“Yes, Your Grace.”
“How quickly you forget, Lady Hampton. Mad British too. I’m both. My home is both. My future, including the future Duchess of Torrance, will accept both. Now settle in and wait. You do know what waiting means?”
His tone sounded angered but the look he offered her—part hurt, part misunderstood, part duel at dawn, a touch of desire— was pure confusion. But I understood it. I lived with such angst in regard to the fairer sex.
Lady Hampton rolled her eyes and fled, quickening her pace away from the duke, crossing the wide golden-yellow tapestry to peer out the windows.
The exposed glass showed men leaving Anya House. The maze and all routes to the stables overflowed.
Someone had to have seen me and Georgina.
“I can’t believe this,” Lady Hampton said. The long sleeves of her plain gray gown billowed with each of her steps. Like the goddess, she was trim, just slightly less voluptuous than the woman who compromised me—and I had compromised right back—in the garden.
“We’ve been so careful.” Lady Hampton’s voice was low. “Our mother, on her dying bed, told us to guard our virtue. I thought we all understood. Ruin can happen so quickly. How could you, Georgina?”
Georgina the goddess—I liked the sound of that and the way she glowed; sitting on the yellow sofa made her brown skin look more tanned like Dido’s. The oversized cushions made her tall height seem dainty, someone to protect.
Then I realizedIwanted to protect her.
“The kiss meant nothing, Katherine. I was impulsive. Your Grace, I am to blame, not the gentleman.”
Didn’t like thinking my kiss was nothing.
Deep breath, fool. I needed out of my troubles, not to add to them. Nonetheless, it was good that she’d admitted her part. A lesser woman might’ve lied.
Still, this honesty stung. The kiss still stirred my blood and it was thirty minutes ago.
Yet, I forgave her and became immobile, watching the goddess flick a falling lock of tightly coiled curls from her face. Tears shimmered on her cheek.
The strain made her cry. The notion of marrying me might’ve too.
Her sister came to her and swooped the thick jet lock of her curly hair back into the tight chignon. Did it feel as silky as it looked? The goddess’s skin was.
Shaking my head, clearing my thoughts of her . . . sort of. How did one forget a perfect dream? “I . . . ah . . . I want to say I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect . . . the young lady.”
The duke rolled his eyes.
Lady Hampton’s grimace deepened.
But the goddess smiled, and I felt lighter.
Mr. Steele knocked, then entered the study. The Scottish man was someone Torrance had met in his extensive travels. The duke bragged about him all the time.
The blank face—his ash-blond hair neatly parted, the crisply pressed, orderly mantle he wore—gave nothing away.
My heart pounded.
He whispered something to his employer, then left.
Torrance’s expression didn’t change.
My pulse raced. Blood and those humors Carew lectured upon sloshed in my veins.
Wasn’t sure if I was found to be guiltier, but I had a feeling the risk-taking duke would use it to his advantage.
“Well?” Lady Hampton asked. “Does Georgina escape with her reputation? A woman can’t live things down as easily as a man. She’ll be damaged, while the gentleman just moves on . . . to a peerage.”
The duke started a slow walk to his desk. “Let me sit. I want to be comfortable when I say what must be said.”
