Chapter 7

.…

—from Selina's private journal, page titled PROPOSED TOPICS OF CONVERSATION FOR STANHOPE AND GEORGIANA

Peter understood now what Selina had meant about talking to Lady Georgiana Cleeve.

They'd made a little party as they wandered the riverbank: Lady Georgiana with her hand on Peter's arm, Selina and Lydia just behind them. Lady Georgiana's mother, the Countess of Alverthorpe, made up the rear, flanked by a truly startling number of maids and footmen. The Earl of Alverthorpe had, fortunately, not deigned to join them—in fact, he had scarcely acknowledged Peter at all, a fact that Peter found he didn't much mind.

His impression of this whole project had risen slightly when he and Selina's path had intersected with that of the Cleeves and Lydia Hope-Wallace. Lady Georgiana—though precisely as young as he'd feared—was almost unnervingly lovely, and she smiled at him brightly enough to rival the sun reflecting off the Serpentine as he'd approached. Lydia, for her part, had looked a bit green, but she too was a beauty, all red hair and neat curves beneath her trim walking dress.

Then they'd all started trying to make conversation.

"And are you enjoying your first Season out, Lady Georgiana?" Peter asked. Damn, he had already asked that. Would she notice? Maybe she wouldn't notice.

"Oh yes," she said, and she gave him that same brilliant smile. Her teeth were perfect, he noted distantly. Literally perfect. She could have been an artist's model for teeth. She could turn a tidy sum if she were to sell them.

No one else said anything. Peter tried to think of a remark less terrifying than Have you considered selling your teeth?

Selina piped up—with a kind of clenched-jaw cheer—from behind them. "His Grace too is fairly new to the Season, Lady Georgiana. He's only just arrived in London these last two years."

"Has he?" said Lady Georgiana, turning wide cornflower-blue eyes to Selina. "But wherever did he come from?"

Selina closed her eyes briefly. Peter thought she might be praying.

"From New Orleans," Peter said to Lady Georgiana.

She turned her head slowly to regard him. "I've never heard of that. Is it in Sussex?"

"Er," he said. "No. It's a city in Louisiana. In America."

"How fascinating," she said, blinking rapidly. Her eyelashes were long enough to create a small breeze.

"Most recently I have come from Cuba, which is an island in the Caribbean." His voice sounded tinged with desperation.

"An island." Georgiana gave a knowing nod. "England is an island too. Or, wait, is it? Or is that Great Britain? I always forget." A small line appeared between her exceptional eyebrows. "I am all thumbs when it comes to geology."

He attempted to parse the last several sentences.

"Great Britain," said Lydia hoarsely, "is the island."

Peter turned to her and attempted to smile. Make her comfortable, Selina had said. What would make her more comfortable? "Have you done much traveling, Miss Hope-Wallace?"

"No," she whispered, staring down at her boots.

"Have you traveled?" asked Lady Georgiana. Peter turned back to her and realized that she was addressing him.

"I seem to have spent most of the last decade going from one island to another," he said.

She appeared stunned by this. "There are more islands? How many?"

"I don't mean to imply that I have visited all the islands in the world," Peter said hastily. Was she jesting? Surely she had to be jesting.

" All the islands in the world ?"

"I—" He honestly didn't know how to respond. "No. I have not been to all the islands in the world. I have been to several islands in the Caribbean. Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados. I spent some time in Haiti after the revolution to learn about self-government."

"How many islands are there in the world?" murmured Lady Georgiana dreamily. "There must be at least…" She paused, looked around, and then said triumphantly, "Seven!"

Peter looked desperately to Selina. If she was laughing, then surely he too could laugh.

She wasn't laughing. She looked as though she were experiencing physical pain.

"Haiti," she said, voice brittle. "That is the former French colony Saint-Domingue, is it not?"

"That's right. The revolution was led by former slaves, and the freed men now run the government there."

"Isn't that interesting, Lyddie?" Selina said, giving her friend a little nudge.

"Yes," muttered Lydia. "Haiti…" She trailed off.

Peter waited to see if Lydia was going to continue.

She didn't.

