“You don’t want West,” Mara repeated, flatly.
“No,” she said. But of course she did. She wanted him a great deal. But not in the way they meant. Not forever. She simply wanted him for now.
“Whyever not?” Penelope asked, and the other women chuckled.
She could not bring herself to confess that he did not seem to want her. After all, she’d very overtly offered herself to him the night before—and he’d refused her. Wrapping a towel around his handsome hips and stalking from the room that housed his swimming pool without looking back.
As though what had transpired between them meant nothing.
Georgiana leaned into the window, splaying her fingers wide and pressing her forehead to the cool, pale glass that made one of Lucifer’s broken wings. The position gave the illusion of floating, of hovering high above the dimly lit pit floor, the tables empty and quiet now, untouched until the afternoon, when maids would lower the chandeliers and light the massive candelabras that kept the casino bright and welcoming in the darkness. Her gaze flickered from table to table—faro, vingt-et-un, roulette, hazard—every table hers, placed with care. Run with skill.
She was royalty of the London underground, vice and power and sin were her dominion, and yet a man, who made pretty offers and tempted her with lovely promises that he could never keep, had somehow flattened her.
After the long silence, Mara said, “You know, I never thought I could have love.”
“Neither did I, though I wanted it quite desperately,” Penelope added, standing and moving to the pram in the corner, where she settled the sleeping future duke into his pristine cocoon of blankets.
“I did not think it was real,” Pippa said. “I could not see it, and therefore, I did not believe it.”
Georgiana closed her eyes at the admissions. Wished the three women gone. Then said, “There are days when I find myself sympathizing with MacBeth.”
“MacBeth,” Pippa repeated, confused.
“I believe that Georgiana is suggesting that we are like witches,” Penelope said dryly, turning from her place across the room.
“Secret, black, and midnight hags and all that?” Pippa asked.
“The very same.”
“Well, that’s mildly unkind.”
Georgiana turned and asked, “Don’t you have places to be?”
“As we are indolent aristocrats,” Mara said, “no.”
It wasn’t true, of course. Mara ran a home for boys, and had raised thirty thousand pounds in close to a year to expand the home and send the boys to university. Pippa was a renowned horticulturalist, always speaking to some society of old men about her work with hybrid roses. And between raising a lovely little girl and preparing for a second child—who Bourne was certain was going to be a boy—Penelope was one of the most prominent, active members of the ladies’ side of the club.
These were not idle women.
So why did they insist on hounding her?
“The point is, Georgiana—”
“Oh, there is a point?”
“There is a point. Namely, that you think you are somehow different from every woman who has ever come before you.”
She was different.
“Even now, you think it. You think that because of this life you lead, because of your casino and your secret identity and the company you keep—”
“—present company excepted,” Penelope interjected.
“Obviously,” Mara agreed, turning back to Georgiana. “But because of the company you keep other than us, and the damn trousers you wear . . . you think you are different. You think you don’t deserve what every other woman deserves. What every other woman seems to have. Even worse, you think that even if you did deserve it, you don’t have the opportunity for it. Or maybe you think you don’t want it.”
“I don’t.” The words shocked everyone in the room, none more than Georgiana herself.
“Georgiana—” Mara was out of her chair, headed for her, when Georgiana held up a hand.
“No.” Mara stopped, and Georgiana was grateful for it. “Even if I could have it. Even if there were someone willing to give it to me—someone to have me despite my being saddled with ruin, an unwed mother, a casino owner with three male business partners and a bevy of prostitutes at my beck and call—I don’t want it.”
“You don’t want love?” Penelope sounded shocked.
Love. The thing that had seen her through the heights and depths of life. The threat of it had ruined her ten years ago, then the reality of it had made her strong and resolute when Caroline was born. And then, last night, it had lured her. “I do not. While it teases with its pretty words and prettier touches, love has already had a run at me, and I am too wrecked by it.”
There was a pause, then Mara asked, “But if he would have you? If he would give it to you?”
He. Duncan West.
“He does not seem the kind of man who would ruin you,” Penelope said.