She jumped again. “I’m sorry, what is it?”
“Where are you this evening?” her aunt asked, while Milly and Edwina gazed at her.
“Just thinking. What did I miss?”
“Lord Westbrook’s prospects.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Aunt Frederica,” she said, standing and pulling her shawl closer around her shoulders. “Please don’t do that.”
“It’s a compliment, to be pursued by so many men.”
“I feel like a worm on a hook, hounded by trout. Is it my pretty wriggling that entices them, or the fact that I’m nice and plump?”
Bradshaw broke into a laugh. “I always thought of myself as a flounder, rather than a trout.” He glanced at his brothers. “What kind of fish are you?”
“A minnow,” Andrew said, grinning.
“Shark,” Bit muttered, his attention still apparently on the fireworks.
Tristan’s gaze shifted to his brother, and Georgiana couldn’t help admiring him for his patience and understanding. He was simply there, if and when Robert needed him.
“Would anyone care for an ice?” Tristan rose, facing his aunts.
“I haven’t had a lemon ice in ages,” Milly said, smiling.
“One for me, too,” Edwina added.
Everyone wanted an ice, and Tristan stepped down from the box. “Might I have a volunteer to help me carry them?” he asked, his gaze again on Georgiana.
Andrew started to stand, then sat abruptly when Robert wordlessly clamped a hand on his coattail and yanked him back down. Bradshaw seemed to understand that he wasn’t invited, and of course Milly and the duchess wouldn’t go. Before Edwina could offer, Georgiana stepped around her chair and down the steps. Damnation. Apparently her body and her heart were forming a conspiracy.
“We’ll be right back,” Tristan said, offering his arm.
She shook her head, willing her mind back into control. “Not without a chaperone.”
He said something under his breath that might have been a curse, then looked at his brothers. Andrew would have stood again, but Robert brushed past him. He glanced at Georgiana, and she thought she saw a touch of humor in his dark blue eyes. “Let’s go.”
Robert kept walking, and she and Tristan had to hurry to keep up with him. “That wasn’t a very subtle attempt at privacy,” she said. “Especially when Bit tackled Andrew.”
“I didn’t know he was going to do that. I’ll thank him later. He’s a prime chaperone, as well.” He glanced ahead at Robert, a good dozen yards in front of them. “We’ll lose sight of him completely in a matter of seconds.”
Georgiana chuckled, her hand on Tristan’s sleeve. She wished she didn’t like touching him so much, but she seemed helpless to resist it. “Isn’t it a bit chilly to be getting ices?” she said, when her mind began to wander toward how much she liked touching his naked skin.
“I couldn’t think of anything else that sounded innocent enough to lure you away from your guard.”
She felt her face warm. “You invited Aunt Frederica.”
“Because you wouldn’t have come without her.”
The paths through the Gardens, running between the boxes and the main gazebo, were dark and sheltered, with trees and bushes and flowers creeping up to the edge of the stone and leaning over it. Robert slowed, facing them.
“I’m going back to Carroway House,” he said. “Good night.”
“Bit,” she called after him, abruptly realizing that without him, she and Tristan would be completely, totally, alone. “Are you all right?”
He paused, glancing over his shoulder at them. “Yes. Just too many people.”
In a moment, he had vanished. Though she could hear laughter and conversation from the other nearby boxes, no one was in sight.
