Bexley-Smythe Quintet 01 - Flight of Fancy Page 3

  “So you said earlier,” Pippa said on a sigh, “but I can’t believe he would even hold a candle to Lord Colebrooke.”

  All four of them then returned their attention to the entrance. Pippa was likely searching for her Colebrooke, and Moira was doubtless searching for a Scot. Georgie pretended to be aiding them in their search…but she was merely looking for Lord Haworth and racking her brain for a means by which to gain an introduction to him.

  Several others came in and were announced, and then, “Lord Brody McTavish,” was called out.

  Georgie looked up and fought to hold in a snicker. The man was shorter than any of her friends, but was as wide as he was tall. There was a decided lack of hair atop his head. He was far from the Scot of Moira’s dreams, but Georgie nudged her anyway. “There is your Scot.”

  Moira’s face dropped in dejection. “This may be more difficult than I thought.”

  Much as Georgie’s plan to meet Haworth and fly in his gas balloon seemed to be. Gracious, why had she decided on this as her planned adventure for the Season? Surely there were other things she could do to escape the overwhelming knowledge taking over her mind. Simpler things to accomplish, at least.

  Moments later, Moira’s brother came along and collected her, and then Pippa and Patience were each claimed by various acquaintances as well. Georgie was left entirely alone.

  She took a look around her, searching first for Monty and then for Haworth. Finding neither, she set off.

  Just what was she off to do? Cedric had to stifle a laugh at the secretive manner in which Georgie was bustling about the Davenport ballroom. She’d take a furtive glance around her, then dash off into a quiet alcove hidden behind potted plants, and then steal another look. After a moment or two, she’d repeat the process, only this time ending up trying to somehow blend her white gown in with the gold and rose-colored walls of the ballroom. Once, she even darted behind a group of servants and tried to make herself unnoticeable—even going so far as to take a tray of lemonade glasses from a bewildered maid and carry it with her to her next destination, depositing it on a table as calm as may be.

  A successful spy, his Georgie would never be. He was having a far too easy time of following her every movement, perplexing though they may be.

  Truly, he ought to be more disconcerted by Georgie’s dismaying behavior. Indeed, if Haworth were here tonight, Cedric would be far more concerned. As things stood, however, he couldn’t help but be highly amused at her antics.

  Not to mention curious. And while it might be true that curiosity killed the cat, Cedric was not presently a cat, nor had he ever been, if memory served.

  What could he do but attempt to assuage his curiosity?

  So when Georgie sneaked behind a potted fern, cast her eyes about briefly, and then dashed down an abandoned corridor, Cedric had no choice, really, but to follow her.

  Once he’d made his way through the throng of people near the refreshment table and out into the corridor, however, she had disappeared from sight.

  Damn and blast, where had she gotten off to? Perhaps she was stealthier than he’d initially thought.

  Taking great care to keep his boots from echoing along the marbled floor, he hurriedly searched every inch of the corridor, listening at doorways for any sign he might find of Georgie’s whereabouts.

  At one closed door to the right, he heard the unmistakable sounds of an illicit tryst. She’d damned well better not be behind that door.

  No, Georgie might be a bit naïve, but she wasn’t an imbecile. She wouldn’t allow herself to be ruined in that way. Cedric shook his head to clear the image from his mind and moved on.

  A few feet down the way on the opposite side of the corridor, he pressed his ear up against the door. The deep rumble of gentlemen’s laughter came his way, so he moved on.

  After passing several more doorways with similar results, finally, Cedric caught sight of a scrap of white fabric peeking out into the corridor from an alcove.

  “Caught you,” he mumbled to himself, not loud enough for the sound to reach Georgie’s ears. Moving on little more than the tips of his toes, he gradually moved closer to her, inch by inch, step by step…until he could reach out and grab her.

  Yet startling her might not be his best course of action. If he were to grab her, she might very well scream—and he didn’t know what she was eavesdropping on or why, though he could hear the slightest hint of masculine voices coming from within the chamber.

  No, instead of pulling her away from the alcove bodily, Cedric made certain he was close enough she would hear him and then cleared his throat quietly.

  Slowly, Georgie spun on her slippers and faced him, her rich, brown eyes as wide as he’d ever seen them in her shock.

  How in God’s name had Monty found her? Georgie had been supremely diligent in making certain no one had seen her as she’d followed Lord Northwood and Lord Sackville into the corridor. She’d overheard them speaking about Lord Haworth in the ballroom, so what choice did she have but to sneak after them and glean what little information she could from their conversation?

  Not that she’d learned anything about Haworth. After the gentlemen’s one brief mention of meeting him at their club earlier in the day, they’d moved on to the incredibly exciting discussions of crop rotation (a subject which had, quite literally, bored Georgie to tears ever since she’d read Observations on a Tour Through Almost the Whole of England by Mr. Dibdin, when she was all of ten years old) and politics (which could at times be interesting, if two opposing viewpoints were in play—but Lords Northwood and Sackville were in perfect agreement on every political matter, thereby nullifying any sense of interest).

  In fact, she was just about to give up on discerning where she might find Lord Haworth from these two gentlemen when Monty pounced on her from behind.

