Georgie spent the following morning in a frenzy of anticipation. She declined to accompany her mother and sister to Bond Street, certain that if she went out shopping, she would miss Wylde.
They were partners in crime now. Last night’s events had shifted their relationship. But had she merely imagined the flash of newfound respect in his eyes? Were they becoming friends?
She almost jumped out of her seat when the front knocker banged, and footsteps sounded on the stairs. But it wasn’t Wylde who entered the drawing room. It was Josiah.
“Cousin.”
Georgie sent him a thin smile of welcome in front of the maid, but as soon as Tilly left, she allowed even the pretense of civility to drop. She glared at him. “What are you doing here, Josiah? I can’t imagine why you think you’d be welcome after what you did to me at Vauxhall.”
His answering smile was as fake as her own. His obvious lack of remorse was infuriating. “Tilly informs me that your mother and sister are out shopping. That’s good. It’s you I wanted to see.” His oily voice matched his greasy hair.
Georgie eyed him dispassionately. He wasn’t an unattractive man, at least not physically, but the dark rings under his eyes and the yellow tinge to his skin made him look far from his best. She wondered if he’d been drinking or frequenting the numerous opium dens that abounded in the city. He certainly looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. Her lip curled in distaste. “What do you want?”
He eased back into a chair with a smile that chilled her to the bone. “Simply put, money.”
She gave an incredulous laugh. “And you think I’m going to give it to you? Have you taken leave of your senses? I wouldn’t throw a bucket of water on you if you were on fire.”
His smug expression didn’t waver. “Oh, I think you will, Georgie. To protect the family’s reputation. Because let me tell you, I’m up to my ears in debt. Quite drowning in the River Tick, as they say.” He gave a hapless shrug, as if none of that were his fault. “I have moneylenders hounding me day and night—quite unpleasant fellows some of ’em—and debts I can’t repay. If I don’t settle them soon, I don’t doubt I’ll be challenged to a duel or thrown into debtor’s prison.” His expression grew crafty. “And we can’t have the family name dragged through the mud, can we? Not while Juliet’s still trying to land herself a title.”
Georgie gritted her teeth and cursed his uncanny ability to hone in on the very things she cared about most. His roving gaze felt like an assault and raised goose bumps on her arms. It was nothing like the pleasant, warming sensation she felt when Wylde looked at her.
He uncrossed his legs and stood. “You’re going to write me a bank draft, Georgie. For five hundred pounds. Because if you don’t, I’m going to tell everyone in the ton you’re married to a sailor.”
Georgie mirrored his stance, but inside she was shaking with fury. Wylde had told her not to give her cousin a penny, but she had no doubt that Josiah was telling the truth about his debts. He might be bluffing—his own precious reputation would be blackened by association if he told the ton about her marriage—but she couldn’t take the chance and risk hurting Juliet or Mama. Josiah certainly seemed desperate enough to do as he threatened. He’d be ruined anyway, if he didn’t pay his debts, so what did he have to lose?
“Very well.”
He raised his brows at her ready answer and watched closely as she crossed to the drop-front escritoire in the corner. Her writing was shaky with suppressed fury, but she managed to sign five hundred pounds over to him. He snatched the paper from her hand and studied it suspiciously, as if she might be cheating him somehow.
“It’s good,” she said bitterly. “But this is the last time I will ever give you any money, Josiah.”
He folded the bank draft into his inside jacket pocket, patted it, and sketched her a sarcastic bow. “Nice doing business with you, Cousin. I’ll see myself out.”
Georgie let out a sigh when he’d gone and sank into the nearest chair. Her limbs still quivered with outrage and dismay, both at her cousin’s daring and her own pathetic inability to refuse him. He’d bullied her neatly into a corner, and she hated the feeling of having been taken advantage of. With a sudden cry, she jumped up and rang for her maid. “Tilly, will you get my hat and gloves please? I’m going out.”
The servant bobbed a curtsey. “Yes, ma’am. Pieter’s not back from the stables yet, if you’re wanting the carriage brought around.”
“No, thank you. I’ll just take a walk in the park. I need a little fresh air.”
Georgie didn’t wait for a maid to chaperone her. She reached Hyde Park, hailed a cab, and instructed the driver to convey her to the Tricorn Club, St. James’s.
If Wylde wouldn’t come to her, she would go to him.
Benedict glanced up from his desk at the knock on his apartment door. “Yes, Mickey, what is it?”
The ex-boxer’s huge head appeared around the doorframe. “There’s a woman ’ere for you.”
Ben frowned, even as his heart gave a little skip. It was bound to be Georgie. He should have known she wouldn’t have the patience to wait for him to call on her. “What kind of woman?”
“The same one as was ’ere last time.”
