She looked up to find all three seated nearby, in the chairs that usually housed their husbands.
Or, at least, the chairs that had housed their husbands before those husbands had gone soft. Now they housed a countess, a marquess, and a duchess and future duke—aged four months.
Lord deliver her from men’s wives.
“Georgiana?”
She met Countess Harlow’s serious gaze, wide and unblinking behind her spectacles. “I feel certain that you know the answer to that question, my lady.”
“I don’t,” Pippa replied. “You see, I’ve heard two possible names offered.”
“I heard Langley,” Penelope, Lady Bourne piped up, reaching to take the infant from the arms of his mother. “Give me that sweet boy.”
Mara, the Duchess of Lamont, relinquished her son without question. “I heard Langley at first, as well, but then Temple seemed to think there was another, more suitable possibility.”
Not at all suitable.
“There is no such thing.”
“Now that is interesting,” said Pippa, pushing her glasses farther back on her nose. “I am not certain that I have ever seen a lady in trousers blush.”
“You would think that embarrassment would not be so easy for someone of your experience,” the marchioness added, her tone fit only for the child in her arms.
Georgiana was fairly certain that the sound that came from Temple’s son was best described as laughter. She considered tossing them all out of the room. “You know, before any of you turned up, this was called the owners’ suite.”
“We’re virtually owners,” Penelope pointed out.
“No, you are literally wives of owners,” Georgiana retorted. “That is not the same thing at all.”
Mara raised an auburn brow. “You are not entirely in a place to condescend about wives.”
Her partners’ wives were the worst women in London. Difficult in the extreme. Bourne, Cross, and Temple deserved them, no doubt, but what had Georgiana done to warrant their presence now, as she reconciled herself to the events of the past day? She wanted nothing more than to sit quietly and remind herself that it was her work and her daughter who were the most important things in her life, and everything else—everyone else—could hang.
“I heard that West was in the running,” Pippa said.
Starting first with her gossiping business partners and their nattering wives.
“Duncan West?” Penelope asked.
“The very same,” Mara said.
“Oh,” Penelope said happily to the boy in her arms. “We like him.”
The boy cooed.
“He seems a very good man.” Pippa said.
“I’ve always had a soft spot for him,” Mara agreed. “And he seems to have a soft spot for women who are followed by trouble.”
Something unpleasant flared at those words as she found she did not care for Duncan West having a soft spot for any women, particularly those who might decide they wished to be protected by him in perpetuity. “Which women?” Only after she’d lifted her head and spoke did she realize she was supposed to be pretending to work. She cleared her throat. Returned her attention to the file in her hand. “Not that I’m interested.”
Silence fell in the wake of her statement, and she could not resist looking up. Penelope, Pippa, and Mara were looking at each other, as though in a comedic play. Temple’s son was blessedly asleep, or he would no doubt be watching her as well.
“What is it?” Georgiana asked. “I am not interested.”
Pippa was the first to break the silence. “If you are not interested, then why ask?”
“I was being polite,” Georgiana rushed to answer. “After all, the three of you are chattering like magpies in my space, I thought I might play hostess.”
Penelope spoke then. “We thought you were working.”
She lifted a file. “I am.”
“Whose file is that?” Mara asked, as though it were perfectly normal for her to ask such a thing. And it might be.
But damned if Georgiana could remember whose file it was.
“She is blushing again,” Pippa said, and when Georgiana turned a glare on the Countess Harlow, it was to find herself under a curious investigation, as though she were an insect under glass.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know,” Penelope said. “We’ve all found ourselves drawn to someone who seems entirely wrong for us.”
“Cross wasn’t wrong for me,” Pippa said.
Penelope lifted a brow. “Oh? And the bit where you were engaged to another man?”
“And he was engaged to another woman?” Mara added.
Pippa smiled. “It only made the story more entertaining.”
“The point is, Georgiana,” Mara spoke this time, “you should not be ashamed of wanting West.”
“I don’t want West,” she said, setting down her file and standing, the frustration of these women and their knowing gazes and their attempts at comforting words propelling her away from them, to the massive stained glass window that looked out on the casino floor.