Page 72 of Lessons for Marquesses
“You cannot wish for death,” he said. “It will come soon enough for all of us.”
What possessed him to take her other arm and slide his hand to her shoulder, up her graceful neck and place his thumb at her stubborn chin until she was forced to look at him? Was it her character, so different than what he had imagined? Her face? Her huge, impossible eyes fighting tears? Her high brow that he wished to smooth with his fingertips? Was it the mouth he wanted to press his lips against?
To save them both a fight to the death, he said the only thing to stop her from posting the letters. “I will consider your partnership. If you will still have me.”
She blinked hard.
Rain and tears sheeted her face.
Without further thought, he wrapped his arms around her shaking body, the slender waist with the supple hip, the small of her back. The rainwater dripped from their hair, down their cheeks and noses, their mouths. He leaned in to her parted lips.
“I think I am falling in love with you,” she said.
He drew back an inch. She looked back at him with her innocence there for the taking. What did he say? Why not the truth? He was a bad man, her enemy, he would never fall in love with her.
Yes, the truth.
“Think long, George,” he said. “I am a very hard man to love.”
Her eyes darkened to grey like the surrounds battering them with rain. “Yes, I know.”
“You do?” he said with a surprised slant to his lips.
“Mm-hmm, but my parents always said that which comes easily is not worth having.”
Nicholas let her go.
Somehow, he thought as he walked Georgiana back home, somehow, he would allow her the dignity to go on once he had Farendon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Why,oh why, had she lost her mind and blurted out that she was falling in love to Mr. Wolf? In the torturous hindsight of the week following, her gaff grew to heights as humiliating as him seeing her list of twenty-two faults. A few times while he tutored her on Minion’s training, she almost brought it up. To clarify that she had been overwhelmed with gratitude at his further consideration of her offer.
Her ridiculous confession had had nothing to do with the way he had gazed so tenderly into her eyes, no. Nor the strength of his arms cradling her. Nor the shock of anticipation when he had dipped his mouth to hers, so tall, so strong, so very much a man. And she, oh God, she had felt so right in her skin. For the first time, she had felt like a woman.
He hadn’t rebuked her, laughed at her, or completely shoved her away.
Oh, who was being the bloody optimist, again? She could hear her father from the grave,He didn’t run screaming, George, therefore, you must persevere. If I had given up, your mother never would have married me.
Mr. Wolf continued teaching Georgiana the rudiments of dressing a horse, the formal training of war horses used for centuries to instill discipline and teach a horse to heed its rider without fail. And the rider to ask the horse to fulfill its duties with absolute precision.
Currently, she collected Minion’s reins to bring her up into the bit and started through the figures. Minion, ever the brat, kicked out her hind legs and zigged about a circle like an angry drunkard.
One more week and the marquess would own her mortgage. Mr. Wolf had not agreed to the partnership but pored through her ledgers in hopes of finding a loophole to fight the marquess. To help her, he had said. When the only way to save her—she was beyond merehelping—was to strike a deal and hand over thirteen hundred pounds. Now.
Her temper flamed in her chest. But no, she would not go off half-cocked again. She was learning every day from Mr. Wolf. Presence was everything. Smiles were for weaklings. The less one said, the better.
She rode Minion in a circle which ended in the shape of an egg.
And if all else failed in one’s control of their family’s famous temper,well, my, and indeedcould go to hell. A ripping ride on a horse always put one back to rights.
Someone dragged Nicholas from the Monongahela River over the forest floor for agonizing minutes and argued with the surgeon to save him. That same unknown someone tilted Nicholas’s chin forward. A splash of whiskey burned his mouth and settled in his belly, unfurling its warmth.
But Nicholas was cold. Too cold. His left arm was numb.
He had lived too meekly, accepting what was given and taken from him with the assumption that with time he would overcome. He had never had to ponder why men killed other men, without a care to each other’s pasts. There was only the present, the single urgency to end futures.
His thoughts raced. He worried he might spend the last hours of his life in madness. Caroline appeared. Fair Caroline—gold hair, green eyes, and fervent promises. But his mind could not form a complete picture of the beautiful girl, and he knew this was a dream because now he knew she had abandoned him. He hated her for bringing this death upon him.
