Her Only Desire (29 page)

“Haven't I told you you worry too much, my lord?”

“Indeed, you have, my dear.”

Then they danced, smiling and gazing into each other's eyes like two smitten fools as they swept through the daring steps of the waltz in effortless unison. He tightened his hold on her waist. Georgiana's palm seemed to caress his shoulder. He savored the dance, though he couldn't help wondering if she was recalling her little visit to his bed and that night in the prayer cave, too.

“Did I mention that I have a present for you, my pretty friend?” he asked at length.

“For me? Oh, how divine! What is it?”

“A surprise,” he chided. “But you won't have long to wait. It should be ready by tomorrow. Shall I deliver it in person?”

“Please do! Oh, please, at least give me a little hint,” she cajoled him. “I hate surprises.”

“That's odd, considering you're full of them.”

“If I don't know what it is, then how can I tell whether or not it would be proper for me to accept this gift from a gentleman?”

He snorted.

“Oh, please, please!”

He laughed. “Very well. It's jewelry, and you may think me improper and overly familiar with the gift, but I don't care. You must have it.”

“Ian!”

“Shh,” he warned.

“I mean—Lord Griffith,” she corrected herself hastily, lowering her voice lest they were heard. “Lord Griffith, my dear, I thought I still had five days left.”

“It's not a ring, if that's your worry,” he drawled as he whirled her smoothly through the turn at the far corner of the dance floor while a crowd of smiling guests looked on. “I assure you, it's quite something…else.”

“Well, aren't you mysterious,” she said with a toss of her head.

He smiled.

When the music ended, she laughed, her cheeks flushed, and pressed her hand to her chest to catch her breath. He offered to get her a drink, and she accepted with an appreciative nod.

“I'll be right back,” he whispered. It was difficult to leave her, but he could feel her watching him as he walked away.

As he pushed his way politely through the crowd, heading for the smaller parlor where refreshments were being served—and those superb meringues—he was apprehended by dear old Lord Applecroft, one of the elder diplomats, along with a young courier from the Foreign Office.

“Griffith! Ah, there you are! This lad has just arrived in search of you.” Lord Applecroft latched onto Ian's sleeve to halt him, then turned to the uniformed courier. “Here, here he is, my boy. What news? You may tell us both! Is it word from India?”

“Yes, sir.” The young man glanced at Ian. “But I've only got orders to tell it to Lord Griffith.”

“It's all right, young man,” Ian said. “I'm the one who gave you the orders.” He had left instructions at the Foreign Office that he should be alerted as soon as any ships from India arrived with tidings of the war. “Lord Applecroft has long been a friend. You may speak freely. The two officers I inquired about, have they come?”

“No, sir, but there's news on the general situation. The Maharajah of Gwalior signed the same treaty of neutrality that you were able to accomplish at Janpur.”

“Excellent!”

“The war's begun, and the reports have it that, so far, Baji Rao has put up a significant defense. But the largest development of all since your departure is that Amir Khan, the leader of the Pindari Horde, has already surrendered!”

“What?”

“The Pindari Horde has decided not to fight!” the courier related with great excitement. “There was a short skirmish, they were quickly routed by Lord Hastings, and driven into disarray. Our forces gave pursuit and now they have surrendered. Many will be hanged; the rest have been disbanded.”

Ian stared at him. “That's incredible,” he murmured, marveling. So much for the Pindaris' reputation for ferocity!

In hindsight, it seemed clear that they had merely been emboldened by the lack of any serious challenge to their marauding practices up until Lord Hastings had vowed to bring them to justice. Then their essential cowardice showed through.

“They put up no resistance?” he asked.

“Only a few of their captains tried to make a stand, but these, too, were crushed. Word has it one of their top leaders tried to escape into the forest and was eaten by a tiger!”

“Dash my wig!” old Lord Applecroft murmured, wide-eyed.

“A tiger? Ha!” Ian abruptly laughed aloud. “Well, I cannot think of a better fate for him,” he declared with an edge of bloodthirsty relish in his voice. “If you ask me, the bleeder got what he deserved.”

“I say!” Lord Applecroft answered, then he eyed Ian shrewdly. “Never heard you talk like that before. Perhaps you picked up a bit of Eastern savagery in your travels, Griffith?”

“Ah, my old friend.” Ian clapped him on the shoulder. “If I had not been born with a savage streak myself, I should never have attempted to negotiate with the wild maharajahs in the first place.” He winked at the old earl, laughed at the courier's astonished look, and then moved on alone to fetch the promised punch for his lady.

         

“You danced very prettily with Lord Griffith.”

