Honor lifted her head, her eyes narrowing.

“Pardon,” he said with an easy smile. “Determined person in my life.”

“I was. I am,” she quickly amended. “But this...this is folly. Childish folly. I don’t want you to do it. Please.”

“Well, yes, but... Good God, you are defeated,” he said, pretending shock. “Where is the swashbuckler?”

The swashbuckler had deserted her. She felt nothing but fear and uncertainty and a strong desire for the man standing before her. She shrugged halfheartedly. She felt torn and pulled in so many conflicting directions, everything twisted all around, and in the midst of it were her growing feelings for Easton.

“Dear God,” Easton muttered, his gaze sweeping over her face. “Stand right where you are, Miss Cabot.” He walked a few feet away to hail a passing footman with a tray laden with champagne flutes. He returned and handed a flute to her. “Cheer up. That’s a command,” he said. “I won’t allow the one shining star in this bloody ton to lose her flame. I’ll even dance if I must.”

That brought her head up with a swell of tenderness. “Really?” she asked hopefully.

He smiled at her earnestness. “Really.”

That admission gave Honor a new breath of exhilaration for reasons that didn’t seem prudent or even reasonable. She suddenly felt much lighter as she sipped her champagne. She looked into his pale blue eyes, filled with the warmth of his concern for her. “I need some air,” she said simply.

His eyes sparked in the low light of the hallway. “I thought you’d never admit it.”



CHAPTER NINETEEN

SHE GLIDED DOWN the hall before him, the train of her gown sweeping elegantly behind. George had no idea where she was going, but when they passed the French doors that led out onto a viewing balcony, he caught her hand in his. “Here,” he said.

“It’s raining,” she said, but she did not pull her hand free of his.

“If I am not mistaken, there is an eave over the balcony.” George opened the door and with a quick glance behind them, he stood aside so she could slip out.

Honor stepped out into the cool, damp air and took a breath. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the fine mist that hung over Longmeadow. Given the weather, there was no one wandering the grounds, no one outside at all. George pulled the door shut and the cacophony of so many people gathered in one place fell away. It was quiet out here, the only sound the slow patter of rain on the eaves.

“I feel as if I can breathe for the first time tonight,” Honor said, and bent her dark head and looked down, over the railing. She placed the flute of champagne on the railing and brought her hands to her bare arms.

George put his flute aside and shrugged out of his coat. He draped it over her shoulders; Honor smiled gratefully. “Thank you.” She dipped her head, touched her nose to the shoulder of his coat, as if she were breathing it in.

“Now then,” he said, picking up his flute and sipping once more. “What has happened to bring about this sudden melancholy?”

Honor sighed as if she carried a great weight. “My mother,” she said simply. “She’s getting worse. Soon, I think everyone shall know about her.” She looked down at something she held in her hand. “I realize now I should have been more inclined to accept the attentions of gentlemen after I came out. If I had, I’d be married by now and I’d have the means to care for her.”

George didn’t like the reminder that Honor was a privileged debutante, or that she would marry one day, probably to someone here in this house this very weekend. It made him feel strangely adrift, as if he was being cast out into the stream while she remained anchored behind.

“I wonder,” he said, taking in a face that seemed almost perfectly sculpted, “on whom you might have set your cap had you accepted their attentions? Perhaps he is stumbling about in his cups now, just beyond that door.”

She smiled. “No. There is no one.”

He didn’t believe that for a moment. “No one,” he repeated dubiously, and very casually brushed her earlobe with his thumb. The little black jewel that dangled there bounced a bit. “The most desirable bachelors among the Quality are gathered here this weekend and Miss Honor Cabot sees no one who might serve as a suitable husband? A father to her children? A companion in her dotage?”

She lifted her face a little. “Not in there.”

“Washburn,” George suggested.

Honor instantly burst out laughing. “Washburn! Do you think I would subject myself to simpering poetry readings every night of my life?”

“Ah, he is a poet,” George said. “How appalling for you. Then you must at least find young Lord Desbrook appealing. I have it on good authority that he is one of the most sought-after young men in all of London.”

