Georgiana could notknow. She was testing, probing, waiting for a reaction. If Cecilia remained composed—if she offered nothing—the suspicion might drift away.
“There,” Cecilia said at last, stepping back. “The rose ribbons flatter you exceedingly.”
Georgiana turned her head, momentarily absorbed by her reflection. Vanity, as always, asserted supremacy over curiosity; and the style was, undeniably, becoming.
“It will do,” she conceded. “Though I still maintain the blue would be better.”
“The blue is for dinner. Rose for the morning.”
“You always have an opinion,” Georgiana sighed, rising to smooth her skirts. “Very well. I must go and converse with the other young ladies while we wait for the gentlemen to finish their shooting.”
“A severe trial.”
“Do not mock me, Cecilia. Not everyone may hide in libraries all day.” She paused at the door and glanced back. “I shall be watching. If something is happening that ought not, I shall discover it.”
She swept out, leaving behind a haze of rose scent and unease.
Cecilia sank onto the dressing-stool, her composure fracturing now that she was alone. Georgiana suspected—perhaps did notknow, but suspected—and Georgiana had never been famed for discretion.
She should end it. She should stop going to the library; stop seeking him out; stop this perilous, impossible thing before it destroyed them both. Every rational thought urged the same conclusion.
But the prospect of returning to the grey invisibility in which she had lived before he looked at her—andsawher—felt like a kind of living death.
One more morning,she told herself.I shall go once more, explain that we must stop, and then it will be finished.
She had been telling herself the same thing for four days.
She suspected she would tell herself the same thing tomorrow.
***
The gentlemen returned from shooting in high spirits, their morning’s sport apparently successful. Sebastian had participated—his mother had insisted—but his thoughts had been elsewhere entirely.
In the library. With her.
He had waited for her that morning, as he had waited every morning since their first conversation; and she had come, as she always did, slipping through the servants’ door with a book clasped to her breast and caution in her eyes.
They had spoken for an hour. About nothing of consequence—a passage in the book she had been reading, his thoughts on a speech he had heard in Lords, the particular challenge of managing servants who had served one’s father before oneself. Small things. Safe things. The kind of conversation that could be explained away if necessary.
But beneath the words, something else had been building. A tension that grew with each meeting, each exchanged glance, each moment when their hands nearly touched and did not. Sebastian felt it like a physical weight, pressing against his chest, demanding acknowledgement.
He wanted her.
Not merely her conversation, though that was remarkable enough. Not merely her mind, though he had never encountered its equal among the women of his acquaintance. He wantedher—her presence, her attention, her rare smiles that transformed her serious face into something luminous.
He wanted things he had no right to want, with a woman he had no business approaching.
“Brother.” Evan’s voice cut through his thoughts. “You look like a man on his way to the gallows. Was the shooting truly so dreadful?”
“I acquitted myself adequately.”
“A ringing endorsement.” Evan fell into step beside him. “Mother wishes to speak with you. She has that look.”
“What look?”
“The look that suggests she has observed something and intends to address it. If I were you, I would prepare myself.”
Sebastian suppressed a sigh. His mother noticed everything. He had hoped his morning absences might pass unremarked in the general whirl of the house party.
