But for her, it also meant that she had walked right into a closed room at the very moment she should have been escaping out the doors. She had worked so hard to earn her freedom, and she had just given it away. Now, she suspected, she would never know what she was truly made of. What she could have been. Who. She would end up being what she always was, the one who took care of everyone else. It made her feel as if she was struggling to breathe.
“Are you all right?” Grey asked quietly, slipping his hand into hers.
Her first reaction was to bat it away. She didn’t, of course. “Fine,” she assured him with a bland smile, afraid that he could see all too well that she wasn’tquitefine.
Grey turned Georgie toward him at the edge of the patio as the rest of their group trooped into the house, chatting and laughing. “But not happy.”
She looked up to see that there was a furrow between those intense seawater eyes of his. He wasn’t just asking out of custom.
“I’m still getting used to the idea,” she admitted, wishing she could just savor the harsh beauty of her husband, that she could run her fingers along that soft mouth that belied the strength of jaw and forehead. That she could kiss those ghostly eyes closed and simply breathe in the open-air scent of him. But panic was not a very romantic feeling. “It is a lot to manage all at once,” she said instead. “Marriage, motherhood, decorating, marchionessing. And you going off in?—”
He went very still, his frown suddenly apologetic.
She waited, but he didn’t answer. Her heart plummeted. “What?”
He dipped his head, took a breath. Had the courage to face her again. “I’m sorry. I was hoping we would not have to deal with this at least until we enjoyed our wedding.”
That robbed her of what breath she had left. “You’re leaving.”
It took him a second when she could almost hear the thud of his heart, sense the new weight on his shoulders. But finally, he gave her a rueful smile. “You suffer from an excess of intelligence, Wife. I suspect I’ll never be able to hide anything from you.”
“Something to remember,” she retorted, even as she felt his news weigh on her as well. As her heart ached harder for her future. Fortheirfuture, all four of them.
“There have been some developments in the case I am investigating, new very important questions,” he said veryquietly. “We need answers, and it is my job to find them as soon as possible.” His smile grew sad. “My boat leaves in two days.”
Her first instinct was to tell him not to worry. That she would take care of everything. That she could handle whatever needed to be done while he was gone so he could face his task with a clear head and heart. It was, after all, what she had always done. What had always been expected of her.
Not this time, she decided. She might do as she always did—she would, of course—but she could not think of one reason to sound happy about it. It would serve him right if she told him exactly what she thought. At the top of her voice. While dragging her fingernails across his face.
She never would, though. She was too well-trained.
But oh, for a seething hot minute, she was tempted.
“What?” he nudged, his expression just a bit whimsical.
She scowled, wishing she didn’t already like him.
But what could she do, really? What could she ever have done?
“Husband, I believe it is past time to drink a surfeit of champagne.”
He dropped a kiss on her forehead and one on her knuckles. “Wife, I believe I will join you.”
Grey was assuredthat the wedding breakfast was a classic Packham celebration. If that was true, he was shamefully grateful he was escaping in two days. He couldn’t imagine how Georgie not only withstood the cacophony but seemed to relish it. She had children crawling all over her, at least two older women grilling her about something, and house staff dropping by to check with her about some preparation or another. Hergleaming mahogany hair, usually so sleek and tidy, was coming a bit undone, and she had what looked like a raspberry jam stain on her beautiful white dress. And she was laughing. He wasn’t sure he had ever heard her laugh. And no more than an hour or so earlier he could have sworn she was near violence.
Even so, even with the laughter and gleam in her eyes, oddly enough, she sat there like the eye of a hurricane, the only calm in the room. The center around which all else spun. It was her special gift, he thought, a sense not so much of tranquility in the madness, but of a lodestone which drew everything to it. He wondered if she even realized it.
He was fascinated by it, by her. He wanted to be pulled into her orbit, to let her calm him as she did the little ones too enlivened by too much sugar and too many co-conspirators to settle. He wanted to see what that magic could work on a man who had seen and done too much and was about to head off to face more. He selfishly wanted her to focus all that magic on him.
Was he selfish enough to wish he could convince her that it might be fun to delve beneath that air of calm she wore like a protective cloak to find the furnace beneath? He knew it was there. He had tasted it on her lips, heard it in the rasp of her breath as they had kissed, traced it with his thumb across the furious pace of the pulse there at the base of her sleek throat. He could strip that cloak bare; he knew it. He could waken the sleeping sensuality that had scorched him the two times he had kissed her. Gods and little green fish, but he wanted to be inside of her. He wanted to hear her scream his name, wanted…
Grey dragged in a ragged breath and looked off before he gave himself away even to the children. Maybe he could talk her into leaving. Surely, they had spent enough time entertaining all the Packhams. Tossing back his latest glass of champagne, he headed her way.
He’d only made it three steps when a young man stepped into his path. Blast. Georgie’s brother. It had to be. He had those same green, green eyes and that broad forehead. Thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, his limbs still out of proportion to his thin torso, ankles, and wrists visible beyond the hem of his suit, and shoes completely outsized for his age. He was frowning with intent.
Grey ruthlessly reined in his previous aim. He wasn’t getting to his wife as soon as he thought.
“My lord...” The boy began, his voice balanced perilously close to breaking.
