Wringing her hands before her, she answered. “I only heard a rumor. I wasn’t cognizant of any details and so I…” She broke off and licked her lips. “I wrote to my mother to see if I could learn anything more than just gossip.”
A cold sensation permeated his insides, banishing the heady warmth that had infused him listening to Georgina singing his praises. Evidently, everything she’d said had been balderdash.
“So. You decided I needed cosseting, because clearly, the damaged man I am, I couldn’t possibly handle knowing my fathermighthave an affliction. In essence, you lied to me.”
She ducked her head. “You make it sound so sordid.”
“No, I make it sound exactly as it is. Georgina, I am not a child in leading strings.”
“I know,” she intoned softly.
“In point of fact, despite my infirmity, I am a grown man, the future Earl of Ainsworth. I do not require my wife to wrap me in swaddling like some goddamned namby-pamby imbecile.” He braced for whatever manipulative response she would manufacture.
Then, she lifted her head and met his gaze.
Her expression was nothing he would have expected. Her eyes didn’t burn with the misplaced ire of the guilty, suddenly found out and on the defensive, nor had she turned on tears like a watering pot on demand.
“I’m sorry. I had no right.” Her quiet contrition melted some of the ice forming inside him, revealing another, less appealing sensation.Shame.
Because she hadn’t lied in order to trick him. She simply hadn’t trusted that he had the strength to weather any further blows. Perhaps, she’d had good reason.
“No more lies,” he bit out. “Promise me.”
Her silver eyes went wide, the pupils turning huge. Abruptly she sprang to her feet and hastened for her desk. “I really haven’t any more time for this conversation.”
He stood, slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
Scrubbing her hands on her skirts, she rounded the corner of herdesk. “I’m behind on my work. My editor will arrive any day now and will expect me to have made more progress.”
He stalked toward her and grasped her elbow, urging her to face him. “What else?”
She had the look of a cornered fox. She knew something.
“Georgina, why didn’t your brother approve of us?” he asked, his query surprising even him.
Now, her eyes welled with tears which she scrubbed away with both hands. “I already told you why.”
“Damn it, Georgina, I told you, no more lies.”
Chin quivering, she met his gaze. “I’m not lying.”
Damn. He’d known he didn’t want to open this particular box. He grasped her shoulders. “What did he say, exactly?” he asked, quite certain he didn’t want to hear the answer.
“He told me to look elsewhere and wouldn’t say more. He didn’t need to. I understood. You were Lord Theodore Arlington, the golden boy, whom everybody loved. He knew you could reach higher than me, and didn’t want to hurt me by spelling it out.”
Teddy shook his head, eyeing the plastered ceiling, then he gave her a little shake, then he yanked her into his arms.
After loosing a startled gasp, she twined her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his chest. “So you see? I didn’t lie,” came her muffled words.
He ran his hands up and down her back, feeling insanely grateful for the ability to prove her ridiculous assumption wrong, even though it meant telling her what a cove he’d been. “You little fool. That isnotwhat he meant.”
She tilted her head back to frown up at him, her bold, dark brows furrowing. “How would you know?”
Despite everything, he laughed. “As it happens, this day has brought its fair share of random insights. Love, it wasn’t you that he found lacking, butme.”
She continued to frown at him, disbelief clear in her magnificent eyes.
“The truth is, he warnedmeoffyou. I can’t speak to the specifics, as I had only the merest glimpse of a conversation between him and me, rather like looking into a fogged mirror, but I gathered…” He broke off. Swallowed. Looking into her guileless face, he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell her his suspicions about his misadventures with Lady Catherine. “I believe I was—that he saw me as—a bit of a rakehell.”
