The Kiss (5 page)

She had wondered when he would bring that up. As usual he had lulled her into hoping he wouldn't ask. She sniffed, trying to draw up her form in the haughtiest pose a lady could assume, given the amount of slops, mud, and rain on her person, which precluded anything truly impressive. "Why, I like pigs. I hate to see them hungry."

"Georgiana ..." He sighed heavily. "Look, I'm cold and more tired than I can say, and you're in pain and freezing as well, although a pack of wild dogs probably couldn't drag a complaint from you. But eventually—in the next twenty-four hours to be precise—I shall be paying a visit to your father."

She looked away.

He sighed. "You were correct on the other point. Before I leave next week to continue my tour of the family's properties to the north, we have
another
issue to discuss. That of your marriage to ... my cousin. And the matter of a settlement. I shall leave it to you to pick the time and the place."

The reference to Anthony and his odd pause made her ill at ease. "There's remarkably little to discuss."

"We both know the validity of the marriage is in question. But we'll resolve this before I leave. And by the by" —he glanced away— "contrary to popular opinion, I was glad to hear you'd married him. The two of you had a very special bond. You always were inseparable."

"It wasn't just Anthony and I who were best friends. It was the
three
of us who were—"

He ruthlessly ignored her. "You were the only chance he had to turn himself around." He took a step closer. "If there was anyone who could have changed the direction he was taking himself, it was you. You usually had good sense. Why, there's not a silly, romantic notion in your body."

"I'm so glad you noticed," she said dryly, regaining her senses. "Everyone always underestimates the advantages of marrying a managing female."

His expression never wavered.

She had thought he would laugh. For the ten thousandth time she wondered what his wife had been like. He had supposedly fallen in love with and married a lady whose beautiful face and elegant grace had been the fodder of every gossip column Georgiana had chanced to see all those years ago. The news of his marriage had broken her pathetic heart irrevocably. Old dreams formed in youth were the hardest to die.

"You always did have a mind of your own, Georgiana. But I appreciate an organized mind. Well, I shall hope we can discuss this more rationally, in future. You have no reason to fear me. I, for one, am very willing to start anew. I never think of the past. Enough..." He looked up at the still gray sky and squinted. "It's starting to rain again. I can't force you to let me carry you. But if you move a muscle from this spot before I send someone with a cart, I'll—"

"Why do you never think of the past?" she whispered. "I think about it all the time."

He stared at her, and a drop of rain worked its way down his cropped hair to land on his broad shoulder. He turned and walked away, refusing to say another word.

"Oh!" Georgiana started. "Don't walk away from me. Oh, what is wrong with you? You've changed. You never used to walk away. Come back. I'll tell you what you want to know." She stopped when she realized he had strode away so quickly that there was no possible way he could hear her over the sudden surge of the returning rain. "Damn you, Quinn Fortesque," she whispered into the wind.

And the wicked wind carried it to his ears and he smiled despite himself. He'd forgotten what a hellion little Georgiana Wilde could be when she set her mind to it.

He was still mulling over the hellcat after dinner in the comfort of Penrose's library.
His
library.

But it didn't feel like his library. The ghosts of the two people who had held the title before him seemed to hover in the shadows, mocking him, forcing him to remember. Well, he'd be damned if he was going to give in to thinking about the past. He took a long pull from the cheroot he'd nearly forgotten, dangling from his fingers over the arm of the cushioned chair. Then he settled in to study the glowing embers at its tip—and ponder his dilemma ... Georgiana Wilde, now Fortesque.

He was disgusted she'd almost made him forget to hold on to the closed facade he carefully presented to the world. He usually measured every word before he allowed it to escape from his lips, and avoided messy scenes entirely. What could he have been thinking? He shook his head.

Georgiana had not changed. He smiled inwardly, remembering her amusing and original string of curses aimed at Gwendolyn, queen of the swine. Oh, Georgiana's angles had softened a little, but not her character. But then, he had never expected her to become a great beauty. In fact he wondered why he was thinking about her features at all. With her dark hair, dark eyes, and sun-darkened skin, Georgiana was the very opposite of refined elegance—the very opposite of Cynthia.

