Page 67 of No Mistress Of Mine

He couldn’t go after her, for he had an even more pressing problem than Georgiana’s tears. He took another step toward Lola, but he was stopped again, this time by an unmistakably masculine grip. He turned, ready to tell his father not to interfere in his affairs, only to find it was Jack behind him.

“Georgiana’s right, old boy.”

“I won’t give Lola the cut, Jack,” he muttered. “I won’t.”

“Acknowledge her, if you must. But you can’t go over there and speak to her. If you do, everyone will see it as a slap in Georgiana’s face. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“I know, but hell, Jack, I can’t leave Lola standing there in limbo.”

“I’ll take care of Lola. You go after Georgiana. You must,” he added, as Denys opened his mouth to argue. “Georgiana’s the girl you’re thinking to marry.” He paused, his dark eyes looking into Denys’s. “Isn’t she?”

Denys knew the answer to that question, knew it with abrupt and absolute certainty, but he also knew his sudden realization didn’t change the fact that Jack was right. He nodded. “Get Lola out of here.”

“I’ll run the gauntlet with her, never fear.” He winked. “Right past Conyers and all the rest.”

“Linnet won’t like it,” Denys felt compelled to point out.

“No,” his friend agreed, and grinned. “But my wife has been angry with me many times before. I’m sure she’ll be angry with me quite a few times more before I’m finally laid in the ground.”

With that, Jack turned and started toward Lola, who was standing with her friend, pretending a vast interest in the roses and trying her best to ignore the fact that everyone within fifty feet was observing her.

He waited as Jack walked to her side, bowed to her, and offered his arm, and it hurt to know that he’d had to allow a friend the honor of rescuing her.

Jack and Lola started in his direction, her friend trailing a couple of feet behind them, and as they approached, Denys’s gaze slid to his family. They stood huddled together about a dozen feet from him—Susan, with her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide, his mother, displaying all the stoic calm a lady could manage in these circumstances, and lastly, his father, stone-faced and grim. He met the reproach in the earl’s eyes with an unwavering gaze of his own before returning his attention to the couple coming across the grass. As she passed, he bowed to her, a polite but brief acknowledgment that, though it might offend Georgiana, wouldn’t be a public insult to her.

Lola gave him a nod in return and strolled on by, but though his duty to her was done, he waited until Jack had seen her through the gates and into the park before he turned his attention to the house and another duty, one that he suspected was going to be every bit as painful.

He knew Georgiana well enough to know where he’d find her, and it didn’t take long to confirm his guess had been right. For he’d barely started down the corridor to Bute’s music room before the melancholy notes of a Chopin concerto floated to his ears. In the doorway, he paused, and seeing her over the piano reminded him of when they were children and they’d played duets together.

He felt now all the same warm affection he’d felt for her then, but that was all he felt, and he knew now it was all he would ever feel. He also knew it was not enough, not for him. It could never be enough.

The music stopped, and she looked up, and though it was a hard, hard thing to look into her eyes, he did it. They were dry now, no sign of tears, but he could still see pain in their gray depths. He took a deep breath, removed his hat, and said the only thing that a gentleman could say in such circumstances.

“I’m sorry, Georgiana.”

She lifted her chin a little higher, a proud gesture that reminded him of Lola though he doubted Georgiana would have seen that particular comparison as a compliment. She swallowed hard. “Just what,” she said in a choked voice, “are you sorry for, Denys?”

He suspected they both knew the answer to that question, but of course, it had to be said aloud.

“I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry for it,” he said simply. “That has never been my intent. I have a great deal of fondness and affection for you, and have always regarded you as a dear friend. But—”

He stopped as she closed her eyes, and he waited for her to open them again before saying the rest. “But I have come to realize it is not enough for marriage.”

She did not reply. Instead, she lifted her hands from the piano, and they trembled a little as she clasped them together. She steepled her index fingers, pressing the tips to her lips, considering her next words with care. “But surely,” she said at last, “fondness and affection—along with suitability, of course—are the perfect foundation for marriage.”

He had been trying to accept that particular premise all his life. When she had returned last year from an extended trip to the Continent, he’d already decided he was done with crazy, ungovernable passions, and he’d worked to accept everyone else’s notion that mutual affection and fondness were a better basis for a happy marriage than romantic love could ever be. He thought he had succeeded, but he knew he had not. “Some people say that’s how it is.”

Her hands opened in a gesture of bewilderment. “I don’t know anyone who would say otherwise.”

That premise might be true for most people, but he knew now, as surely as he knew his name, that for him, marriage without romantic love would be as cold and colorless as the North Sea in January.

Georgiana deserved better from matrimony than that. So did he.

“I would,” he said. “I would say otherwise.”

She shook her head, a sudden, violent movement of denial, and jerked to her feet, but when she spoke, her voice was low, controlled. “All my life, I’ve waited for you, Denys, because I’ve always known we would be perfect together. Our families know it, too. We are so well suited. We have many interests in common, we think alike about most things. Why, in the whole of our lives, we’ve never had so much as one disagreement.”

“That’s not love, Georgiana,” he said gently.

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