Page 54 of When the Marquess Was Mine
Rob gave a harder-than-necessary pull on the penknife and split the quill in half. With a curse he flung it aside and got a new one. Tom retired to the far side of the room, still arguing under his breath and drinking his own glass of port. Rob ignored him and uncapped his ink.
There was only one thing he could do for Georgiana now, and he did it, though it gave him no pleasure. Then he drank the port and went to bed, and tried to forget the golden-haired temptress with laughing green eyes down the hall, and how soon she might be another man’s wife.
Chapter 18
The journey back to London took the better part of three days, most of which passed without a word spoken. Nadine seemed to know there was nothing to say, and thankfully held her tongue. Georgiana caught the girl’s dark eyes on her from time to time, and knew Nadine wondered what had happened.
“Are you all right, m’lady?” the maid finally asked as they reached the outskirts of London.
“Perfectly,” Georgiana murmured, her cheek resting against the window of the travel chaise Major Churchill-Gray had hired. Normally she almost hung out the window, eagerly watching the spectacle of town unspooling past their carriage. Today she saw nothing beyond the glass.
“I expect I’m not to mention Lord Westmorland,” Nadine went on.
Georgiana flinched. “Please don’t.”
“He did seem a decent gentleman,” Nadine said after a moment. “Are you certain he’s all bad and hateful? Angus said—”
Georgiana made a violent motion, and quickly stopped. Angus would have seen Rob holding her, almost kissing her, in the pond. He would have seen her captivated and enthralled by Rob. “No, he’s not hateful. But it’s still a secret. Best not to speak of him at all.”
“No, m’lady,” murmured Nadine. She twisted a handkerchief, the linen stark against her dark fingers. “But if Lady Sidlow were to ask me, what should I say? She’ll turn me off if she catches me in a lie.”
Georgiana raised her head. “You’ve lied in the past.”
Nadine’s lips compressed. “About buying Minerva Press novels and gossip sheets, which Lady Sidlow reads herself. She wouldn’t kick up over that. But you spending hours alone in a gentleman’s bedroom... She’d be upset.”
Georgiana barely even noticed the tidbit that Lady Sidlow read the same sensational novels she did. “I won’t let her turn you off,” she told the maid. “Please don’t mention anything about... him. Say you don’t know or don’t remember what I did.” She sighed. “If Lady Sidlow grows suspicious, I’ll be in far worse trouble than you.”
“She can’t sackyou,” muttered Nadine.
“I won’t let her. If I must, I’ll confess it was my doing alone,” Georgiana promised. “But it would be enormously helpful if you never mentioned anything, either.”
The maid’s face eased. “Thank you, m’lady. I don’t want to be sent back to Yorkshire.”
Georgiana shuddered. She’d lie, steal, and cheat to avoid being sent home to her brother’s house, and if Lady Sidlow gave notice in a fit of outrage, that’s where she would end up. “Nor do I.”
Lady Sidlow was not in a good temper when they reached Cavendish Square. “What do you mean, rushing around the country?” she scolded as footmen carried in Georgiana’s trunks and Nadine went to prepare a bath, after the long, dusty journey. “I thought you were to stay in Derbyshire another fortnight at least!”
“I was ready to return sooner.” Georgiana took off her bonnet. “One might think you didn’t want me back.”
Lady Sidlow’s mouth pursed up. She was forever finding fault with everything Georgiana said and did—too exuberant, too energetic, too wild. She had always been so, but ever since Georgiana had sneaked out to find Eliza a few months ago, there had been a permanent cloud over Lady Sidlow’s chaperonage. She was far more suspicious and less tolerant of anything impulsive or high-spirited, and Georgiana had counted escaping her company as one of the most prized benefits of marriage. She’d jumped at Kitty’s invitation to Derbyshire for a respite.
“You’d better learn a more modest and compliant demeanor before you are married, Georgiana. This forward way of speaking and behaving will not endear you to Lord Sterling.”
That was the exact wrong topic to mention. Georgiana paused in the doorway of the morning room, and turned back. “Lady Sidlow, I begin to think ‘modest and compliant’ means ‘silent and subservient’ to you. If that is the case, I must tell you it will never happen.”
Lady Sidlow’s nostrils flared. She had quite a prominent nose, and Georgiana was sure the woman knew how dramatic this expression looked. “And will Lord Sterling approve of that?”
Sterling again. The unfairness of having to change her manner to suit Sterling’s preferences combined with Georgiana’s guilt over the last fortnight with Rob to push her temper to the boiling point.
“Well, it won’t be a surprise to him,” she said defiantly. Lady Sidlow’s jaw dropped. “Sterling has known me since I was six years old! I have always been this way. It doesn’t seem to have shocked him thus far.”
Lady Sidlow clucked in disapproval. “What men find charming in a girl, they find less so in a wife. Lord Wakefield directed me to see you were prepared for marriage. I would be remiss if I didn’t warn you to mend your ways before you give your husband a disgust of you.”
Then he can find another fiancée. It was on the tip of her tongue; she very nearly said it aloud. And that, more than Lady Sidlow’s words, stopped Georgiana’s outrage cold.
“If you no longer wish to undertake the challenge of advising me, I will write to my brother and ask him to find a new chaperone,” she said.
It was a low blow. First, by reminding Lady Sidlow, a widowed countess whose spendthrift husband had left her very little, that she was barely more than a paid companion. Second, because Lady Sidlow was extremely well compensated and would never relinquish the position before she had to, no matter her threats to resign the post. Georgiana knew her brother paid for not only this house in fashionable Cavendish Square with its full complement of servants, but also the carriage and all Lady Sidlow’s bills, from the furrier to the modiste. Georgiana had once overheard Lady Sidlow tell a friend of hers that she wouldn’t have taken the post but that Wakefield begged her to take Georgiana off his hands. Georgiana knew the truth was that Lady Sidlow had approached Wakefield, playing on her friendship with Georgiana’s late mother, and asked for the position to spare herself having to beg her late husband’s nephew for an income.
