Keaton found himself laughing.
“Why is that funny?” Georgia asked.
“Here, I was thinking that your wearing of this dress was intended to entice me. How arrogant of me.”
“Exceedingly,” she agreed, a playful lilt in her voice.
“Anything else?”
“I want to go swimming,” she added after a thought, “somewhere wild and lonely. A lake or a river, perhaps.”
“I know of no such place, I’m afraid.”
“You do. There is a place you used to visit as a boy. On your estate.”
He tilted his head slightly. “I have told you, that place is out of bounds for me. I cannot safely navigate such thick woodland.”
“Not alone, certainly. But with me…” Georgia began.
Keaton looked thoughtful. The idea was not unappealing.
“After all, I can be with no one safer. I can swim nude and my modesty will be intact,” she put in, lowering her voice.
“Nude?” Keaton asked, wishing it was not so obvious that his ears had pricked up at the word.
“I do not propose to swim in my chemise.”
“That dress is practically a chemise.”
“Do you like it?”
“Exceedingly.”
CHAPTER 24
“Westvale! You have been absent from our company for far too long,” greeted the Duke of Bath.
Keaton smiled and inclined his head properly. The ball was being hosted in a house on Pall Mall, being rented by the Baths for their sojourn in London. It was crowded, if the babble of conversation and laughter were anything to go by. Adding in the clink of glasses and the music from the string quintet, and Keaton was finding it difficult to pinpoint specific voices. It put him on edge.
“And allow me to welcome your wife to our company for the first time,” Bath guffawed.
“I thank you, Your Grace,” Georgia replied gracefully.
“Quite lovely, you lucky chap,” Bath murmured, pitching his voice to a whisper that only Keaton would hear.
He felt himself coloring at the notion that the Duke of Bath’s lecherous gaze was lingering on his wife. But then he had expected it. He wondered if Georgia was scarlet at the attention. Or if she was enjoying it. She kept a hand in the crook of his elbow, standing close enough that he could feel her bare arm against his. He wanted to strip off his coat and shirt so that his skin would be against her own.
“Thank you for the compliment, Bath. The Duke was just remarking on your appearance, Georgia,” Keaton said for their small crowd.
The Duke of Bath harrumphed.
“It is quite remarkable,” the Duchess of Bath put in.
Keaton did not think she had been present at the start of the conversation, and now resisted the urge to swing his head around in search of the direction of her voice.
“I thought the occasion warranted a statement piece,” Georgia spoke in a telling smile, “I did not want to attend your first ball of the season in anything that could be termed ordinary.”
“You certainly avoided that,” the Duchess said.
