Finally, he smiled his bold, brazen smile, the one that had called to her from the beginning. Every day for a year. For longer. Until this afternoon, when he’d tempted her finally, finally up to the hayloft, kissed away her hesitation, and made his lovely promises, and taken all she’d had to offer.
But it hadn’t been taking.
She’d given it. Freely.
After all, she loved him. And he loved her.
He’d said so, maybe not with words, but with touch.
Hadn’t he?
Doubt curled through her, an unfamiliar emotion. Something that Lady Georgiana Pearson – daughter to a duke, sister to one – had never felt before.
Say it, she willed. Tell me.
After an interminable moment, he spoke. “You’re a sweet girl.”
And he dropped out of sight.
Chapter 1
Ten Years Later
Worthington House
London
When she looked back on the events of her twenty-seventh year of life, Georgiana Pearson would point to the cartoon as the thing that started it all.
The damn cartoon.
Had it been placed in The Scandal Sheet a year earlier, or five years earlier, or a half dozen years later, she might not have cared. But it had run in London’s most famous gossip rag on March the fifteenth.
Beware the Ides, indeed.
Of course, the cartoon was the result of another date entirely. Two months to the day earlier – January the fifteenth. The day that Georgiana, utterly ruined, unwed mother, walking scandal, and sister to the Duke of Leighton, had decided to take matters in hand and return to Society.
And so she stood here, in the corner of the Worthington ballroom, on the cusp of her reentry into Society, keenly aware of the eyes of all London upon her.
Judging her.
It was not the first ball she’d attended since she was ruined, but it was the first at which she was noticed – the first at which she was not masked, either with fabric or paint. The first at which she was Georgiana Pearson, born a diamond of the first water, devolved into a scandal.
The first at which she was present for her public shaming.
To be clear, Georgiana did not mind her ruination. Indeed, she was a proponent of the state for any number of reasons, not the least of which was this: Once ruined, a lady was no longer expected to stand on ceremony.
Lady Georgiana Pearson – who barely claimed the honorific and barely deserved the descriptor – was thrilled with her ruination, and had been for years. It had, after all, made her rich and powerful, the owner of The Fallen Angel, London’s most scandalous and most popular gaming hell, and the most feared person in Britain… the mysterious “gentleman” known only as Chase.
It was of little consequence that she was, in fact, female.
So, yes, Georgiana believed that the heavens had smiled upon her that day a decade prior when her fate had been forged. Her exile from Society, for better or worse, meant a dearth of invitations to balls, teas, picnics, and assorted events, which, in turn, eliminated the necessity for battalions of chaperones, inane conversation over tepid lemonade, and pretending to show interest in the holy trinity of aristocratic female conversation – mindless gossip, modern fashion, and marriageable gentlemen.
She had little interest in gossip, as it was rarely the truth and never the whole truth. She preferred secrets, offered by powerful men who had scandal to trade.
Similarly, she had little interest in fashion. Skirts were too often taken as a mark of feminine weakness, relegating ladies to doing little but smooth them and less refined females to doing little but lift them. When on the floor of her gaming hell, she hid in plain sight inside the brightly colored silks that costumed London’s most skilled prostitutes, but in all other places, she preferred the freedom of trousers.
And she had no interest in gentlemen, caring not a bit if they were handsome, clever, or titled as long as they had money to lose. For years, she had laughed at the eligible gentlemen who had been marked for marriage by the women of London, their names listed in the betting book at The Fallen Angel – their future wives speculated upon, their wedding dates predicted, their progeny forecasted. She’d watched London’s bachelors from the owners’ suite at her casino – each more rich, handsome, and well-bred than the last – as they were felled, shackled, and married.
And she’d thanked her maker that she hadn’t been forced into the silly charade, forced to care, forced to marry.
No, Georgiana ruined at the tender age of sixteen – now a decade-old warning for all jewels of the ton who had followed her – had learned her lesson about men early, and blessedly escaped any expectation of the parson’s noose.
Until now.
Fans fluttered to cover whispers, to hide smirks and snickers. Eyes grazed by, pretending not to see, even as they settled on her, damning her for her past. For her presence. No doubt, for her gall. For sullying their pristine world with her scandal.
Those eyes hunted her, and if they could, they would slay her.
They know why she was here. Despised her for it.
Christ. This was torture.
It had begun with the dress. The corset was slowly killing her. And the layers of underskirts were constricting her movement. If she was required to flee, she’d no doubt be tripped by them, land on her face, and be swallowed up by a cackling horde of lace-trimmed aristocratic ladies.
The image flashed, unexpected, and she nearly smiled. Nearly. The honest possibility of such an end kept the expression from making an appearance.
She’d never felt the urge to fidget so much in her entire life. But she would not give them the pleasure of playing prey. She had to keep her mind on the task at hand.