Georgie turned in surprise to see who had addressed her. The woman, in her middle thirties, had flawless skin and champagne-blond hair swept up in an artful arrangement. Her columnar gown of shell-pink satin had a high vandyked collar around the back of her neck, though the front plunged to reveal a generous bosom. Smiling benevolently at her, the graceful creature sauntered closer, waving her fan by her neck with a slow, idle, decidedly calculating motion.

For some reason, everything about her put Georgie on her guard. “Thank you, madam,” she replied, greeting the woman with an amiable nod. “I don't believe we have met.”

“Lady Faulconer, my dear. You, of course, need no introduction. The whole ballroom is abuzz with you,” she said lightly, her voice breathy and smooth. “And after such lovely dancing, I predict that by tomorrow you shall have conquered all of London.”

“Lady Faulconer?” Georgie did her best to hide her astonishment and managed to smile coolly at her supposed praise, but she couldn't help wondering why this woman was complimenting her. To be sure, “Tess” was up to something. “You're very kind. However, the credit must go to Lord Griffith. He is such an excellent dancer that he could make…nearly any partner look good.”

Tess eyed her sharply at her smooth parry, taken aback, it seemed, that she could give as good as she got.

Georgie bestowed a serene smile on the woman.

“Yes, well, my dear, you're not just
any
partner, are you?” the woman tried again, countering with a knowing smile.

“Hm?” Georgie looked at her inquiringly.

“You are a Knight and he is a Prescott,” his former lover explained. “Your two clans have always been very much—in step.” Lady Faulconer glanced at the dance floor as the couples now separated into two lines for a country dance. Then she let out a worldly sigh. “Ah, well, you certainly have a better chance of snaring him than anyone.”

Georgie managed an uneasy laugh. “I am not trying to snare him,” she informed her.

“Well, maybe not. He is rather old for you.”

Georgie started to frown at the woman, but realized that she was merely being baited.

“Nevertheless, you will be instructed to marry him, mark my words,” Lady Faulconer said in a breezy tone. “I warrant he and Hawkscliffe are drawing up the settlement already.”

Georgie was growing annoyed by the woman's presumptuousness, but she refused to show it, meeting her words with an idle laugh. “My dear Lady Faulconer, I'm afraid you take me quite aback with your predictions. You must know something I don't,” she added dryly.

“I do,” she replied, staring intensely at the dancers. “And that, my dear, is why I am talking to you now.”

“Ma'am?”

She looked at Georgie and her gray eyes gleamed. “I can hardly be accused of doing many good deeds in my day, but somebody really ought to warn you about—that man.”

Georgie blinked. “
Warn
me?”

“I don't envy you, being put in this position. All the pressure the families will put on you to become his marchioness. And him! Ah, he is so cunning and smooth…I daresay you'll never know what hit you.”

“My lady, I don't understand,” she said with an uneasy laugh. “Lord Griffith is a model of chivalry.”

“Do you think so? Well, you are young,” Lady Faulconer said indulgently. “And you don't really know him yet. Not like I do.”

Georgie stared at her incredulously even as she cursed herself for letting this woman's lies draw her in by one iota.

“Far be it from me to criticize such a fine man,” she continued, “but you see, my dear, Lord Griffith and I—oh, how shall I put it? We have, you might say, a history together.”

“What sort of history?” Georgie demanded bluntly.

“We have been…close for a number of years,” she admitted with a look of satisfaction. A look that told Georgie this woman had no intention of letting him go without a fight.

“How many years?” Georgie tested her, annoyed at the jealousy that had sprung up inside her like cactus needles.

“Four, I think,” she answered with another side-ward glance that seemed to relish Georgie's discomfort. “Long enough for me to know beyond all doubt that no matter what lucky lady stands by Griffith's side, the only woman he will ever truly love…is Catherine.”

Georgie paled as she stared at her.

Lady Faulconer looked bitterly toward the dance floor once again. “His precious Catherine. Save yourself the heartache, sweeting,” she murmured, keeping her gleaming stare pinned on the dancers. “Marry him if they insist on it, but you are too young and vibrant to throw your heart away on a man incapable of returning your love. Take it from one who knows.”

“What do you mean?” Georgie forced out, barely able to find her voice.

Lady Faulconer looked at her at last. “For four years I tried to make him love me, to no avail, and I can't see why you should have any better success. We are both beautiful, intelligent, well-bred women, are we not? Of course we are. We are both worthy of him. But neither of us is
she,
and that is the problem.” Lady Faulconer paused. “Haven't you noticed how he's always so cool and unfeeling? Why does nothing ever anger him? Why does he never quite—care? I'll tell you why. Because our dear Lord Griffith laid his heart inside the tomb with his dead wife, and he will never love again.”

Georgie felt a sharp pain in her lungs as if she suddenly couldn't get enough air.