“Well, of course he is—he will one day be a duke. But in the strictest confidence I may tell you that as a man, Desbrook is exceedingly dull. I once spent an entire supper party seated next to him, and all he could speak about was the stag he had shot.”

“He’s a hunter? The bounder,” he teased her. “There is always Lord Merryton, who has, as far as I know, resisted the many attempts to lay a dainty finger or two on his fortune.”

“Lord Merryton is not here. And if he was, I assure you, he’d be quite imperious. He’s too proud, if you ask me.”

“All right then, we have a poet, a hunter and a proud man who are all wholly unsuitable for the fair Honor Cabot.”

“Precisely.”

“Then who?” George traced a path down her neck, his finger sliding into the indention of her throat at the base of her neck. Yes, who, Honor Cabot? Who would you take to your bed? Who would you allow to father your children, to love you every day of your life? “You are a beautiful young woman with the best of connections. Surely there is some one you might imagine joining you in conjugal bliss? Or are the rumors perhaps true that Lord Rowley has ruined you for any other man?”

Honor looked up at him with surprise. “Is it truly said?”

“Not by everyone, but a few, yes.”

She sighed. “I grant you that my unpleasant experience with Lord Rowley did not persuade me to other courtships...but it is not entirely true, Easton.”

He couldn’t imagine a greater fool than Rowley, and moved his hand to her décolletage, his fingers sliding across her soft skin. “Poor Honor. It must have been painful for you.”

“At first,” she admitted, and looked away. “It was really more surprising. Until then, I didn’t know that life could be so terribly cruel.”

How he hated that she’d discovered that sad truth. He wished that he could keep her from discovering other cruel truths about life, but that was beyond his capacity. The most he could offer was some advice. “Not every man is unkind, love.”

She looked up at him, her eyes swimming in an emotion he could not name but could feel reverberating in his chest. “I know,” she said softly. “You’re not unkind. I can trust you.”

George’s heart hitched painfully. The words were erotic to the bastard child in him. They meant acceptance, respect. “Don’t trust me, love,” he warned her. As much as it meant to him to hear those words from her lips, he knew that he could never be what she expected him to be. He was too much of an outsider, a man with no home.

Honor seemed to understand; she averted her gaze, swallowing hard.

George admired her slender neck and gentle jaw. A moment passed as the two of them gazed out into the night. Honor said, “I’ve not wanted to marry these past two years.” She peeked at him again and smiled sheepishly. “I have valued my freedom and have believed that until Augustine shoved me out into the cold world so that his new wife might turn my favorite green salon into another breakfast room, I would enjoy the privileges I have somehow been fortunate enough to enjoy.”

“But won’t you still be a free woman if you are married?”

She clucked her tongue at him. “Of course not,” she said. “Really, Easton, surely you understand that a woman is not truly free if she is married. Some husbands are benevolent, but others are not, and if your husband is not, there is very little a woman can do for it.”

George had had liaisons with married women, and none of them had ever complained particularly about their lives. But he did recall when Lady Dearing desired to see a sister in Wales who was near death, Lord Dearing refused her, claiming he could not be parted from his wife for so long, and she was not allowed to go.

He shook off the memory. “You want freedom to do what, precisely?” he asked as he cupped the back of her neck with his hand—it felt so small to him. “To attend teas and parties and ride about in Hyde Park?”

“No, I want to be free as you are,” she said. “To not care about society, to do what I please, to go where I desire.”

George snorted. “Do you truly believe what I have is freedom?”

She blinked up at him. “Well, yes... The best kind.”

He laughed low, stroked her cheek. “It is a puzzle to me how one woman can be so clever and fearless, and yet so naive all at once.”

“Naive!”

“Quite. How can you even think I am free, when you yourself have had to seek invitations for me? Admit it, Honor—we are all prisoners of our society in one way or another. Don’t mistake loneliness for freedom.”

She looked startled. “Are you lonely, George?”

“At times, yes,” he admitted. “I’ve no family, have I? There are times I’d rather have a family than all the ships in the sea.” He laughed, the sound of it a little bitter to his own ears. “And now it looks as if I shall have neither.”

“Oh, George...” She slipped her hand into his. “I...I think...”