"Lady Selina tells me you are familiar with my political work on abolition," Peter said to Lydia—though to call his handful of weeks in the Lords "political work" seemed a bit of stretch. But he meant to do real work, damn him. He had stumbled into this position of immense power and privilege, and he meant to use it, if he could. He intended to learn, to try to help tear down the world of plantations and brutality he'd grown up in and build a new one.

"Yes," said Lydia, and now she looked absolutely wretched, her face growing even paler, her lips almost white.

"Are you quite all right?"

Lydia stopped walking and clamped her jaw together, and Peter had no idea if he was meant to continue to walk with Lady Georgiana or stop to keep pace with Lydia. He attempted to do both and thrust the arm with Lady Georgiana forward while twisting his body to continue to look at Lydia. His hat fell off.

Sweet Jesus, he was a disaster. This was a disaster.

"Have you lost something?" asked Lady Georgiana, peering up at him in concern and drawing to a halt. "You seem different."

"Oh dear God," mumbled Selina, and she leapt forward to grab his hat.

Lydia Hope-Wallace turned on her heel and took off away from their group at a pace that might have been termed a sprint.

Peter looked longingly after her.

He could run. He could disentangle Lady Georgiana's fingers from his forearm and run back to Freddie and Lu. He could scoop one up under each arm and carry them to the Stanhope townhouse and lock them in the nursery and never let them leave.

He could be the Kidnapper Duke. The Abducting Aristocrat.

He turned his gaze back to Selina and Georgiana. Selina stuffed his hat into his hands. Lady Georgiana blinked down at it.

"That's it!" she said in amazement.

"That's… what?" He was almost afraid to ask.

"A hat," she said, and there went the teeth again. White and even and surely too numerous for one aristocrat's daughter. "That's a hat."

He could not introduce this woman to his sister. Lucinda would gnaw on her bones.

Peter turned to Selina and mouthed, Help.

The expression of tooth-grinding misery on her face shifted suddenly as she looked at him. One corner of her mouth twitched up, and she blinked desperately, and, thank God, now she too was about to laugh.

"Lady Georgiana," she said on a smothered gasp, "are you fond of hats?"

"Oh, exceptionally." Georgiana grinned blissfully at them both. "I have fourteen hats."

Peter felt the muscles of his abdomen clench as he tried to contain himself. Oh, to hell with it. "Do you know," he said, grinning back at her, "so do I."

"Truly?" Her blue eyes widened in amazement. "For your head?"

Damn it, the girl could not be serious. This had to be some kind of elaborate ruse. "Several for my head. Others for my…" He trailed off.

Selina gave a sort of strangled sound.

"For my valet," he said, giving her a chastening look.

"You are dreadful," she hissed.

"I am being polite."

"I would love a valet," said Georgiana dreamily. And then, "Mother! Might I have a valet?"

Lady Alverthorpe, who had been meandering at some distance behind them, came abreast of their trio. "Georgie, darling, certainly not."

Georgiana's face fell.

"A valet would know nothing of gowns," said the countess. She was as blond as her daughter, and nearly as slim, though her blue eyes were a bit watery and her nose wriggled disconcertingly like a rabbit's when she spoke. "And hair! Heavens, a valet wouldn't know how to dress your hair."

"But surely a valet dresses His Grace's hair," protested Georgiana. She smiled winningly up at him. "Your valet curls your hair so prettily."

Selina appeared to choke.

"Georgie, sweet," said Lady Alverthorpe. "Men do not like to be reminded of their efforts at beautifying themselves. Not since the French Revolution."

Good Christ, there were two of them. "Do you have any brothers? Perhaps you might try out one of their valets."

"My brothers' hair is much less pretty than yours, Your Grace," said Georgiana. "And my father is quite bald, so his valet would be no help at all."

Peter could practically hear the response in his head— Lady Georgiana, it would be my pleasure to offer you the services of my valet —or perhaps I can't countenance the idea that your hair could be any more lovely —and yet he found he could not bring them to his lips.

He looked again at Selina. The berry-colored curve of her mouth was set in a crooked smile, and her eyes on him were encouraging. He was meant to be courting this girl, and Selina's expression said, Go on, then. Say something charming.

And, damn him, it shouldn't have rankled, but it did.

