Page 98 of Ne'er Duke Well
Selina opened her mouth, then closed it again.Fancy meeting you here, she thought, with a hint of hysteria.Do you prefer erotic poetry or explicit memoir?
Georgiana, it seemed, did not find it similarly difficult to summon the spoken word. When she spoke, her voice was devoid of its usual charming bafflement.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I had written to Laventille to ask him to meet me here, but I would rather speak to you in any case.”
Selina paused briefly to take that in.
ToLaventille? How did Georgiana even know Laventille? And where were the teeth and the blinking and the non sequiturs?
Something peculiar was going on, and Selina did not enjoy the feeling of being the last to know what.
“I am here to apologize,” Georgiana said, “and to warn you. I know about you. I know you run Belvoir’s and the Venus catalog.”
“You—” Selina couldn’t find the words.Georgiana Cleeveknew? Lord Alverthorpe’s daughter? It made some kind of sense, she supposed—Alverthorpe was one of Nicholas’s political enemies, one of the people she’d suspected of starting the rumors in the first place. But she never would have imagined that Georgiana—sweet, lamb-like, ringleted Georgiana—might side with her father in opposition to Belvoir’s and what it stood for.
“I discovered your connection to Belvoir’s in my financial inquiries,” Georgiana continued, “because I wanted to know who was paying for my novels.”
Selina could not make sense of the words.
“You—” She could not apprehend it. “You write novels?”
“I’ve written six in the last two years. The Venus catalog has stocked them all. Three differentnoms de plume.” She provided the names, and Selina gaped.
“But those—but those are—”
“Scandalous?” said Georgiana. Her curls bobbed as she tilted her head to the side. “Then I suppose I am in fit company.”
“I was going to say excellent!”
For a moment, Georgiana’s eyes widened. Her face took on a cast of puzzled bemusement. “I’m sure I do not understand,” she said, her voice sweet, her hands clasped together in front of her.
And then the expression fell away. “I’m not sorry,” she said, “for lying to theton. But I am sorry for what I’m about to tell you.”
It had been a ruse. This whole time. The wide blank blue eyes and the ludicrous comments and—
And Peter had known, or at least suspected. He’d said there was more to Georgiana than met the eye. He’d stopped courting her, suddenly and without explanation.
“Lady Georgiana, I do not mean to offend, but what the devil are you trying to say?”
“For the last several months, I have attempted to uncover who owns Belvoir’s because my father has taken it into his head to bring down the library. He found—” Georgiana winced, looking pained. “He found three of my novels in my bedchamber. He did not know they were mine, but once he saw the contents and the Belvoir’s bindings, that was more than enough.”
“Why—”
“He’s searched our rooms since we were children, all three of us. He has a very particular idea of how the Cleeves should behave. My brothers… he beat them into the very model of English peers, hunting and riding and fucking.”
Selina blinked, taken aback despite herself at the word emerging from behind Georgiana’s perfect teeth.
“And I,” Georgiana continued, “was to be the ideal wife. Silent. Beautiful. Uncomplaining, no matter what my husband said or did, because he held the purse strings, and I held nothing at all.” Her expression was set in tense, furious lines. “To hell with that. I wrote my novels. My mother helped me play the fool so no one—most especially not my father—would ever suspect I was more than an empty-headed doll. And I was going to get out. I was going to run away, and make a home for myself, withmymoney andmynovels, and I was never going to see him again.”
Selina’s heart was in her throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Georgiana. Tell me how I can help.”
Georgiana gave a brisk shake of her head. “I don’t need any help. I am doing fine on my own. But after my father found the novels, I set myself upon the path of finding the owner of Belvoir’s, so that I could warn her. I thought”—she looked at Selina, her blue eyes piercing—“I thought it must be a woman. You cannot imagine how afraid I was for you. For what my father will do to you now that he knows.”
Selina felt cold and sick. “He knows about me?”
“He does. It’s—it’s my fault. I went to the bank—I pretended I had no idea why the Belvoir’s promissory note had come to me and convinced them to send it back to the person who had signed it. That was how I found your man of business and then—well, then I traced him back to you.
“I was a coward.” Georgiana’s face looked almost pleading. “I wrote you a letter, warning you that you were on the point of discovery and that my father was behind the rumors. I should have come to you in person, I know I should have—but I was tooafraid to reveal myself. I wrote you an anonymous note and put it out for the post, and I did not know my father had set a servant to intercept any letters that my mother and I tried to send.”