  She opened her mouth to tell him just what she thought of him sneaking up behind her, but he silenced her by placing his forefinger over her lips and whispering, “Hush.”

  The brief contact set her head to reeling and sent a trail of shivers coursing down her spine, leaving her fully unnerved. How was it possible for him to so thoroughly disarm her, with just the simplest touch? Georgie blinked in dismay.

  He gestured towards the door, shook his head, and took hold of her elbow, pulling her away from the alcove and further into the corridor. The heat of his hand left an unfamiliar tingling sensation on her skin, which then traveled all over her arm all the way to the tips of her fingers. What on earth was happening to her?

  They came to the end of that hall and Georgie was certain he would come to a stop, but Monty tugged her around the corner and kept walking. Even though her legs were longer than those of the average lady, she was huffing in her efforts to keep up with him.

  Finally, when he turned yet another corner, Georgie dug her heels into the flooring and forced him to stop. “Where could you possibly think you’re taking me?”

  He faced her with a frown, his blue eyes boring into her. “Away from there, where we’d be overheard by whoever it was you were eavesdropping on. Not that I owe you any sort of explanation. I have to wonder what you thought you were doing, however. It’s impolite to listen in to private conversations, and it is about the furthest thing from what you’d normally do as I can imagine.”

  She pulled her arm free from his grip, and then crossed both arms over her chest. “Oh? About as impolite as it is for a gentleman to trap a lady alone somewhere, I’d wager.” The fact that he knew it was unlike her left her unsettled. He was right. She never did anything improper.

  Well, never before this Season.

  Blast him for knowing her so well.

  Monty frowned, the effort of it forming a crease between his eyebrows. “You’re not trapped, and given the relationship that I have had with your family for nearly two decades—one which is well known amongst the ton —no one would think twice about the two of us being somewhere alone together. I’m practically your brother.”

 
Something tugged at the side of his mouth and a jerking twitch tugged his eye at that last statement, but he set himself to rights before Georgie had more than a moment to wonder why such a sentiment would be bothersome to him.

  “But you’re not my brother.” She put more emphasis than was necessary on the word not, but he needed to understand that the world didn’t see things quite the way he was choosing to see them. Being almost her brother was far from the same as being her brother.

  “No,” he said on a long exhalation, “I’m not. But your brother isn’t here, so I’m doing what I can to protect you.”

  “I don’t need your protection.” She didn’t want it, at any rate. His attempts to protect her were making her life miserable. He was always in the way, even when she thought she’d escaped his attention for a moment.

  “That, my sweet Georgie, is up for debate.”

  She scowled at him with enough force that she could have burned him to ash if she could throw flames through her eyes. Come to think of it, that was a rather delightful prospect. Perhaps someone ought to someday write a treatise on the physics involved in making such a thing happen. She’d send Percy to the bookstore with her pin money to purchase it for her straightaway, should it happen. Now that was a subject she found fascinating. At least she did once it had occurred to her.

  They stood there for a long moment, neither willing to give an inch to the other.

  Finally, Monty dragged a hand through his hair and let out a ragged breath. “I know you think you’re all grown up now and don’t believe you need my assistance—”

  “Hovering, I might call it, rather than assistance. Or perhaps interference might fit better.”

  He frowned but pressed on, staring resolutely into her eyes with undiluted fervor for his message, whatever that may be. “But you’re only eighteen, and London is full of people who would…”

  But then his gaze slid away, fading off into the distance even as his shoulders slumped forwards.

  “People who would what?” Georgie finally asked, throwing her hands up into the air in exasperation. The silence that had fallen between them was heavy with tension to the point she could no longer hold it aloft.

  His head shook slightly, as though he was warring with himself over what to say. “I need to know what you were doing, Georgie. I need you to tell me who you were skulking after and listening to, and why.”

  She bit her lower lip while she debated her options. He already knew she wanted to meet Lord Haworth, though she’d not informed him why she had such a desire. Would it really hurt to tell him this, just because he’d refused to introduce her to the viscount?

  No matter how she racked her mind, she couldn’t sort out a good excuse to lie to him, blast it all.

  Eventually, she screwed up her courage and went for it, sucking in a massive gulp of air before beginning. “That was Lord Northwood and Lord Sackville. I followed them because they were discussing Lord Haworth. Since you won’t help me to meet the man, I thought to learn what I could about him, in whatever way I could.”

  It took a decided effort not to heed the rising sense of panic taking over Monty’s expression at her confession, but she determinedly ignored it.

  “Now,” she continued, staring at her slippers in order to avoid the censure she knew would be in his eyes, “if you don’t mind, I should be getting back to the ballroom before someone misses me.”

  Georgie didn’t wait for his response. She sprinted through the corridors in the direction of the ballroom, with as much haste as she could muster short of resorting to running.

  Running would be supremely unladylike. That would never do.

  Four days.

  For four solid days since the start of the Season, Georgie had hardly been able to get herself out of Monty’s sight for even a few minutes, save those blessed moments when she was shut away in her chamber, supposedly sleeping.

  Supposedly, she should note, because she’d scarcely been able to sleep a wink since the Season had started. Lud, but she hadn’t been able to stop her mind from working other than for a few dratted moments at a time…and even those moments were few and far between, to say the least.

