“Certainly not!Don’t look so hopeful.The works are what they are.These voices may notbe respectable English voices, but they deserve to be heard as much as Sophocles and Euripides.”
“What about the folks who find any translation of the ancients dangerous to women?”He couldn’t resist provoking her.Georgiana, ready to do battle, her eyes blazing with determination, stirred him as nothing else ever had.
“Fools, every one of them.Foolish old men afraid of anyone smarter than they, anyone they can’t control.”She paced, a fury of movement propelling her across the room.Ten years of indignities spilled out of Georgiana in a flood, and desire raged through him like a pillaging horde.
“Men listened to Korinna in her lifetime, but scholars buried her work.Nossis, Anyte, all of them were pushed aside.Buried!”Anger gave way to anguish.Andrew’s eyes prickled, and his throat constricted.From the day he left her, Georgiana was pushed aside.“Buried!”she repeated, and he had no doubt that was how she felt.“Buried alive.”Her voice faded on a sob.
Rampaging desire laid siege to his common sense and set fire to his heart.He could only reach out, take her hand, and pull her close.
“We will finish it, Georgie.We will give them a voice.”He rasped out.He rubbed her palm with his thumb and drank in the blue of her eyes.Dangerous electricity filled the air of the workroom.
“Andrew,” she whispered.“I can’t bear it alone.I can’t bear it any longer.”
He froze at the sound of his name in her mouth.Her eyes were on his lips, and her own parted as if in anticipation.She wanted him.He could take one taste, one soft gentle brush of her lips.All other delights would come second to that.
He lowered his head and felt her sweet breath on his face.The lilac scent of her filled him.
She swayed toward him, almost touching.He released her fingers and ran his hand up her arm to cup her cheek.
“Door,” she breathed, voice husky.
The unexpected word confused him.“Door?”he repeated without taking his eyes from her mouth.
“It isn’t locked.”She turned her head to point it out.That small gesture broke the cord holding them.The door stood slightly ajar.
Dear God!A house full of servants loyal to the Duke of Sudbury and Andrew was ready to seduce his daughter on her Axminster carpet.Good sense flooded back into him, and he released her.
“Excellent idea, Lady Georgiana,” he said with unnatural force loud enough to be heard beyond the door.“If we’re to bring this project into a whole piece,” he continued in a voice so gruff it was as if the words were torn from his throat, “we had best continue.”
Andrew limped over to the table and put it and distance between them.He looked up to find Georgiana staring back, hurt vivid on her face.He turned away, but he could still feel her eyes on the back of his head.
“Record your proposed translation, my lady, and make notes for the commentary.”His words sounded harsher than he intended.He feared what she might say if he gave her the opportunity to speak.
Faint shuffles in the hall told him all he needed to know.This house was not safe, not safe enough for a schoolmaster’s son to make love to a Duke’s daughter.If he did what his body urged, her reward would be humiliation, harassment, and hurt.He wanted to protect her from it even if she wouldn’t protect herself.
Andrew picked up the pen and began to write.His entire body betrayed him.His eyes refused to focus.His hand wrote shaky words on vellum, but his mind gave no meaning to them.The rest of him, body and soul, yearned with an ache that destroyed all rational thought for the woman who stood across the room as still as marble.Her indignation filled the air as thoroughly as her lilac scent.