“If you're wise, you will save yourself the misery of trying to love him. His wife was taken from him with the birth of their son, and all his deeds since then have made it very clear that no one else will ever come close to equaling her in his affections. I daresay he's in love with her still—a ghost! Well, there you have it.” Lady Faulconer snapped her fan shut. “Now you can't say you were never warned.”

She sauntered away, while Georgie was left reeling.

CHAPTER

         
TWELVE
         

I
n dire need of a moment alone to sort out her crashing thoughts, Georgie walked out onto the flagstone terrace overlooking the garden.

A few lanterns glowed atop wrought-iron poles, while billows of flowers fountained up from mossy urns here and there. A breeze rustled through the leaves of the surrounding trees, and above their boughs, stars glittered against a plum-dark sky, with a thin sliver-moon skimming over a wispy bank of clouds idling westward.

But despite the beauty of the June night, her mind was awash in confusion, her stomach in knots after Lady Faulconer's shocking claims. Shrugging her silk shawl higher around her shoulders to ward off the night's chill, she drifted over to stand by the low stone balustrade, then dropped her chin with a low exhalation.

Any fool could see that Lady Faulconer had an ulterior motive for saying those things, and she was not about to fall into that jealous harpy's cunning trap.

Still.

One simple fact was staring her straight in the face. That day in the music room at Knight House, when she had asked Ian to explain his reasons for offering marriage, he had not mentioned
love.

He had spoken of family and duty, desire and propriety, but had said not a word about being in love with her. And that, she knew now, was what her heart had so been longing to hear.

Was Lady Faulconer right, then? Did Ian love his late wife still? He never talked about the woman. Georgie had not even known her name was Catherine, let alone the fact that she had died giving birth to Matthew. Ian had said it was fever that took her.

Of course, puerperal fever killed thousands of women who never recovered from giving birth. Perhaps he blamed himself, for making her pregnant. She hated to think of him tormenting himself over that.

All she knew was that on the only two occasions he had mentioned his late wife, back in Janpur, his tone had turned clipped and remote and, Georgie recalled, he had quickly changed the subject. She knew he was not in the habit of discussing the things that mattered most—affairs of the heart. She had already discovered that on the topic of Matthew. The closer it cut to his emotions, the more closemouthed he was.

So, did that explain why he never spoke of Catherine? Had he loved her so much that, five years later, the wound was still too raw for him to stand the torment of speaking of his loss? And did he love her still, as Lady Faulconer had claimed? Maybe she should just come out and ask him, she thought. But she might just get an answer that she wasn't ready to hear.

Georgie was willing to fight for him, yes, but not if her efforts were doomed from the start. Of one thing only she was very sure. Unlike her friend Princess Meena—or her enemy Queen Sujana, for that matter—she could never submit to the notion of sharing her husband. She was no more willing to share Ian with a ghost than she'd have shared him with the likes of Lady Faulconer.

True love, in her view, was all or nothing. She wanted him entirely—the same way she would give herself—or not at all.

Just then, a cheerful male voice intruded on her thoughts.

“There you are! I've found her, chaps! She's out here!”

She turned around as one of the young gentlemen she had been introduced to earlier appeared in the open doorway with an eager grin. Alas, his name had slipped her mind.

“Oh, my dear Miss Knight! Have you forgotten? You promised me a dance!”

“He's found her! She's on the terrace!” other male voices called to each other from just inside the ballroom as the first young buck came rushing toward her.

In a moment she was surrounded by four young fribbles with dandyish winker collars and slicked-back hair. All gleaming smiles and clean-shaven rosy cheeks, they reminded her for all the world of Adley, her lovable foppish suitor back in Calcutta.

“My dear young lady, are you quite all right? Egads, you look distressed!”

“Don't crowd her, you villain!”

“Do you need something to drink?” the third asked.

“I'm fine, truly,” she said, wondering if she might have to settle for one of them, in the end.

“What a relief! I thought you might no longer wish to dance with me!”

She turned to the first fellow, swallowing an impatient answer as the second one elbowed him aside. “It's my turn, anyway, she promised me!”

“You're quite mistaken.” The first planted his fists on his waist. “Miss Knight distinctly said that the next quadrille she would stand up with me. Don't you remember, Miss Knight? Tell him so, won't you please? He is the rudest fellow.”

“Me, rude? You're the one bothering her!”

“Don't listen to either of them,” another intervened with an oily smile, cutting between the first pair and stealing her hand. “You're too beautiful to waste your time with them. Dance with
me.
”

“Oh, he's penniless! You know, you really are the most interesting girl to arrive in Town in ages—”

“Gentlemen!”
a deep, furious voice boomed from over by the door.

Everyone stopped.

Georgie looked over, startled by the roar.

Ian loomed across the terrace, the brooding glower on his face sculpted by the lantern's glow.

Her new friends seemed to shrink like gregarious pups before a large, bristling lion.

