Lord Pembroke shut the door and met her gaze again, his expression resigned but steady. For a long moment, they stared at each other, the quiet between them taut as a bowstring. “Let’s go,” he prompted.
“You’re truly helping me?” she asked, frowning.
He leveled a finger at her. “I will not let you wander into danger. If you’re determined to do this, then yes—I will help you. But you will follow my lead. No arguments.”
Her lips curved into a smile that she couldn’t quite suppress. “No arguments,” she agreed sweetly. Though she fully intended to argue if need be.
He muttered something under his breath again—something that sounded like, What the devil am I doing?—before striding to the window and shutting it firmly.
“That was my escape route!” she cried.
Lord Pembroke shot her a look over his shoulder. “Not anymore. We’ll find a better one.”
Then he extended a hand to her, palm open, the faintest glint of humor hiding behind his stern expression.
“Well, Lady Georgiana,” he said. “Shall we?”
Georgie placed her hand in his and let him lead her out of the antechamber, her pulse thrumming in her ears and the faintest, most dangerous thrill curling low in her belly.
And for the first time in weeks, she felt alive.
Chapter Four
What the devil was he doing?
Jason asked himself the question for the fifth—no, sixth—time as he descended the servants’ staircase at the back of Lord Willoughby’s town house with Georgiana in tow.
His hand tightened imperceptibly on hers. He should stop this madness now, march her back to the ballroom, and deliver her into her father’s custody.
But no.
Instead, he was here. Smuggling her through a dim stairwell, her skirts whispering behind him, her breath coming faster than he liked.
He risked a glance back at her and felt his jaw tighten. Damn. She really was beautiful.
Not in the too-polished, perfect way most Society diamonds were, but in some untamed, infuriating way that was neither helpful nor relevant to the task at hand.
Because he had one job. One. To keep her reputation intact.
Jason swallowed a bitter laugh. God help them both—he was the worst man alive to be trusted with such a responsibility.
His own reputation was hardly pristine. He’d spent the better part of a decade perfecting the role of solid MP by day and discreet libertine by night. He’d had a string of mistresses, each more manipulative than the last.
His last mistress in particular had made a habit of contriving fainting fits whenever she wanted a new bauble. She’d stop at nothing, sobs, theatrics, even once deliberately slashing her own hem to prove some absurd point about his neglect.
And that, come to think of it, was why she was now his former mistress.
Jason’s gaze flicked again to the young woman hurrying after him, her chin lifted stubbornly even in flight.
Was Lady Georgiana cut from the same cloth?
She had claimed to be betrothed to the Marquess of Henderville, after all. Which seemed quite dramatic, now that he considered it.
It couldn’t possibly be true. Could it? Jason’s lip curled at the thought. The Marquess of Henderville?
That decrepit old scoundrel was old enough to be her grandfather. Jason had seen him just last month at White’s, nodding off into his brandy and muttering about the glories of Bath.
Could she possibly be telling the truth?
