“You’re funny, Sebastian. We both know I’d break you. But I am not the person you should be mad at. She hasn’t chosen me but the idea that a man will want her hand and have his life in order so that they can build a new world together.”
“Georgina Wilcox is too smart to allow you and a bunch of men to pick her husband.”
Torrance chuckled. “You had a spring flower in your hands, the bud opening at your touch, and thought you could delay watering it until autumn. When a rose is in full bloom, it will not wait. It will be in someone’s hair or buttonhole.”
The man was right.
I was a fool. “These weeks they’ve been coming here, when Miss Wilcox was resistant to marriage, I stopped pushing so hard. I wanted to give her time, but she may have been testing my resolve.”
“The logic of a woman is something I will never fully understand, except that Scarlett—she frightens me with her intensity. But I’ve learned two things. Honesty in both your desires and fears is important. And a woman must never doubt your feelings for her. If she does, that’s ground for someone else to harvest.”
I sank to the bench. “I doubted her and myself. Now she’ll be someone else’s wife.”
I began to play. This time it was the tune stuck in my head.
Torrance hummed, but all I heard was Georgie’s voice from our practice earlier today.
“She will partake in the parade of suitors that starts tomorrow and has agreed to marry whom I choose for her. As her guardian in the matter, I’ll not pick a volatile choice. Nor will I be swayed by a man who’s unsure.”
The duke strolled to the door, his long white robe fluttering like an angel’s. “Stick with your music, Sebastian, and Dido. She will wait an eternity to be admired.”
My fingers shrank away from the keys.
Nothing Torrance said was untrue. My love deserved the world—something kind and free, where she ran or twirled for pure pleasure, never fear.
A better man would leave things to the duke and let Georgie enjoy her choices.
Good thing that wasn’t me.
Chapter 33
GEORGINA—PARADE OFMEN
The duke’s red study was filled with men. I sat off to the right of his desk in the corner with Scarlett. She’d taken out a quill to score candidates.
“Such a collection, all here for you,” she said.
Wasn’t sure they were here for me or the food or the circus-like atmosphere. Tall and short, big-boned and skinny, Black, Brown, and White—all God’s children were in my sight, hunting for a wife.
This was the duke’s science meeting gone wild.
Country-looking fellow, red from working in the sun, decked in his church-best—onyx tailcoat and black glossed boots—stood off to the side eating my biscuits, the batch I’d made this morning.
“He owns a large farm beyond London,” Scarlett said.
“I guess wealth was the price of admission.”
She nodded and shuffled through her notes. I stared at all my suitors.
Dandies with ideas on chemistry appeared in bright-colored regalia—waistcoats of stripes, strawberry reds, and silky starched shirt collars.
I wondered whose physiques were true or cinched with a girdle. Mr. Thom said they did that over here. He’d seen all manner of things on his coal routes.
Katherine couldn’t stomach this process. She drove a coal route today. Mr. Thom needed assistance with our growing business. I think my sister still hoped to pay the duke back. Miracles happened, but I doubted Wilcox Coal could gain enough income before the ball.
“Georgina, I think that’s Lord Fellows. Second son, man of science. I see him at the lectures held by ministers of the Royal Society.”
Ah. The peers would come.