  At every turn, she was trying to determine just how, precisely, she was going to escape Monty’s attention for long enough to discover which events and soirees Lord Haworth might attend. From there, she was still at a loss as to how she would gain an introduction to the man, since typically gentlemen sought to gain introductions to ladies and not the other way around. And even after she did manage to meet him, it would still be necessary to convince him to take her up in his gas balloon.

  None of this seemed all that easy.

  Particularly not with Monty about constantly. His hovering had only increased since the Davenport ball two nights ago. Since then, he was at their house on Berkeley Square before she arose in the morning, and he stayed until after she retired in the evening, and she couldn’t fathom how to breathe without him there to watch and make certain she was doing it properly, or how to blink without him darting to her side to offer a handkerchief in case she was crying—let alone how to meet Lord Haworth.

  Goodness, even now, as Georgie and her mother and sisters took their luncheon, he was sitting across from her with a rather queer expression on his face as he stared at her.

  Again, it should be noted. The more often he was around, the more frequently this particular expression greeted her. Monty had taken up this sensationally perturbing habit of staring at her in a decidedly…well…uncomfortable manner.

  Uncomfortable for her, that was. Monty didn’t seem all that uncomfortable.

  On the contrary, he seemed entirely too comfortable in his surroundings, like he had just decided to make himself a permanent fixture at the dining room table or something else of the sort that would be equally ridiculous and perplexing.

  Georgie stabbed a spear of asparagus with far more force than was necessary and then sulked as she chewed it. She could not make her plan work with him underfoot at every turn.

  She needed a plan. Now.

  Typically, she’d go to Moira or Patience for help with her plans, but they’d both been busy with their various problems…being in the betting book, or trying to get there, whichever the case may be for the lady in question. Besides, they’d want to know why Georgie wanted to avoid Monty, since she’d never been overly keen to do so in the past, and that would require all sorts of explanations she wasn’t prepared to provide.

  No, Moira and Patience wouldn’t do. And Pippa wasn’t exactly in a position to help her out right now, either. Not that she would, since it would mean aiding Georgie in doing something scandalous. Pippa seemed determined to avoid any hint of scandal right now.

  None of her friends could help her. Could one of her sisters, perhaps?

  Frankie was rather good with sorting through problems, but she was even more of a stickler for propriety than Georgie was. That left her out of the equation.

  Mattie would prefer to solve all of her problems by starting a new embroidery project—a new sampler or something similar. Not that Georgie doubted Mattie’s ability to solve her own problems in that manner, but she couldn’t imagine that causing her fingers to bleed when she inevitably poked herself with a needle would help her to avoid Monty, unless he had an overwhelming fear of blood. That ruled Mattie out, as well.

  Which left Edie.

  Surreptitiously, Georgie eyed her younger sister across the table, reaching for the plate of meats and cheeses as she did, so as not to rouse Monty’s suspicions. At the moment, Edie was blathering on about some poem or another her governess had her studying, which she found exceedingly tedious and boring. Both of Edie’s hands were flying wildly through the air, illustrating her points as she went on.

  “But really, Mother, it isn’t as though it will matter in the grand scheme of things if he was writing about a woman or a man, after all, or even a toad. It’s just Shakespeare.” Edie pounded the flat of her palm against the table. “Simply b
eing able to recite it ought to be enough to prove to any gentleman worth a grain of salt that I’m well studied. I shouldn’t have to explain the meaning of the poem. He ought to be able to explain it to me.”

  Well…that didn’t bode well for Edie’s ability to solve Georgie’s woes. The poor girl couldn’t even be bothered to try to understand the Bard.

  Georgie slumped down in her chair and scowled. Her sisters would be no help.

  Damn and blast, she wished she was a man. Men could do virtually anything they wanted.

  But…well…she might not be a man, and Monty might not be willing to help her, but there were other men in her life who might be willing and able.

  Like Pippa’s brother, Harry. He’d always been a bit of an adventurous soul, himself.

  A smile stole over Georgie’s face as she plotted out how she would convince Lord Harrison Casemore to do her bidding. But then Monty caught her eye from across the table, and she fought to conceal her glee. No point allowing him to spoil her fun.

  God, he had always loathed the opera.

  Cedric tugged at his cravat as the soprano hit yet another ear-punishing note, wishing all the while he was anywhere other than where he was at the moment. But this was where Lady Stalbridge had wished to bring her daughters for the evening, at the invitation of Lord and Lady Sutherland, so this was where Cedric must also be, particularly since Georgie seemed more determined than ever to throw herself into Haworth’s path.

  He hoped that last note represented the top of the soprano’s range. Anything higher might very well burst his eardrums. The only good thing about being forced to sit through the opera tonight was that it allowed him to at least attempt to forget the currents that had sparked through him when he’d pressed his finger to Georgie’s lip two nights ago. In the intervening time, he’d thought of little else, other than what those currents might mean.

  Well, he had thought of one other thing in that time—the perplexing realization that, while he’d always thought of Georgie as a younger sister in the past, he currently had no desire to think of her as such.