But she’d barely rounded the corner before his voice came from just behind her. “Lady Georgiana.”
She froze.
Then she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and turned to face him.
Lord Pembroke.
Green eyes steady and infuriating, broad shoulders filling the narrow corridor, the very picture of unflappable male arrogance.
Georgie folded her arms across her chest. “You simply cannot help yourself, can you?” she snapped.
His brow arched faintly. “Would you rather I let you make a scene?” he drawled. “Or worse, cause a scandal?”
She huffed, glaring up at him. “You’ve followed me through two balls, cornered me in a garden, bundled me into a carriage, and now you’re chasing me through a corridor. If this is not some grotesque obsession, then what would you call it?”
His jaw tightened. “I’d call it keeping a promise,” he said shortly. “Your brother?—”
“Oh, yes, my brother,” she cut in bitterly. “How very noble. Because you’ve made it perfectly clear that you see me as nothing more than an obligation. A nuisance. A problem to be solved.”
Pembroke’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes.
Georgie narrowed hers. “I already told you…you cannot possibly understand what it is to be me,” she said, voice rising slightly.
“Then explain it to me,” he said evenly.
Her breath hitched. That had certainly caught her off guard. She’d expected an argument. A tedious list of reasons why he didn’t need to understand her plight.
For a beat, they just stared at each other, the silence thick with something she didn’t dare name.
He was close. Too close. And she hated—hated—that some part of her noticed the faint scent of him, that familiar mix of soap and starch and something darker beneath it.
She tore her gaze away, staring at the floor.
“You think I don’t care?” he finally murmured.
She swallowed hard, forcing herself to look up at him again. “I know you don’t.”
Pembroke’s jaw worked, his hand flexing at his side as though he wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t.
Instead, he leaned back slightly, his eyes narrowing just enough to betray some crack in his usual composure.
She took a deep breath already expecting her words to be wasted. “I have been bartered off like a sack of flour to a man older than my grandfather, with no one—not even my own family—on my side. On the contrary, they are all three counting the money that is to be made off my misery.”
“You do realize that running off like this could cause a scandal?” Pembroke replied.
“Of course I realize it,” she retorted, waving a hand in the air. “In fact, you’ve no idea the scandal that I’m capable of.”
He blinked at her as if her words made no sense. “But if you cause a scandal, you won’t be able to marry anyone.”
Georgie laughed. Loud and long. She even pressed her hand against her middle because she was laughing so heartily.
Pembroke arched a brow. “What’s funny?”
Georgie wiped her eyes. “It’s just like a man to assume a woman wants to marry at any cost.”
He rubbed his jaw, still watching her. “You don’t?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes on him. “Let me ask you something, Lord Pembroke.”
