No Gentleman for Georgina (6 page)

For the first time, Georgina understood the passion between them, she understood the love, and she turned away, not in embarrassment, but in jealousy. Her friend already had what Georgina, herself, wanted.

And Georgina was damned well going to try to get the same.

“Oh, goodness,” Annabelle said, breaking from Marcus as she noticed Georgina at the door. “I’m sorry, we didn’t see you there.”

“Clearly,” Georgina said, her tone dry as a fall leaf.

Marcus chuckled as he motioned Georgina to a seat. She ignored him and instead paced over to the sideboard as she perused the food she had no interest in eating. This was all an exercise in futility. She was only trying to work up her courage, after all. A tall feat considering she had never allowed herself to have much of that trait.

“Are you well?” Annabelle asked as she stood and took a step toward Georgina. “You look very tired.”

Georgina pivoted and looked at her two friends. They cared about her they would not judge her. In truth they were her best and probably only hope. She screwed up her nerve and forced herself to speak at last.

“Do you recall when I foolishly tried to help you with your respectability problem, Annabelle?”

Annabelle blinked and said, “Er, yes. Thank you.”

Georgina reached up to press her cold hands against her hot cheeks. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it was foolish to help you. More that perhaps the notion of respectability was foolish.”

Annabelle moved on her and pulled Georgina’s hands away from her face to hold them. “What is going on, Georgina? You seem very upset.”

Georgina shook the comforting touch away. She needed to feel her discomfort. It helped drive her on.

“I never understood why you threw everything you could have away on Mr. Rivers.” She looked at Marcus, who was shaking his head and laughing at the other end of the table. “Don’t misunderstand me, Marcus—you are very handsome, of course. And the more I came to know you, the more I have realized what a truly decent man you are.”

He reacted as if physically wounded. “You slander me, woman. I am not decent at all.”

Annabelle smiled at his quip. “Oh, hush. Clearly Georgina is upset. Why don’t you take your eggs and go bother someone else for a bit.”

Georgina shook her head. “Oh no, please don’t go! I…I actually need to speak to you both, as humiliating an exercise as this is going to be. You see, I need your help.”

Now Marcus straightened up in his chair and the teasing left his eyes. “
Our
help,” he repeated. “Georgina what is it? Are you in trouble?”

“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know.” She turned away, trying to gather her thoughts. Confession was truly much harder than she’d thought it would be. Especially when her heart and mind were so tangled. “Let me try to explain.”

Annabelle motioned her to the table and sat beside her. She laid a hand on hers. “Take your time. We aren’t going anywhere.”

Marcus nodded as he got up and moved closer to take the place on her other side. The two of them simply stared, waiting.

Georgina took a long, deep breath. “Do you know the wax exhibit has returned to London?”

Annabelle nodded. “Oh yes, I had heard about that. It’s wonderful! You should go, you would love it.”

Georgina blushed as she pondered what those lifeless wax figures had witnessed just a few hours before. “I wanted to. My father refused to allow it. That was why I was so upset when I came here a few days ago.”

“Ah, I had been wondering. You were nearly hysterical when you arrived and then you just left without explanation.” Annabelle’s brow wrinkled. “I could talk to him. Or arrange for an outing with my brother and Serafina. He would not deny the duke and duchess, would he?”

Georgina shook her head. “I mentioned it to Paul that day, you see,” she continued, ignoring Annabelle’s suggestion. “And he said he could help me have a private viewing of the collection.”

Both Annabelle and Marcus were suddenly silent, staring at Georgina as if she had sprouted a second head which only spoke Latin.

“What? Why do you look at me that way?” she stammered.

Marcus lifted both eyebrows. “Abbot.
Paul Abbot
. Who works for me?”

She nodded. “One and the same.”

Annabelle seemed as shocked as her husband apparently was. “I have never known Abbot to break a rule in his life.
Did
he arrange it?”

