“I don’t think so. I’m not really in the mood to be flung about in anger in front of most of Manhattan. You might lose your temper and toss me into the musicians.” Her pulse beat madly in her throat.
“And I’m not in the mood for your witty banter. I wasn’t asking, Georgina.”
He flashed a charming smile. False. Slightly menacing. Pulling her close, he led her out to the middle of the floor. He held her stiffly in his arms, as if he couldn’t bear to touch her. Still, Leo moved flawlessly between the other dancers. Their bodies in perfect sync together, as if they were still back on that stupid red settee in his office.
Secretly, she’d wanted him to be an awful dancer.
“Terrible acoustics.” The roguish smile didn’t waver, though his voice rumbled like cut stone. “I do hope the echo is confined to the atrium. Mrs. Rutherford has made such an effort on her opera house. Would be a shame if it were all for naught, wouldn’t it?”
“You know I don’t like it when you do this,” she answered. Speaking of every mundane subject in the world instead of the one which was important to give his listener a false sense of security before he pounced on them. The tactic worked brilliantly if one were negotiating a stack of markers, for instance, but not when avoiding the obvious. “Please get to the point of your visit.”
“I dolikeNew York,” he continued, the blue of his eyes flat. Hard. “I can see why you’d return. I walked down Broadway Street the other day taking in the sights. I confess I had a completely different perception of the size. I suppose that’s something most women say.” He wiggled his brows at his ridiculous innuendo, but his eyes maintained their chilliness.
Georgina had to look away. “Stop it.” This was far more horrible than she’d anticipated, his blithe pretense of polite conversation.
“I’ve learned poker,” he continued, ignoring her protest. “What an interesting game. I can see why you might like it so much. I imagine you’re adept at poker because the main strategy seems to be...bluffing. You’re rather good at bluffing. All that time in London after returning from the countryside. Flitting about throwing garden parties and taking tea with my stepmother and sisters.” He swung her around hard. “Bluffing is not exactly a lie, I suppose, more an omission of the truth. A reluctance to inform others. Not even the irony of meeting my father and having him help you hide his grandchild shook your façade. Brava, Georgina.”
“You aren’t being fair,” she hissed back at him as her skirts caught around his legs. “You made yourself perfectly clear, Leo. No children. No bastards. You didn’t want me.”
“Who says I want you now?” He smiled down at her.
Georgina looked down at his chest. The words hurt her more than she wished.
“Tell me, did it amuse you? Avoiding me as you did? Refusing to even allow me to speak to you? Taking tea with my sisters or playing cards with Tony, all the while knowing you’d given birth to my child?”
“How do you know he’s yours?”
His eyes glittered like sapphires. Such beautiful eyes. So full of disgust for her.
“Others may assume you to be something of a lightskirt, but I know you are not, Georgina. I suspect the necklines and outrageous behavior,” he said, “are merely punishment. First, for your parents—I suppose that’s what got you into enough trouble to wed Masterson. A riverboat gambler, I’ve heard.” He gave a careless shrug. “Your poor behavior continued because London didn’t welcome you, and why should they, given your pedigree and waspish tongue? Lastly me, of course. I was never only your friend, Georgina. I always meant to have you. But I called you a shiny bauble and was treated to displays of you flaunting your breasts at Elysium for any man to admire them.” He pulled her close against his chest. “But there were no other lovers.”
Georgina pressed her lips together. When he laid things out in such a way, she sounded like a child throwing a tantrum. “Not in London, perhaps.”
Leo’s fingers dug into her waist at her taunt. “I might never have known I had a child.”
“Whom you didn’t want.”
“If Marcus Barrington hadn’t left me a deathbed confession. How he owed a debt to Masterson, of all people, and in trying to be a better man, had found a friendless widow he could help.”
Georgina stumbled, her toe catching in her skirts. Leo let her nearly fall before he caught her. Marcus Barrington had been so kind to her. Helped her. And now he was dead, probably despising her for her deception as much as his son did.
“Oh, you didn’t know? The Duke of Averell is dead.Marcus. Tony is now the duke and very much alive. That was the news the messenger from Cherry Hill brought to me the last time we saw each other, when I was trying”—his grip tightened, and she struggled—“to mend things between us.”
“You asked me to be your mistress. Hardly mending, Leo, dooming me to the same sort of existence your mother had.”
Leo’s jaw hardened, but he kept the smile on his lips. “I did not, Georgina.” He spun her again. “You havenoidea what I meant to say because youleft.” He spat out the word as if it were poisoning him.
“I had to leave. I was going home to New York.”
“Where you had conveniently sent my child.”
“Yes. I didn’t want Harold to know. He’d threatened me and—youwould have sent me to some apothecary.”
Leo swung her around again. There was nothing graceful in his movements now, only a simmering hostility. “You knew what you were to me. Youknew. And you didn’t tell me. You left.”
“Yes.” A decision she’d regretted the moment she was on theBetty Sue. “I made a decision.”
“Decisions. Ones you took upon yourself to make for both of us. I know why you kept our child a secret from Haroldand the rest of London.But not me.” The rasp of his voice had gone raw. Broken.
