Historical Romance June 2017 Books 1 - 4. Annie Burrows
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loose in the haft. It was a good job he hadn’t been taking a drink at the time because he had a notion he’d have just sprayed it all over the curtains. ‘You knew about my mistresses?’
She widened her eyes as though what he’d said was rather stupid. ‘Everyone in Bartlesham knows about your mistresses. People gossip about everything you do, since there is so little going on down there. And you have lived such an exciting life...’
‘Me? Exciting?’
‘Yes. First of all going off to the Scilly Isles, for all those years, which everyone said was as good as going on the Grand Tour for a young gentleman nowadays—’
‘It was nothing of the kind! My health—’
‘And then you went off to university and created a scandal by getting involved with the daughter of your bedmaker—’
‘It wasn’t a scandal! Betty was—’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was making no sense. If she knew he’d been active in that way, for so long, then she couldn’t possibly suspect him of being...
No. Of course not. Georgiana was far too innocent to know about that sort of thing. Which brought him neatly to the next point.
‘Nobody should have repeated such gossip to you, at that age. Why, you could hardly have been more than...’ Actually, she hadn’t been that much younger than Betty. Which reflection made him feel rather flushed.
‘Oh, they didn’t,’ she said blithely. ‘But I couldn’t help overhearing things, sometimes.’
Now it was her turn to blush and look uncomfortable.
The whole situation was deuced awkward. She clearly knew details about his life he wasn’t at all comfortable with her knowing.
Though he supposed that was marginally less unpleasant than having her suspect he did not find women attractive at all.
‘Well, you shouldn’t have! You should not repeat the things you’ve overheard, either, especially not to me.’
She sighed. ‘I beg pardon. I know I’m always blurting out things I shouldn’t. It’s just—well, it’s so hard not to be frank with you, now that we are talking again. I keep forgetting that we aren’t...friends any more.’
‘Of course we are friends!’ He stared at her, feeling almost as shocked as she looked. And then something flared in her eyes. A sort of wistful look. And she leaned a little closer.
But then whatever it was died.
‘No,’ she said, with a rueful shake of her head. ‘Stepmama says that single ladies cannot be friends with single gentlemen. It isn’t proper.’
He was about to say that was nonsense, when he recalled that actually, it was true. It wasn’t proper. So he clamped his mouth shut.
‘And that being so,’ she said, ‘I think you ought to return me to Stepmama now. Don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t. We still haven’t made any progress in defining what sort of man you could tolerate marrying.’
‘What, you still think I ought to draw up some sort of list?’
‘It couldn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘As a mental exercise, it would certainly help you to get your thoughts in a less chaotic state than they are in at present.’
‘My thoughts are not in a chaotic state.’
‘They are. Otherwise,’ he said, when she drew breath to object, ‘you would not think it a good idea to marry Major Gowan, nor would you be talking to a man about what mistresses he keeps whilst in the same breath implying—’
‘Implying what?’ She looked up at him in confusion.
He felt a touch confused himself.
He never blurted out what he was thinking—or to be more precise, feeling. Especially not what he was feeling. He could normally keep a cool head during any debate, no matter how heated other participants might become.
‘Never mind what I thought you were implying,’ he ended up saying, since he was definitely not going to explain that one, some men did not find women attractive, two, he’d thought she’d thought he was one of those men, three, he resented her assumption, and so on and so forth. It would take far too long and only end in embarrassment all round.
‘It is time I returned you to your stepmother.’ He’d lost track of time whilst bickering with Georgie. Any moment now his mother would be hauling some husband-hunting debutante up before him and insisting he dance with her.
‘I shall call upon you in a few days,’ he said, taking her by the elbow and steering her out of the refreshment room at a brisk pace. ‘Which will give you time to set your thoughts down on paper. And then I can see what I can do to match you up with your...ideal man.’
She shot him a look of resentment.
‘You do not need to bother.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ he said firmly. ‘If you think I’m going to have a moment’s peace, if I stand back and watch you throw yourself away on the likes of Major Gowan, then you are very much mistaken.’
‘But, Edmund—’
‘But nothing, Georgie. He’d make you miserable.’ And so would Lord Freckleton, albeit in an entirely different way.
And he didn’t want her to be miserable.
He walked her back to her stepmother, was aware she said something, and he said something back, and that people were chatting and laughing and somewhere in the background music was playing. But he was only half-aware of any of it. Because he was reeling at his last unspoken thought. He’d meant it, too, with every atom of his being, without even knowing he felt that way.
And it made no difference what she’d done, or not done in the past, or even what she thought of him now.
He couldn’t bear to think of her being miserable.
Of all the high-handed, arrogant, supercilious...men! Georgiana glared at Edmund’s back as he sauntered out of the ballroom, his mind already clearly elsewhere. She spent the rest of the evening fuming. By the time she reached their rented house, all she could remember of the ball were the moments she’d spent with him. Being lectured and dragged round and forced to drink lemonade, and lectured again, and then tossed aside as if he’d grown bored with her antics. And all whilst trailing two feet of spangled floss trimming.
Georgiana tore off her ball gown, wincing as one of the pins she’d used to repair the damage scored her ankle, kicked off her slippers and brushed her hair so vigorously that sparks crackled. When Sukey dreamily bade her a goodnight and wafted to her room on a cloud of happy reminiscences, she grunted a brief response, shut her bedroom door with exaggerated patience and then flung herself on to her bed, thumping the pillow for good measure.
He was a beast to speak to her that way!
The worst of it was more than half of what he’d said made perfect sense. Drat him. She had been foolish, thinking she might as well accept Major Gowan’s proposal—if he ever made one—simply to get the business settled.
But Edmund had no idea what it felt like to have a sword hanging over his head, or the terrible strain of being braced for the moment it finally fell.
Oh, she should have said that to him! Why hadn’t she come up with that clever analogy when it might have impressed him?
She buried her face in the pillow and screamed her frustration into it. And then, since she was never going to be able to sleep, the way she felt, she rolled off the bed and went to her window, and sat on the sill with her knees drawn up, looking out at the night sky.
As she watched the last few stars