“Yes.” She tried to find her breath but it was becoming almost impossible. “I’m afraid I used my coming here as a ruse. Last night after everyone went to bed, I snuck out to meet him and he took me there.”

Marcus’s eyes went even wider. “
Paul Abbot
.”

Annabelle shot him a look. “Stop repeating his name, dear. Go on, Georgina.”

She clasped her shaking hands before her. “It was wonderful, everything I had hoped it would be. But then Paul admitted…he said… he told me that he has feelings for me.”

“Paul Abbot,” Marcus muttered, shaking his head in continued disbelief.

“Paul,” she reassured him. “Still Paul Abbot.”

“And what did you say to him?” Annabelle asked.

“Nothing,” she said, softly, as if a whisper would help.

Annabelle’s face fell. “Oh, poor Paul. And poor you. How awkward to—”

“No, you misunderstand,” Georgina interrupted. “I didn’t say nothing because I rejected him. I said nothing because I-I kissed him.”

“You
what
?” Marcus and Annabelle exclaimed in unison.

Georgina dropped her gaze to the table and her hands clenched on it. “I-I have also had feelings for him since nearly the first moment we met, you see.”

“We are idiots,” Annabelle said after a moment of stunned silence had passed between the friends.

“I’m not an idiot,” Marcus retorted.

Annabelle glared at him. “Did you know?”

He shrugged. “No.”

“Then
we
are idiots,” she insisted. “How did we not see? How did Serafina and Gemma and even Mary not see when we are such good friends?”

“What happened next?” Marcus asked.

Georgina blinked, slightly flummoxed by the banter of the couple. Equally turned upside down by what she had to say next. Honesty was her best course of action now, of course, but it was still rather embarrassing to consider it.

“Well, we—he—we—” She struggled, her blush burning her cheeks as she thought of Paul touching her so intimately.

Marcus jumped up from his seat. “Great God! Paul Abbot?”

Georgina turned her face. “Well, we didn’t…it didn’t go irrevocably far. But things between us
did
turn most passionate.”

Annabelle’s gentle fingers closed over hers again, and when Georgina dared to look at her, she saw not censure, but understanding and empathy in her friend’s bright eyes. Annabelle smiled softly. “How can we help?”

Georgina drew a sharp breath. “I want to be with Paul. I always have—he is my ideal man, you see.”

“Paul Abbot?” Marcus said, this time his tone full of questioning that inspired defensiveness in Georgina.

“Yes, Paul Abbot. He and I always have such stimulating conversation. He looks at me and he truly sees me. Other men, they size me up. What could a union with me bring them, what is my dowry, who is my father? Paul just sees me. And he’s devilishly handsome, surely even you can see that.”

Marcus blinked and Georgina huffed out a breath.

“He
is
handsome,” Annabelle reassured her.

“Finally, you two show some reasonability,” Georgina sighed. “No one has lived up to Paul’s example since the moment I met him. But I always convinced myself he thought nothing of me beyond a bare kindness. Now that I know he cares for me, the situation is increasingly dire.”

“Why?” Annabelle encouraged her.

Tears flooded Georgina’s eyes. “My father will never allow for anything between Paul and me. He with his Debrett’s and his dukes and his earls? He would never accept Paul as my husband, no matter how I pleaded or proved to him that Paul is worthy.”

Marcus pinched his lips. “I often do not understand your class,” he sniffed.

Annabelle glared at him. “Love, we can discuss the unfairness later. Right now we must focus on Georgina. I don’t know how Marcus or I could help convince your father to give you what you wanted. After all, we aren’t titled.”

“You couldn’t,” Georgina admitted, ready to get to the most desperate part of her plan. “I would like to arrange for a…a seduction. Paul Abbot and I need to be caught in a compromising position together that will require our marriage. And I need you two to help me arrange it.”

Annabelle slipped her hand away with a gasp of shock and Marcus swore as he got up and paced to the window, his back to them.

