The curiosity in the duchess’s eyes deepened. “I will do so.”
“Good morning, Your Grace. I won’t be returning today.”
“Good day then, Lord Dare.”
She vanished from the doorway, and Tristan returned outside to Charlemagne. This wasn’t over. And if his growing suspicions were correct, the way Georgiana had left things might be the best news he’d received in six years. All he needed to do was keep himself from killing her for long enough to find out.
“He’s gone, my dear.” Aunt Frederica’s quiet voice came from the hallway.
Georgiana pulled in her breath with a gasping sob. “Thank you.”
“May I come in?”
The last thing she wanted was to face her aunt, but she was acting like a madwoman, and the duchess deserved some sort of explanation. Wiping her tears, Georgiana stumbled to the door, slid the latch off, and opened it. “If you wish.”
Frederica took one look at her face and brushed past her. “Pascoe! Send up some herb tea!”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The duchess shut the door behind her and leaned back against it. “Did he hurt you?” she asked, very quietly.
“No! No, of course not. We…argued, is all, and I just…didn’t want to be there any longer.” She drew a shaky breath, retreating to the reading chair by the window. Curling into it, she drew her knees up to her chin and wished with all her might that she could become invisible. “What did he want?”
“To speak with you. That’s all he would say to me.” Her aunt stayed by the door, no doubt to intercept a maid before she could barge into the room with the tea and witness the duchess’s niece looking like an escapee from Bedlam. “Except for one thing he asked me to tell you.”
Oh, no. If he was angry enough, he would be quite capable of ruining her. “What…what was that?”
“He said to tell you that he’d received and understood your message.”
She straightened a little from her fetal curl in the chair, nearly ill with relief. “That was it?”
“That was it.”
The tea arrived, and the duchess went into the hallway to get it herself. Georgiana took a deep, sniffling breath. He hadn’t ruined her. He hadn’t brought her stockings back and flung them to the ground and shouted that he’d bedded Lady Georgiana Halley twice now and that she was a hoyden and a lightskirt.
“Oh, and he said he wouldn’t be returning here today. He emphasized ‘today,’ which I took to mean that he would be calling at a future date.”
Georgiana tried to pull her thoughts together, still too relieved with the present to let the future frighten her. “Thank you for seeing him.”
The duchess poured a cup of tea, dropped two lumps of sugar and a large measure of cream into it, and brought it over to her. “Drink.”
It smelled bitter, but the cream and sugar smoothed the taste, and Georgiana took two large swallows. Warmth spread from her stomach out to her fingers and toes, and she took another drink.
“Better?”
“Better.”
Her aunt sat in the deep windowsill, far enough back that Georgiana didn’t have to look at her if she didn’t want to. If Frederica Brakenridge was one thing, it was intuitive.
“I must say, I haven’t seen you in hysterics for…six years, it must be. Dare had something to do with that, as well, if I recall correctly.”
“He just upsets me.”
“I can see that. Why associate with him, then?”
Georgiana looked into the tea, at the slow swirls of cream in the delicate china cup. “I…I was teaching him a lesson.”
“He seems to have understood it.”
