‘Had my mother,’ he said, flexing his hand as his fingers flushed pink once more, ‘by any chance, had a word with him, too?’
Stepmama nodded vigorously. ‘At our first meeting, he told me that Lady Ashenden had felt obliged to warn him that his daughter was on the verge of creating a scandal that was entirely his own fault for bringing her up in such a lax manner. And that if he didn’t do something soon, she—you—would become the talk of the county. Very upset, he was. Admitted he’d made a mull of things. Said he should have seen he needed a woman about the place to teach you how to go on,’ she said, turning to Georgiana.
Lady Ashenden had told Papa he’d been a bad parent? When he’d been so utterly wonderful?
‘Lady Ashenden had told him how well behaved Sukey was and what a good influence she’d be, just by living alongside of you. And said that if I’d brought up one girl so nicely, she was sure I could achieve the same with you. Well, he only had to meet Sukey the once to see the difference.’
When Edmund winced, she realised her grip on his hand had reached painful proportions once more. But her own pain was so great it was a wonder she wasn’t howling.
‘Begged me, he did, to steer you back to the straight and narrow. As well as explaining all...’ she waved her hand at the bed in which Georgie lay ‘...this sort of thing.’
Now, that Georgie could understand. Her father would never have been able to cope with explaining what was happening to her body, when she started maturing. She’d always, instinctively, tried to keep all this sort of thing hidden from him.
‘He said he hadn’t the heart to discipline you for the faults you’d acquired, when he was the one who deserved a beating for not teaching you right from wrong.’
Georgie let go of Edmund’s hand to press her hands to her own mouth to stifle a sob. Because she finally understood why Papa had seemed to suddenly turn against her. Knew what lay behind those looks he’d given her—as though he was disappointed in her. It hadn’t been any such thing. It had been guilt. He had been trying to correct a fault for which he felt responsible...
No wonder he had turned away whenever Stepmama got out the cane. No wonder he had been unable to look her in the eye.
He hadn’t been ashamed of her. Disappointed in her.
He’d been ashamed of himself.
Edmund slid his arm round her shoulder as though he knew how hard she was struggling not to weep. She turned her face gratefully into his shoulder. For all these years, she’d thought first Edmund, and then her father, had turned against her. But it hadn’t been the case at all.
It had all been Lady Ashenden’s work.
‘Why did she do it?’ Once she’d regained control of herself, she lifted her face to Edmund’s and looked beseechingly into his eyes. ‘Why go to such lengths to make us hate each other?’
‘She wanted to make sure the split was permanent.’
Georgie frowned, her confusion only growing. ‘But...why?’
He sighed. ‘She didn’t want me to have to marry you.’
Her confusion only grew. ‘Marry you? Then? But...we were children. Far too young to be thinking of marriage.’
‘Juliet was only fourteen when she conceived her fatal passion for Romeo, I believe,’ he said. ‘When Mrs Bulstrode told her how she’d found us together, I dare say she thought you were more precocious than that hot-blooded Italian. And took steps to prevent me from succumbing to your charms.’
‘My charms? Succumbing? You?’
‘Well, I think that is quite enough of that,’ said Stepmama, who had clearly regained control of her equilibrium. ‘Put Lord Ashenden down, Georgie, there’s a good girl,’ she said firmly.
And because she was in the habit of obeying her stepmother, Georgie, who’d been clinging to him like a limpet, forced herself to do so.
‘And now, my lord,’ she said, going to the door and opening it, ‘if you would care to take tea before you leave, while we discuss the legalities?’
It was framed as a question only out of deference to his rank. What Stepmama was really doing was ordering him out of her room.
‘Leave? No, Edmund...’ She reached for his hand. He couldn’t leave, not as things were. It was all very well to have cleared up the misunderstandings that had blighted their childhood friendship, but if he left it like this, they would end up married. When it was the last thing he wanted.
But Edmund evaded her questing fingers and stood up. ‘Your stepmother is correct. The mode of our betrothal has been unorthodox enough to cause gossip. I shall not subject you to more by doing anything likely to tarnish your reputation further.’
Unorthodox? What an understatement. If Stepmama hadn’t blundered in, or if she hadn’t set up such a screech that it had brought the servants running, there wouldn’t be a betrothal.
But now that Edmund had pointed out the advantages such a marriage would mean for Sukey, Stepmama wouldn’t rest until she’d seen the notice in the Morning Post.
‘No, Edmund, there must be some other way to straighten out this mess.’
He turned to her, his face grim. ‘You regard being betrothed to me in the light of a misfortune?’
‘Of course it is!’ He’d turned her down when she’d all but begged him to save her from having to come to London and go through a Season. Since then, he’d done all he could to teach her how to handle suitors, including getting her to itemise the things that would make some other man bearable as a husband.
Some other man.
‘You know it is!’
He gave an elegant shrug of his shoulders. ‘Nevertheless, we will marry. We have been caught in a compromising position and this is the only way to salvage your reputation, and ensure that Sukey’s remains untarnished. You had better,’ he said, striding to the door, ‘accustom yourself.’
