Page 18 of Lessons for Marquesses
It continued on in René Durand’s tongue, “Who knows what you would get along with the ability to appreciate a jest. Perhaps the pox. Or you might lose that magnificent head of hair.”
It grinned, gesturing at Nicholas’s hair. “Rather have the pox, wouldn’t you? I would.”
Nicholas dug his fingers into his left palm until the numbness shifted to pain. “Who are you?”
“Ah! Vous êtes français.” It extended its hand. “Je suis George.”
“I’m not French,” he replied tightly in English, ignoring George’s outstretched hand.
George dropped his arm and smiled. “My,” this George breathed.
“My?Mywhat?”
Eyes widening, George shrugged. “Just a—amy.”
Nicholas wrenched his shoulder. Maybe it had been too soon to return. His rage had moved closer to the surface. But Georgiana St. Clair had needed to be dealt with.
George was persistent, hanging close to his side, and Nicholas was helpless to leave.
It snapped his control. “How old are you, George?”
“Twenty.”
The same age as René Durand when Nicholas had killed him.
He peered at George’s cheek, turning for a better view when a cursory glance showed nothing requiring a razor.
George’s mouth split in awe as his gaze found Nicholas’s scar. It ran from his temple to chin, a souvenir of a fight to the death in a nameless forest. The first time Nicholas’s mother had seen his scar, a woman who derided the habit of swooning, she had crashed sideways into her pack of lapdogs.
George nodded to his left cheek. “Pirates?”
If Nicholas smiled, the scar would draw his mouth like the macabre strings of a puppet. He could wipe away George’s childish curiosity and get the youth to leave him the hell alone.
So, he smiled. “Yes.”
George’s eyes rounded. “And you were the victor, of course.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, any man who’d dare givethat, to you, must be dead.”
George was made of stronger stuff than most but where were the youth’s friends? If he wasn’t a ghost, that was. Young men of George’s age should have been at the tables, drinking until they tossed their accounts on the street. There were skirts to ruck and a moon to howl at. Yet here was George, stuck to Nicholas like a leech.
This thing, with its fine clothes and female face, was an outcast. He had marked Nicholas as the same.
“George, have I given you any inclination that I desire your company?”
A shadow passed across George’s impossible eyes. He lifted a finger with a cavalier smile. “How right you are, sir. You’ve beenmore than tolerant. I shall take my leave. But first, thank you for the honor of your company.”
George bowed. He looked left and right as if unsure how to exit a cut, and turned around instead.
Nicholas watched his slim form slip through the crowd. Why had George sidled up to him? He hadn’t asked Nicholas his name, as if he already knew it. Their meeting, on further study, seemed not by chance. He had the impression of being chosen.
Nicholas tossed his glass to the potted plant and followed George outside.
CHAPTER SIX
Georgiana jumpedthe three steps to the street, bursting into the night with a scream wedged in her throat. She had shoved it down since leaving the clerk of the course’s office, and like her pride, it was thick, jagged, and untenable. Why had she talked to the man again? Why had she thought she could be amusing or, as she was learning, acceptable to anyone outside her home? No, since her father’s death, she hadn’t been acceptable there either.
