Page 19 of Lessons for Marquesses
Dance smaller, Georgiana. Walk slower. Shorten your steps. No winking. Hands in your lap. Close your legs. Don’t look a man in the eye. Don’t laugh. Don’t show your teeth when you smile. Don’t show teeth at all!
Georgiana bared her teeth to the moon and the scream was unleashed. Doubling over, she smothered her mouth with both hands and let it rage until her lungs emptied.
Passers-by gawked. She marched west through the waning crowd, the lights, the laughter, and chatter flickering along her path. She hadn’t spilled the awful truth of Minion being cut from the race to Charlotte or Kitty. She couldn’t admit her defeat.
When she did, what then? Crawl back to Farendon? What then? Auction her furniture? Sell her horses, one by one? Oliverhad already paid seven thousand toward her debt. She couldn’t ask for more from a man with a wife, ambitions for Prime Minister, and four daughters in need of come-outs and dowries.
She’d go down with the ship. There would be no ship.
She would sell Farendon’s doors and moldings. The Venetian marble mantels, the crested firebacks. She’d pitch a ladder to the first floor after selling the imperial staircase. She’d part with the stone facade piece by piece and live in the stables until she had to tear that down, too.
At the assembly, Georgiana had watched the dancing, the men being men, the women pinned in their gowns, and she had grown stranger, larger, until she towered like a giant over the ballroom. Every conversation she imagined was a judgment on her. Every laugh one of support for the Marquess of Eastwick.
See there, it’s Miss St. Clair. She thought she could conquer us.
What is she?
Fiction. Absolute fiction.
To walk toward the man had been a feat. She had assessed him for hours, picking apart each of his qualities like a prospective racehorse. Straight legs, excellent knees topping his muscular calves, in black wool with pewter buttons the only ornamentation. His legs broadened a few inches above into powerful thighs. His height was such that they appeared lean but put on a shorter man they’d appear too thick, squat. On a horse, they’d make record time.
His left hand troubled him. He clenched it repeatedly. Under a cream waistcoat buttoned to his stock and a shirt without frills, his chest was broad, made for drawing huge breaths. His shoulders positively made shadows over the men who approached him.
Nothing commanded but the man’s presence. With a fraction of his silent, savage power, she’d not have to say a word and allwould know her. She could be anything she wished. She could lay waste to the Marquess of Eastwick.
She had followed the gazes of the crowd searching him out through the evening. Women admired him. Her cousin Caroline had. And Georgiana had seen his unflinching appraisal of Caroline beneath his black lashes. What man didn’t admire Caroline? She was the epitome of female beauty.
A twinge struck between her shoulder blades. Not jealousy. Georgiana had never been jealous of another woman. Because she wasn’t a woman. She was…
What am I? Oh God, am I jealous?
A man skulked from the door of an inn, and though his strides were sure, Georgiana knew foxed.
“George!” the man called.
Georgiana quickened her steps away from her cousin Anthony Philips with the smutty hand and the offer toride.
“George, wait.” Anthony grabbed her arm. “Where’s that feisty aunt of yours?”
“Unhand me.”
He rolled his eyes. “I wish to apologize. I had no idea who you were back on the road.”
“Because you were drunk as you are now.”
“And by the by,” he slurred, “I’ve far prettier pieces to plow than you. If I were to, you know, wish to plow my own cousin.”
“How chivalrous of you. Now let me go.” What would the man from the Hazard Room do? She clamped her mouth shut and waited for her disgust to send him off. She attempted to will his hand away with a glare.
“Let us be friends again,” he said.
“Cousin, have I given you any inclination that I desire your company?”
“No. But I am a hell-helluva lotta fun.”
Georgiana shoved him. He stumbled backward, catching himself on a post. Pushing off it, he caught up to her again.
“You like a bit of quim?” he asked. “I’m fond of it myself. I know just the place. They’ll be more than happy to oblige a girl.”
