* * *
George’s mother kept her distance for at least two weeks, which was probably a record for her, considering she loved finding new ways to put him down. They didn’t even attend the same social events—or if they did, she kept to her side of the room and never once ventured toward him.
They were two weeks of unmixed bliss.
Of course, that could only last so long, and fifteen days after he had turned her out of his Manor, Peters announced that his mother was here to see him.
George stared at his butler and considered giving the excuse that he wasn’t home. He may well not have been; he’d almost accepted an invitation for dinner at White’s, and it was only a reluctant need to tackle his accounts that meant he was in the Manor at all.
But before he could make any such decision, his mother swept into the study and cast a scornful gaze at him. “Going to deny me, George?” she asked.
“I was considering it,” he said evenly. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Her eyes narrowed, as though she heard the inflection he placed on ‘pleasure’, but all she said was, “I have found a bride for you.”
“Really?” He leaned back in his chair and tapped his finger against the desk. “I thought you preferred me to die over the prospect of me continuing the family name.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I wasn’t aware I was being.” He was conscious of a wish for a drink. Or several. His uncle urging him to marry was one thing; that was easily ignored, and he had every intention of ignoring it for the present. A wife would be an inconvenience, and he rather enjoyed his current mode of life.
But for his mother to have found a bride for him. How far had she meddled? Had she given the poor girl to believe he might offer for her? If she had, that would have been cruel indeed.
“Tell me,” he said when she showed no signs of leaving, “who is the girl?”
“A young lady you haven’t met,” his mother said. “She’s been out in the country for the past year. Although I suspect your tastes may run more toward her mother.”
George frowned. “How young is the girl?”
“Oh, not that young—around twenty, I believe. But I know your preference for courtesans, so I know she will be to your liking.”
Anger swept through him. “You’re proposing I marry a courtesan?” he demanded. It had been done before, of course, but usually one had to have visited the courtesan in question and fallen in love with her.
He had visited several over the course of his lifetime, but he had fallen in love with none.
“The girl is a courtesan’s daughter,” his mother said, her lip curling. “Likely, she’s some ill-bred man’s brat—a woman like that could hardly find it within herself to remain with one man, I’m certain.”
Anger flared in his stomach, and it was all he could do to keep his gaze steadily on his mother. “You have selected the daughter of a courtesan as my prospective bride? For what purpose? A lesson in humiliation?”
“It was a challenge, to be sure, to find a lady equally worthless, but I believe she may suit. Her mother is coarse and vulgar, alarmingly ill-bred and only a lady by dint of marrying a man she no doubt seduced. And her daughter is a plain little thing who spent the last Season in the country, no doubt because she failed to take in her first.”
There was something familiar about the scenario that she’d presented to him, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. After the year he’d had, with his brother’s death and succeeding to a title he never expected to inherit, it was hardly surprising.
He rose, pushing back his chair and striding past his mother. “Be so good as to leave,” he said. “And be warned—I shall not be calling on this girl you’ve selected. I am a Duke and I know what’s owed to my title, even if you are determined to drag my name through the mud.” As he spoke, he stalked back through the Manor to the front door. His servants could hear everything, but they always did; no one discovered secrets like servants.
“You do not need my help to drag your name through the mud,” his mother said viciously as she followed him. “But it’s a shame you won’t see the girl as she came here with me.”
He whirled. “You brought her here?”
“She’s in the drawing room awaiting your pleasure.” She smirked, the expression so at odds with the painstaking neatness of her dress that he stared.
“For God’s sake,” he muttered, changing direction at the last minute and walking with quick steps to the drawing room. If his mother was the girl’s chaperone—though really she shouldn’t have been—then he couldn’t throw her out of the Manor without the girl.
But what a nerve his mother had, bringing the girl here, and expecting him to receive her with grace when his hand had been so forced.
Expecting him toofferfor her. No, she didn’t expect that. This was to humiliate him, nothing more.
He flung open the door to the drawing room. “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said curtly, only to pull up short. The face that stared at him with wide, resentful eyes was one he’d seen in his dreams; she had haunted his every waking moment for weeks after she’d left him by the river.
