison Casemore, likewise, was missing, and Berkswell was at a loss as to the location of any of the three of them.

  So Cedric had set off to look for Georgie, leaving Berkswell pacing in agitation in front of his box. Pacing, of all things! What good would that do? Did the blasted marquess not realize the danger his sister and Georgie could each be in? One would think, after the scandal of both young ladies’ names being written in the book at White’s, that one would recognize how close to ruin they each were…and therefore one might be a bit more careful with the shreds of dignity remaining of their reputations.

  Yet Berkswell simply paced.

  Even now, as Cedric hauled yet another of Georgie’s friends from Broadmoor Academy (one whom, he might note, also had her name in the book at White’s, as did their fourth friend, Lady Moira Kirkwood, for Christ’s sake) back to her cousin’s supper box after finding her alone on one of the dark walks with Lord Swaffham in a rather compromising position, all Berkswell could do was pace.

  It was downright infuriating.

  Cedric barreled up the steps to Rowan Findley’s box and planted his young cousin before him. “Findley,” he clipped off. “You’ll want to have her father arrange for the banns to be called starting tomorrow.”

  Patience flushed, which only stood out all the more because of her long, black hair and pale skin. For some confounding reason, she smiled a bit sheepishly at her cousin.

  Cedric didn’t realize how terse his tone was until Findley looked back and forth between him and young Patience with a question in his gaze. Not outrage, just curiosity. Good God.

  “Lord Swaffham will be over to speak with him and arrange matters as soon as possible, I’m sure,” he rushed on, so there would be no doubts that he was not the future bridegroom. A shudder ran through his body at the idea. He couldn’t imagine marrying Patience, or really any of Georgie’s friends. He couldn’t imagine marrying anyone but Georgie.

  At that, he nearly fell over from shock. Marry Georgie? Where had that idea come from? He couldn’t fathom it, and he couldn’t stand there any longer while he tried to sort it out…not when he still hadn’t found his quarry, and Haworth might well be out there, as well.

  “Right. Well, then, I’ll leave you to it. See you handle matters with her father, Findley.”

  “And a good evening to you, Montague.”

  A good evening? Hardly. At the moment, he was praying it wouldn’t be a catastrophic evening.

  Georgie was more than just a bit winded by the time Harry slowed his pace on the dark walks. Breathless with anticipation might be a more apt description.

  He turned another corner, paused and looked around, and then nodded and pressed on in that direction. “Almost there. You’re certain you haven’t changed your mind?”

  If she didn’t go through with this, she would spend an eternity wondering what might have happened if she had. “I haven’t changed my mind.” And she hadn’t, despite the growing flutters of eager expectancy twittering through every limb of her body.

  They kept going, wending their way through the myriad twists and turns the path led them on.

  When they passed beneath one of the few lanterns scattered about, he stopped again so suddenly that Georgie almost ran straight into him from behind. Without turning, Harry dropped his voice low and said, “This is your last opportunity to have second thoughts. Haworth is just around the bend.”

  She really wished he would stop giving her the chance to retreat. “I’m starting to wonder if perhaps you aren’t the one having doubts about this.”

  He turned then and flashed a roguish grin. “I never have doubts.”

  Georgie straightened her spine and lifted her chin in as haughty a manner as she could muster. “Neither do I. Shall we?”

  “As you wish,” he replied with a wink, sweeping his arm towards a clearing.

  Looking out over the expanse, she caught a glimpse of him. Haworth was leaning against the trunk of an oak, smoking a cheroot, its glowing end a stark contrast to the near-black night.

  Georgie tried to take a step towards him, but her feet seemed to suddenly be stuck, as though weighted down by marble.

  Harry chuckled beside her. “I thought you never had doubts.”

  She took the time to grant him one brief scowl, and then forcefully lifted a foot, beginning her trek across the way with Harry by her side.

