West narrowed his gaze. “You don’t have a single idea what this is about.”
“I do, though. I think it’s about a woman.”
A vision flashed, the woman to whom Bourne referred. Half sin, half salvation, equally as beholden to the men of The Fallen Angel. To their leader. So beholden to him that she did not have room for West.
Not that it mattered.
He met the marquess’s gaze. “You deserve a thrashing.”
“And you think you’re the man to give it to me?”
He was. He was the only man in London who could give it to him. He was tired of being manipulated and used with complete disregard.
“I think I’m the man to end you all,” he said, the words cold and dark and unsettling in the quiet.
End them and save her.
Bourne stilled. “That sounds like a threat.”
“I don’t make threats,” Duncan took hold of the door handle and opened the door.
“Now I know it’s about her.”
Duncan turned back, resisting the urge to take out his anger on the marquess. To do to him what he wished to do to Chase – the mysterious, unknowable Chase.
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 – everyone 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.”