“
What
…is the meaning of this?” he growled, glaring at the dandies one by one, for they really had been growing much too forward.

They stammered out a few haphazard excuses, then, blanching, fled in a herd, stampeding toward the door.

Ian turned his head, the fire-glow shimmering along his wide, tensed shoulders and patrician profile as he watched them scramble back inside. But when he eyed her again with a brooding look, Georgie took umbrage.

For heaven's sake, what was he scowling at
her
for? If anyone had cause to be upset about their rivals at the moment, it was she—first his horrid mistress, and then his sainted wife!

         

The sight of Georgiana surrounded by lusting suitors had raised the hackles on his nape and brought a wave of dark impulses surging up from the depths of a place inside him that Ian had never cared to experience again.

Though she stood alone at the balustrade now, he could not get the brazen image out of his mind, nor halt the rapid series of associations that it set off in the darkest recesses of his heart.

Never again would he let a woman trifle with him.

Humiliate him. Betray him. Break his trust.

Never.

And if this was how she was going to behave, holding court over a horde of panting men, then he wanted out. Before he was drawn in any deeper.

He could not go through it all again.

Don't forget, she's the niece of the Hawkscliffe Harlot.

Across the terrace, Georgiana set her hand on her hip and shot him a feisty look. “Why are you scowling at me?”

Her frank question and insolent tone jarred him out of the past's dark hold over him and back to the shaky present.

Georgie, he reminded himself.

This was Georgie. His spicy little chili-pepper girl.

Not his lying wife.

He scrutinized her and was content after a moment that Georgie hadn't done anything wrong.

Yet.

“Hm?” Her chin came up a notch as she waited for his answer, her eyebrow raised.

If he was not mistaken, she looked like she was itching for a fight.

Well, that was odd. Of course, it might have something to do with the wrathful glower that he had fixed on her. Very well, he would force himself to stop scowling. This was Georgie, after all, not Catherine, and all things considered, his harsh, knee-jerk reaction to seeing her surrounded by men might be a tad out of proportion.

Reining in his very rare but very black temper, Ian drew a deep breath and willed his fury back down to mere displeasure, with a healthy dose of watchful suspicion thrown in for his health. He squared his shoulders, eased the anger out of his face, and brought his lady her drink. “Forgive me,” he clipped out, offering her the goblet of Champagne punch. “I was detained.”

“Something wrong?”

He knew he should not answer the question, so he evaded it. “Yes, actually,” he murmured, frowning as he held up his glass to the light. “There is a damned fly in my drink.”

A little winged insect that had fallen into his punch and was thrashing about among the floating bits of fruit, drowning in the sweet liquid.

“Ian,” she said.

He glanced at her, on his guard.

“You know that isn't what I meant.”

He knew he should just shut up, find a smile, deny all—he was an expert at that—but after brief consideration, silence proved beyond his power. He set the cup aside. “It really is not wise for you to wander off alone without your chaperon,” he informed her in a seething tone, though highly controlled. “You must be more observant, Georgiana. As I'm sure you are aware, you cannot enjoy the company of strange men without damage to your reputation. And your family's. And mine.”

“I came out here to get some air, for your information! I was standing here minding my own business when they joined me.”

“And what do you think they wanted?” he bit out in a lower, harder tone.

Her eyes flared, but she looked away from his intense stare and focused on the garden, refusing to meet his gaze. “They said they wanted to dance with me.”

“Right.” He scoffed, but then a new thought struck him, and ice promptly formed in his core. “Did they offend you?” he asked, poised to rip someone's head off if that was the case.

“No,” she replied with a snort.

“Frighten you?”

“Of course not,” she retorted, but the glance she sent him suggested that
he
might be doing so now.

Ian dropped his gaze, taken aback. A moment's clarity beamed into the dark chaos of his churning emotions like a ray of sun breaking out from amongst the thunderheads. Good God, what was happening to him? He clamped his jaw shut.

Georgiana glanced at him again, her bright-blue gaze wary and much too shrewd as she scanned his face.

Ian slowly picked up his glass, poured its contents, bug and all, over the railing, letting it water a flower bed, and then, with a highly civilized motion, set the empty goblet atop of the wide balustrade. “We should return to the ballroom.”

“Yes,” she murmured, eyeing him with a guarded look. “Let's.” Lifting the hem of her skirts, she whooshed around in a rustle of rose-colored satin and strode back across the terrace ahead of him, returning to the ball.

His brow furrowed, Ian followed a step behind her, but he was mystified as to how this night had suddenly gone so wrong.

The picture matched.

In the darkness, Firoz squinted at the locket in his hand, then peered in the window at the child. Cloaked in the shadows of the trees in the park opposite, he could see right into the diplomat's house.