LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

he said and had the satisfaction of seeing surprise flit across the man’s face.

      ‘You know who I am? I wouldn’t have thought—’ He stopped, his mouth pressing into a grim line. Then fell silent, running his eyes over Edmund’s frame as though sizing him up.

      While Edmund did the same. And he didn’t like what he saw. Because there was no denying that Mr Armitage was a very handsome chap. Dark, with rather unruly hair, but exuding a kind of vitality that a girl as full of energy as Georgie must surely admire. And since Georgie had already told him that he was the least unwelcome of her suitors, he could actually see them as a matching couple.

      Mr Armitage’s perusal halted at the posy in Edmund’s hand. Then he smiled. In a predatory fashion. ‘Aye, mayhap that’s the way to go,’ he said. ‘Good day to you.’

      With that, he sauntered off, with the air of a man on a mission. Which gave Edmund a chill of foreboding. Because if Armitage started wooing Georgie with flowers and compliments, who was to say he might not persuade her...

      No. Armitage was all wrong for her. He would demand his conjugal rights if he ever became her husband. Nobody but Edmund knew her well enough, or cared about her badly enough, to put her welfare above his own selfish desires.

      Clutching the posy with renewed determination, he mounted the steps. Before he could knock, Wiggins, who must have been watching through the keyhole, opened the door.

      ‘Good morning, my lord,’ he said, in the way that butlers invariably had, which subtly imparted the information that he was a more favoured guest than the one who’d just departed.

      ‘Mrs Wickford and Miss Mead are in the drawing room,’ he said, motioning to the stairs. Edmund supposed he’d have to go in and endure a half-hour of their tedious conversation if he wanted to persuade everyone that he was in earnest about courting Georgie. But then that was what serious suitors did. They also informed a girl’s guardian of their intentions and asked permission to pay their addresses. All of which he’d also better do.

      He handed his hat to Wiggins, then stood for a moment perplexed as to how to remove his gloves whilst holding a posy.

      Wiggins cleared his throat.

      ‘The posy is for Miss Wickford, I presume?’

      ‘Yes. I heard she was indisposed.’

      The butler’s face sobered. ‘Indeed, my lord,’ he said with a rueful shake of the head.

      All Edmund’s senses went on the alert. What did that mean, that grave look? The sorrowful tone in his voice? The doleful shake of the head? Just how sick was Georgie?

      Terrifying visions of scarlet fever, or typhus, or smallpox claiming her before he could speak to her again leapt into his mind.

      ‘I will have the maid take them up to her,’ said Wiggins, just as a harassed-looking girl carrying a tray emerged from a door to the rear of the hall that no doubt led to the servants’ hall. Or whatever passed for the offices in a house as small as this one.

      She shot a mutinous look at the posy and then at the butler, then eyed the tray in her hands in a pointed fashion.

      If only etiquette was not so strict, he’d save her from having to take on another duty she clearly had no time for, by taking the flowers to Georgie himself. In a more reasonable world, it would be the perfect excuse to see her. Which was what he really wanted. So that he could find out exactly how ill she was and with what. And, yes, he knew he could simply ask the stepmother those questions, but that wouldn’t be the same.

      And what if she died? Without ever learning the truth about why they’d parted and how it had affected him? Without understanding why he’d rejected her proposal the way he had? Without hearing that now he intended to make amends for all of it?

      Why, for God’s sake, were the rules governing society so rigid? Why shouldn’t an unmarried man enter the sickroom of an unmarried girl if she was at death’s door? That rule wasn’t only rigid, it was downright cruel.

      Resentfully he handed over the posy to the maid, who’d slammed the tray down on a side table, and his gloves and coat to the butler.

      Since Wiggins had long since given up trying to make him wait in the hall while he took his outer garments to wherever it was that butlers stashed them, Edmund began mounting the stairs only a few paces behind the maid.

      It was when he was about halfway up that it suddenly occurred to him that if Georgie was suffering from anything contagious, and deadly, her stepmother would not be admitting visitors to the house at all. Which was an immense relief. In fact, he couldn’t think why he’d leapt to such dire conclusions in the first place.

      But even though his fears abated, the urge to storm into her room and tell her how he felt did not. He’d put it off long enough as it was.

      In fact...

      He came to a dead halt, one foot on the landing, the other on the last tread, as the implications of doing just that unrolled in a series of vivid tableaux. The scandal. The inevitability of marriage...

      It would solve all his problems at a stroke. Chepstow and Havelock had said he ought to consider kissing her, in public, in order to compromise her. But this would be even better. In fact, it was downright brilliant. She’d be compromised all right, but he wouldn’t have to do anything he had good reason to know she would hate.

      Besides all that, there would be a pleasing symmetry to storming her room in order to solve all the things that had gone wrong between them. Georgie had regularly sneaked into his bedroom when he’d been sick, as a lad. And had eventually been caught by his outraged housekeeper. The events of that day had torn them apart, though neither of them had known it at the time. If he invaded her room, today, it would bring their relationship full circle.

      He half-smiled at the elegance of the solution. It would mean an end to all the uncertainty, all the wild emotions that had been making him so uncomfortable of late. Once he and Georgie married, he could settle back down into a regular, ordered existence, with her at his side.

      He only hoped he would have sufficient time with her, alone, before discovery, to convince her he was in earnest about wishing to marry her. Although surely sneaking into her bedroom would convince any girl a man truly wanted her, wouldn’t it? It certainly wasn’t a place any man who was determined to remain single would stray.

      It was a great pity he hadn’t thought of this in the first place, rather than wasting time buying horses and flowers. That time would have been far better spent studying this house and discovering if a handy tree happened to be growing outside her bedroom. He could have climbed it and gone in through her window. That was the kind of gesture Georgie would appreciate.

      It was at that point that he realised that searching for a tree would have been useless without first ascertaining where, within this house, Georgie’s bedroom was situated.

      He swore under his breath. This was the trouble with acting on impulse, rather than taking time to make a watertight plan. The house was not all that large, but who knew what lay behind any of the doors he’d be obliged to open in order to discover her whereabouts? If he opened the wrong one, he’d have to...

      But, no, actually, there would be no need to search the whole house. All he would have to do was follow the maid who was on her way to Georgie’s room with that insipid posy. He’d only been mulling things over for a moment or two. She couldn’t have got far. Could she?

      Hastily, he took the final step that carried him up to the landing and was just in time to see his quarry turning into an alcove at the far end. Then he heard the sound of her feet, stomping up another set of stairs.

      He glanced briefly to his left, to make sure that the drawing-room door was shut, before turning to his right and tiptoeing along after the maid at full pelt.

      He was halfway up the second flight of stairs before he saw the flaw in this plan. The maid, having delivered the posy, was bound to return this way and she’d see him. And demand to know what he was doing.

Скачать книгу