Chapter 3

It took every atom of Georgiana's self-control to preserve a fragile appearance of composure as Lady Blanche presented her family to her newly arrived guests. She smiled mechanically at the young people, and murmured polite commonplaces, which they returned. The young gentleman was plainly taken with her, and asked her what seemed to be a great many questions, but she had no thought to spare for him, and returned only mechanical answers to his civilities.

The Duke bowed over her aunt's hand, greeting her with cool courtesy, then turned to Georgie. She curtsied, and raised her eyes to his. The hand he took in his much larger one was trembling, she noted with little surprise. She could do nothing to prevent it. Their eyes locked as they had done once before, bright blue to silvery grey, and she was so close that she saw the flare of utter astonishment as he recognised her. There could be not the least doubt that he recognised her. She saw his pupils dilate as memory flooded them. Flooded him. She was sure she must be flushed, her breathing constricted, and hoped distractedly that others, if they saw it, would ascribe it to the heat of the fire. Not him, of course – no, he knew better.

‘Lady Georgiana,' that instantly recognisable voice purred. ‘What a… pleasure it is to make your acquaintance.' She could only pray that no one else noticed the minute hesitation before the word ‘pleasure'. But she heard it, and her whole body tingled at the recollections it evoked, the recollections it was surely meant to evoke. That he should dare to speak of pleasure… He had recovered his composure with astonishing swiftness; indeed, unlike her, he had never truly lost it. He was, she thought, toying with her deliberately. This could hardly be a surprise to her.

And then he had released her, and moved on to greet Miss Spry, and Miss FitzHenry was shyly addressing some cordial remark to her about her journey to which she was obliged to reply. There was a general movement; the Duke and his nephew took their leave with many expressions of regret – Georgie avoiding her host's penetrating gaze all the while – and went off to take tea with their other guests, and Lady Blanche and her daughter summoned the housekeeper. They would take Lady Louisa and her companions up to their rooms, they said, where their luggage (which had arrived in a separate coach with the abigails some time earlier) had already been unpacked, and allow them to rest for an hour or two before it would be necessary to change for dinner and greet the rest of the company.

Georgiana pasted a smile to her face, and said everything that was proper, until at last she was left alone in her chamber, sinking into a chair set beside her bed and putting her cold hands to her face in sheer unbelieving horror. There was a spectacular, dizzying view from the room's casement down to the beach hundreds of feet below, where angry waves roared and lashed across slick black rocks, but she did not see it. She was blind to her surroundings, back in that warm, sensual, depraved house in Mayfair, and that small, locked room. She felt now as though she had never left it. As though she never would leave it.

She could almost have laughed when she reflected on her thoughts during the carriage ride, and all her pitifully sensible resolutions. To wait, to be patient, to curb her wildest impulses. To behave properly, like other young ladies, and to wait for love, and marriage. The trouble was, it had been so very easy to form such a purpose over the past few weeks. Then, she had been secure in the belief that the latest and worst instance of her recklessness had been entirely and most providentially without consequences. Up till this afternoon, she had believed that once again she had shown evidence of bearing a charmed life. She'd heard nothing more from Mrs Aubrey, she'd been touched by no breath of scandal, she'd come hundreds of miles away from home, and she had convinced herself that her ridiculous imaginings about meeting him again had been just that – ridiculous.

Of course, Georgie had wondered a thousand times who the man could possibly have been. She'd spent many hours wondering. He was plainly someone of great experience, she could vouch for that. Her whole body tingled at the recollection. His honeyed, seductive voice, his glittering eyes, his long, clever fingers, the smile that just touched his firm lips, his mouth: good God, his beautiful, sensual mouth. His kiss, his… All these things and more had obsessed her, waking and sleeping. But as the weeks went by, she had convinced herself by sheer force of will that it did not matter. That she had put the past behind her, and learned her lesson from it. That they would never meet again, and he would not recognise her if they did. That he was nothing to her, just as surely as she was nothing to him. And most of all that she was safe. She didn't deserve to be safe, but she'd persuaded herself that she was.

But now she was in his home, he had recognised her – this she knew with every fibre of her being – and she was so very far from safe. She was in his hands – an entirely involuntary shudder ran through her at the thought – he was the notorious, scandalous, dangerously attractive Duke of Northriding, and she had not the least idea what he would choose to do with the power he held over her.