And with that Parthian shot, he stalked out, Stepmama hard on his heels.
Chapter Eighteen
Edmund waited until the notice of his forthcoming marriage to Miss Georgiana Wickford appeared in print before calling upon her again. He wasn’t going to give her any opportunity to wriggle free now he’d got her hooked.
Besides which, it turned out that arranging a wedding at short notice required a great many hours of work.
However, he did want to speak to Georgie before the ceremony. He didn’t want her walking up the aisle fearing he had the slightest reluctance to marry her. She had such an expressive face that every member of the congregation would wonder what was amiss. And would start inventing stories that bore no relation to the truth, but would be accepted as gospel simply because the inventor had attended the wedding.
It was a great pity, he mused as he mounted the front steps of her house, three days after he’d invaded her bedroom, that eloping was regarded as being scandalous behaviour. He’d much rather whisk Georgie away and marry her in private.
But on that point both his mother and her stepmother were in accord. Nothing would do for either of them but the biggest, most extravagant wedding that could be arranged in the short time he’d agreed to wait to make Georgie his wife.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ said Wiggins with an avuncular smile as he opened the door. ‘The ladies are all in the drawing room this morning,’ he continued, taking Edmund’s coat, hat, and gloves. ‘I take it you do not require my escort upstairs?’ And then, to his astonishment, the fellow winked.
‘No,’ he said tersely. ‘There is no need.’ He might have imagined it, but he could have sworn the fellow was chuckling as he sauntered off with Edmund’s things.
He mounted the stairs, cursing over-familiar servants under his breath. And was still frowning when he entered the drawing room.
Georgie’s stepmother and stepsister both leaped to their feet and greeted him effusively. Predictably, Georgie sent him a troubled, guilty loo
k before lowering her gaze to a tangle of needlework that lay in her lap.
‘I was hoping,’ he said, once the initial hubbub occasioned by his arrival had died down, ‘that Miss Wickford would be well enough to take the air with me today. I have—’
‘Of course she is!’ Mrs Wickford cut him short. ‘Run along and put on your coat and bonnet, dear,’ she said to Georgie, who rose to her feet with reluctance.
‘I do hope you will not mind, my lord,’ Mrs Wickford added, archly, as Georgie trailed to the door, ‘but Sukey and I will not be coming with you. We are expecting visitors we do not wish to offend by putting off.’
Georgie’s face flushed.
‘I am sure,’ said her stepmother, when it looked as though Georgie meant to voice some sort of objection, ‘that there can be no impropriety in you driving in the park with your betrothed. You will have a groom and footman with you and will be in public view at all times.’
Mrs Wickford must have been looking out of the window and seen the carriage in which he’d driven up to be able to say that. Though she was correct. He’d borrowed his mother’s barouche, again.
‘No impropriety at all,’ he said. Was impropriety even possible, in a barouche? ‘I am glad you understand the necessity for us to appear in public as a betrothed couple, Mrs Wickford, now that the announcement has been made. We do not wish anyone to suspect there is anything irregular about our forthcoming union, do we?’
Georgie shot him an anguished look before, shoulders slumped in defeat, she went off to get ready for their outing.
He sank on to a sofa to wait for her, the inane chatter of her female relatives washing over him as he struggled to maintain an appearance of calm. Though his heart had plunged somewhere below the region of his boots at her hangdog expression. Or even lower perhaps. Downstairs somewhere. Possibly even in the servants’ hall, if it was in that little area whose windows he’d spied when mounting the front steps. Anyway, wherever it had gone, the fact that his heart had done so was extremely annoying.
But then this was the way he’d been ever since managing to clinch the deal with Georgie’s stepmother. Fluctuating wildly from one extreme to the other. One minute he’d be elated at the ease with which he’d managed to snatch her out from under the noses of all her other suitors. The next he’d be ashamed for resorting to such ruthless methods that had left her no choice. But then he’d remind himself that he’d saved her from a fate she’d been dreading. And now nobody would have the right to ‘paw at her’.
Except him.
At which point he’d have a vision of a future in which they slept in separate beds. Or at least she would sleep. He would lie there thinking about her, down the corridor. In her nightgown. With her hair streaming across the pillows...
In fact, over the last few days he’d come to understand why some men drank so much they rendered themselves insensible. It was going to be unbearable having her yoked to him, passively, when he yearned for so much more.
And then the door opened once more and there she was, looking utterly captivating in the carriage dress she’d worn when he’d taken her to Bullock’s Museum, the pink one with all the white fluffy trimming down the front and round the edges of the loose sleeves.
He rose to his feet automatically. Which was just as well. His brain seemed to be taking a holiday.
‘You do have your parasol with you, Georgie, don’t you?’
Mrs Wickford was fussing round Georgie, who was staring back at him across the room as though she, too, was in a daze.
‘You must take more care to protect your complexion, what with the wedding taking place so soon and the sun deciding to shine today. And you will be in an open carriage, don’t forget.’
Her lips compressed at the mention of the vehicle. And he suddenly wondered if he ought to have made time to go and buy himself a phaeton, so that he could have driven her himself.
