One Night of Passion (2 page)

“I’ll not many him, Uncle. I will not.” Georgie took a deep breath. “According to Lady Finch, he’ll demand . . . demand . . .” She had never understood Society’s strict need to mince words, and she certainly wasn’t going to now. Not when there was so much at stake. “Oh bother,” she said. “Demand an examination before we are to be wed.”

Uncle Phineas’s buggy eyes blinked several times, obviously trying to ignore what she was hemming and hawing about.

So Georgie spelled it out. “An examination of my person by his physician to determine if I’m a virgin.”

This forthright outburst sent her aunt swooning in her chair, while Uncle Phineas turned a stormy shade of red at the declaration of such an unmentionably private matter.

“Have you no decency, girl?” He took a fortifying swallow of his wine. “Though what should I expect, raised as you were by that disreputable harridan.”

“A woman you hired, Uncle,” Georgie pointed out. “And paid a pittance for the privilege.”

“Bah,” he said, casting aside her comment with an indignant flutter of his napkin. “You’ll marry Harris, and I’ll hear not another word on the matter. Now get back to your room and leave us to finish our dinner in peace.”

Georgie held her ground. “How could you approve of such a man? Worse yet, this horrid examination?”

“The Harrises have always demanded that their brides be virgins, and the current earl is a little more particular than most.” Uncle Phineas took another gulp of wine. “Apparently, the last Lady Harris wasn’t as pure as her family assured him. So this time he isn’t taking any chances. He demanded that verification be part of the betrothal agreement. And that’s that. I’ll not hear another word of it. His physician will be here on the morrow, so there is nothing you can do about it. You’ll submit to this . . . this . . . this
examination,”
he finally sputtered out, “if I have to have every footman in the house hold you down.”

Tomorrow? So soon?

Georgie’s knees quaked, her stomach turning over. She thought she might get sick, right there and then on Aunt Verena’s best Turkish carpet. Not that it wouldn’t be poetic, but it certainly wouldn’t help her case. So she steadied her nerves and tried to think.

She and Kit could run away. Flee town.

How? They had no money, no family to shelter them, nowhere to go. At least not anywhere that Uncle Phineas wouldn’t find them.

Georgie shook her head. “How can you do this to me, your own niece?”

Before Uncle Phineas could reply, Aunt Verena stepped in. “This isn’t your uncle’s doing, Georgette. Your guardian found the arrangements highly favorable. All your uncle did was to do you the favor of finding a willing marriage partner.”

“My guardian?” Georgie stared at her easily befuddled aunt, who had yet to remember either her or Kit’s name once in all these years. “Whatever do you mean? Uncle Phineas is my guardian.”

“Verena, enough,” Lord Brockett hissed under his breath.

“I won’t have her speaking ill of you, my dear,” Aunt Verena retorted. “She might as well know who is truly answerable for this. While your Uncle Phineas has had all the responsibility and heartache of caring for you and Katherine—”

“Kathleen,” Georgie corrected.

“Oh, yes, yes. Kathleen, if you must. But that doesn’t change the fact that your uncle and I, your dearest and only relations, have seen fit to oversee your welfare since your parents’ deaths, while your legal guardian, that dreadful Lord Danvers, hasn’t cared two whits about you ungrateful girls,” the woman said before her husband could muzzle her.

Dearest relations?
That was stretching matters a bit far.

Uncle Phineas and Aunt Verena had packed the girls off for fostering in Penzance three days after their parents had been laid to rest. And not once in the eleven years that followed had there been so much as a visit or even a letter hinting at such “concern” from their only relations.

No, concern had been the sole domain of Mrs. Taft and her seafaring husband, Captain Taft. They had looked out for the girls with all the concern and, yes, love that their relations would never have thought necessary.

Georgie looked from her uncle to her aunt and then back to her uncle. “Is this true?” she asked him. “Is this Lord Danvers my legal guardian?”

Her uncle’s nose twitched, while his brow furrowed into one dark line. “Yes,” he finally admitted. “Your father left what money there was and your guardianship to Lord Danvers’s care. But make no mistake about it, I have borne the full brunt of your expenses. Your guardian has done little but approve a few meager expenditures and fob off his responsibilities on me.” He huffed a few times and then tossed his napkin down on the table.

