Page 55 of Better Love Next Time
“Er, well done, sir.”
Ripping his knit cap from his head, he looked to Georgiana. “Well?”
Swinging her right leg over the stallion’s neck, she jumped to the ground. “Come with me, Sir Olympian.”
“Shall I prepare your therapies?” Nate asked.
“Yes please.” Jogging after Georgiana, the euphoria of exertion ceded the longer she said nothing. He was not going to beg his cousin for information. He stretched his legs, taking relief from the renewed strength in his right leg.
“Kitty misses you,” Georgiana announced.
He bent up from touching his toes. “She said so?”
“In her expression, yes.”
“Words, Georgie.”
“I know when a horse misses me or when they’re cross or unwell, and they don’t use words.” Picking up a curry comb, she worked circles on the stallion’s winter coat. “I broached a few scandalous topics. Kitty obfuscated.”
“Again, words.” He avoided asking what constituted scandalous, stretching his arm behind his head.
“She avoided the topics. She quibbled. But she will marry you, if you ask her.”
His arms dropped in shock. “You asked her if she wanted tomarryme? I never said a thing about marriage.”
“But you write to her every day, and if that’s not a man who wishes for a wife, what is?”
“I have no bloody idea what a man who wants a wife does. I can’t marry her. I have no plans to marry anyone.”
“But Kitty would make an ideal lifelong companion.”
“I’ll get a dog.” Before she could say it, he added, “Many dogs, throughout my life.”
“A wife would pick up after you, instead of vice versa.” She threw a wad of horse hair at him.
He pulled the clump off his knitted waistcoat and threw it back. “Even if I wanted to marry her, which I do not, her father would not consent. You know Babbington’s a secret papist.”
“And you can save her from the Lord Stavertons of the world and marry her.”
Julian’s lip curled at the lecher’s name. “I can save her from the Lord Stavertons much easier. With a pistol.”
She sniffed. “You kissed her, I can sense it.”
He rubbed his hand across his mouth to cover his dismay. Kitty hadn’t told her best friend about their kiss? Had it been so bad she hid it?
“I did not kiss her,” he said.I mauled her.
Her blue eyes narrowed to slits. “You try my optimism, you know. Close your eyes.”
Julian looked around the block. The horses hung their sleek heads over their box gates, eavesdropping. “I’m not closing my eyes.”
“Close your eyes and put out your hand.”
“Are we ten?”
“Do you want Kitty’s letter?”
Sighing, he did as commanded. He stood for at least a minute before she dropped something in his hand. He opened his eyes. The letter was the size of a pea.