His heart beat erratically as he led her downstairs and out on to the street as his mind frantically seized upon, and then rejected, excuse after excuse. But in the end, only honesty would suffice.
‘I know,’ he said, his cheeks heating as he handed her into the low-slung vehicle, ‘that we are not exactly going to cut a dash, driving about in this carriage, but you have to admit it does make it easy to sit and converse. Which was my intention.’
Georgie gave him a quick frown as she took her seat and arranged her skirts. ‘There is no need to apologise for being who you are. I know you have never wanted to cut a dash, as you put it. In fact, I would have thought you despised the kind of young men who thought of nothing else.’
His spirits sank. ‘In short, you find yourself about to be shackled to a very dull dog.’
Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘You are not dull. At least,’ she amended, ‘I have never found you so.’
‘Thank you,’ he said glumly, since he didn’t believe her. For, after all, wasn’t it his very dullness that had made her propose to him in the first place? If he only had ink running through his veins, rather than red-hot blood, then she didn’t need to fear he would ravish her, did she?
‘It has never bothered me before,’ he said as they set off, ‘what anyone thinks of me. But I do not want you to find me...lacking, in any way.’ A sweat broke out on his upper lip when he realised he’d almost admitted that he didn’t like the image she carried of him, or the hopes she cherished for a bloodless union, in which she probably saw him taking a kind of brotherly role. Fortunately, he’d stopped himself in the nick of time. He must absolutely not alarm her by telling her exactly how hot his blood ran, sometimes, when his thoughts turned in her direction. Or his eyes did.
‘Edmund?’ She looked at him with concern. ‘Surely you know that I would much rather you carry on being yourself than trying to ape the antics of any of those idiots who think they are dashing. Though, actually,’ she said with a curl of contempt to her lips that made them look even more kissable than usual, ‘dashing is a good word to describe them, for they do tend to go dashing about in their high-perch phaetons, don’t they, terrifying innocent pedestrians and drivers of market carts? Or racing down to Brighton, to win a stupid wager. Or prancing about in the park on a showy piece of rubbish Papa would never have permitted in his stables. Or dressing themselves up like peacocks and strutting round with smug looks on their faces, expecting every female in the vicinity to swoon in admiration.’ She was breathing rather fast by the time she’d finished unburdening herself of her view of the male of the species.
And he was feeling even more diminished than he had when he’d handed her into his mother’s barouche.
‘Yes,’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘I would regard acting in any such way as completely frivolous.’
‘Exactly,’ she said with an approving smile. ‘You don’t strew your conversation with fatuous, insincere compliments, either, about the lustrous sheen of my hair, or the sparkle in my eyes, without once taking your own gaze higher than my...’ She made a gesture to the front of her coat.
What had she made, then, of the compliments he had paid her? How had she felt when he’d told her she looked magnificent in that gown which had been practically falling off her shoulders?
And hadn’t he told her she had lovely hair and eyes himself? In Bullock’s Museum? ‘Would you prefer it if I didn’t pay you any more compliments, then? I would not wish to make you...uncomfortable.’
She gave him a strange look, then turned her head to regard the shop windows that edged the street through which they were driving.
After a short pause during which he held his breath, she turned back to him. ‘You would not make me uncomfortable, Edmund. Because I know you would never say anything you did not mean.’
‘Never,’ he vowed on a rush of exhaled breath.
She smiled at him. In a way that made his heart turn over, as well as making him long to crus
h her to his chest and kiss her in such a way that she would know exactly how dashing he could be.
‘Because,’ she continued, ‘we are...friends again, aren’t we?’
‘Friends,’ he echoed.
‘Yes. I...I missed that. This. Very much when we...weren’t. Having someone to talk to.’
‘Talk to.’ Well, that neatly summed up exactly what was wrong between them. While she was thinking of their marriage in terms of having a friend to talk to, he was longing to get his hands on her bare flesh. To sink into that bare flesh. Over and over and over.
‘Yes. The only times that I haven’t been utterly miserable, since I came to London, were the times I spent with you.’
‘But we hardly had a polite word to say to one another.’
‘I know.’ She grinned up at him. ‘You cannot imagine how wonderful it was to just...let go of all the etiquette and be myself.’
‘Hmmm.’ Well, that was something.
‘And you always manage to make me see the funny side of things.’
So now he not only had ink running through his veins, but he was also some sort of clown?
Georgie certainly knew how to cut a man down to size.
‘At least you appear to be reconciled to the notion of marrying me,’ he said.
‘Ye...es...’
‘What is it?’ He turned to study her pensive face, ignoring the lady who was hailing him from a landau bowling along in the opposite direction. Because if Georgie had any doubts, now was the time to quash them. ‘Come now, Georgie, this was the whole point of bringing you out for a drive. So that we could talk to each other. We never had time, did we, before your stepmother burst in upon us, to settle things.’
‘Well, no, and I’m sure you didn’t want to settle things that way, did you? I mean, you had to tell her you were in the process of proposing. It was the only thing to say, wasn’t it? But, um...’
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