“Geoffrey!” his mother exclaimed. “How could anyone know they would catch the measles so easily? Besides, they had a wonderful time before they got sick.”
“Got sick anddied, Mother, far from home. What’s more, the king was a year younger than I am.”
“Still,” she said, “they enjoyed the opera at Covent Garden.”
“And you saw them at the Theatre Royal, didn’t you?” his father asked him. “I saw the king myself, tall chap.”
Geoffrey had seen King Kamehameha before he fell sick without ever getting an audience with King George.Poor man!But that night, Geoffrey had also seen Caroline with her parents. Again, that had been when his future still seemed as if it might have her in it. She’d looked beautiful, and he’d watched her instead of the stage. She had even discreetly waved at him in the dimly lit auditorium.
“The king and queen couldn’t have done any of the entertaining things they did in London,” Lady Diamond pointed out, “if they’d stayed on their little island.”
“Islands, Mother. It’s a chain of them. Never mind.” Geoffrey shook his head. His mother was indeed frivolous. Apparently, she thought coming to London to see the opera and meet a bunch of noblemen had been worth their lives.
“Come now, think of something happier,” Marianne Diamond insisted.
“Lord Byron died,” Geoffrey said. At least the adventuresome baron had lived life to the fullest and knownmore than his share of passionate love, too, if all the newspaper recounts were true.
“I saidhappier,” his mother reminded him. “Poor foolish man!”
She might as well have been speaking of her own son as of Byron. For Geoffrey was foolish through and through to have thought Lady Caroline genuinely cared about him.
He still wasn’t sure whether she’d merely been exacting revenge on him for her parents’ sake. It had seemed so when she cavalierly said she didn’t wish to marry him and left the room. He remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday.
Geoffrey imagined it was why she’d allowed him to take liberties, too.
Now that Stir-Up Sunday was done and dusted, they would hurtle swiftly toward Christmas and the new year. Strange how he’d been all but certain he would have proposed to a willing wife by now.
The following day, he met Jasper at White’s and endured another cheering-up similar to what his parents had attempted, although they were ignorant of the reason for his fit of the blue devils that would not abate. With Jasper, he could speak plainly.
“I haven’t seen Lady Caroline for months. Yet sometimes, it seems as if I’ve seen her quite recently — she is still so clear before my mind’s eye.”
“Saw her and kissed her,” Jasper added.
“And kissed her,” he agreed.
Geoffrey had no wish to continue moping and feeling sorry for himself. Nevertheless, it was hard to disabuse his heart and his brain of the notion that he had found the one woman who suited him best in every regard. Even less did he have enthusiasm for hunting another, knowing she would be second best.
With his fist, he hit the linen-covered table, making Jasper jump as well as some of the other diners nearby.
“I can’t stand this another minute,” Geoffrey vowed. “I tell you she is mine and meant to be. She said she would not marry me, but I ought to have tried harder.”
“Harder than the notes, flowers, and getting the Chimes’s door slammed in your face?”
“Yes, harder. She is worth it. And I didn’t ever try flowers. That seemed a tad sappy, frankly.”
Jasper shrugged. “Do you have a plan?”
“Actually, yes, I do.” Geoffrey could think of only one plan, clichéd as it was. “You provided it to me with your talk ofRomeo and Julietmonths ago.”
Chapter Eleven
Iappreciate your help,” Geoffrey told Jasper before they dropped as silently as possible over the garden wall. Landing on the coal bin had been unexpected, making a clattering sound that caused them to remain motionless, holding their breath. When no one opened the back door, they moved forward.
Although Jasper wasn’t so much helping as offering friendly support, agreeing to be a lookout or a second in a duel if it came to it.
At White’s, his friend had been nonchalant. “We shall go to her home tonight, and I vow you will speak with her,” Jasper said as if sneaking around after dark were the most natural thing in the world for a couple of titled bucks. “Like men of derring-do.”
And now Geoffrey found himself hiding behind a tree in the Chimes’s back garden, feeling more foolish than daring. On the other hand, he would be happy to escape without a lead ball fired into his body, so Geoffrey supposed there was some measure of actual danger.
