Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover: Number 4 in series (The Rules of Scoundrels series) (32 page)

Instead, he said, “It’s not a threat. Tell that to Chase.”

Chapter 15

… Our favorite Lady was seen eating lemon ice from Merkson’s Sweets with Miss P— earlier this week. It seemed not to concern either flaxen-haired beauty that the weather was far too cold for lemon ice. It should be added that a source close to Merkson’s reports that a certain Baroness will be stocking lemon ice at her next ball…

… London’s finest casino continues to indebt gentlemen with little sense and less money, apparently. We have it on good authority that several aristocrats will be offering land in exchange for loans this spring, and we pity their poor, put upon wives…

The News of London
, May 4, 1833

“Cross says that you’ve selected a husband.”

Georgiana did not look up from her place by the fireplace in the owners’ suite, where she pretended to be enthralled in a pile of documents requiring her attention. “I have.”

“Are you planning to tell us who it is?”

In The Fallen Angel and the lower club the founders owned, seventeen members owed more than they could repay from their cash coffers, which meant that she and the other partners needed to decide what they were willing to accept in lieu of money. This was not a small project, nor was it to be taken lightly. But there was no possible way a woman could work with her business partners’ wives collected about her.

She looked up to find all three seated nearby, in the chairs that usually housed their husbands.

Or, at least, the chairs that had housed their husbands before those husbands had gone soft. Now they housed a countess, a marquess, and a duchess and future duke – aged four months.

Lord deliver her from men’s wives.

“Georgiana?”

She met Countess Harlow’s serious gaze, wide and unblinking behind her spectacles. “I feel certain that you know the answer to that question, my lady.”

“I don’t,” Pippa replied. “You see, I’ve heard two possible names offered.”

“I heard Langley,” Penelope, Lady Bourne piped up, reaching to take the infant from the arms of his mother. “Give me that sweet boy.”

Mara, the Duchess of Lamont, relinquished her son without question. “I heard Langley at first, as well, but then Temple seemed to think there was another, more suitable possibility.”

Not at all suitable.
 

“There is no such thing.”

“Now that is interesting,” said Pippa, pushing her glasses farther back on her nose. “I am not certain that I have ever seen a lady in trousers blush.”

“You would think that embarrassment would not be so easy for someone of your experience,” the marchioness added, her tone fit only for the child in her arms.

Georgiana was fairly certain that the sound that came from Temple’s son was best described as laughter. She considered tossing them all out of the room. “You know, before any of you turned up, this was called the owners’ suite.”

“We’re virtually owners,” Penelope pointed out.

“No, you are literally
wives
of owners,” Georgiana retorted. “That is not the same thing at all.”

Mara raised an auburn brow. “You are not entirely in a place to condescend about wives.”

Her partners’ wives were the worst women in London. Difficult in the extreme. Bourne, Cross, and Temple deserved them, no doubt, but what had Georgiana done to warrant their presence now, as she reconciled herself to the events of the past day? She wanted nothing more than to sit quietly and remind herself that it was her work and her daughter who were the most important things in her life, and everything else – every
one
else – could hang.

“I heard that West was in the running,” Pippa said.

Starting first with her gossiping business partners and their nattering wives.

“
Duncan
West?” Penelope asked.

“The very same,” Mara said.

“Oh,” Penelope said happily to the boy in her arms. “We like him.”

The boy cooed.

“He seems a very good man.” Pippa said.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for him,” Mara agreed. “And he seems to have a soft spot for women who are followed by trouble.”

Something unpleasant flared at those words as she found she did not care for Duncan West having a soft spot for any women, particularly those who might decide they wished to be protected by him in perpetuity. “Which women?” Only after she’d lifted her head and spoke did she realize she was supposed to be pretending to work. She cleared her throat. Returned her attention to the file in her hand. “Not that I’m interested.”

Silence fell in the wake of her statement, and she could not resist looking up. Penelope, Pippa, and Mara were looking at each other, as though in a comedic play. Temple’s son was blessedly asleep, or he would no doubt be watching her as well.

“What is it?” Georgiana asked. “I am not interested.”

Pippa was the first to break the silence. “If you are not interested, then why ask?”

“I was being polite,” Georgiana rushed to answer. “After all, the three of you are chattering like magpies in my space, I thought I might play hostess.”

Penelope spoke then. “We thought you were working.”

She lifted a file. “I am.”

“Whose file is that?” Mara asked, as though it were perfectly normal for her to ask such a thing. And it might be.

But damned if Georgiana could remember whose file it was.

“She is blushing again,” Pippa said, and when Georgiana turned a glare on the Countess Harlow, it was to find herself under a curious investigation, as though she were an insect under glass.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know,” Penelope said. “We’ve all found ourselves drawn to someone who seems entirely wrong for us.”

“Cross wasn’t wrong for me,” Pippa said.

Penelope lifted a brow. “Oh? And the bit where you were engaged to another man?”

“And he was engaged to another woman?” Mara added.

Pippa smiled. “It only made the story more entertaining.”

