Peter understood now what Selina had meant about talking to Lady Georgiana Cleeve.
They’d made a little party as they wandered the riverbank: Lady Georgiana with her hand on Peter’s arm, Selina and Lydia just behind them. Lady Georgiana’s mother, the Countess of Alverthorpe, made up the rear, flanked by a truly startling number of maids and footmen. The Earl of Alverthorpe had, fortunately, not deigned to join them—in fact, he had scarcely acknowledged Peter at all, a fact that Peter found he didn’t much mind.
His impression of this whole project had risen slightly when he and Selina’s path had intersected with that of the Cleeves and Lydia Hope-Wallace. Lady Georgiana—though precisely as young as he’d feared—was almost unnervingly lovely, and shesmiled at him brightly enough to rival the sun reflecting off the Serpentine as he’d approached. Lydia, for her part, had looked a bit green, but she too was a beauty, all red hair and neat curves beneath her trim walking dress.
Then they’d all started trying to make conversation.
“And are you enjoying your first Season out, Lady Georgiana?” Peter asked. Damn, he had already asked that. Would she notice? Maybe she wouldn’t notice.
“Oh yes,” she said, and she gave him that same brilliant smile. Her teeth were perfect, he noted distantly. Literally perfect. She could have been an artist’s model for teeth. She could turn a tidy sum if she were to sell them.
No one else said anything. Peter tried to think of a remark less terrifying thanHave you considered selling your teeth?
Selina piped up—with a kind of clenched-jaw cheer—from behind them. “His Grace too is fairly new to the Season, Lady Georgiana. He’s only just arrived in London these last two years.”
“Has he?” said Lady Georgiana, turning wide cornflower-blue eyes to Selina. “But wherever did he come from?”
Selina closed her eyes briefly. Peter thought she might be praying.
“From New Orleans,” Peter said to Lady Georgiana.
She turned her head slowly to regard him. “I’ve never heard of that. Is it in Sussex?”
“Er,” he said. “No. It’s a city in Louisiana. In America.”
“How fascinating,” she said, blinking rapidly. Her eyelashes were long enough to create a small breeze.
“Most recently I have come from Cuba, which is an island in the Caribbean.” His voice sounded tinged with desperation.
“An island.” Georgiana gave a knowing nod. “England is an island too. Or, wait, is it? Or is that Great Britain? I alwaysforget.” A small line appeared between her exceptional eyebrows. “I am all thumbs when it comes to geology.”
He attempted to parse the last several sentences.
“Great Britain,” said Lydia hoarsely, “is the island.”
Peter turned to her and attempted to smile.Make her comfortable,Selina had said. What would make her more comfortable? “Have you done much traveling, Miss Hope-Wallace?”
“No,” she whispered, staring down at her boots.
“Haveyoutraveled?” asked Lady Georgiana. Peter turned back to her and realized that she was addressing him.
“I seem to have spent most of the last decade going from one island to another,” he said.
She appeared stunned by this. “There aremoreislands? How many?”
“I don’t mean to imply that I have visited all the islands in the world,” Peter said hastily. Was she jesting? Surely she had to be jesting.
“Allthe islands in theworld?”
“I—” He honestly didn’t know how to respond. “No. I have not been to all the islands in the world. I have been to several islands in the Caribbean. Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados. I spent some time in Haiti after the revolution to learn about self-government.”
“How many islandsarethere in the world?” murmured Lady Georgiana dreamily. “There must be at least…” She paused, looked around, and then said triumphantly, “Seven!”
Peter looked desperately to Selina. If she was laughing, then surely he too could laugh.
She wasn’t laughing. She looked as though she were experiencing physical pain.
“Haiti,” she said, voice brittle. “That is the former French colony Saint-Domingue, is it not?”
