Trusting that was harder now than it had been a few hours ago.
I hadn’t thought of myself as a man who needed reassurance of his feelings, but devil take me, I wanted to have it out with her! I wanted to tell her exactly how I felt, and I wanted her to return those feelings. I wanted her to return Grandmother’s ring so that I could give the thing right back!
I was fairly confident she felt the same.
But dash it all, a man needed to hear the words!
If Georgiana agreed to a courtship, Society would be shocked. Perhaps even scandalized. Georgiana Wood, the woman I swore I had no intentions toward.
Just a friend.
Not after that kiss. Not since that night at the Waymonts’ party, if I was completely honest with myself.
Little did Society know, she’d outsmarted them all by bargaining with me. Then she’d faced them with grace. She was brave, empathetic, intelligent, and strong.
What more could I want from a partner? What more could I want from the future mother of my heir?
Could she maintain the dukedom in my place if something happened to me? I could say with certainty that she would try. And she’d have her brother, who, despite his feelings toward me, was respectable and honorable and quite successful on his own. He would guide her through it.
In truth, my feelings for Georgiana were still new, but theyfeltold. Like I’d loved her for a lifetime already.
For the first time in my life, I could imagine a future—more so than I had with anyone else—of late nights and early mornings, a courtship of gifts and flowers and stolen moments. All the way to picnics on the lawn, our children chasing the wind and whatever it carried.
It was mad, and yet, I was old enough to know that this sort of match only came once in a lifetime. It was far more valuable than any title, any wealth, anyring.
Georgiana looked back at me again and smiled. Surely, she felt it too.
Just ahead, a gathering crowd stood at the end of the pond in Kensington Gardens.
The water glistened in the sunlight, reflecting the palace just across the way.
The crowd made room for us, a horde of young ladies and gentlemen and their ever-watchful chaperones along the sidelines. Three young bucks with their coats tossed aside skipped rocks across the pond.
“Four!” one young lady cheered. “The winner is Mr. Warwick.”
A young man thrust his fist in the air. “Huzzah!” He strode to the young lady, who beamed and blushed, and with both hands, pulled her face to his.
A chaste kiss, but the crowd cheered all the same.
“It’s a game,” Reynolds told Georgiana. “They skip stones to earn a kiss from the most beautiful woman in the crowd.”
“Heavens, in public?” Maggie’s eyes widened.
“Let’s move on.” I nudged Gabriel, whose eyes were fixated on the young gentlemen.
“Anyone think they can beat four skims?” the most confident of the young men asked.
“I can!” Reynolds called out, hand raised.
I groaned. “Must we?”
“There! Come forward, sir!”
“That’s Lord Reynolds,” someone said. Watchful eyes studied our group.
“Don’t.” Georgiana winced, tugging his arm back.
“I am very, very accomplished in the art of skipping rocks, Miss Wood.” Reynolds winked at her, and every muscle in my back tensed.