Ben sat back in his chair. “That’s what I was afraid of. Bring her up.”
She swept into his parlor like a tiny whirlwind, all bustling skirts and windswept coiffure. Beneath a lunatic confection of a bonnet, strewn with all manner of fashionable bows and ruffles, her cheeks were flushed a becoming pink, and her eyes sparkled with a strange, almost combative light.
His brain immediately wondered what he could do to make her cheeks that pink—and he was glad he’d stayed seated, so his crotch was hidden behind the desk.
“Mrs. Wylde,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You know perfectly well.” She tugged at the ribbon bow by her ear, removed her bonnet, and tossed it onto a chair. She must have left her cloak with Mickey. Her morning dress was a delicate sprigged muslin that molded to her body with fashionable and unnerving faithfulness. Benedict prayed for strength.
“You promised to share the contents of the scroll we stole last night. I have been waiting in all morning.”
She sent him a chiding look; he was clearly not dressed for an imminent visit to her house. He wore only a white shirt and breeches, covered by his favorite long, deep-red banyan robe.
He drew himself up in his chair. “As a matter of fact, I’ve only just returned from a meeting with Admiral Cockburn.”
She pounced on that. “The Admiralty? Why? What did we steal?” She stalked impatiently to the desk and tried to get a look at the opened scroll he’d been studying.
“Plans.”
“For what?”
He tried to ignore the heady scent of her perfume as she came closer. “Plans for a submarine,” he said, his throat suddenly dry.
Her eyes widened. “Really? Let me see.”
She placed her hands flat on the desk and leaned over to get a better look, unwittingly providing him with a magnificent view of her cleavage.
A gentleman would have politely averted his gaze, but Benedict rarely behaved like a gentleman these days. He bit back a moan and tried to forget those wonderful moments of madness in O’Meara’s library, when he’d put his mouth to those pert little mounds. He’d been so close to—
She turned the paper to study it the right way up, and her nose wrinkled in concentration. Ben leaned back in his chair and watched her.
Since the war, he’d developed a new appreciation of such simple pleasures. On the boat back from Belgium, after Waterloo, he’d made a promise to himself that he would seize as many moments of happiness as he could. He’d never take them for granted again. In a strange way, it was his memorial to all those who’d lost their lives. He owed it to them to do all the things that they could not. To enjoy life to the utmost, to taste it. To live it.
The feel of the sun on his face was all the sweeter now for having been hard-won; he’d come so close to never seeing another sunrise. He appreciated the grey drizzle, the astonishing greenness of the fields, the relentless bustling optimism of the metropolis, everyone so intent on their lives, the thrust of commerce, the urgent yells of the street vendors. He savored the first sip of his morning coffee, the yeasty taste of fresh bread.
And he savored the woman in front of him.
He’d endured months of abstinence during the war, eons without the soft touch of a female. He’d rarely accepted the dubious attentions of the camp followers; he’d feared infection more than he’d craved the momentary release, so he’d made do with his own hand and his imagination. Since his return to England, he’d spent a few evenings with women, but while they’d satisfied his physical demands, they’d left his heart and mind untouched.
But here was a beautiful, infuriating woman, in his rooms. In his life. It was springtime, a time of hope and renewal, and the world was coming alive again. He was coming alive again, as if the emotions that had been deadened during the war were being coaxed forth by her presence.
A profound sense of gratitude swept through him. He wanted to get on his knees and glory in the miracle of having survived. He wanted to carry her through into his bedroom, throw her down on his bed, and show her just how wonderful it was to be lusty, healthy, and alive. His body throbbed in definite agreement, and he found himself calculating the number of steps to the bedroom. Mentally unbuttoning and unhooking.
Georgiana Caversteed Wylde, however, was completely oblivious to the heated direction of his thoughts. She was far too engrossed in the hand-drawn cross section in front of her. Benedict bit back a wry smile. No doubt she’d grasp the technicalities of it far better than he could. She presumably knew her way around all manner of seafaring vessels, what with owning her own shipping line.
He suppressed a sigh and willed the ache in his groin to subside. Work before pleasure. His mantra.
“The Admiralty have intercepted several plans to rescue Bonaparte since he was placed on St. Helena,” he said. “Some of ’em more harebrained than others. One included the crew of a notorious privateer named the True Blooded Yankee invading the island from Brazil. Cockburn believes Bonaparte plans to travel to the United States, where his brother Joseph now lives, should a rescue attempt be successful.”
Georgie’s captivating grey eyes met his, and he fought to keep track of the conversation in the face of the distracting length of her eyelashes. This close, he noticed she had two little freckles on the bridge of her nose.
“How extraordinary,” she said.
Concentrate, Wylde, he reminded himself. He tapped the plans in front of her. “This suggests our friend O’Meara is involved in something similar.”