What was the farce? That my future husband could be chosen based on interviews? That there was someone in London for me? Or that I couldn’t find happiness unless it was with Mark?
“Don’t you think it ridiculous what Torrance is doing?” he asked. “You should tell him and end this.”
End the bet and end the fantasy we lived on Tuesdays and Wednesdays?
Take away the care and attention Lydia received?
And Scarlett?
When I spied her, she seemed to be keeping up with the duke. The girl who’d rather be reading was laughing and remembering the footwork Mama had taught.
Scarlett was twenty, the age to be presented. Had Katherine and Tavis’s marriage not been ostracized, our younger sister might have invitations all about town. Her world could be so expanded beyond the books where her imagination lived.
“Georgie, are you all right?”
“Just remembering something Mama said about . . . dancing. Mark, if you’ve made no progress, how will you make the deadline?”
He twirled me away. When I returned for the next part of the dance, he said, “I have time. If not this year, then next.”
“But what will you do for a whole year?”
“My mother will have me design music rooms for some of her friends. She’s good at finding things like that for me.”
He wasn’t to be his own man this year, not if he depended upon his mother’s favor. He was the doting version of Tavis, a kinder, no-gambling version.
“You stopped, Georgie. Have I tired you?”
“No . . . my lord. Not at all.”
But actually, truthfully, I was fatigued, fatigued at thinking I could wait for Mark to show me that I could put my faith in him.
“Georgie. You will be lovely at the ball. It will be a shame that you must break our secret engagement.”
“Yes. A shame.”
“Pick no one. Neither will win the bet if you do not choose.”
The answer was obvious. I needed to do what Katherine had been unable to do, marry the right man. “Time waits for no man. Let’s switch partners.”
Mark looked hurt, but he handed me off to dance with the man with a plan.
The Duke of Torrance was an excellent partner. Light on his feet and mine. As he always did, he gently turned me about the room.
The breath I held burned my lungs when I finally released it. “I accept.”
“Accept what? That the rhythm is too slow, my dear?”
“No, Your Grace. I will comply with whatever, or whoever, you choose. I know that you only have my welfare, my family in mind.”
“Always my utmost concern.”
Mark tried to bump into our path.
As if he had a set of eyes in the back of his head, the duke turned a different way. “Excellent, you will not—”
“But I want to be a part of the process. Let Scarlett and me sit in on your next examination session.”
“The parade of men.” He stopped dancing. Then, as if the notion hadn’t occurred to him before, he clapped. “Excellent. That will add to the process. You will complete this logical investigation. Brilliant.”
