“She won’t have me.”
“It didn’t seem to me that the lady lacked interest.”
The look of death intensified.
“Am I correct in my assumption that our Georgie is utterly compromised?”Jamie went on.
“Only if she chooses to be,” Andrew replied.It came out as a growl.
“Or if word were to get out,” Jamie pointed out.
“It won’t.Not from me, not from Harley, and not,” Andrew spat, “from you.I would see you dead first, slowly and painfully.”
“You would too.Do you plan the same fate for Dunning?”
Mallet’s curses would have been at home on the docks of any Mediterranean port.He had tried to overlook the detail that Geoff, though not a malicious gossip, was careless.Georgie couldn’t avoid this.She would have to marry him.Still, Geoff had come at the very end.He saw that they had been alone, but perhaps he thought they were working.Fool!The truth was clear all over Georgiana’s face.
Andrew felt as though a large pole had hit him over the head.
Jamie looked more amused than sympathetic.“Banns on Sunday?”
“Georgiana informed me that banns are tantamount to shouting to her parents.She believes they’ll bring hell to pay on the shire.”
“There’ll be hell to pay, in any case.”
“I know that.She knows that.She wishes as little humiliation from her parents as possible.You know the Haydens.Picture the kind of humiliation she fears.”
“Special license?”
“To paraphrase the lady, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a cousin.York is her uncle, and Winchester her father’s boon companion.Special license is tantamount to banns.”
“Gretna?”
“Cowardly, cold, and undignified at our age.”
“Common License it is.”The little baron stretched his shoulder, an uncharacteristically smug expression spreading slowly across his face.“It will feel good to be of some use for once.”
Andrew looked at him quizzically.
“Allow me to introduce you to my grandmother’s brother, the Bishop of Ely,” Jamie said through a widening smile, “who dislikes Sudbury sufficiently to enjoy thwarting him and is advanced enough in age not to care what Canterbury might say or do.”
Andrew greeted this marvelous speech with a hoot of laughter.He hadn’t intended to enact his personal drama for an audience, but it seemed there might be advantages.A smile began to evolve deep in his dark eyes.
Jamie’s self-satisfied grin answered back.“Shall we leave tomorrow or allow the lady one day to reconsider?”
Andrew’s face fell.“Let’s allow her a day to get comfortable with it.It has to be her choice.Georgiana’s stubbornness might be a hurdle, but she will come around.She has no choice.”Andrew shuddered at the thought.
Glasses clinked in agreement.Companionable silence stretched a while before the baron spoke again.
“Hell to pay for certain, if not before then after.I presume your funds are safe?”
Mallet nodded.He was a careful man.“Sudbury can’t touch me.I’m unlikely to be considered for a University post in any case, so he can’t harm me there.I can afford a wife.”
“Humiliation is a Hayden specialty usually reserved for sworn enemies and family members.I can see where she’d want to avoid it.Is that the rub then?”
“That and marriage itself I think.Mostly she is angry with me and with Richard for things that happened long ago.”
“Your sudden wish for an army career?”
