Chapter 23

CHAPTER23

“Is that Lord Morton?” Agnes asked, feigning surprise as she glimpsed the fellow among the finely dressed gentlemen who wandered the upper tiers of Ascot racecourse.

Rose whirled around like a dervish, her pretty pink skirts spinning with her, forgoing subtlety all together as the graceful movement drew the appreciative gaze of many of the nearby gentlemen. The poor girl had been morose since the night of the opera when Agnes had been forced to inform her of Lady Finch’s “concerns.” Of course, Agnes had not outright said that Lord Morton was forbidden fruit, for she had not wanted to crush her sister’s hopes entirely.

But seeing the delight in Rose’s eyes, and the manner in which her entire demeanor brightened in a split-second, Agnes had to wonder if she had been too vague in suggesting that Lord Morton was outlawed as a potential suitor.

“Where is he? Are you teasing me?” Rose whispered, gripping Agnes’ arm so tightly that Agnes feared it might leave welts. “I cannot see him. Oh, Agnes, please do not torment me like that!”

Agnes blinked, not knowing whether to be outraged or just disappointed. “I would never tease you about a gentleman you admired,” she said sternly, chinning toward the tallest gentleman in the crowd, who stood at the farthest end of the upper tier. How Rose could have missed him was beyond Agnes, for he stood out like a sore thumb—an attractive one but nevertheless.

“He is here!” Rose clamped a hand over her mouth and danced a small jig of excitement. “This must be destiny, sister. It must be!”

Or a tiny orchestration on your sister’s part, Agnes congratulated herself silently, for she was the one who had made the suggestion about attending Ascot. She had lied about never seeing a race before and had harped on about how dearly she wished to behold one at such intolerable length that she had known Lady Finch would buckle if only to quieten her about the damned thing.

The truth did, however, have a little hint of fate within it. The day before the picnic, Agnes had overheard several gentlemen discussing attending the races at Ascot while she, her sister, and her mother were refreshing themselves at a tearoom with Lady Finch, after perusing the latest fashions for hours upon end. Lord Morton’s name had come into conversation, and the gentlemen had alluded to the fact that he would be there. So, Agnes had decided to put a discreet plan into action, allowing fate to decide—with a gentle nudge—if Rose and Lord Morton should meet again.

“Oh, but what is the use?” Rose’s face fell, and she turned her gaze away. “If Lady Finch does not approve, then…”

Agnes patted her sister’s arm. “Then make her approve. Show Lady Finch what a fine, respectable fellow he is. I am already compiling my report, and it looks promising.” She paused, hastening to add, “That does not mean you should wager all of your hopes upon him, but nor should you stamp on them because of someone else’s uninformed judgment. You are the one who must be happy, you are the one who must find a love that will last, and if anyone can convince Lady Finch, I suspect it is you.”

Rose considered the sentiment, her attention darting between Lord Morton and the green oval of the racecourse that he observed with great interest. Meanwhile, Agnes’ thoughts charged along a very different track, leaping over the steeples of Lady Finch’s warning to breathe some wind into her romantic sails or risk drifting alone upon a merciless, isolated sea.

But why do I feel as though I am sailing into a storm? She had dipped a toe into flirtation at the picnic the previous day and had returned to the Mayfair townhouse feeling hot and uncomfortable and awkward. The nighttime had been worse, conjuring dreams of George on horseback, riding toward her without a stitch of clothing upon him. Why she had dreamed of him that way, she did not know, but it had made for a very restless slumber. So much so, that she was quite certain she looked horrifying.

“I cannot approach him alone,” Rose said, some of her cheer restored. “Where is His Grace? Do you think he might serve as an intermediary?”

“I could not even begin to tell you,” Agnes replied, searching the crowds for the man who had seized hold of her dreams and made her look haggard. “He journeyed here in his own carriage, and last I saw of him, he was enjoying the company of his peers. Gambling, no doubt.”

