She tilted her head and studied him, his amber eyes now avoiding hers. “It would appear you swim quite a lot,” she murmured.
He rolled his lips in, his fingers tapping at his thighs, like he didn’t know where to put them. “I’m in my head quite a lot.”
Her palms coasted down his arms to his wrists. She slowly brought his hands to her hips and stepped closer to him. His chin dropped down, hers tilted up, their gazes locked. She gripped his biceps to keep herself from falling backwards. Falling for him.
“I don’t mind,” she said, her words barely audible.
His strong amber brows pinched.
“The nerves, the awkwardness, the stutters and stumbles,” she clarified. “If you get lost in your head and need time to come back out… I’m a very patient person, Fitz.” She had been patiently waiting her entire life to be free from her lonely existence. Being patient with her husband would be no task at all. And she found…she quite wanted to know what that patience would bring.
His lips coasted over hers. “How did we get here?” he asked, his voice soft with what sounded like awe.
She pulled away and sent him a cheeky smile. “I believe my breasts might be to blame for that.”
He stiffened against her, and she blinked, unsure of what caused the instant tension. And it wasn’t a good tension. He cleared his throat and stepped back, grabbing his shirt.
“I should probably get back to my work,” he said, throwing his shirt back over his head.
She slowly backed away. Was that hurt in his eyes? But whatever for?
“I—” He shook his head and seemed to shake away whatever upset had overcome him. “Thank you for speaking with me, Gigi,” he said softly.
And then he was sitting and picking up his quill, and she was leaving, wondering how, after experiencing something that had felt so right, she suddenly felt as though everything was wrong. But he had called her Gigi again. So she was going to hold on to that.
21
Georgiana
Georgianahadn’tseenherhusband since she’d left his study earlier. Since their incendiary connection had been doused by a bucket of cold water, one that had come out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. Apparently, Georgiana had been the one to throw it. But now he was here, with her and the rest of his family in their library. Yet, he wasn’t.
Fitz sat in an over-sized, leather armchair before the low-burning fire, adorable spectacles resting on his perfectly straight nose, and a book in his lap. He had turned the monstrosity of a chair to face the rest of them, but he was still…apart from them. He had barely acknowledged her presence.
Georgiana, Felix, and Felicity were gathered around a coffee table in the middle of the library, the pair of settees pulled back to give them plenty of room to sit on the floor around the table. His mother, Lydia, sat on one such settee observing her children while she embroidered what looked like a handkerchief.
So yes, they were all together, celebrating Christmas Eve, but…not. Georgiana glanced discreetly at her husband, who was brushing back a temperamental curl that kept falling in front of his spectacles while he read.Argh.That man. Beautiful. Awkward. Unexpected. She wished he’d join them. Join her.
Gigi. Him groaning the pet name echoed through her mind, and she shivered. She had liked that a great deal. She’d liked the entire thing a great deal. Until she had ruined it. She was all too familiar with being dismissed, with walls. When she had brought up their initial encounter in his study, him finding her there bare-breasted, he had closed himself off to her, erected a barrier, pushing her back into the lonely tower she had inhabited her entire life. She didn’t understand why.
But it also didn’t seem like it was only her he pushed away. It wasn’t the first time over the short duration she had been in his life that she had noticed he always seemed to separate himself.I’m in my head quite a lot, he’d said. Was there room for her in that anxious mind? She was starting to realize she really wanted to take up residence there.
Could two lonely souls find a shared home together? She was foolish to hope that, to risk what it meant if it couldn’t be. Her heart. It didn’t matter, though, because she was helpless against it. For the first time in Georgiana’s life, she felt seen, and with every peek into the enigma that was Fitzwilliam Jennings, the more she craved to uncover.
The man was endearingly awkward and unforeseeably filthy. The things he had whispered in Italian—Georgiana fanned herself. Thinking about her husband’s glorious cock and vulgar tongue when about to play a festive game on Christmas Eve with his family was decidedly not what she should be doing.
A cork popped, pulling her attention to the coffee table where Felicity poured a hearty measure of amber liquid into four snifters. Georgiana fought a grin. Felicity looked completely ridiculous. Her ensemble consisted of a skirt paired with a separate bodice—the bodice of which was covered in white, gray, and black feathers. And in the center of the bodice? An exceptionally crafted, stuffed goose head.
Felicity’s ugly waistcoat: the Christmas goose.
Georgiana’s grin won out and spread across her face. An ingenious idea. Felicity had won the competition, much to her bemoaning brothers’ dismay. But honestly, the woman had a floppy goose head hanging from her bodice. She deserved the win.
A shallow dish filled with raisins sat in the middle of the table, and small bowls rested in front of her, Felicity, and Felix.
“Felicity, what are you doing?” Felix asked with a huff and a jingle, his voice thick with older brother exasperation. Yes, with a huff and a jingle. Because his gold waistcoat was covered in silver bells. And strings of gold beads. And a blinding number of metallic accents. It was a little hard to look at, if Georgiana was being honest.
Felicity looked up and frowned. “What does it look like?”
“The brandy was for snapdragon. Not to drink.”
