As though he had been expecting another.
But behind the irritation, somewhere in the depths of his beautiful brown eyes, she saw something else. Something akin to thrill. She knew it, because she felt it, too. Felt it, and feared it.
She stopped short. “Who let you in?”
He met her gaze, spoke. “I am a member of the club.”
“Members are not allowed in this room,” she said. “Members are not even allowed on this floor.”
“Perhaps you ought to tell that to Bourne.”
“I was going to say,” Bourne said from the doorway, ignoring the look she sent in his direction, “that you should know I invited him up.”
Anger flared, hot and unwelcome. She turned on her partner. “You had no right.”
Bourne raised a supercilious brow. “I am an owner, too, am I not?”
Her gaze narrowed. “You violate our rules.”
“Don’t you mean Chase’s rules?” Bourne said, and Georgiana wanted to slap his face for the sarcasm in the words. “I wouldn’t worry. Chase seemed to forget those rules in certain cases.”
She did not misunderstand. At one point or another all three of the women in the room had been invited to The Fallen Angel by Chase, without the permission of their husbands. She didn’t care that Bourne was somehow viewing West’s invitation as retribution, she was too busy being furious at him for ignoring the rules. For smugly disregarding their partnership.
For the way he seamlessly stripped her of power here – the only place where she had any power to begin with.
Before she could argue with him, West spoke. “Where is he?” West’s words were clear and firm in the dimly lit room, as though he fully expected to be heard and responded to despite the fact that he did not belong here.
Despite the fact that she did not want him here.
“Where is who?” she replied.
“Chase.”
He had not come to see her. Of course, she should have known it. She should not be surprised. But she was, nonetheless; after all, they had spent much of the prior evening together, and… shouldn’t he wish to see her? Or was that mad?
Should she not wish him to wish to see her?
The thought ran through her head and disgusted her with its stupid, simpering simperingness. And then she was disgusted with the fact that she could not think of a better word than simperingness.
She did not wish him to want her. Everything was easier without that.
But there was something about the way he looked – thoroughly serious and thoroughly dismissive, as though she were nothing but a door-man to the room he wished to enter – that made her hate the fact that he was not here to see her.
Except, of course, he was.
He just didn’t know it.
“He is not here.” A lie, and somehow not one at all.
He took a step toward her. “I’m sick and tired of you protecting him. It’s time he face me. Where is your master?”
The angry question hung in the air, seeming to reverberate off the stained glass. Georgiana opened her mouth to brazen it through when the Duchess of Lamont interjected, “Well. I think it’s time for Stephen and me to find Temple.”
The words unlocked the rest of the room. “Yes. We must be home as well,” Penelope said as Mara pushed the pram to the door, more quickly than any young mother had in history, Georgiana imagined.
“We must?” Bourne asked, looking as though he weren’t at all interested in leaving the drama unfolding before them.
“Yes,” Penelope said firmly. “We must. We have things. To do.”
Bourne smirked. “What kinds of things?”
His marchioness narrowed her gaze. “All kinds of things.”
The smirk became a wicked smile. “May I choose the things that are done first?”
Penelope pointed to the door. “Out.”
Bourne heeded her instructions, leaving Pippa only. The Countess Harlow had never been very good at perceiving social cues, so Georgiana hoped she might stay and protect her from this man, his questions, her answers, and her silly feelings about the whole thing.
Hope was a fleeting, horrible thing.
After a beat, Pippa seemed to realize she’d been left. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. I should… go… as well. I have… well…” She pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “I have a child. Also… Cross.” She nodded once and left the room.
West watched her go, his gaze lingering on the door for a long moment before he turned to Georgiana. “And then there were two.”
Her stomach flipped at the words. “So it would seem.”
He did not release her gaze, and she marveled at the way he seemed to see and ask and somehow know everything with a simple look. And then he said her name, soft and tempting in this room she loved so well. “Georgiana.” He paused, and she wanted to go to him. Wanted to curl into him and tell him everything, because if she did not know better – she would think the word was spoken in understanding.
But she did know better. And if she did not understand, it was impossible that he did.
He asked the only question she could not answer. “Where is he?”
She was wearing trousers.
It was the first and only thought he had when he’d entered the room – his gaze flying past Countess Harlow, to the woman who had consumed his thoughts for what seemed like forever. She stood against the far wall of the room against an enormous stained glass mosaic, one he knew well. One he had seen a thousand times from its opposite side.
He’d always assumed there was a room here, on the far side of Lucifer’s fall, but he’d never imagined this was how he would find it, with the beautiful Georgiana framed by the dark angel beyond. Wearing trousers.