Oh, the devil take all,
Georgie thought. Not only did she have Uncle Phineas directing her life, but now she also had some unknown and obviously uncaring guardian making her life miserable.

Didn’t any of these men have better things to do?

“Then I demand an audience with Lord Danvers,” she said. “I’ll tell him what I’ve told you. I won’t marry Lord Harris.”

“Lord Danvers hasn’t time to listen to the complaints of a self-serving chit. The documents are all signed and the announcements will be made in the papers day after tomorrow.”

“Surely this Lord Danvers can’t be so heartless as to marry me off without seeking my counsel?”

“Your counsel? Why would he want that?” Uncle Phineas shook his head in the same contemptuous way he did when Aunt Verena complained about the servants pilfering the good sherry or her inability to find a milliner who understood her difficulties in finding the perfect hat for her head. “Consult a woman about marriage. What utter nonsense!”

Georgie glanced over at the salver again, but restrained herself. “Hardly so, if I am the one who has to bear the indignity of this examination, let alone share a bed with a man who is rumored to carry the pox.”

“The pox,”
Aunt Verena gasped, as if just saying the words would be her undoing. She began to swoon in earnest, her head lolling one way, then the other, her yellow curls dancing like daffodils in a spring breeze, her breath coming in big wheezy huffs. “My salts! My vinaigrette!”

Lord Brockett reached over and patted his wife’s hand. “Steady there, old girl.”

“Such vulgarity,” Aunt Verena managed to gasp. “And at dinner, no less.”

“Now see what you’ve done, you faithless chit,” Uncle Phineas said, turning his attention back to Georgie. “I can see my money was ill-spent on your upbringing. If that worthless Taft woman weren’t dead, I’d insist on getting every shilling back. Why, you sound like a Penzance doxy, not a decent miss about to become a countess.” He picked up his wineglass, then frowned when he discovered it empty, so he reached for the decanter. “Now off with you, baggage. I would like to finish my meal in peace.”

Georgie leaned over the table and moved the decanter out of his grasp. She met his angry stare with a stubborn one of her own. He could say all he wanted about Mrs. Taft, for certainly she hadn’t been the best choice to teach the girls to be ladies. But right now, Georgie was thankful that she had learned other lessons from the worldly woman—like how to stand up for herself.

“Uncle, if you have no say in this marriage matter, then I will discuss it with Lord Danvers. Summon him here. Tonight if you must.”

He waved her off. “Impossible. The man is tied up with his own problems. And most likely has fled town by now. He was convicted of treason this morning, or so says the
Times.”
He shoved the newspaper lying beside his plate toward her. “You ought to consider yourself lucky that I had some say in this, or there is no telling who you would be engaged to right now.”

“A traitor?” She glanced down at the headline and saw only too clearly that on this, her uncle was being honest.
Treason.
Her guardian had been convicted of treason. Other words from the long, detailed article leapt out at her.

Dishonorable. Cowardly. Appalling.

What had her father been thinking in leaving his children’s guardianship to such a man?

For the first time in her life, Georgie found herself wishing that her uncle
was
her guardian. And as much as it graveled her to admit it, she needed his assistance.

Desperately.

Why, she’d even cater to him if she must, for the specter of some old, smelly man taking her to his bed was enough to restrain her temper over the situation.

“Uncle, you did promise me a Season,” she said, edging the wine decanter a little closer to him, like a tempting bribe. “Let me have it so I can at least try to gain a better offer. ’Tis only three months’ time.”

“A Season? For you?” Uncle Phineas shook his head. “Out of the question. Good money out the door on that one. Your sister mayhap, for she’ll fetch a fine fortune with some help from your Aunt Verena. But you? Hardly.” He laughed, and his merriment stung even if it held some measure of truth.

At one and twenty, she was a little old to be venturing into the Marriage Mart, and she’d be the first to admit she wasn’t the delicate and cultured miss preferred by the men of the
ton.

She was too tall, too rounded of figure to be called lithe or petite. And far too headstrong ever to keep her opinions strictly on such safe subjects as the weather or her favorite flavor of ices at Gunter’s. Especially when her favorite topics were Italian art and innovations in navigation.