"My valet, I'm afraid, would be a disappointment." He resettled his hat on his head, trying not to be too obvious about the desire to smother his own coiffure. "I hate to admit it in polite company, but I've yet to let Humphrey take hot tongs to my head. My hair grows this way." He'd never even had a valet until he'd inherited. It was bad enough to let the man dress him, as if he were a child.

Selina's brows drew together in an expression of unguarded skepticism. "You cannot mean it."

He felt himself smiling helplessly at her. "God's truth."

"Insulting," she mumbled. "Truly insulting."

"It runs in the family. You've seen Lu's hair. You can't imagine she lets Aunt Rosamund at her with curling implements."

Selina tilted her head in acknowledgment. "I suspect Aunt Rosamund doesn't wish to find herself at the wrong end of extremely hot metal."

"You haven't met Aunt Rosamund. I suspect she wouldn't know curling tongs from a salad fork."

Selina pursed her lips. "To be fair, she could probably use curling tongs on a salad."

"Point to you," he said, and her eyes sparkled at him so brightly in the afternoon light that he almost lost his breath.

Lady Alverthorpe cleared her throat, and Peter started. He knew enough about English society to know that he was being outrageously rude to talk in company about people they didn't know. He tried for a moment to explain his siblings and Great-great-aunt Rosamund.

Georgiana blinked up at him. "They all sound very nice."

Well, nice wasn't really the word for Aunt Rosamund—or Lu, for that matter—but he appreciated her effort. "They're very important to me."

Her perfect teeth peeked out as she bit her lower lip. "Who did you say they are again?"

Selina groaned quietly from beside him, and he didn't have to turn toward her to know she was clenching her jaw again.

"Georgie, my girl, you must listen better," chided her mother. "Surely you heard His Grace say that they were his valets?"

It was only because Peter was still marveling at Lady Georgiana's teeth that he saw it. Her gold lashes fluttered down to her cheeks, and her nose twitched, and the corner of her mouth… shivered. Once, and then again.

And if he didn't know any better, Peter would have sworn that Lady Georgiana was a very, very talented actress who was trying very, very hard not to laugh.

Her eyes blinked open again, and the impression was gone. She was all curls and limpid blue eyes, and her voice was spun-sugar sweet when she said, "Valets! Of course. The ones who curl His Grace's hair." She nodded smartly. "I can see it must require several men."

He narrowed his eyes at her, and her eyelashes started working again like feathered fans. "Your Grace," she said, "I'm afraid we must take your leave. The afternoon grows a bit warm for my mother."

The countess was already nodding and scooping up her daughter's arm.

"Oh," said Selina. "So soon? Perhaps we shall see you at the Strattons' ball this week?"

Lady Alverthorpe kept right on nodding. "To be sure, my dear. To be sure."

"Might I call on you?" Peter heard himself ask. "Lady Georgiana?"

Three faces turned toward him, with varying expressions of surprise. Selina looked rather startled, but not at all displeased. Of course she did. Peter ignored the little flush of irritation, because, damn it, this was what they'd agreed on. This was the damned plan.

"To be sure, Your Grace," Lady Georgiana said politely. "That would be an honor. Perhaps you might bring your valets."

"I will try to do so. Armed with salad tongs." He stared at her, practically daring her to laugh.

She didn't. "I love salad," she said breathily. "It is my first passion."

And then they made their farewells.

He escorted Selina back along the Serpentine toward their families.

"That went… well," he offered. Well enough, except for the part where he hoped that Lady Georgiana's entire personality was an intricate facade and then the other part where Lydia Hope-Wallace had sprinted away like Pheidippides at Marathon.

"Do you fancy her?" Selina asked. "Lady Georgiana? Is that the sort of woman you favor?"

He echoed Georgiana's words from earlier. "She seems nice."

In truth, he wasn't sure he'd ever had a type of woman that he favored. Women came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and he liked soft bits he could hold on to as much as he liked long elegant lines. Blondes or brunettes. French accents or English ones.

He supposed he liked clever women. With ruthlessly efficient fingers. Eyes that danced and flashed by turns, eyes that soothed him and challenged him at once.

None of which described Lady Georgiana Cleeve, but did very accurately describe—

Damn it.