  When they drew close enough to hear one another without shouting, Harry lifted a hand in greeting. “A good evening to you, Haworth.”

  The viscount tossed his cheroot to the ground and stubbed it with the toe of his boot. “You said you were bringing someone who had business dealings with me tonight, Casemore.” His voice was gruff, and more than just slightly perturbed.

  This was not a good beginning. Why would Harry have told him such a thing? Georgie glanced at him in a bit of a panic, but in the moonlight, she was unable to deduce anything in his expression.

  “And that I’ve done,” Harry said jovially. “Lord Haworth, meet Lady Georgianna Bexley-Smythe. My lady, this is Viscount Haworth.”

  A grunting sort of sound came from Haworth. “Bexley-Smythe?” He shook his head, his dark, short-cropped locks swaying gently in the cool night air. “The only Bexley-Smythe I have business with is Stalbridge himself, and he hasn’t bothered to grace Town with his presence as of yet so we can settle it as gentlemen.”

  Blast! Percy owed Haworth a debt, too? Was there a man in all of London her brother hadn’t swindled or hoodwinked in some way? Her hopes of flying in Lord Haworth’s gas balloon seemed to be dissipating into the fine layer of mist that had descended upon the night.

  She couldn’t give up without at least trying, however. “I can assure you, Lord Haworth,” she said, though her voice faltered, “my business with you is my own.”

  He took two bounding steps closer to her, eyes ablaze, and it required every last blessed ounce of Georgie’s fortitude not to burrow into Harry’s side and beg his protection.

  Haworth narrowed his eyes at her, looking down at her in a bit of a sneer. “What business could you, a young lady hardly out of the schoolroom, have with me?”

  “I’m rather inclined to ask the same question,” Harry piped in. “We’re both waiting on pins and needles for your answer, Lady Georgianna.”

  Harry’s cheekiness only served to fluster her more than she already was. The added pressure from Pippa’s brother was not in her plans. Not that Georgie truly had a plan from this point on. She’d only thought through up until the moment she met Lord Haworth.

  With her lips pursed, Georgie shook her head. “I am terribly sorry, Harry, but it was not in our agreement that you be privy to this conversation. I would like to speak with Lord Haworth alone, please.”

  One side of Harry’s mouth turned down and he crossed his arms over his chest, looking first at Haworth, then at Georgie, and then at Haworth again. “I’ll be right over here on the other side of the clearing, then.” Slowly, he moved far enough away that they could converse at a normal level without him overhearing, but where he was still within plain view.

  She bit her lower lip, wishing she had spent more time on trying to sort out this predicament and less time on worrying who Pippa’s Lord Colebrooke might be. Too late for that, however.

  When she returned her attention to Haworth, he also had his arms crossed before him. In the hazy moonlight, she could make out a mocking sneer. “Well?” he asked when she didn’t immediately speak. “What sort of business could we possibly have with each other, Lady Georgianna? Or is this about the bet in the book at White’s? I had nothing to do with putting it there, you know.”

  A bet in the book? Pippa and Moira and Patience were all named in the book, but she wasn’t. Was she? Oh, heavens.

  But if she was named in the book, that would
make finding a decent match even less likely than it already was, given Percy’s behavior of late. So even if flying in Lord Haworth’s balloon caused a bit of an uproar, it couldn’t hurt her prospects any more than they already were. Could it? Georgie took a breath, praying that some brilliant argument to convince Haworth to play to her whims would strike her.

  And then it did.

  “How much does my brother owe you, my lord?”

  Haworth shook his head dismissively. “That’s between Stalbridge and me. I couldn’t possibly discuss it with a lady, least of all his sister.” He turned as though to leave.

  Georgie couldn’t let him get away. “Not even if I could arrange for his debt to be repaid?” she hastily suggested.

  As she’d hoped, that gave Haworth some pause. He slowly turned around, eyeing her in doubt. “And how might you be able to do that? Your brother is a wastrel and a spendthrift. Not to mention a coward, or else he’d have already come to Town to face me himself. How can you convince him to repay what he owes?”