And I am glad he has not yet seen me, for he will think he has witnessed a ghoul, she lamented silently, for in her dreams, she had attracted the entirety of his attention. He had leaped down from his horse and hurried toward her on an unknown stretch of sandy beach at sunset, scooping her up as the wind whipped around them, turning her around and around with his face buried in her neck. Sadly, she had awoken before she could discover what it might be like to be kissed by him, and no matter how hard she had concentrated, she had not been able to pick up the dream where she had awoken from it.

“I wondered why my ears were burning.” Agnes stiffened at the sound of his voice, so close behind her that she could feel his breath tousling her hair.

Slowly, she turned and forced herself to peer defiantly up into his eyes. “You said yesterday that you intended to place a wager upon these horses.”

“Did I?” George tilted his head to one side, rubbing his fingertip beneath his plump lower lip in thought. “I remember mentioning a wager, but I cannot recall saying a word about betting upon a horse.”

Agnes sniffed. “What else would you wager upon at a racecourse, Your Grace?”

“That is something I intended to discuss with you,” he replied silkily, startling her as he took her hand and kissed it. “So, tell me, are you in a gambling sort of temperament today?”

Agnes looked toward a large blackboard that took pride of place on the wall at the rear of the upper tier. A long list of names was etched in chalk upon it though, she had to confess, she had not paid it much heed since arriving.

“What are your terms?” Agnes asked, reading the names.

George chuckled. “You wish to speak of this now, with so many people around us?”

“Whyever not?” Agnes straightened up. “They are too entrenched in their own conversations to hear ours, and I already know what I shall ask for if my horse beats yours.”

A shadow fell across George’s face for a moment, swiftly chased away by one of his glowing smiles. “And what would you ask of me?”

“That you act as intermediary between my sister and Lord Morton and say not a word to Lady Finch of it,” Agnes replied in a low voice, making sure that Lady Finch was not nearby.

The older woman sat upon a chair by the dark green balcony, deep in conversation with Agnes’ mother. Indeed, Katherine Weston had become rather more animated since her daughters had returned from the opera, joining in with walks and picnics and excursions and dinners. Agnes suspected it had everything to do with the mutual decision between her mother and Lady Finch to keep Rose and Lord Morton apart, and Agnes would have been lying if she had said that did not have something to do with her determination to allow Rose and Lord Morton to become better acquainted.

George grinned. “I would have done that without a wager, Lady Agnes. Lord Morton seems to me to be a very dull, very sensible, very reliable, upsettingly handsome gentleman who would make any young lady a fine—albeit boring—husband.”

“Oh, he is not dull!” Rose chimed in, dipping in and out of the discussion as Lord Morton continued to draw her lovelorn gaze. “He reads poetry.”

George and Agnes stifled a shared smirk though Rose did not appear to notice.

“If poetry is the epitome of being noteworthy, I must be exceedingly lackluster,” George whispered, the caress of his breath against Agnes’ cheek making her shiver despite the heat of the afternoon. Yet, it was not an unpleasant sensation. Anything but.

“I thought the very same thing,” she replied, her heart racing faster than any thoroughbred.

“That I am exceedingly lackluster?”

She laughed softly, her body still thrumming from the intimacy of his whisper. There was a certain thrill to holding such a private conversation among a crowd, knowing that anyone could see them and begin a spring of gossip that might turn into a flood.

“That I must be very dull too,” she replied, ensuring once more that neither Lady Finch nor her mother was watching. “So, I have stated my terms—what are yours?”

George’s teeth grazed his lower lip, prompting Agnes’ stomach to flip and her chest to tighten. “As with our last wager, I shall only tell you of my terms when I have won.”

“I expected nothing less though I do find it somewhat cowardly,” she said, emboldened by his brazenness. “Are you, perhaps, ashamed to admit what you might want? Is it something you certainly would not say in company?”