“Unless you don’t approve of the match either?” Georgina asked, suddenly very aware of her failings. “You don’t think I’m good enough for Paul?”

“It isn’t that,” Marcus said, turning on his heel. “When I think of it, your studious, quiet natures would likely suit very well. And if Paul cares for you, if he…somehow allowed something between you to become heated, I would guess that he would like to marry you, too. He would never do such a thing unless he was very serious.”

“Then why do you both look so worried?” Georgina asked. She gave Annabelle a pleading look. “Please, tell me.”

“A seduction that you are describing could go very wrong,” Annabelle said. “And I don’t know that Paul would go along with it. He is so very honorable. A wonderful quality, of course, but I don’t see him forcing something like this even for the best cause.”

Georgina folded her arms. “I realize that. Which is why he wouldn’t know what I was doing. Then he will be blameless.”

“And likely furious,” Marcus said, shaking his head.

“I would rather have him furious and mine than have to marry some stuffy marquis while I pine for him forever,” Georgina snapped as she jumped up. “I have been doing what everyone else wants, what everyone else requires for years. I don’t want to live the rest of my life regretting it. I will make it up to him afterward, but please, please won’t you help me?”

Marcus looked past her, his eyes locking with Annabelle’s. Unspoken communication flowed between them as Georgina held her breath and hoped they would come out on her side after all.

Finally, Marcus sighed. “I do owe him. After all, he helped orchestrate something quite similar for Annabelle.”

Georgina’s eyes went wide and she jerked her gaze to her friend, who was merely smiling. “Indeed, he did.”

“Very well, Georgina,” Marcus said. “We will help you. And I know exactly the best place to shock your father into action.”

Paul couldn’t keep the scowl from his face as he strode through the empty main hall of the Donville Masquerade. In a few hours, the place would be buzzing with patrons gambling and also relieving their sexual tensions right in the open for everyone to see.

Normally Paul barely even noticed such things. They had become commonplace in his world and he kept his own desires far separate from the ones expressed here. But since his powerful encounter with Georgina a few days earlier, he had become more and more irritated by the passions exhibited in this hall.

Why should all these people get what they wanted while his desires remained forever out of reach?

“Mr. Abbot,” said Cord, the butler for the hell, as he puffed and struggled to keep up with Paul’s long stride.

He came to a sudden stop and Cord nearly toppled over with the unexpected ceasing of motion.

“What is it?” Paul asked, hating how sharp his tone was. Marcus was the roaring bear here, Paul had always been the one to maintain calm.

Now fulfilling that role felt almost impossible.

“Sir, we have been waiting for your arrival. Mr. Rivers has requested some changes in the purple salon and they require your attention.”

Paul pursed his lips as he withdrew the small notebook he always carried from his breast pocket. “Cord, today I must do the following list of things.”

He turned the paper so the butler could see the three pages of notes he had taken the night before. He’d been hoping work would help him forget Georgina. It hadn’t thus far, but he had little other recourse.

“It is a long list, I see,” Cord said.

“Is it possible someone else could see to Marcus’s whims just this once?” he asked, grinding his teeth.

Cord’s eyes went wide at the uncharacteristic temper Paul was displaying. But then he shook his head, singular in his direction. “I’m afraid not, sir. Mr. Rivers told me you would need to see to it yourself. I am just the messenger, Mr. Abbot.”

Paul froze at that last admonishment, spoken softly by the ever-loyal servant. He took a long breath and exhaled before he spoke again.

“You are correct, Cord. I’m sorry for my bad humor. I have a great deal on my mind, most of it having nothing to do with the Masquerade. I shouldn’t take it out on you regardless of the source of my discontent. I’ll see to Rivers’ changes and, in the meantime, will you be certain the deliveries were made this morning? We’ve been having trouble getting the spirits stocked before we open and it vexes me.”

Cord let out a brisk nod. “Certainly, sir. I’ll see to it right away.”