Page 139 of Lessons for Marquesses
Nicholas continued to face the dais. “She wasnotmy beloved.”
She faltered. “Your Majesty?—”
“No. Your Majesty, the ring upon her finger is the Margate Ruby, given by me, in a proposal of marriage. Which she accepted. Which her guardian, Lord Acomb, approved.”
The court muttered in surprise.
The monarch, presiding over this formality turned spectacle, looked to Georgiana. The expression with which he regarded her was a mix of pity and awe. “We will take this matter under consideration. Until then, Miss St. Clair, you will leave. Lord Eastwick, we would speak to you further in private.”
The king rose from the chair of state, his subjects descending in deference. Except Georgiana, who stood riveted and regarding Nicholas.
I am sorry, she mouthed.I am so sorry.
The king noticed Georgiana’s slight. Thankfully bestowing royal munificence, His Majesty waited for his robe to be adjusted, a door to be opened, and slipped from the presence room.
Braunstone approached Nicholas with a sober nod. “Quite favorable, my lord. Indeed, it is.”
“At what cost?” he said to himself but more to Georgiana still rooted in place.
“My lord?”
Nicholas looked to his lawyer. “I said, at what cost? My betrothed has been forced to come forth with a harrowing, most painful secret. Unless I am to purchase every paper and broadside in the land, they will tear her family apart. Even then, I cannot stop their gossip in their homes and gatherings.”
Braunstone’s brows rose. “My lord, I am certain in light of these proceedings, no one would fault you for rescinding your offer of marriage.”
Nicholas looked to Georgiana but she was gone.
She’d had the power to alter the course of his life, the lives of the men he had killed. She also had the power to unveil the man inside him who existed without hatred.
“Well.” He bit the inside of his cheek as Miss Charlotte Philips had once instructed Georgiana.
“My lord?”
“Not wise to keep your king waiting, is it?” Nicholas left the presence room.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Fifteen Days Later
Farendon Estate
Georgiana treaddown the stairs with her trunk while Rupert creaked beside her with a crate of books. In the reception hall, Charlotte directed men who hauled furnishings into the house. As Georgiana prepared to quit her home, Mr. Christie’s men had arrived to return fourteen rooms’ worth of furniture. Nicholas had purchased it all at such an ungodly sum that not one piece had been lost to a higher bidder.
The desk graced by Henry VIII had also been returned.
“Do you see this?” Oliver ranted from the study.
Her cousin directed his outrage to Carlton, his new secretary. A physician had ordered Oliver to shell out the funds for an assistant in consideration of the pains in his chest. Also prescribed were daily walks, a reduction in spirits, and contemplative reading, preferably poetry.
“Do I not read enough?” Oliver had fumed over his brandy. “Must I now read claptrap verse on flowers? I bid good riddance to it after Oxford.”
Oliver had avoided walks after his first ended in a raging attack of gout. But he still raged, this time over the relentless reports on Georgiana’s testimony.
“Take a letter, Carlton,” Oliver boomed. “We’ll have a retraction within a fortnight.”
What good were retractions? At first, the reports were factual, but as the story churned through the drawing rooms of London and the public demanded more, the papers and broadside authors were more than happy to oblige for more pennies. Sensational lies were fabricated. Edmund had seen Georgiana’s ravishment through. In some reports, he had done so in front of her father after having tied him up. Others said she wasn’t his daughter at all but a son who donned a gown to defend his lover, Lord Eastwick.
Against all of them, Oliver was in the process of bringing suit, and poor Carlton staggered each evening from the study to take sustenance after combing through every publication Oliver could get his hands on. After dinner, he went back to work.
