All three women turned their attention to George as Lady Beverly greeted her appearance with a happy smile, relief clear in her eyes. George pressed her lips together to keep from grinning. Entertaining country cousins had never been among Lady Bev’s favourite activities.
‘Get out,’ Cardross cried as the duke entered behind her, throwing up one hand, as if to ward off an evil vision. George glanced back over her shoulder to catch Alençon smiling, showing his teeth in a slightly menacing manner. The duke pushed forward and claimed Lady Beverly’s hand, bending over it with a dramatic flourish.
‘I warn you, Alençon, no shoving in, or I shall take this one from you.’ Cardross beckoned George over to the seat beside him.
‘Boys!’ George eyed them reprovingly, while Lady Beverly laughed, fluttering her fan like a girl making her debut.
‘For heaven’s sake, Georgianna, don’t discourage them. I’ve nearly forgotten what it’s like to be fought over.’
‘Now, that is a clanker if I’ve ever heard one.’ George nodded to Miss Spence. ‘I seem to recall more than one story of a duel being fought over you. It makes me terribly jealous.’
‘Do you like men to fight over you? Like dogs with a stolen bone?’ The young woman standing at the front of the box raised her chin. Her voice was oddly hard and loud enough to carry to the boxes on either side of them. ‘I would think that something to be avoided by any lady of taste or principles.’
George blinked, mouth falling slightly agape before she closed it with a snap. She felt a twinge of guilt. A duel had been fought over her, and the results had been anything but pleasant. A rush of anger burnt the guilt away.
She flicked her gaze appraisingly up and down the unknown woman, taking in her less than modish gown and the gaudy garnet set that adorned her neck and ears. The woman stared right back, hardly even blinking. George knew dislike when she saw it. This unknown woman burnt with it. Why?
‘Perhaps so,’ Lady Beverly chimed in hastily. ‘But one can hardly deny the romance of it all. Though now that the men are more apt to attack one another with guns than swords, it all seems a little sordid. Georgianna, this is Lady William, Miss Bagshott, and her mother, Lady Bagshott. Ladies, let me make you known to one of the true sights of London, Mrs Exley, our famous Lady Corinthian.’
George flicked her glance over the lady in striped silk again. So, this was Dauntry’s mother? She had a rounded, motherly look to her. Not at all what George would have imagined. The older woman smiled tentatively, a worried crinkle marring her brow.
‘Lady William. Lady Bagshott. Miss Bagshott.’ George forced a smile, refusing to acknowledge the Bagshott ladies’ frosty reception. She would not fall into the trap of playing the game. Overt dislike wasn’t an uncommon reaction from the country gentry.
They watched their own with a hard eye for any possible misstep or transgression, and they sought to impose their mores equally upon the rest of humanity. Their small-mindedness gave her the headache.
She was well aware that she was more likely to be held up as an example of what to avoid rather than a model to be emulated by women such as these. What on earth was Lady Bev doing with such dowdy guests? It wasn’t at all like her.
Before anyone could reply the curtain parted and Dauntry entered, followed by his grandfather, their hands filled with champagne flutes.
‘Here you go, Aunt Prue…’ Dauntry began gaily enough, turning to distribute the glasses. He stopped in mid-sentence, mid-step. As his eyes met hers his face paled, then flushed, a slow bloom creeping up from his collar. Behind him the marquess stiffened, his eyes scorching her from across the box.
George’s whole body flamed in recognition. Lust raced through her, licking every secret, intimate part of her all at once.
‘Mrs Exley,’ Ivo managed to get out, allowing Cardross to relieve him of the flutes and distribute them to the ladies in their charge. ‘I thought you still in the country.’
He glanced about, gorge rising. His night was going from bad to worse. The air crackled with anger. The emotion radiated off his grandfather like heat off coals and positively oozed off the Bagshott ladies. His mother looked like she was about to faint. He wouldn’t blame her if she took the coward’s way out.
Miss Bagshott was staring off into space, lips pressed so tightly together they disappeared entirely. Her mother looked equally offended, her colour high even under the veil of heavy cosmetics. The beauty mark she’d placed at the corner of her mouth disappeared into the wrinkle of her frown.
There was not a doubt in Ivo’s mind that they knew exactly who George was, and what their relationship was rumoured to be. His godmother’s mischievous expression didn’t reassure him a jot, and it could only serve to further infuriate the marquess.
He held his own flute out to George, consigning his nearest relations to perdition. In a perfect world, he could just drag her out into the hall and find a private place behind a potted fern…Sadly, his world was far from perfect.
The ladies’ perfumes mingled in the air, but George’s overrode them all. Jasmine filled his nostrils, swirling through his head, heady as brandy on a warm night.
‘I didn’t know we’d have visitors. I should have thought…’
George took the glass, her expression closed, almost haughty. She sipped, her eyes never meeting his. In fact, he was almost sure she and his grandfather were staring each other down like two beasts fighting over a kill. She took another sip and his grandfather moved past him to hand glasses to the Bagshotts.
‘I hope you found the colonel’s daughter well?’ Ivo grasped at straws as everything around him seemed to slow down. His cravat became tighter and tighter by
