The Tricorn Club in St. James’s was a newly established gentlemen’s club, but in the few months it had been open, it had, according to Pieter, gained a reputation for deep card play and extravagance in both food and “gentlemanly entertainment,” which Georgie took to be a euphemism for “attractive, available women.”
At ten o’clock in the morning, however, this enclave of elegant depravity was remarkably quiet. Pieter turned the carriage into the stable mews behind the imposing stone-clad building.
“Georgiana Caversteed, this is a—”
“—terrible idea,” Georgie finished with a grimace. “Yes. I know. I know.”
She’d told Pieter of Wylde’s reappearance, of course. The Dutchman had simply raised his bushy brows and said he’d warned her against her foolish scheme at the outset. He opened his mouth to say more now, but Georgie was in no mood for a lecture. She raised the hem of her cloak, stepped down onto the cobbles, and tried to ignore the butterflies churning in her stomach.
She’d barely slept a wink last night, turning over all the possible outcomes of this meeting in her mind. What did Wylde want? A monthly allowance? A lump sum? How much would this debacle cost her?
“Please wait for me here. I shouldn’t be long.”
The back door of the club swung open to reveal a mountain of a man dressed in black-and-gold livery. His size was such that Georgie wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was a former boxer or wrestler. Certainly, his crooked nose and cauliflower ear spoke of an interesting life.
Pieter stepped forward protectively, but Wylde appeared behind the behemoth and shot her a welcoming smile.
“Stand down, Mickey, the lady’s here to see me.”
The mountain nodded respectfully and stepped aside to let her pass.
“Good morning, Miss Caversteed,” Wylde said, and for one moment Georgie imagined herself poised at the door of some sinister castle—like the one in Mrs. Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho—a foolish, unsuspecting traveler about to discover something very unpleasant inside. She gave herself a mental shake. She had to stop sneak-reading Juliet’s gothic tales. She was getting overly fanciful.
“I’ll be right here,” Pieter said gruffly. “If you’re not out in half an hour, I’m coming in to get you.”
Georgie nodded. She mounted the stairs, stepped over the threshold, and entered the lion’s den. She followed Wylde’s broad shoulders along a marble-tiled hallway, up a set of curving stairs, and into a surprisingly light and airy sitting room. Despite having always wondered what the inside of a gentleman’s lodgings might look like, she wasted no time examining the furnishings. She sank into the seat he indicated and arranged her hands primly in her lap. “I’ll come straight to the point, Mr. Wylde. What game are you playing?”
The corners of his lips twitched. “Not one to mince words, are you?” He crossed to an elegant French fauteuil and sat, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, the epitome of relaxed masculinity. “No game, Miss Caversteed. You found me at Newgate. Our meeting was purely accidental.”
She raised her brows, inviting him to explain what he’d been doing there.
He tilted his head and fixed her with an accusatory look. “I, for one, had no plans to marry when I entered the building.”
Guilty heat warmed her cheeks.
“I applaud your ingenuity,” he said dryly. “There was no chance your suitor would escape, that’s for sure.”
She shifted uncomfortably in the chair. He deserved an explanation. “It was an unusual course of action, I know—”
He raised his brows, silently mocking the understatement, and she looked at her hands. “Until a few weeks ago I had no desire to marry anyone. Ever. I do not, after all, need the money. And I have no desperate hankering for a title.”
“You might be the first woman of my acquaintance to say that and actually mean it,” he replied amiably. “Few would deny the desire to be one day addressed as ‘my lady,’ or ‘Your Grace.’”
“Not me.”
His gaze flicked to her stomach. “So, why the sudden need for a husband? Are you anticipating a happy event in around nine months’ time? Seeking a name for another man’s brat?”
Georgie couldn’t contain her gasp of shock. “What? No! Of course not! I’ve never … I mean…” She trailed off, utterly mortified at the suggestion, and took a deep, steadying breath. She should have anticipated such an assumption. “No. That’s not it at all. The problem was my cousin, Josiah.”
“Ah.”
His tone was neutral, and she tried to decide how best to phrase Josiah’s steady campaign of harassment. “Josiah has been trying to persuade me to marry him for years, but as I neared my majority, he became increasingly insistent—so much so that I feared he would engineer some compromising situation so we’d be forced to wed.”
She sneaked a glance at Wylde. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“I could not face placing my future, or my business, in Josiah’s hands, but there was no one else in the ton I trusted enough to marry. I was desperate. And then I realized that if I married a condemned man, I could control my own fate. I could tell Josiah I was married and fail to mention I was also a widow.”