  “I can’t.”

  He tossed his hands up in the air.

  Georgie rushed on. “I can’t convince him to repay it, especially since he quite possibly can’t repay you. But I can pay you for him.” Well, she could depending on just how much Percy owed. She’d been putting almost all of her pin money aside since she went off to Broadmoor Academy, spending only the smallest amount in case Percy somehow lost the funds for her dowry.

  “You’re being absurd.” Haworth started to walk away in the opposite direction of where Harry was waiting, so she scurried to walk with him.

  “I’m not. I’ve been saving for years.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see Harry following along behind them, keeping the same distance as he’d established before.

  “You couldn’t possibly have enough to cover his debt,” he scoffed, taking longer strides than before as though in an effort to escape her. “Your brother owes me two hundred fifty pounds.”

  At last count she had three hundred twenty-seven pounds, six pence. “I can pay you all of that and an extra fifty pounds as interest, if you’ll grant me a favor.”

  With that, he came to a sudden stop. “What favor?”

  Georgie’s heart was racing so fast she felt lightheaded. This just might work. “I want to fly, Lord Haworth. I want you to take me up in your gas balloon.”

  Cedric was almost to the point of ripping out his hair in frustration from his inability to locate Georgie, when she appeared on the walk before him as though coming mysteriously through the mist with Lord Harrison Casemore at her side. They joined him on the lighted, main pathway, emerging from one of the dark walks. She came to a sudden stop when she noticed him.

  Relief and fury jointly rushed through his veins at the sight of them.

  “What are you doing here, Monty?” she demanded.

  “What are you doing alone on the dark walks with Casemore? And why aren’t you with Pippa?” And why in God’s name did the sight of the two of them emerging from the dark together send his heart into palpitations and make him want to cast up his accounts, all at the same time?

  At least it wasn’t Haworth he’d discovered her with. But at the moment, discovering her with any gentleman was an unwelcome sight.

  “Lord Harrison has been providing me with his escort,” she responded haughtily. “Not that I owe you any explanation at all. But you can rest assured that he’s seen to my protection quite well, thank you very much.”

  His escort? That was supposed to suffice as an explanation for their joint disappearance, and their subsequent reappearance almost an hour later? “Georgie,” he said, though it came out more like a growl than a word.

  “And on that note,” Casemore cut in, “I think I’ll leave you two to your discussion.” He ignored Georgie’s scoff at his description of their conversation. “Montague, I trust you can see to Lady Georgianna’s care. Should we expect her to rejoin us, or will you be seeing her home?”

  “Let Pippa know I’ll be with you all again shortly, my lord,” Georgie cut in just as Cedric was preparing to state that he’d escort her home. “I’m sure my discussion with Lord Montague will not take very long.”

  He had his doubts about that, but now might not be the best time to contradict her. With Georgie, it was always best to pick one’s battles carefully.

  “I will be glad to do that.” Casemore inclined his head towards them both. “I’ll see you both again shortly, then.”

  Once he was gone, Georgie turned furious eyes to Cedric. He didn’t give her the opportunity to begin a tirade against him.

  “What were you two doing, and why didn’t Berkswell know where you’d gone off to?”

  She scowled up at him, and it was at once the most ludicrous and delightful expression he could remember seeing upon her face in quite some time. What an odd reaction. Some odd affliction seemed to have come over him of late, and he could attest it to nothing and no one but Georgie.

  “Lord Harrison agreed to show me the Chinese pavilion,” she finally said, her tone filled with acid.

  “Nice attempt at evading me, Georgie. I’m sorry to inform you, however, that the Chinese pavilion is well on the other side of Vauxhall from here. Surely you knew that.”

  Georgie bit her lower lip, clearly debating something in her mind. After a long moment, she met his eyes again. “You’re correct, of course. Lord Harrison and I did meet at the Chinese pavilion, but he took me from there to meet someone else.”

