Wild-eyed, he searched the room ’til he spotted her, seated behind her desk.
She rose to her feet. “Teddy? Has something happened? You’re soaking wet.”
He moved toward her, graceful as a cat despite the way his garments clung to his body like a second skin. A large, sleek, hunting cat. “Never mind that. Who is Catherine?”
Chapter Ten
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Standing in the center of the bright receiving room, Teddy waited for Georgina’s answer. He’d been so sure he was onto something, but the longer his question hung in the air between them, the more foolish and desperate he felt, especially considering his ramshackle state. Wet. Covered in grit. Garments clinging to him like they were glued onto him. He resembled nothing short of a madman and he was growing chilly, to boot.
“I take it you have had another breakthrough?” Georgina asked.
Was it his imagination, or was she a degree paler since his mention of the name he’d plucked from the recesses of his brain?Catherine.
“You tell me. One moment, I was swimming. the next…” He gazed over her shoulder at the paneled wall, and attempted, yet again, to recall the entire scene to mind. “I saw you kneeling beside a basket of food, a man hovering over you. You were, I believe, offering to fix me a plate.”
Her silvery eyes widened, as if in amazement.
His pulse spiked. “That happened, didn’t it?”
She licked her full lips.No.He would not be distracted by thoselips.Not now.
“I’m not sure if what you envisioned was an outright memory. I will say we often picnicked Hampstead Heath.”
He narrowed his eyes on her and pinched the wet fabric of his shirtsleeves, peeling the linen off of his forearm. “Definewe.”
There it was again. A stiffening of her jaw. A tensing of her spine. Why?
“You, me, Drake, and”—she licked her lips again—“Catherine. Drake’s…intended.”
Drake’s intended. That didn’t seem accurate. He couldn’t say why.
Perhaps because of Georgina herself. She was acting very strangely. This was the most detailed memory he’d had to date. One would think his future countess would be overjoyed.
“Go on,” he demanded, irritated by the number of confounding elements he was forced to wade through.
She lifted her chin, slanting him an almost defiant look. Then she turned her attention to what appeared to be correspondence lying atop her desk. She stacked the sheets into a neat pile. “I’m not sure what else you want me to tell you.”
Georgina plucked the key she wore around her neck from its hiding place, nestled within her ample bosom, and unlocked the cabinet, paper grasped in one hand.
“What have you got there?” he asked, both his curiosity and his suspicion aroused.
“Just some correspondence. Nothing to do with you.”
Despite his desire to get at the truth of his vision, the tone of her reply, coupled with her unwillingness to release the letters even for a moment, as she unlocked the cabinet, deepened his suspicion. “I thought you said you only stored your writing in there.”
For a brief moment, she hesitated in the act of sliding the letters into a wooden slot on the top shelf, as if his observation caught her off guard. Then, in swift order, she shoved the papers in, closed andlocked the sliding door, then dropped the brass key back into her bodice.
Lucky key.
“One never knows where inspiration might strike.”
He snorted and pointed. “You’re saying that correspondence you just shelved is going into one of your novels?”
“Perhaps.” She twined her fingers before her and sent him a look of pure innocence.
“Hmm.” He logged the information for future inspection, realizing he was in danger of losing the thread of the original conversation, entirely. “Back to the subject at hand. The four of us made a practice of frequenting the park?”
