“Now tell me about these beautiful horses, will you? You must be a very fine horsewoman.”

And with that, Caroline had been deftly extricated from any situation that might end in her being either scolded or murdered by her mother. Georgiana’s head spun as she was overcome by the distinct feeling that she and West had been left alone on purpose. She was not used to losing so roundly.

She missed her club.

She turned back to West, who was still smiling. “Skull drinking?” he asked.

She waved away the words. “Do not ask.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

“You see now why I need a husband. She’s too precocious for her own good.”

“I don’t see it at all, honestly. She’s charming.”

She smirked. “You are obviously not good ton.” He went serious, and she suddenly felt as though she’d misspoken. She added. “And you do not have to live with her.”

“You forget, I have a sister who is similarly eccentric.”

It was a perfect word for Caroline. “Tell me, are most gentlemen seeking eccentricity in their wives?”

“As I am not a gentleman, I would not know.”

Something flared inside her, unfamiliar and yet thoroughly recognizable. Guilt. “I didn’t mean —” she said.

“I know,” he replied. “But you were not wrong. I am not born a gentleman, Georgiana. And you would do best to remember it.”

“You play the part well,” she said. And he did, looking every inch the gentleman now, and each night on the floor of her club. He’d played it well when he’d rescued her from Pottle’s slithering, disgusting grasp. And in the years leading up to that moment, during which he’d never propositioned her. Not once.

“You think so?” he asked casually, as they trailed behind Caroline and Cynthia, whose conversation grew more animated by the minute. “You think I played it well when I manhandled you on the floor of a casino? When I nearly stripped you bare?”

They were in public – in the middle of Hyde Park. And to an unsuspecting observer, they were all propriety. No one would ever know that his words sent heat coursing through her, warming her straight through, as though they were in that shadowed alcove in her casino once more.

She did not look at him, afraid he would see what he had done to her.

“When I wanted to do much more than that?” he added, the words soft and full of promise.

She’d wanted it, too. She cleared her throat. “Perhaps you are not such a gentleman after all.”

“I promise you, there is no perhaps about it.”

She was certain that anyone who watched them would know what he said. How she enjoyed it. How shameless they both were. She looked to the Serpentine, trying to pretend they discussed something else. Anything else. “What are you, then?”

He did not answer for a while, and she finally turned to look at him, finding him watching her carefully. She met his gaze, finally. He held it for a heartbeat. Two. Ten. “I would have thought you’d recognized it the moment we met. I’m an utter scoundrel.”

And in that moment, he was. And she didn’t care.

Indeed, she wanted him more for it.

They walked farther, trailing his sister and her daughter as they edged around the curve of the Serpentine lake. After long moments of silence, she could not bear it any longer, the wondering what he was thinking. The hoping he’d give voice to thought. The hoping he wouldn’t.

So she spoke first. “My brother’s wife nearly drowned in this lake once.”

He did not hesitate. “I remember that. Your brother saved her.”

It had been the beginning of a love for the ages. One that did not end in tragedy, but in happiness. “I suppose you wrote about it.”

“Probably,” he said. “At the time, if I recall, The Scandal Sheet was the only paper I had.”

“I just had a conversation with Caroline that leads me to believe that it still holds a fair amount of influence.”

He turned to look at the girls. “Oh?”

“Yes. As you may have divined, she reads the gossip pages.”

He smiled. “She and every other girl in London.”

“Yes, well, most girls of her age aren’t reading about their mother’s search for a husband.”

He slowed his pace. “Ah.”

“Well put.”

“What did she say about it?”

“She asked why I wish to marry. And why now.”

The girls now quite a distance away, and she and West were both public and private. As with everything in Georgiana’s life these days. The situation was by design, yes, but it did not mean she enjoyed it.

Although, if she were fully in private with Duncan West, there was no telling what might happen.

They walked a little farther in silence before he said, “And how did you answer?”

She turned to him, shocked. “You too?” He lifted a shoulder in an expression she was coming to recognize in him. “You know, you do that when you want someone to think that you aren’t interested in what they are about to say.”

“Perhaps I’m not interested. Perhaps I’m simply being polite.”

“Since when does politeness include prying, personal questions?” she asked. “Did you not receive the lesson I just delivered to my daughter?”

“Something about skull drinking.” She laughed, taken by surprise, and he smiled briefly, the expression there, then gone, leaving only a pool of warmth in her stomach as he added, “Well, as your daughter pointed out, I am a reporter.”