It was a great pity, he mused as he mounted the front steps of her house, three days after he’d invaded her bedroom, that eloping was regarded as being scandalous behaviour. He’d much rather whisk Georgie away and marry her in private.
But on that point both his mother and her stepmother were in accord. Nothing would do for either of them but the biggest, most extravagant wedding that could be arranged in the short time he’d agreed to wait to make Georgie his wife.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ said Wiggins with an avuncular smile as he opened the door. ‘The ladies are all in the drawing room this morning,’ he continued, taking Edmund’s coat, hat, and gloves. ‘I take it you do not require my escort upstairs?’ And then, to his astonishment, the fellow winked.
‘No,’ he said tersely. ‘There is no need.’ He might have imagined it, but he could have sworn the fellow was chuckling as he sauntered off with Edmund’s things.
He mounted the stairs, cursing over-familiar servants under his breath. And was still frowning when he entered the drawing room.
Georgie’s stepmother and stepsister both leaped to their feet and greeted him effusively. Predictably, Georgie sent him a troubled, guilty look before lowering her gaze to a tangle of needlework that lay in her lap.
‘I was hoping,’ he said, once the initial hubbub occasioned by his arrival had died down, ‘that Miss Wickford would be well enough to take the air with me today. I have—’
‘Of course she is!’ Mrs Wickford cut him short. ‘Run along and put on your coat and bonnet, dear,’ she said to Georgie, who rose to her feet with reluctance.
‘I do hope you will not mind, my lord,’ Mrs Wickford added, archly, as Georgie trailed to the door, ‘but Sukey and I will not be coming with you. We are expecting visitors we do not wish to offend by putting off.’
Georgie’s face flushed.
‘I am sure,’ said her stepmother, when it looked as though Georgie meant to voice some sort of objection, ‘that there can be no impropriety in you driving in the park with your betrothed. You will have a groom and footman with you and will be in public view at all times.’
Mrs Wickford must have been looking out of the window and seen the carriage in which he’d driven up to be able to say that. Though she was correct. He’d borrowed his mother’s barouche, again.
‘No impropriety at all,’ he said. Was impropriety even possible, in a barouche? ‘I am glad you understand the necessity for us to appear in public as a betrothed couple, Mrs Wickford, now that the announcement has been made. We do not wish anyone to suspect there is anything irregular about our forthcoming union, do we?’
Georgie shot him an anguished look before, shoulders slumped in defeat, she went off to get ready for their outing.
He sank on to a sofa to wait for her, the inane chatter of her female relatives washing over him as he struggled to maintain an appearance of calm. Though his heart had plunged somewhere below the region of his boots at her hangdog expression. Or even lower perhaps. Downstairs somewhere. Possibly even in the servants’ hall, if it was in that little area whose windows he’d spied when mounting the front steps. Anyway, wherever it had gone, the fact that his heart had done so was extremely annoying.
But then this was the way he’d been ever since managing to clinch the deal with Georgie’s stepmother. Fluctuating wildly from one extreme to the other. One minute he’d be elated at the ease with which he’d managed to snatch her out from under the noses of all her other suitors. The next he’d be ashamed for resorting to such ruthless methods that had left her no choice. But then he’d remind himself that he’d saved her from a fate she’d been dreading. And now nobody would have the right to ‘paw at her’.
Except him.
At which point he’d have a vision of a future in which they slept in separate beds. Or at least she would sleep. He would lie there thinking about her, down the corridor. In her nightgown. With her hair streaming across the pillows...
In fact, over the last few days he’d come to understand why some men drank so much they rendered themselves insensible. It was going to be unbearable having her yoked to him, passively, when he yearned for so much more.
And then the door opened once more and there she was, looking utterly captivating in the carriage dress she’d worn when he’d taken her to Bullock’s Museum, the pink one with all the white fluffy trimming down the front and round the edges of the loose sleeves.
He rose to his feet automatically. Which was just as well. His brain seemed to be taking a holiday.
‘You do have your parasol with you, Georgie, don’t you?’
Mrs Wickford was fussing round Georgie, who was staring back at him across the room as though she, too, was in a daze.
‘You must take more care to protect your complexion, what with the wedding taking place so soon and the sun deciding to shine today. And you will be in an open carriage, don’t forget.’
Her lips compressed at the mention of the vehicle. And he suddenly wondered if he ought to have made time to go and buy himself a phaeton, so that he could have driven her himself.
His heart beat erratically as he led her downstairs and out on to the street as his mind frantically seized upon, and then rejected, excuse after excuse. But in the end, only honesty would suffice.
‘I know,’ he said, his cheeks heating as he handed her into the low-slung vehicle, ‘that we are not exactly going to cut a dash, driving about in this carriage, but you have to admit it does make it easy to sit and converse. Which was my intention.’
Georgie gave him a quick frown as she took her seat and arranged her skirts. ‘There is no need to apologise for being who you are. I know you have never wanted to cut a dash, as you put it. In fact, I would have thought you despised the kind of young men who thought of nothing else.’
His spirits sank. ‘In short, you find yourself about to be shackled to a very dull dog.’
Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘You are not dull. At least,’ she amended, ‘I have never found you so.’
‘Thank you,’ he said glumly, since he didn’t believe her. For, after all, wasn’t it his very dullness that had made her propose to him in the first place? If he only had ink running through his veins, rather than red-hot blood, then she didn’t need to fear he would ravish her, did she?
‘It has never bothered me before,’ he said as they set off, ‘what anyone thinks of me. But I do not want you to find me...lacking, in any way.’ A sweat broke out on his upper lip when he realised he’d almost admitted that he didn’t like the image she carried of him, or the hopes she cherished for a bloodless union, in which she probably saw him taking a kind of brotherly role. Fortunately, he’d stopped himself in the nick of time. He must absolutely not alarm her by telling her exactly how hot his blood ran, sometimes, when his thoughts turned in her direction. Or his eyes did.
‘Edmund?’ She looked at him with concern. ‘Surely you know that I would much rather you carry on being yourself than trying to ape the antics of any of those idiots who think they are dashing. Though, actually,’ she said with a curl of contempt to her lips that made them look even more kissable than usual, ‘dashing is a good word to describe them, for they do tend to go dashing about in their high-perch phaetons, don’t they, terrifying innocent pedestrians and drivers of market carts? Or racing down to Brighton, to win a stupid wager. Or prancing about in the park on a showy piece of rubbish Papa would never have permitted in his stables. Or dressing themselves up like peacocks and strutting round with smug looks on their faces, expecting every female in the vicinity to swoon in admiration.’ She was breathing rather fast by the time she’d finished unburdening herself