“There’s a dog,” he said instead, “in the Serpentine. There’s a little dog on a branch, and I’m just going to retrieve it. No one will see.”
Selina threw out a hand at their surroundings. “Peter! I understand your concern. I’m sure it will float free, or someone else will secure it. But it cannot beyou! Everyone in the Park will see. There are a hundred people within eyeshot right now, and another thousand who will hear about it in the papers tomorrow.”
“Surely the circulation is higher than—”
“Peter!”
He liked the way she could shout in a whisper. He liked his name on her lips, and he liked her lips, and he needed to throw himself into the river before his physical reaction to her proximity became any more obvious.
“I’ll be quick,” he said, backing another step away. “No one will notice. Maybe you can make a distraction across the Park. Sing a ballad. Do you know ‘Rosemary Lane’?”
She launched herself at him and caught his arm, the warmth of her fingers palpable through her gloves and his coat sleeve. “Peter, for heaven’s sake. You are not taking this seriously! Do you notwantthe guardianship? Is that what this is about? You want Lord Eldon to dismiss your suit?”
He tugged his arm back, and she came with it, pulling their bodies within inches.
He couldn’t have made himself step away from her for all the world. Instead, he reached up and closed his hand around her shoulder. Her lips parted, and she took a quick, gasping breath. Her gaze fell to his mouth. His groin tightened in response, and so did his fingers on her arm.
“I’m taking this seriously,” he said. “You have no idea how seriously I am taking this or what I would do for my brother and sister.”
She licked her lips. He felt the inches between them like a physical thing.
“Then why”—her voice was soft and he fought the desire to lean into her words, intoher—“then why do you do this? Do you not think before you act—about what others will do? What they will say?”
Reckless.He could hear his father’s voice in his mind as clearly as if the man were not six years dead.Selfish. Thoughtless.
Damn his father, and damnhim, for hearing the words so many times and never backing down. It had become almost a badge of honor—to be precisely what his father accused him of being.
He was reckless. He took the things he wanted, and he wanted his brother and sister. He would take Freddie and Lu because he damned wellknewhe could protect them better than a stranger the courts had given them to. And if when he thought about them, he also thought about Morgan, and Louisiana, and the way Morgan had looked before he got sick, swimming like a silver-limned dolphin in the bayou—well. Peter already knew he was a selfish bastard. He’d known that for a long time.
A thousand words boiled in him as he stared at Selina. Hedidwant the children. Hedidmean to get the lord chancellor on his side.
He wanted too much.
“There’s a dog,” he said finally. “I’m not going to leave the dog in the water.”
He watched her throat bob as she swallowed, and he realized he was still gripping her shoulder. He pulled back his hand, let it fall to his side.
“All right,” she said, and then she started to pluck at the fingers of her gloves. “All right. You walk with Georgiana.I’llget the dog.”
Christ! Georgiana. He’d forgotten her completely. He looked back to where she’d been standing and saw that she’d wandered closer to the bank with her maid. Her gaze was still on the river—presumably on the scrap of wet fluff gently meandering down the Serpentine.
He turned back to Selina, who had pulled off her gloves and crouched, at work on her half boots.
“For God’s sake, Selina, you don’t mean to—”
She raised challenging eyes to his. “What? Go into the water?”
“In a word, yes.”
He could see her jaw tighten. “I mean to stop you from hurling yourself into scandal once again.”
“By hurling yourself into a river instead?”
She had one boot off. “Yes, if that’s what it takes! I don’t have anyone I need to impress. I don’t have”—her voice shook—“anyone who needs me. Freddie and Lu don’t need you to rescue a wet puppy, they need you to act like the ninth Duke of Stanhope.”
“Well, I needyounot to drown in the Serpentine,” he heard himself bite out. He could barely recognize his tone, barely recognize the anger swirling inside him. He knew she was right. Heknew, in the stretched-thin part of himself that was so damned tired of trying to be what he was supposed to be, that her counsel was sound.
But this goddamned society—this goddamnedcountry—cared more for the state of his hat and his boots than a living animal.
