“Would that I had done so before you ran outside with Winbow that night while the rest of us were dancing.”
“You weren’t dancing. You were stealing a kiss from Miss Cortland.”
“True.” His lips twitched. “Lovely bit of baggage was Miss Cortland. She’s married now. An older gentleman from Albany, I’ve heard. But you are right, Murphy is nothing like Harold. Bastard son of a duke. Impressive from a business standpoint. Elysium accounts for the smallest part of his wealth. Were you aware?”
“I was not,” she whispered. Why would Ben bring up Leo now?
“I would have thought you’d rid him of those terrible waistcoats.”
“You vastly overestimate my influence on Mr. Murphy. Whatever prompted you to scratch around in the dirt, Ben, I want it to stop. That part of my life I have blessedly left behind in England. There is no need for me to revisit it.”
“Don’t be cross, George.”
“Then cease poking about. Leo Murphy and I had a brief, pleasant affair. We were friends of a sort, as I was with his brother, Lord Welles, but nothing more. He was a way for me to pass the time while in London. Leo doesn’t form attachments, him being a bastard and all.” She tilted her chin, furious to even be having such a discussion, especially when she had to spend the evening sparring with her mother. “He lost interest in me some time ago. Well before Daniel was born.” The lie came smoothly off her tongue. “If he knew I’d had a child, I assure you, he wouldn’t care.”
Why must Leo haunt her thoughts? He had nearly all day. First, at Lilian’s, and then now, in what should be the safety of her own parlor.
“Or be furious at you for hiding a child from him. Which I think you’re more concerned about.”
Georgina looked away. “You don’t know him.”
“True. I don’t. Not personally. I made sure to stay out of his line of vision when I visited Elysium.”
Damn Ben.
“But I think a gentleman who went toallthe expense and subterfuge to ensure you had Beechwood Court and an income isn’t the same sort ofbastardwho would casually toss you aside. Or a child.Thatsort of man will want his son, George. I’m not sure what happened between you and Leo Murphy, nor do I need the details.”
“Good. I’ve no intention of recounting them to you. He won’t come to New York. Besides having no reason to—”
Ben raised a brow.
“—Leo is deathly afraid of water. He won’t even cross the Channel to France. He’s hardly apt to board a ship to New York.”
“Very well, George. I concede. No more talk of Leo Murphy. You are correct that it is only women who are known for changing their minds.” He stuck out his elbow. “Shall we?”
15
Leo slid his gaze around the party goers swilling champagne as if it were water. They were all expensively dressed, their clothing as fine as anything Leo had seen society wear in London. He’d heard some female patrons of Elysium decry the fashions and poor taste of their cousins in America, but Leo found no evidence of that here. The entire room fairly reeked of wealth and riches. Nothing, it seemed, could put a damper on Manhattan society’s gaiety; not a fire which had destroyed parts of the city the year before Georgina had wed Masterson, nor the near-catastrophic financial collapse that had followed.
Leo appreciated resilience. And overindulgence. He did own a gambling hell and pleasure palace, after all.
New York City, particularly Manhattan, had little in common with London other than the massive amounts of people clogging the streets. The crowds were familiar. The smell of so many bodies being pushed into much too small a space. A plethora of languages met his ears, most he didn’t recognize, but he was familiar with the lilt of the Irish because his mother had possessed the same sound to her speech.
The island of Manhattan wasn’t large, but there was still plenty of room for streets and buildings as the city expanded north. Everything about New York was raw. New. No centuries of breeding. No tedious customs in place for hundreds of years. No titles. Many of the wealthiest gentlemen in the city were self-made, of lackluster origin, and armed with only raw ambition and a work ethic. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t an upper class firmly in place. The evidence of their existence crowded the marble floor around him. Old Dutch and English families mingled with the dreaded newly monied citizens, like the Rutherfords, Georgina’s family.
The future, as Leo often told Tony, wasn’t in tenants and the rent they paid to titled landowners. Or in the landowners themselves. It was in gentlemen like Georgina’s father, Jacob Rutherford. In factories. Railways. Textile mills. Gambling hells and pleasure palaces were incredibly amusing and vastly profitable, but Leo didn’t see himself standing on Elysium’s second-floor landing into his dotage.
Particularly not given recent events.
Leo had spent the last month since his arrival studying and noting everyone and everything in New York. Georgina loved this place, and he wanted to understand why. He didn’t intentionally hide his presence in Manhattan, but neither did he announce it. Tonight would change all that.
His attendance at the grand opening of the Rutherford opera house wasn’t because Leo was enamored of opera, though he did enjoy a good Italian soprano. His first mistress, Lucia, had been an opera singer. Lovely woman, though she had a tendency for the dramatic. Tried to stab him when he ended things.
Nor was he here to gasp in awe at the ornate building done in gray stone, replete with marble and gold fixtures. The sweeping, majestic interior, painted in soothing tones of pale cream and adorned with expensive landscapes, perfectly complimented the glass dome stretching above his head with its view of the night sky, complete with dozens of sparkling stars.
Magnificent. Truly.
The champagne was nicely chilled. The oysters delicious.
