The words dropped between them, and they both seemed surprised by them. She was taken aback. Did he really mean it? Did he really care about her story? Or was he simply in it for the information she promised? For the payment she always rendered when he did the Angel a favor?
And why did the answers matter so much?
He saved her from the questions swirling through her mind. “But today, I will settle for an answer to Caroline’s question.”
Why did she wish to marry.
She shook her head. “There are a dozen reasons why I should marry.”
“Should is not wish.”
“That’s semantics.”
“It is not at all. I should not have kissed you yesterday. But I very much wished to. There’s nothing at all the same about the two.”
She stopped, the words sending surprise and something richer through her. Desire. She met his gaze, registering the heat in his brown eyes. “You just…” She hesitated. “You cannot simply announce things like that. As though we are not here, in a public place. In Hyde Park. At the fashionable hour.”
“That must be the most idiotic description for four o’clock in the afternoon that ever there was,” he said, and the conversation had changed. As though he hadn’t just said the word kiss in full view of London’s aristocracy.
Perhaps she’d dreamed it.
“So, tell me, Georgiana.” Her name was a caress even as they walked, a yard between them, in a perfectly innocuous portrait. “Why do you wish to marry?”
The question was quiet and liquid, and made her want nothing more than to answer it, even as she knew it was none of his business. She started with the obvious. “You know already. I require a title.”
“For Caroline.”
“Yes. She needs the protection of a decent title. With your help, she’ll receive it, and with it, hopefully, a future.”
“And you expect Langley to be a decent father.”
The words came so easily, with such a lightness, that she almost didn’t notice the way they probed, searching for the answer to the question she’d been asked her whole adult life. “If she’s lucky, yes.”
He nodded, and they walked farther. “Fair enough. But that is all for Caroline. What of you?”
“Me?”
“The meat of it is right there in the question, Georgiana, why do you wish to marry?”
The wind blew once more, and it carried the scent of him to her – sandalwood and something else, something clean and entirely masculine. Later, she would tell herself that it was the scent that made her tell the truth. “Because I haven’t any other choice.”
The truth of the words shocked her, and she wished she could take them back. She wished she’d said something else, something bolder and more brazen. But she hadn’t. Instead, he’d asked his questions and stripped her bare. Exposed her vulnerabilities. Even as she was the most powerful man in Britain, one who ruled the night, here, in the day, she was still just a woman, with a woman’s rights. And a woman’s insignificant power.
By day, as a mother with a daughter, she needed help.
He didn’t know all of that, of course. He knew she was ruined, but not the extent to which she could be destroyed. And even as he heard the truth in her words, he did not fully understand them. He did not press the issue, however, instead asking, “And why now?”
He’d asked her the question before. The night they’d met on the balcony at the Worthington Ball. The night he’d met Georgiana. She hadn’t answered then. But now, she spoke without hesitation, her gaze finding Caroline ahead. “She needs more than I can give her.”
He raised a brow. “She lives with your brother. I imagine she does not want for much.”
She watched her daughter for a long moment, a memory coming thick and nearly overwhelming. “Not like that. She deserves a family of her own.”
“Tell me,” he said, the words soft and warm and tempting, making her wish they were somewhere else, where she could curl into his heat and do precisely as he asked.
She answered. “Just after the New Year, I visited her on my brother’s estate.” Those assembled had barely given her a look, each more interested in the rare warm winter’s day than in their eccentric aunt, who often turned up at strange times wearing breeches and boots.
But Caroline had noticed.
“She was surprised to see me.”
“You don’t see her often?”
Georgiana hesitated, guilt flooding through her. “The estate… it is far from Mayfair.”
“The opposite end of the world from where you live.” Precisely. She simultaneously adored and hated the understanding in the words. “What happened?”
She tried to explain, realizing that the story might seem simple. Unimportant. “Nothing of particular note.”
He didn’t accept the answer. “What happened?”
She lifted a shoulder. Let it drop, hoping the movement would cover her shame at the memory. “I thought she would be happy to see me. But instead, she was confused. Instead of smiling and rushing to me, she blinked up at me and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’”
He exhaled, and she thought she heard understanding in the sound, but she didn’t dare look at him. Didn’t dare ask. “I was so shocked by the question. After all, I am her mother. Shouldn’t I be there? Isn’t that my place? With her?” She shook her head. “I was furious. Not with her, but with myself.” She stopped, lost in the memory, in the way Caroline had smiled, as though Georgiana were a welcome stranger.