“I’ll be a bluestocking, and hold salons, and I’ll have no use for men at all.”
“It would be a shame if you never were a mother.”
She felt the pang, and she flinched. “I intend to be an eccentric intellectual. There’s no saying I can’t have a baby on my own.”
“You need a man for that.”
“I suppose they have their uses,” she said with a sniff.
He laughed then, and her heart warmed. “If any man tries to take advantage of you, I’ll throw him out on his ear.”
“You won’t be around.”
He didn’t deny it. He was watching her, and his eyes were warm in the cool night air, and something snapped inside Georgie.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said briskly. “Since I’m going to want a baby and you aren’t going to let any man near me, then you can do the honors.”
If she’d managed to startle him, he didn’t show it. “I’m not in the habit of leaving my bastards around the place.”
“I’ll take good care of her.”
“What if it’s a boy?”
She wondered if he were seriously considering it. She turned to face him, a faint bit of hope filling her heart. “I’ll take good care of him, too.”
“Now you’re talking two children. How am I supposed to manage that?”
“You can be my butler. I’ll need help if I’m to have my own establishment.” She’d need money too, but she’d worry about that later.
“I don’t think I’m cut out to be a servant for the rest of my life.”
“Then you can marry me.”
Dead silence. “Georgie,” he said softly. “I can’t. You can’t marry your butler.”
“Well, then, we can always live in sin.”
She startled a laugh out of him. “There are better men than Andrew Salton,” he said, and the faint hope in her heart died.
“Don’t you want me?” Her own words were quiet, hopeless.
The moonlight caught his smile. “Who wouldn’t want you, dear heart? But it’s my duty to keep you safe, not to debauch you.”
“Even if I want to be debauched?”
There was an odd look in his blue eyes, and he reached out and cupped her jaw with one strong hand. “No, Georgie.” And then, to her amazement, he leaned forward and kissed her gently on the mouth.
It was a far cry from the raw passion of the night before, but it broke her heart, and she rose to meet him, heart and soul, ready to give him everything. His lips were soft, questing, and she wanted more. She needed more.
But then he broke the kiss, pulling back, and she could feel tears fill her eyes. “Then what was that?” she asked in a small voice.
“That was goodbye.”
He was gone before she could stop him, getting to his feet with that long, lean grace of his and moving to the heavy door. “Don’t stay out too late—it’s getting cold,” he said, and he left the door open for her.
She sat there, staring after him, and she could feel the wetness of tears on her cheeks. He meant it. He was really going, leaving her, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
Chapter Twenty