He stilled and closed his eyes when he thought of the ax butt that had fallen on Georgiana's knee. He wondered if the horrific injuries to her legs from so many years ago still pained her. They must. He shivered involuntarily when he remembered the accident that had almost cost her a limb. It was what had caused his immediate removal from Penrose, in fact. He forced his mind away from the incident. He had trained himself to keep all irrelevant thoughts of his childhood from cluttering his mind. He was only sorry she had suffered so.

A log shifted and sparks spewed out near the padded fire railing. He rose and brushed the embers back into the grate. Unbidden, like a creeping vine, Georgiana wound back into his thoughts. She had lost the innocent look of childhood. But then, he supposed he had too. Yet she had the same audacious temperament she had possessed at a very tender age, when he had first spied her shepherding an enormous flock of Southdown sheep with mischief on their minds.

It appeared she still had the inability to dampen her emotions—something he had learned how to do very well fifteen years ago. And if there was one thing he was certain of after seeing her today, it was that she was hiding something from him. Well, he would learn what it was, as methodically as he had uncovered state scandals and lies throughout his diplomatic career. Her reception of him proved yet again that the years he had spent here as a boy had been yet another transitory illusion of fellowship, permanence, and happiness.

Actually, he really didn't care very much what she was hiding. It was just that he didn't like secrets, and his methodical, disciplined roots would not let him rest until everything was examined, a solution found, and the lot of it settled in a proper fashion. Yet he would not shame her even if the marriage was questionable. She didn't understand that she had nothing to fear from him.

In the end, even if there was something dubious about the marriage, he would simply arrange a comfortable annuity for Georgiana and settle her far from Penrose so he wouldn't have another reminder of humanity's shortcomings.

He had sent a note to her father telling him to expect him early tomorrow morning. Quinn only prayed Mr. Wilde was not as ill as he suspected. He had always been a man Quinn respected, one of the few people who had always had time for him in his youth.

He turned his attention to a letter in his lap. His daughter had surreptitiously pressed the note into his hand when he had taken leave of her at the home of Cynthia's parents. He had read the note so many times on his journey south that the creases were worn. Large letters looped across the page, begging him between each line to return for her. He had no reason to feel guilty for leaving Fair-leigh with his in-laws. She was much better off in London with Cynthia's mother and the governess they had found. Of course she was sad. She had left everyone she had ever known in Portugal, her mother had died the year before, and now he was away.

He closed his eyes for a long moment and remembered the day he had arrived at Penrose at the age of eleven, newly orphaned by the scourge of the pox that had invaded his parents' modest home in Dorchester.

He jumped up and grappled with the escritoire's drawer to find some writing paper.

They would be furious. He simply didn't care. He scribbled a note to Cynthia's parents, sanded it, sealed it with sizzling crimson wax, and stamped Penrose's symbol of a six-petaled rose—from the signet ring his aunt had given him, amid a public flood of tears on her part and none on his.

He hailed a footman and released the missive into the man's hands before he could change his mind. And then he realized he had taken another decision before he'd examined it in his normal, reflective fashion. He would not return to London at the end of the week as planned and then go on to the rest of the properties. He couldn't take his daughter willy-nilly across England for the next several months. She needed permanence after all the disruptions. Well, if anyone could banish ghosts, it would be his impish daughter. They would stay here in Cornwall, far, far away from the dazzling aristocratic and diplomatic circles of London. He shook his head. Who needed town bronze when one could have country dirt?

What had come over him? He made a point to never take decisions haphazardly. Any innocent spontaneity he might have possessed in his youth had been thoroughly expunged from him by experience.

It must be the mystical nature of the changeable Cornish air . . . or the fairies at mischief. He groaned. Fairies indeed. He stared at the untouched amber liquid in a glass the housekeeper, Mrs. Killen, had brought unbidden and then placed on the nearby desk before she had retired. He suddenly wondered if perhaps the muddy new Marchioness of Ellesmere was poisoning the firewater. He wouldn't put it past her. He wouldn't put it past any woman . . . especially a woman with a
plan.

And Lord knew Georgiana Wilde always had plans...

Chapter 3

"But my dear Georgiana," Ata St. Aubyn, the Dowager Duchess of Helston murmured with a little excited smile on her face, "you are too, too kind. Are you certain we wouldn't be an imposition?"

Georgiana smiled back at the tiny, old duchess, whom she had come to love with every beat of her heart. "Certain," she replied firmly.