“You said it yourself, she’s a lady,” Rafferty growled.
“She doesn’t care.”
“She would, sooner or later.”
Jenkins made a disgusted noise and went back out the kitchen door, slamming it behind him, and Rafferty cursed. Everyone was disgusted with him, almost as much as he was himself. He had to get over the deadly case of the doldrums before all the people who worked for him quit.
He reached for his glass of brandy, then shoved it away. His temper was none too sweet already, and the brandy only made it worse. He was happy, dammit. Everything had gone his way, and he was finally free to continue his peaceful country life.
Maybe he needed a woman, but he couldn’t think of any that appealed to him apart from a certain long-legged, golden-haired, child-woman that he couldn’t stop thinking about. Maybe he’d become a goddamn monk. He heard the sound of the carriage through the thick stone walls of the farmhouse, but he didn’t stir from his place. Jenkins would get rid of whoever it was, leaving him in peace.
He closed his eyes and then opened them again as the heavy door was thrust open, and the woman he loved, his earthly nemesis, burst into the room.
“Rafferty!” she cried. “I thought we’d never find you. Martina isn’t the best person at giving directions, and then your grandmother grew peckish, and we’re here much later than we thought we would be.”
She set the large basket she was carrying down on the table and began to unpack it. “I wasn’t sure what food you might have, but I brought eggs and Bertha made you a loaf of bread, but I saw you have chickens and I’m so glad! I adore chickens. The coachman is bringing in the rest of the supplies and?—”
“Did you say my grandmother?” He broke through her spate of words. She was nervous—she always talked too much when she was nervous.
“Mr. Jenkins is bringing her in. She is very cross with you for just taking off, and why didn’t you tell me you were the grandson of a duke? Doesn’t that make you an honorable or something?”
“Honorable is the last word to reply to me,” he said, dourly, rising from his seat, just as his grandmother’s tiny figure appeared, accompanied by Jenkins, two footmen bearing firewood and baskets, presumably of food, and a tall, thin stranger took up the tail of the procession.
“There you are, Jamie,” the dowager duchess greeted her errant grandson “You’ve been remarkably hard to find.”
Georgie was busy unpacking the baskets and boxes until the table was laden with food. “Do you have a cook?” she asked brightly. “Bertha has been teaching me, but I still have a lot to learn, though I expect I can manage something for dinner.”
Rafferty ignored her, focusing on the stranger. “And who the hell are you?” he demanded.
The man look like he’d been bitten by a snake. “I am the Reverend Oswald Pettiforce and I would remind you to watch your language. There are ladies present.”
“Oh, we’re used to it,” Georgie said cheerfully.
“What are you doing here?” Rafferty demanded.
“He’s here to marry us, of course,” Georgie said.
If he didn’t know her so well, he wouldn’t have seen the traces of anxiety in her beautiful blue eyes, and part of him melted at the sight. He steeled himself. “No,” he said flatly.
“We’ve got a special license,” she said.
“I don’t care.”
She looked as if she’d been slapped in the face, and she set down the ham she’d been holding. “All right,” she said, and she walked out the door into the cold night air.
“You idiot,” his grandmother said, as the heavy door closed behind Georgie. “That girl is worth ten of you.”
“I know it. That’s why I’m not going to marry her.”
“So now you’re noble and self-sacrificing. She doesn’t want a good man, an honorable man. She wants you.”
Picking up his glass of brandy, he flung it against the fireplace. The dowager duchess didn’t even blink.
“Don’t you understand,” he said, in a tight, angry voice. “I’d destroy her. She’ll be trapped out in the country, shunned by the ton and possibly her entire family. I can’t ask her to do that. Better to break her heart now and get it over with.”
“And what about you? I know you’re in love with the girl—it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“I’ll survive,” he said grimly. “The best thing I could do for her is to let her go, no matter what I might feel.”