Still, it didn’t hurt to try. There had to be some man out there who would take her off her uncle’s hands. She cast aside the last remaining shreds of her pride and resorted to begging.

“Surely, Uncle, even you can spare me the consideration of a Season, and if not for me, then out of respect for my father’s memory.”

The moment she said the words, she knew she’d gone too far, for Uncle Phineas’s face went a mottled shade almost as ruddy as the wine in the decanter.

“Bloody consideration? I’ve gone and found you a husband worth twenty thousand a year, and you throw it back at me like some spoiled Bath miss. And how dare you call on your father’s memory as if he were some saint. Bah! He made his choice when he took your mother to wife. French trash, that one. And did he listen to his family or friends? No! Well, he learned his lesson the hard way when she murdered him, and I’ll not see this family disgraced again with a runaway marriage or some equally grievous scandal.” He leaned across the table and shook a finger at her. “Listen very carefully to me, gel, and don’t even think of brooking another word on the matter. You’ll marry Harris and you’ll be well pleased in the bargain.” His finger went from waggling in warning to pointing at the door.

For a moment, Georgie considered all the things she could say, all the arguments she could offer, but she knew they would be useless.

There was only one thing left to do.

Take matters into her own hands.

As the door to the dining room slammed shut, Verena shook her head and let loose a long-suffering sigh of exasperation. “What a burden children are. Aren’t you glad we never had any?” She paused for a moment and took a recuperative sip of her wine, her gaze still resting on the spot where Georgiana had reduced their pleasant dinner to such a terrible scene.

The girl was nothing but an uncontrollable hoyden—why, it was a miracle Phineas had found her a husband at all considering her ill manners and questionable breeding.

Questionable breeding.

That notion gave Verena a terrible start. What if the girl wasn’t a . . .

“Have you considered, my dear,” she began, struggling to find the right words to broach such a delicate subject, “that your niece may not pass Lord Harris’s exacting standards?”

Brockett nodded. “Of course. That Taft woman was a disreputable hag—albeit a cheaply had one. So I have no doubts that she let the chit run wild. Lord knows what trouble the gel found around the docks of Penzance. Why, that nosy vicar said she went down there daily to watch the ships come and go.”

At this Verena’s eyes widened with horror.

Young ladies near docks? Dear Lord, what kind of men had their Georgette been in contact with?

Oh, they might as well start packing for the country now.

For as Phineas had explained it, they were to receive Georgie’s dowry for allowing her the privilege of becoming Lady Harris. Lord Harris’s havey-cavey reputation amongst the
ton,
coupled with his history of losing wives under highly suspect conditions, was enough to make his attentions toward any marriageable miss unacceptable—earl or no. Even the well-to-do
cits
about town, who’d all but give up their fortunes to see one of their daughters become a countess, were unwilling to go that far to advance themselves socially.

In truth, Lord Harris was beyond the pale.

Yet for the Brocketts he appeared like a saving angel. With their bills and accounts having gone unpaid for several years now, and threats of foreclosure surrounding them, they needed Georgie’s dowry badly.

Money that should have been theirs to begin with, or so Phineas had claimed. Money from Phineas’s mother’s dower holdings that had been willed to his younger brother, Franklin, and then to Georgiana and Kathleen, passing over Phineas and Verena completely.

Oh, life was so unfair at times,
Verena thought. That two such awful girls should be so rich, when their relations had pockets to let.

Luckily for them, Lord Harris hadn’t been concerned at all about Georgie’s fortune—all he had wanted was another bride to hopefully get with child.

And a virgin one at that.

That point troubled Verena more than she cared to admit. For if Georgie wasn’t as innocent as they had promised Lord Harris, then the money would not be forthcoming.

And where would that leave them? Run out of the city? Forced into disgrace?

The very thought left Verena feeling ill. She reached once again for her ever-present bottle of vinaigrette.

“What if she doesn’t pass? What will you do?” she asked Phineas, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

Her husband leaned back in his chair and wiped at his greasy chin. “Then I will give the old goat the younger one for a wife. She’s a frightful piece of baggage, but far too young to have gotten herself into
that
kind of trouble.” He smiled at his wife, and reached over to pat her plump fingers. “Never fear, Verena, one way or another, one of those girls will be Lady Harris before the month is out, and you and I’ll not have to fret any longer.”