Unless she wasn’t.
Respectable anymore, that was. He hadn’t seen her since Paris, and a lot could change in six years. He didn’t want to believe that she could have. He couldn’t.
His friend Bennett jostled his arm. ‘You didn’t follow Rivers’s advice and put your blunt on the challenger, did you?’
‘No.’ Ivo rolled his shoulders, trying to relax, to keep his attention away from the woman across the ring. ‘But what odds will you give me on that great lump going at least ten rounds?’
Bennett looked the challenger up and down, assessing. ‘Not a chance. I’ll bet you fifty pounds he doesn’t make it even to three. Johnson has a punishing left.’
While Bennett loudly sized the pugilists up, arguing the finer points with the men surrounding them, Ivo’s gaze slid back to Mrs Exley, back to the rakish buck who was watching over her with a proprietary air. The man wore his cocked hat angled low over his brow, gilt trim winking as he dropped his head to hear her over the crowd. His greatcoat gaped, revealing a flash of a puce coat beneath, embroidered in darker browns and gold.
The way she stood, arm tucked into her gallant’s, was an affront to the sacrifices he had made. She had no right to flaunt herself like a fallen woman. No right to be such. If nothing else she owed him purity.
As he studied the pair of them, she glanced across the ring and her eyes met his for the briefest of moments. Her face paled, then she looked away, turning her attention back to her cicisbeo.
Ivo’s stomach clenched. Fury rushed through him—a hot, burning tide—mingling with an almost violent repulsion. What had she become?
He was barely aware of the match as it commenced. The combatants, the din of the crowd, the jostling, raging, swirling humanity surrounding him, it all simply faded away, nothing but a fantastical stage set for the woman standing across the ring. She was the only thing that was real. The only thing that mattered.
Fifteen rounds later the match was over, the challenger bloody and beaten. Howls of anger mingled with cheers. Fights broke out in several places, causing the mob to shift and push. Across the ring, Mrs Exley’s companion wrapped one arm familiarly about her waist and turned to escort her from the field.
Ivo shut his eyes for a moment, resisting the urge to plunge into the crowd after her. He’d given up everything for her, and it stung to realize that sacrifice didn’t give him the right to demand an explanation today. It didn’t give him any rights at all. Only the right to feel like an utter fool.
As he collected his winnings, he glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder, trying to catch one last glimpse of her.
‘She’s gone,’ Bennett said with a sly smile, thrusting a wad of bank notes at him.
‘Who’s gone?’
His friend’s smile widened, revealing the perfect teeth for which he was justifiably famous. ‘The only woman out here. The one you’ve been staring at for the last hour or more.’
‘You know her?’
It didn’t matter that Bennett knew her. Didn’t matter that he’d seen her again. Or that some man had succeeded in giving her husband a pair of horns. It didn’t matter that their attraction was every bit as strong as he remembered.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth was chalky and bitter. He needed a drink. A very large one.
‘Everyone knows her.’ Bennett tossed back the ruffles at his wrist and pulled a flask from one capacious pocket. ‘That was Georgianna Exley. One of the most outrageous widows in England.’ He removed the top and took a drink before holding the flask out to Ivo. ‘It’s rumoured she has rules for taking a lover, the most pernicious of which is that she only grants the men she chooses as many nights in her bed as they roll on a die.’
‘Widow?’ Ivo swallowed hard, heart hammering in his ears. That single word reverberated through his whole body, echoes cascading like a stone dropped into a well.
‘Widow,’ Bennett repeated absently, thrusting the flask into Ivo’s hand. ‘You can meet her tomorrow if you’ve a mind to. She’s sure to be another guest at Lord Glendower’s shooting party. The earl’s her father-in-law.’
Ivo stared hard at the crowd, searching to no avail for her fur-trimmed hat in the sea of humanity headed back towards the village. He glanced down at his hand, realized he was holding Bennett’s flask, and tossed back what was left of the brandy. The heady fumes filled his nose and the liquid burnt a slow track all the way down into his belly.
A widow.
‘George, who the devil is that man across the ring? The tall fellow staring at us.’
Georgianna Exley glanced up before following Gabriel Angelstone’s gaze across the straw-strewn ring where the two prize-fighters were being helped from their coats.
Her eyes met those of the man Gabriel was glaring at and she glanced away immediately, her hands suddenly cold. Her head buzzed as though she might faint.
Dauntry. His name was Dauntry.
Her breakfast swirled about in her stomach and she swallowed convulsively. She was not going to throw up. She was not going to faint. Not here. Not ever.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ she replied, pressing slightly closer to Gabe, burrowing into his reassuring warmth. Around them people eyed her and Gabe askance. Dauntry’s look of disgust was reflected in many other pairs of eyes.
She didn’t belong here. No woman did. And her oldest friend was not well liked. Too handsome. Too foreign in a myriad of subtle ways: skin that spoke of summer no matter the month and slightly hooded eyes he’d inherited from his Turkish mother, combined with an air of French dandification from his ambassador father.
He was her rock. The one constant in her life. The only man she’d ever known who hadn’t
