Dim light shone under the door on the landing; a gentle touch opened it.
“What now Harley?I thought you went to bed.”Andrew’s deep voice sounded weary.
An oil lamp burned brightly on the worktable to Georgiana’s left.She could see Andrew in the shadows to the right.He slumped in a wingback chair, an unopened book in his lap.He stared at the fire.A candle burned low on the table next to him; it illuminated a half-finished glass of brandy.She hoped that that glass was his first.For a moment, doubt paralyzed her, but the sight of him half-dressed drove doubts from her mind.His jacket, waistcoat, boots, and neck cloth were nowhere to be found.He wore a bright white shirt open at the throat with its sleeves rolled above strong forearms.She turned the lock behind her with a firm click.Andrew rose to his feet at the noise.Too late to back out now.
A growl brought her eyes higher to study his face, once gloriously handsome.She found that face ravaged with scars, but no less beloved.She knew him well now and could read emotions he could no longer mask.She saw longing quickly replaced by fear and concern.She assumed it was for her and thought him foolish for it.She saw irritation, too, indecision, determination, and, again, longing.The last gave her courage to walk across the room, to pass the chair, to stand in front of him.
“The door is locked.”She handed him the key.“It is locked this time, Andrew.”
* * *
Honor be damned,Andrew thought, staring at the vision that had invaded his sanctuary.
He wanted to take the foolish woman on the floor of his study.He wanted it.She wanted it.He knew he couldn’t do it.He had loved her too much eleven years before to offer her a shabby relationship; he couldn’t do it now.One night would never be enough.Unless he could have her honorably, he wouldn’t do it.
“We can’t do this, Georgiana.You shouldn’t be here.”
She stood close enough for him to feel her heat.He could pull her to himself if he reached out.He wanted her with every part of his body and soul.He mustn’t reach out.
She looked adorable in her stockings.She obviously dressed in a hurry, her rumpled clothing testimony to haste.He wondered if she remembered her stays, and he rather hoped she hadn’t.If he reached over, one touch would tell him.He ruthlessly suppressed the thought.He would not reach out.
“We can’t do this,” he repeated.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t be here?”she asked.
Of course I am, you dratted woman.He didn’t answer her.
“Are you one more person who wants to keep me prisoner at Helsington, Andrew?Am I to be condemned to thirty more years of solitude?”
She was an idiot, an infinitely desirable idiot.She leaned inches closer to him.He need only raise a hand to touch her.Everything in him longed to do just that.He wouldn’t.
“Is that what you want, Andrew?”she continued, angrier when he didn’t respond.“For what crime should I be so punished?”
She moved abruptly but stopped a foot away.“What is it you want then?Shall I be the marble goddess, cold, hard, and artistically arranged for you and Richard to admire?Is that what you want?How will you label that tableau?‘Propriety?’”
“Merciful heavens, Georgiana, is that how you see your life?”He should comfort her.If he touched her, he could comfort her.If he touched her, he would take her there on his study floor.He groaned in frustration; he held back.
“How else is there to see it, Andrew?I live surrounded by people trained to be invisible when I pass, not one of whom will talk to me.Even my ‘companion’ is invisible.Cambridge derides me.London despises me.My parents and sisters prefer to forget me.My brother, my most loved brother, the one person who cares for me at all, gives me no voice in what is good for me.”
Shame forced him to look toward the fire.Those words–her anger at Richard–were for him also.He didn’t want to see the anguish in her eyes.He and Richard had done what was right.He refused to believe otherwise.
“You arranged it between you, didn’t you?You condemned me to solitary confinement at Helsington Cottage.Don’t even try to deny it!You knew that no one wanted me.Once you left, I was completely alone.”
“Don’t speak of yourself so, that isn’t?—”
“True?Isn’t it?Please, Andrew, let there be honesty between us.”
Her eyes burned blue fire, a cauldron of fury and need.He couldn’t hold against it.
“You deserved better,” he began, voice thick.“Your father wouldn’t have permitted it.We could have run, bolted for Scotland or the Continent, but what then?Poetry in a hovel?That kind of romance dies in a day.”
“‘Poetry in a hovel,’” she repeated.“If that’s what I escaped, what did I get in return?Glorious solitude?No one suitable, no one acceptable to the Duke of Sudbury wanted his eldest daughter, the daughter too tall, too lacking in grace, and too eccentric in her conversation to ornament an aristocrat’s home.”
“There is nothing wrong with your conversation, Georgiana.Don’t deride yourself.”
“No?I never learned to find a man’s waistcoat more fascinating than his politics.I never learned to pepper my words with on-dits rather than the books I read.No man wanted me, not one.Even Lord Pfeil—old, bald, and smelling of horse—acted as if he had been asked to do a favor for my father, and a distasteful one at that.”
Her eyes burned into him.“That is one fear you can lay to rest,” she said.