  A groan tore from his lips even as he felt his heart being ripped from his chest. “Haworth?” He hoped he was wrong.

  “Yes.”

  The earth beneath Cedric’s feet seemed to crumble and swallow him whole.

  Never in her life had Georgie seen Monty look so bedraggled, so distressed. His eyes were pained and strange lines had suddenly appeared around his mouth. It wouldn’t have surprised her if, at that very moment, his hair had turned from rich brown to grey right before her eyes.

  “Please, Georgie,” he said in a pained whisper. “Please tell me why you so desperately wanted to meet Haworth. Tell me what happened.”

  Hurting Monty had never been in her plans. Allowing him to stop her now was out of the question, though. “That’s not something I can do.”

  “Why? What is it that you want?” He paced along the path, his arms swinging in agitation at his side. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. Anything.”

  “This isn’t something you can give me.”

  How could Monty possibly help her to experience something in which she didn’t already know everything involved? How could he assist her in leaving behind her own insistence upon never stepping outside of the strict constraints of propriety even for the tiniest moment? At every turn, he was trying to stop her from doing anything which might cause scandal. He seemed hell-bent on keeping her safe and secure in the enclosures proscribed by society for a proper debutante.

  No, he could do many things, but he couldn’t grant her the freedom which Lord Haworth had agreed to.

  Monty’s blue eyes filled with a fervor she’d rarely seen in them, which left her taken aback.

  “I can, Georgie. Whatever you want, I’ll find a way to give it to you.”

  She shook her head, preparing to yet again deny him.

  Monty held her off by taking both of her hands in his own. “Give me a chance. I love you. I would do anything for you.”

  “You’re talking madness. You only love me like you would an annoying younger sister.” Didn’t he? She’d always been the young girl pestering him and Percy, forever in their way and driving them to the brink of madness. Monty would never see her as anything other than a pest—one he felt compelled to look after, certainly. But not one he could love with more than just a familial connection.

  So why did it cause an ache in her chest and a pull in her stomach when he didn’t immediately refute her claim?

  She didn’t want him to love her. Not as anything m
ore than a brotherly love for a sister. Did she? But when she stared into the depth of his eyes, all she could think of was how she wished to stare into them forever.

  Now who was mad? A lock of Georgie’s hair fell forwards over her eyes, and she blew at it with a frustrated breath. She tried to clear the errant thoughts from her head, brushing haphazardly with one hand to repair her coiffure when blowing didn’t work, but that was useless as well without a mirror.

  Monty lifted a hand and swept her hair back into place. His fingers trailed along the side of her face, leaving a tingling path along her oversensitive skin. “Is that what you think? That you’re nothing more to me than Bridge’s bothersome sister?”

  What else should I think? That was what she meant to ask, but her tongue seemed to have permanently attached itself to the roof of her mouth, and her lips felt as though they had been sewn shut, and nothing came from her but a muffled, “Mmm.” Georgie was unable to stop herself from behaving like a feline; she pressed her head further into his touch, desperate for more of the tantalizing and perplexing heat of his hand.

  As close together as they were, a spicy scent radiated from him to fill her nostrils—something not quite like cinnamon or clove, but with a decidedly Monty-esque feel to it—and she wanted more of it.

  He moved closer, and she hadn’t even had to ask him to do so. He lifted his other hand and stroked her cheek delicately, and all sense of reason left her, flittering away into the night sky like fireflies heading towards a lantern. Moving both his hands behind her head, he tenderly tilted her face up even as he brought his down. His lips landed upon hers, soft and supple.

  His kiss was undemanding, and yet somehow possessive, lip moving over lip.

  There was no need for Monty to demand anything of her at that moment. She held her breath and lifted up on the tips of her toes, seeking more of his tenderness even as every nerve ending within her body yearned to be wrapped up in his arms.