After all, he had thought that very thing when he was four, looking at her in her baby basket. He had hoped for a little boy like himself, already his age, when he had been told he was about to meet the newest member of the Finch family. He had wanted a playmate.
But when he saw baby Phoebe, his wish went right out of his head. She was so little. So pink. She opened her eyes and looked right at him. This baby is for me, he thought.
She’s for me.
A largely uneaten luncheon with his damnable sister staring at him over her plate.
“You look dreadful, George. I didn’t know the absence of a mistress could make one ill. It might make one’s testicles ache, yes, but it surely should not make you distraught. You are such a slave to your routine.”
“Your mind lives in the gutter,” he snapped.
“Or maybe it’s due to losing that chess game to Phee yesterday?”
George clenched his jaw. What did Alice know? These girls told each other everything. Didn’t Phoebe realize how foolish it was to give her secrets to Alice who thought nothing of being the center of gossip and scandal?
“Phoebe was horribly late for whist, and Lady Huxley was in a bit of a temper. I soothed Lady H though by reminding her Phee had just gotten engaged and was likely taken up with her betrothed and Lady Huxley was lucky to get her to agree to come to whist at all this week. There was a horrible moment when I thought Lady H was going to insist I partner her, but Phee arrived just in time to rescue me. Then she told me it hadn’t been Thornwick at all that had made her late, but a chess game with you. She said she was worried you were sad with Lady Starling out of town. Despite being a future duchess, she is still the same sweet girl we grew up with, isn’t she?”
Alice didn’t know.
George gathered himself. “Speaking of that, I really wish you had not made Phoebe aware of . . . told her about . . .”
“Your mistress?”
“She doesn’t need her mind filled with that sort of thing. Unlike you, she is an innocent.”
“Is she?” Alice quirked an eyebrow. “Maybe not anymore.”
Alice knew.
“Wh-what do you mean by that?”
“She didn’t stay for the dinner last night. She said she was tired and going home. She left very early. But she wasn’t tired. She was excited, George. Flushed. Starry-eyed. Quite looking like a woman in love. I think she was going to meet Thornwick.”
Thank God, Alice didn’t know. But his short-lived relief turned quickly into rage. Blinding, red-hot rage. Under the table, his hands tightened into fists.
Thornwick. The cause of all his pain.
Thornwick. The groom-to-be.
Thornwick. The vile man did not deserve to live.
Although George knew next to nothing about Thornwick except the size of his cock, the duke was clearly unworthy of Phoebe.
He had to be.
Had Phoebe really gone almost directly from his bed to Thornwick’s? He could not and would not believe that of her. No. Not if he wanted to retain his sanity.
“You’re breathing heavily, George. Are you upset about something?”
“The air is too close in this house.” He pushed back his chair. “I’m going out.”
He knew his exit would provoke suspicion from Alice. Saturday afternoons were when he normally did the accounts in his study, totting up each little expense so he could march into the office of his man of business on Monday morning and point out the errors the clerks had made.
But he couldn’t worry about Alice and her canny mind right now. He needed to escape. And Alice made no demur, did not even raise her eyebrows.
But she made a suggestion. “You might drop in at the Abingdon town house. Didn’t you have something you wanted to discuss with Andrew?”
Did he? Was there something to do with the musical society George needed to speak to Andrew about? Perhaps. If not, he would invent something on his way there.