She made a wry face at her own naivety. “Unfortunately, there were no condemned men in Newgate. When you were offered as an alternative, I reasoned that a living, but absent, husband would do. Josiah thinks I fell in love with a midshipman on one of my own brigs, who’s currently away at sea.”
“Very romantic. Swept off your feet by a burly sailor. How did your cousin take the news? Not well, I’d imagine.”
“Pieter showed him the marriage license, but he still suspects a trick. He’s probably trying to find a way to disprove it even as we speak.”
Wylde tapped one long forefinger on the arm of the chair. “So, apart from your hulking manservant, the two witnesses at Newgate, and dear Josiah, who else knows we’ve wed?”
“Only my mother and my sister—and they only think I’ve married a convict. They do not know the convict is you.”
“And you’re in no hurry to tell them,” he said wryly. “Because I’m even worse than a convict. Who’d want to be tied to someone like me?” His eyes crinkled at the corners in self-mockery.
She shot him an accusing glare. “Can you blame me? You do have the blackest reputation.”
He inclined his head as if accepting a compliment, the perverse man. “Why thank you. One tries one’s best. And yet I’m still welcome in the most select drawing rooms. It’s most unfair. A man can behave atrociously and escape with an indulgent slap on the wrist, but the same behavior from a woman causes the ton to immediately close ranks and expel her.”
Georgie nodded. “Which is precisely why I need to sever our association. If the circumstances of our marriage ever got out, the scandal would ruin my sister’s chances of making a good match. She and my mother would be spurned and disgraced.”
“And yourself,” he added gently.
“Oh, well, yes. Of course.”
If Wylde was going to blackmail her, she’d just given him the perfect opening. She waited with a grim sense of inevitability for him to demand a princely sum to keep quiet about the whole affair.
“Hmm,” he mused. “I see your dilemma. So, what now?”
Georgie hid a frown of surprise. Was he truly not going to ask her for money? She was no stranger to tough negotiating, but he was almost impossible to read. Time to lay all her cards on the table. Honesty in business dealings, however painful, was vital.
She cleared her throat and assumed a brisk tone. “I was hoping we could deal with this like sensible adults. You cannot wish to be married to me. And I do not want to be married to you. An immediate annulment is therefore in both our interests.”
“On what grounds? We’re both of sound mind.”
Georgie resisted the urge to snort. She’d doubted her own sanity almost daily during the past few weeks. “Josiah threatened to have me declared mentally incapacitated when I told him I’d married a sailor,” she admitted wryly. “But that won’t work. I have plenty of professional acquaintances who can attest to the fact that I’m competent.”
She stole a glance at Wylde’s chiseled profile. He really did have an extraordinarily nice jawline, now that it wasn’t covered in bristles. Looking at his lips made her own tingle. A wave of disbelief washed over her. She, Georgiana Caversteed, was married to this Adonis! It was such an improbable pairing, like some Greek god come down from Mount Olympus to dally with an unsuspecting mortal. She took another wistful glance at his outrageously tempting mouth. Things rarely went well for the mortals in those stories, though. They all ended up being turned into rocks, or trees, or got ripped apart by hunting dogs.
Still, maybe it was worth it. He really was mind numbingly handsome.
Georgie shook her head and forced herself to concentrate on the disaster at hand. “I had hoped our marriage could be terminated on the grounds of nonconsummation, but according to my research, that in itself is not sufficient for an annulment.” Heat rushed to her cheeks. “In fact, to gain an annulment the husband—ah, that is, you—would have to be declared impotent.”
A long, excruciating silence ensued. She didn’t dare look at Wylde’s face; she focused on the pale green swirls of the Aubusson rug instead. Was it possible for someone to burn up with mortification? She ignored the hellish flush creeping up her neck and stumbled on.
“In order for that to happen, the groom would have to share his wife’s bed for three years, prove she’s still a virgin at the end of it, and prove that he couldn’t get aroused by two other women, such as, ah, professional courtesans, before an annulment would be granted.”
She ran out of breath. When Wylde failed to answer, she glanced up to gauge his reaction. His heated gaze turned the tingle in her lips into a full-body flush. She curled her toes inside her shoes.
“Then it seems we have a problem, Miss Caversteed.”
His eyes held hers, and Georgie found she was breathing rather too fast.
“Even if we shared a bed for three years, and managed not to touch one another in all that time”—his intent expression seemed to indicate the unlikeliness of that eventuality—“I would still be found more than capable of consummating our marriage.” His brows rose in unmistakable challenge. “If you have any doubts, I am more than willing to prove my ability. Just say the word.”