“The point is, Georgiana,” Mara spoke this time, “you should not be ashamed of wanting West.”

“I don’t want West,” she said, setting down her file and standing, the frustration of these women and their knowing gazes and their attempts at comforting words propelling her away from them, to the massive stained glass window that looked out on the casino floor.

“You don’t want West,” Mara repeated, flatly.

“No,” she said. But of course she
did
. She wanted him a great deal. But not in the way they meant. Not forever. She simply wanted him
for now
.

“Whyever not?” Penelope asked, and the other women chuckled.

She could not bring herself to confess that he did not seem to want her. After all, she’d very overtly offered herself to him the night before – and he’d refused her. Wrapping a towel around his handsome hips and stalking from the room that housed his swimming pool without looking back.

As though what had transpired between them meant nothing.

Georgiana leaned into the window, splaying her fingers wide and pressing her forehead to the cool, pale glass that made one of Lucifer’s broken wings. The position gave the illusion of floating, of hovering high above the dimly lit pit floor, the tables empty and quiet now, untouched until the afternoon, when maids would lower the chandeliers and light the massive candelabras that kept the casino bright and welcoming in the darkness. Her gaze flickered from table to table – faro,
vingt-et-un
, roulette, hazard – every table hers, placed with care. Run with skill.

She was royalty of the London underground, vice and power and sin were her dominion, and yet a man, who made pretty offers and tempted her with lovely promises that he could never keep, had somehow flattened her.

After the long silence, Mara said, “You know, I never thought I could have love.”

“Neither did I, though I wanted it quite desperately,” Penelope added, standing and moving to the pram in the corner, where she settled the sleeping future duke into his pristine cocoon of blankets.

“I did not think it was real,” Pippa said. “I could not see it, and therefore, I did not believe it.”

Georgiana closed her eyes at the admissions. Wished the three women gone. Then said, “There are days when I find myself sympathizing with MacBeth.”

“MacBeth,” Pippa repeated, confused.

“I believe that Georgiana is suggesting that we are like witches,” Penelope said dryly, turning from her place across the room.

“Secret, black, and midnight hags and all that?” Pippa asked.

“The very same.”

“Well, that’s mildly unkind.”

Georgiana turned and asked, “Don’t you have places to be?”

“As we are indolent aristocrats,” Mara said, “no.”

It wasn’t true, of course. Mara ran a home for boys, and had raised thirty thousand pounds in close to a year to expand the home and send the boys to university. Pippa was a renowned horticulturalist, always speaking to some society of old men about her work with hybrid roses. And between raising a lovely little girl and preparing for a second child – who Bourne was certain was going to be a boy – Penelope was one of the most prominent, active members of the ladies’ side of the club.

These were not idle women.

So why did they insist on hounding her?

“The point is, Georgiana —”

“Oh, there is a point?”

“There is a point. Namely, that you think you are somehow different from every woman who has ever come before you.”

She was different.

“Even now, you think it. You think that because of this life you lead, because of your casino and your secret identity and the company you keep —”

“— present company excepted,” Penelope interjected.

“Obviously,” Mara agreed, turning back to Georgiana. “But because of the company you keep other than us, and the damn trousers you wear… you think you are different. You think you don’t deserve what every other woman deserves. What every other woman seems to have. Even worse, you think that even if you did deserve it, you don’t have the opportunity for it. Or maybe you think you don’t want it.”

“I don’t.” The words shocked everyone in the room, none more than Georgiana herself.

“Georgiana —” Mara was out of her chair, headed for her, when Georgiana held up a hand.

“No.” Mara stopped, and Georgiana was grateful for it. “Even if I could have it. Even if there were someone willing to give it to me – someone to have me despite my being saddled with ruin, an unwed mother, a casino owner with three male business partners and a bevy of prostitutes at my beck and call – I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want love?” Penelope sounded shocked.

Love. The thing that had seen her through the heights and depths of life. The threat of it had ruined her ten years ago, then the reality of it had made her strong and resolute when Caroline was born. And then, last night, it had lured her. “I do not. While it teases with its pretty words and prettier touches, love has already had a run at me, and I am too wrecked by it.”

There was a pause, then Mara asked, “But if he would have you? If he would give it to you?”

He. Duncan West.

“He does not seem the kind of man who would ruin you,” Penelope said.

“They never seem like the kind of men who would ruin you,” Georgiana replied.

They had lied so much to each other. It was hard to imagine the truth between them. She shook her head, spoke the words that she thought whenever he was near, and she ached for his touch, and she wished for more than one night. One week. “It is too dangerous.”

“For whom?”

An excellent question. “For both of us.”

The door opened, revealing Bourne. He crossed the room, not even looking at Georgiana, focused only on his wife, beaming at him from her place by the pram. He smiled, pulling her into his arms. “Hello, Sixpence, I would have come more quickly, but they only just told me you were here.”

Penelope smiled. “I came to see Stephen.” She nodded at the pram. “Doesn’t he look just like Temple?”