He nodded again.
“How old are you?”
“Eight and twenty,” he replied. “How old are you?”
“One and twenty,” she replied. “And do you want to marry?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly. No.”
“Well, I don’t either. And I’m willing to guess you’ve never asked yourself why I should want to simply because I am a woman and you are man, have you?”
Pembroke’s brow furrowed.
Georgie held up a hand. “Never mind. No need to answer. I know I’m right. Now,” she hooked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing behind her. “I’m going to leave this party. And you’re not going to stop me. Or escort me this time.”
“You’re impossible,” he said, his voice low.
Georgie gave him a tight, humorless smile. “So I’ve been told.”
And with that, she turned, skirts whispering as she swept them up, her spine ramrod straight.
But she could feel his gaze burning into her back as she hurried away.
And she hated how aware she was of it.
Chapter Ten
Jason stood in the shadowed corridor, staring at the place where Georgiana had just disappeared, her skirts swishing furiously as she rounded the corner.
He hadn’t moved. Couldn’t move. His hands were still at his sides, fists clenched. And damn it all, he was rattled.
She’d left him standing there like a schoolboy who’d been thoroughly outmatched in an argument he hadn’t even meant to have.
He let out a breath and rubbed a hand down his face, still feeling the echo of her words.
It’s just like a man to assume a woman wants to marry at any cost.
She’d looked him dead in the eye when she said it, her chin lifted and her brown eyes blazing.
And the worst part?
She was right.
He’d never once considered that she might not want to marry—not at all.
That she might see marriage as a prison, not a prize.
Jason let out a low laugh, bitter and self-deprecating.
God help him, but he was already far too entangled in this.
Somewhere along the way, it had stopped being about Chadwick’s favor, or even about Evelyn and his own guilt.
He wasn’t sure when it had happened.
But it had.
And now here he was, standing in a deserted corridor, watching her disappear yet again…and feeling the strangest thing.