His eyes gleamed with that flicker of hunger she had seen before. “I could whisper it in your ear, but I fear I might draw unwanted scrutiny. Unless you do not mind turning the wheel of the rumor mill?” He paused, bending his head until he was not exactly maintaining a polite distance. “What has changed in you, Agnes?”

“Changed, Your Grace?” Her throat tightened, her skin flushing with a feverish heat far greater than the beating rays of the sun.

“You suddenly seem inclined to invite scandal, or perhaps you truly do not care what anyone says of you, even if it could harm your sister’s future prospects,” he replied in a throaty voice that was almost threatening.

She balled her hands into fists, struggling to swallow the longing that ached within her. “I have no desire to invite scandal, Your Grace, nor would I do anything to harm my sister’s prospects. To what, may I ask, are you referring? I cannot say that I have behaved any differently toward you or anyone else of late.”

Truly, she was bewildered, for though she had been somewhat flirtatious at the picnic yesterday, she did not consider it to be anything out of the ordinary. They had bantered and quarreled countless times before in much the same fashion.

“The way you were lying upon that blanket yesterday before I approached,” he told her in a clandestine whisper, his own hands balling into fists as if he did not trust them. “You were like the muse of a Baroque painting though sadly more… attired.”

She stared up at him, hardly able to believe the gall of his words. Thinking back, she supposed there was a moment or two when she had been utterly relaxed, perhaps forgetting that she was in a park in the midst of London and not in the gardens of her countryside home where no one could observe her.

“You do understand what I mean by that, do you not?” he added, smirking.

Anger replaced the feverish heat as she looked back at him. “Do I know what ‘Baroque’ means?” She scoffed at his insult. “Certainly, I do, but your perspective is something I do not understand. Are you suggesting it is terribly scandalous to be at ease among one’s family and friends? Should I be forever anxious and formal, nibbling daintily at delicacies and sitting straight-backed until my spine and shoulders ache? I was content, Your Grace; I was not inviting unwelcome eyes to gaze at me, and I assuredly was not inviting them to undress me.”

She remembered his remark about that awful book by the Marquis de Sade and realized that this was likely another one of his tricks. Another means to shock her into being intrigued by him, by suggesting he had thought of her without any clothes on.

It shall not work! her mind screamed, but the growing warmth inside her belly branched out into her limbs, cracking the sturdy foundations of her resolve. Had he thought of her disrobed? Had he thought of disrobing her? It irked her that she could not proclaim innocence, for she had gone so far as to dream of him without anything on. Then again, she could somewhat console herself by remembering that she could not control what she dreamed about whereas he could control the words that came out of his mouth.

“After that, Your Grace, I have decided against a wager,” she said stiffly. “I do not trust what you might request.”

George’s smirk faded. “But what of needing an intermediary for your sister and Lord Morton?”

“I shall do it myself,” Agnes replied, desperate to escape George before he realized how much he had flustered her. “Indeed, while I do that, I might also take Lady Finch’s advice and find myself a husband among these fine gentlemen. A dull, reliable, sensible one, for that is—according to her—what makes a lasting marriage. Passion dampens, infatuation fades, and I will not accept weak flesh over solid bones.”

She noted the flicker of confusion that pinched his eyes into a frown and let that satisfy her as she turned and made her way toward Lord Morton. And if anyone thought that was scandalous, then so be it, but it would be less scandalous than what she might do if she stayed in George’s company a moment longer.

Solid bones, she repeated to herself, for when it came to matters of the flesh, she sensed that George would devour her whole, chewing her up and spitting her out until only disgrace and shame remained. Worst of all, despite knowing that, despite everything she had read about him and everything he had done to vex her since meeting, she could not clear her mind of him. Nor her heart which called to him even as she walked away.

“Perhaps, Lady Finch is wrong,” she whispered. “Perhaps, it is better to be alone.” For if she did not know what she was missing, she supposed she could never miss it.