Lord, but the girl could ride—astride or sidesaddle, she outrode them all.
Hart hung back at a distance, watching her, observing her interaction with her guardian. She usually rode out with all her family, Sinc had said, but Lady Rose had left London with her long-lost husband. Lady Lily too had gone to the country with her husband.
Georgiana had been quite alone when he’d first come across her in Gloucestershire, five years before. Quite frighteningly alone, he’d realized in retrospect, with nobody to care for her or protect her, except for the dubious protection of the local squire who’d told the locals not to interfere with her.
According to Sinc’s sister, she hadn’t even known she had family.
She had family now.
He watched her racing her uncle, winning the race—lord, but that stallion was fleet—and throwing back herhead and laughing at something he said. She seemed to laugh easily, with family, with friends. Though not with him. Never with him.
She and her uncle walked their mounts quietly for a time, seeming to be discussing something serious. Was she telling her uncle about the night before? And if so, what was she saying? He hoped her uncle was backing Lady Salter.
She leaned over and pinched a few leaves off a bush, crushing them between her hands and smelling them as she talked to her uncle. Did she realize how sensual she was or was that a discovery that still lay ahead of her? Of them.
Her zest for life—her enjoyment of small, simple things—fascinated him.
Hart was solitary by nature. He had few friends. He’d learned young that most people wanted to be friends with a duke or the heir of a duke, not so much with Hart himself. Who Hart was, what he thought, what opinions he had were almost immaterial. They wanted the duke, not Hart.
She most emphaticallydidn’twant the duke. But last night she’d kissed Hart in a way that had rocked him to his foundations. She’d kissed Hart, not the duke—he could tell the difference.
He sat quietly on his horse, watching her, feeling a little like a voyeur; unable to take his eyes off her, unable to make himself leave.
He would have joined them, except he wasn’t yet ready to talk to her guardian. He needed to get everything in place first.
Chapter Nine
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.
—JANE AUSTEN,EMMA
They waited for the duke to call. George had gone for her usual morning ride with Cal. She missed the company of Lily and Rose, but still, it was good of Cal to come out.
She’d told him what had happened the previous night. His lips had thinned, but he hadn’t said much to the point. Cal was often like that. A man of action rather than words. leaving her with no idea what he really thought.
And when they’d arrived home, Aunt Agatha was waiting, a silver dragon lady breathing brimstone and betrothals. “At least you’re not wearing those disgraceful breeches,” she said the moment George walked in the door. “Run upstairs and change into something pretty, something worthy to receive the addresses of a duke in.”
George did think of changing into her oldest breeches, and went as far as pulling them out of the chest. But then she thought of the way he would look at her down that long, superior nose of his, and changed her mind.
She put on a dress—the plainest one she owned. She would not dress up for him.
She paced around the house, rehearsing in her mind what she was going to say to him. The trouble was, apart from “No, I won’t marry you,” she didn’t know what else she could say.
If he, like Aunt Agatha, pointed out her unseemly behavior, she couldn’t deny it. If he wanted an explanation, she had none—none that she cared to speak aloud, that is.
According to Aunt Agatha, he was being extremely gallant in offering for her, and George could see that, by some lights, that might be true. Only she had a deep dark suspicion that he’d engineered the situation. He’d sent that footman in to call her away from the concert.
And wasn’t it a very strange coincidence that he’d started kissing her just before the break for supper? Had he known everyone would come out then, and find George wrapped around him?
The flaw in that reasoning was that he couldn’t possibly have known that George would react to his kisses the way she had. And if she hadn’t, if she had pushed past him and walked away, as she’d intended, nothing would have happened.
No matter how George looked at it, it kept coming back to being her fault.
Aunt Agatha argued that if she didn’t agree to the betrothal, the duke would be held to be a scoundrel and a seducer. But Aunt Agatha would make any argument that would achieve her aim. She was determined that a Rutherford girl would marry the duke, and George, unsatisfactory as she was, was the only one left.
Aunt Dottie did suggest—very quietly so her sister couldn’t hear—that George could always agree to the betrothal, and later, when the dust had settled, she could call it off. Girls were allowed to break betrothals; only men could not—well, they could, but then they’d be regarded as dishonorable scoundrels whose word of honor could not be trusted.
A man’s word of honor was held to be almost sacred, but if a woman gave her word, she wasn’t taken seriously.Because only men—onlygentlemen—had a sense of honor. Apparently.
