He watched her for a long moment. “Then you are surrounded by fools.”
She cut him a look. “Every one of you. Besotted beyond reason. And look at what has happened because of it.”
He raised his dark brows. “What? Marriage? Children? Happiness?”
She sighed. They’d had the conversation a hundred times. A thousand. Her partners were so idyllically matched that they could not help but foist it on everyone around them. What they did not know was that idyll was not for Georgiana. She pushed the thought away. “I am happy,” she lied.
“No. You are rich. And you are powerful. But you are not happy.”
“Happiness is too highly prized,” she said with a shrug, as he turned her across the room. “It’s worth nothing.”
“It’s worth everything.” They danced in silence for a long moment. “Which you see, as you wouldn’t be doing this if not for happiness.”
“Not mine. Caroline’s.”
Her daughter. Growing older by the second. Nine years old, soon ten, soon twenty. And the reason Georgiana was here. She looked up at her hulking partner, this man who had saved her as many times as she had saved him. Told him the truth. “I thought I could keep her from it,” she said quietly. “I steered clear of her.”
For years. To the detriment of them both.
“I know,” he said quietly, and she was grateful for the dance that kept her from having to meet his gaze too often. She didn’t know that she could.
“I tried to keep her safe,” she repeated. But a mother could keep a child safe for only so long. “But it wasn’t enough. She’ll need more if she’s to climb out of our swill.”
Georgiana had done her best, sending Caroline to live at her brother’s home, doing her best to never sully her with the circumstances of her birth.
And it had worked, until it hadn’t.
Until last month.
“You can’t be talking about the cartoon,” he said.
“Of course I’m talking about the cartoon.”
“No one gives a damn about scandal sheets.”
She cut Temple a look. “That isn’t true and you of all people know it.”
The rumors had abounded—that her brother had told her she could not have a season, that she’d begged him. That he’d insisted that, as an unwed mother, she remain indoors. That she’d pleaded with him. That neighbors had heard screaming. Wailing. Cursing. That the duke had exiled her and she’d returned without his permission.
The gossip pages had gone wild, each trying to outdo the other with tales of the return of Georgiana Pearson, Lady Disrepute.
The most popular of the rags, The Scandal Sheet, had run the legendary cartoon—scandalizing and somewhat blasphemous, Georgiana high atop a horse, wrapped only her hair, holding a swaddled baby with the face of a girl. Part Lady Godiva, part Virgin Mary, with the disdainful Duke of Leighton standing by, watching, horrified.
She’d ignored the cartoon, as one did, until one week prior, when an uncommonly warm day had tempted half of London into Hyde Park. Caroline had begged for a ride, and Georgiana had reluctantly left her work to join her. It had not been the first time they’d appeared in public, but it had been the first time since the cartoon, and Caroline had noticed the stares.
They’d dismounted on a rise leading down to the Serpentine, grey and muddy with late winter, and led the horses down toward the lake where a group of girls barely older than Caroline stood the way girls did—in a cluster of whispers and barbs. Georgiana had seen it enough times to know that no group of girls like this one would bring any good.
But Caroline’s hope had shone on her bright young face, and Georgiana hadn’t had the heart to pull her away. Even as she was desperate to do just that.
Caroline had moved closer to the girls, all while attempting to look as though her movement was unintentional. Unplanned. How was it that all girls everywhere knew this movement? The quiet sidle that hinted of simultaneous optimism and fear? The silent request for notice?
It was a miracle of courage born of youth and folly.
The girls noticed Georgiana first, recognizing her, no doubt from bearing witness to the wide eyes and wagging tongues of their mothers, and they surmised Caroline’s identity within seconds, heads lifting and craning while whispers increased. Georgiana hung back, resisting the urge to step between the bears and their bait. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there would be kindness. Greeting. Acceptance.
And then the leader of the group saw her.
She and Caroline were rarely identified as mother and daughter. She was young enough for them to be mislabeled as sisters, and Georgiana, while she did not hide from Society, rarely entered it.
But the moment the pretty blond girl’s eyes went wide with recognition—curse all gossiping mothers—Georgiana knew that Caroline done for. She wanted desperately to stop her. To end it before it could begin.
She took a step forward, toward them.