He opened his mouth and ended up closing it again. “You’d rather be a spinster aunt? I have not heard many positive assessments of that vocation.”
“Most of those women didn’t have a choice. I do.”
“And you’d rather live without a family? Without children?”
She realized she was about to shout. He expected a pat answer. He expected what every man expected to hear.Of course, I want children. Children of my own I can nurture and guide and teach. Heirs, which is what is important.
But she’d spent her life nurturing her mother’s children, her aunt’s children. She had begun to see her way clear from constant responsibility, and then…him.
She was still hashing those inchoate thoughts when she realized that he’d stepped even closer. She realized it because her body began to thrum again. Her heart picked up speed. She swore her breasts grew heavier.
She looked up to see that he was lifting his hand as if to swipe back a loose curl, except her curls never broke loose. Not the Countess of Clevedon’s daughter. Even so, he stroked the hair right above her ear, sending shivers cascading through her. She might have stopped breathing entirely. She wasn’t certain. But she was so verywarm.So anxious. She wanted to take hold of that hand of his and see if he had calluses, and that was the very last thing she should be thinking of.
“You can’t say you don’t want me,” he challenged, his voice like dark honey.
She blinked, and the air came rushing back into her lungs. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He took another step forward. “Don’t you want to see where tonight would have gone?”
That absolutely froze her. It was all she could not to haul off and box his ears. She stepped back, feeling the settee hard against her legs. “So, I should sacrifice my entire life to, how do you gentlemen put it, scratch an itch?”
She was so delighted by his shock at her words that she might have gone further, but from the window she heard a definite throat-clearing.
Good Lord, she’d even forgotten that Preston was sitting there. If she’d been able to blush, she would have been red as Charlie’s hair.
“It might be a better attitude to make the most of the situation in which we find ourselves,” Coleford said, and Georgie wasn’t sure whether he was challenging, apologizing, or negotiating.
She didn’t get the chance to find out. Suddenly the door flew open, and her parents strode in, both of them smiling like pirates.
It was bad enough that her father was rubbing his hands. “I hear we have a wedding to prepare for.”
“Now, Clevedon,” her mother cautioned, stepping up beside him. “You haven’t even been introduced yet.”
Her father’s laugh was sharp. “Georgie knows him, obviously. Knows him well enough to warrant a wedding. Isn’t that right, girl?”
“No, sir.”
Her parents gaped. At which point, of course, it got worse.
Aunt Berenice stalked in right behind them. “I told her there was no other option.”
And behind her Eddie and Charlie all but tumbled into the room like Astley’s clowns. “We tried to keep her out,” Eddie protested.
“You shall do no such thing,” Aunt Berenice insisted, turning on them like a fury. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“It doesn’t concern you either,” Charlie accused her own mother, which made Aunt Berenice choke on her own ire.
And all Georgie could see was the way Greyville looked at the windows as if planning an escape.
“Stop,” she said.
“Why don’t I talk to the young man,” her father said.
“Once you’ve been introduced,” her mother said in that velvety voice that belied the underlying steel. “Yes, Georgianna?”
“I’ll introduce you,” her aunt offered, her voice even more strident.
“Stop,” Georgie insisted a bit more loudly.
