Georginaknewit.
“—urged by our dear Gwen after she received some disturbing information from her husband Mr. Devereux.”
Georgina blinked. Perhaps she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. What would Mr. Devereux know of Georgina visiting the Lyon’s Den? She relaxed back into her chair and took a soothing sip.
“Gwen, dear, you have the floor.”
Gwen smoothed her skirts, then shifted to face Georgina.
Georgina’s stomach dropped. Evidently she was not off the hook. At all.
She set the cup in its saucer and the saucer on her lap. She’d had the unfortunate experience of inhaling her beverages on a gasp when being confronted by something shocking too many times, and this was starting to look like another one of them.
Gwen aimed her signature gentle smile at Georgina. “Georgina, dear, recently Mr. Devereux was perusing my office shelves. He mentioned your books, not for the first time, namely that he thought he might know you because he recognized your name—Arlington.”
Georgina nodded. “But he couldn’t, as that is mynom de plume.”
“That is what I assumed. And then, he picked up one of your books, then another, and another. Dear, I shall cut to the chase. He recognized your hero.”
“My…hero?”
“The one who is in all of your books.”
Georgina swallowed. “But he is a fictional character.”
Gwen’s smile never faltered. “Mr. Devereux informed me that the man he recognized is not only a viscount, but an officer in His Majesty’s army, recently returned from the war. Darling, I don’t know how to say this, but, it seems this man came home with some sort of unknown injury and has not been seen since.”
No one in the room said a word. Georgina did not dare glance around, but she assumed they all watched with somber, sympathetic expressions matching that of Lady Amelia’s who currently peered at her over Gwen’s shoulder.
Gwen went on. “As we all have long assumed that you nurse atendrefor someone—”
“You have?” Georgina all but squeaked.
Gwen nodded once. “Darling, you are a beautiful, vivacious woman possessed of a passionate nature. Yet, you recently took to wearing those spectacles I understand you do not actually need…” She broke off frowning. “Where are they by the way?”
Georgina waved her question aside. “I…only need them on occasion. In fact, my eyes seem to have improved of late.” She lifted her chin, though she assumed the heat crawling up her cheeks was staining her cheeks a brilliant shade of red.
Both Gwen and Amelia’s expressions said Georgina had made the point for her.
“As I was saying, you seem keen on dissuading any and all male attention, like a woman might who’s in love.”
Georgina lifted her saucer from her lap and handed it away, blindly.
Amelia jumped up to take it from her.
Glancing about the space, she met each of her friends’ eyes in turn, then she blurted, “His name is Lord Theodore ‘Teddy’ Arlington. I’ve loved him from the moment I first laid eyes on him, when my brother brought him home for a visit from Eton and he gave me my first rose. But, I always knew he could never be mine. He is so very….so…” She shook her head.
“So very,what?” Amelia demanded.
“He’s beautiful, and charming. He’s smart, and flawless at everything he sets his mind to try. He’s a future earl and…”
Amelia’s dark brows snapped together. She opened her mouth to argue, but Gwen beat her to it.
“You are all those things. With the exception of being a future earl, that is.”
In a rush, the rest of the room chimed in, their sentiments mirroring Gwen’s. Even Lady Harriet, their imperturbable leader, voiced heraffront. “Well, I never. As if any man alive could outshine our Georgina.”
Tears pricked her eyelids and she made a valiant effort to staunch them. She needed to keep her head. She hadn’t yet told them everything. “He came home from the war, injured. I didn’t know what had happened to him, only that he was nowhere to be seen after his return, so I paid a visit to Mrs. Dove-Lyon at the Lyon’s Den…”
