Page 12 of His Wicked Little Christmas

“Westfield, you must tell us about your adventures. I hear you spent time in India. Always wanted to go myself,” James Hightower, the Earl of Atherton said around a burp he tried politely to cloak. He was in the process of bartering his eldest daughter to temper his graceless business decisions, and Georgiana was having trouble overlooking this fact. Sophia Hightower was another helpless young woman placed in a precarious position by someone who should have sought only to protect her. The need for a sudden influx of capital brought about reckless decision-making. Georgiana should know, as she’d once been a pawn in a brutal arrangement. She understood she’d never be able to accept these situations less than personally, which was a weakness of character but critical for heartfelt management of the Duchess Society.

“Bombay the most recent. India is…” Dex’s reckoning gaze circled the room and landed on her. “Intoxicating. An explosion of color and scent. And taste. Extreme poverty and glorious wealth an amalgam on every street until you’re dazed from walking them. It’s exhausting and magnificent. A place in the world one should experience.”

Georgiana glanced down, moving peas in a circle on her plate. Forget Dex’s passionate words. His eyes held reflective meaning, sizzling with emotion and eager appeal, nothing he directed toward the eligible woman sitting two seats away from him.No, he wasn’t going to make it that easy. He’d been tossing Georgiana hot looks all night; her stomach was tangled in a knot from trying to ignore them.

“You’ll leave the geology nonsense behind when you gain the dukedom, am I right? Take up hunting or horse racing. Carriage driving seems a fine sport, very fine. No need to go haring back to Asia or some such,” the earl said with a pat to his round belly, as if Dex’s work was less than trivial. “Not when London, and secondly, Derbyshire, are enough, more than, for any man.”

“Hmm, give up my rocks…” Dex took a languid sip, and her heart thumped to note his eyes gleaming a feral lime green, a color that had signaled a brewing battle when they were children. “What do you think, Lady Sophia, about a man abandoning his profession? His lone fixation since he found his first fossil, oh, at seven or eight years of age. His obsession, as it were, in a world where many stumble through life without one.”

Georgiana raised her wineglass to her lips, the sip more a gulp and vastly essential to her surviving this dinner. Dear God, Dex was a caged tiger set loose on society. She should have recalled his obstinacy, his unyielding view of life, and his purpose within it.

Sophia, all of nineteen and preparing for her first Season, blinked while adjusting her spectacles, which were charming but regrettable if she truly needed them. “If I had such a pursuit, my lord, one near to my heart, I wouldn’t forsake it for anything,” she said with only a faint tremor. Then she promptly sent her gaze to her plate of roast goose as if it was the most interesting thing in the room.

The smile Dex bestowed, not one of his fakes, took Georgiana’s breath away though it had little effect on Sophia when the girl glanced up and found it.

“You don’t mean that dearest,” Countess Atherton murmured from across the table.

“I do,” Sophia answered in a dogged tone Georgiana was beginning to believe spelled trouble. “You know I do.”

The earl set his glass on the table with a thunk. “We talked about this. It’s preposterous.”

Dex caught Georgiana’s eye.Brilliant, he mouthed, the effort to repress his smile nearly cracking his cheeks.

With a sigh, Georgiana polished off her wine, tempted to smash her glass over his head.

Sophia turned to Dex and gave her spectacles another shove. “My lord, may I be so bold as to admit I cannot yet marry, should this be the reason for this agreeable banquet. I need more life experience for the page. Like Miss Austen, I’m compelled to write.” With an edgy exhalation, she rushed to add, “Composing stories is my passion. Myonlypassion.”

“I never mentioned passion,” Dex whispered for Georgiana alone. She could only think that when this dinner party was over, she might strangle him.

In the end, the evening was a congenial disaster, the earl andcountess making every attempt to confirm they’d had an enjoyable time and would love to entertain when they were next in Derbyshire. Atherton pulled Dex aside, and Georgiana imagined he was making a plea to keep his daughter’s unconventional comments forever within the confines of Markham Manor. The countess pulled Georgiana aside and petitioned for her daughter’s acceptance into the Duchess Society, which Georgiana, after getting a first-hand look at Sophia’s mettle and naïve charm, agreed to secure.

A beautiful, young bluestocking? Georgiana wasn’t about to see such a spirited independent thrown to the wolves.

“I’m sorry your dinner didn’t go as planned,” Dex said when he returned from escorting his guests out to find Georgiana slumped on the bottom step of the sweeping central staircase, her head in her hands. “Although it was more entertaining than Drury Lane, regretful to admit. The last play I attended there was ghastly. Tonight, I actually had a pleasant evening.”

“If you laugh right now, Dexter Munro, I can’t account for what I may do.”

“I’m not going to laugh,” he murmured and sat on the stair above her, on the opposite side, out of reach, out of touch. But shefelthim as if he wore a hearthfire like a cloak.

She rolled her head to look at him. “If you need this, Dex, a duchess by Twelfth Night, why aren’t you taking it seriously? Why don’t you seem to care?”

Shrugging from his coat, he folded it in a neat bundle and laid it over the glossy walnut handrail. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he bowed his head. Georgiana brought her hands into fists to keep from brushing his hair from his brow. Sweeping the tousled strands aside, pressing her lips to the tantalizing curve between neck and shoulder. He looked like he’d set himself on an island far from everyone, although he looked comfortable, as if his aloneness were a familiar companion. “I’m having trouble”—he linked his hands, those slim, elegant fingers curling in on each other—“connecting this life to the other. The bloody title, nothing effortless about the duty imposed, and the universal expectation I should feel emotionally attached to it. Instantly and without dispute. Instead, I feel…” He shrugged one broad shoulder. “Detached from even my dying father sleeping in his bedchamber a floor above. Nostalgia has a bite, capable of injury, I’m finding. When I was here before, I suppressed my desires to manage expectations and now find I can’t articulate who I truly am.”

“Wreckage,” she whispered, and his gaze jumped to hers, his expression fierce. She knew what it was to close oneself off only to find you’dbecomethe closed-off person. “You could wait to uphold your promise to your father. The Season will provide every opportunity to find her.”

“I don’t want to wait,” he snapped, staring at his hands.

Georgiana exhaled softly, realizing she was dealing with tender feelings, gratified Dex was showing them to her even if he wished he hadn’t. “Care to tell me what’s bothering you?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

Georgiana traced the toe of her boot along a nick on the stair. “I’m sorry about Lady Sophia. I don’t know her well as there wasn’t time for a thorough interview, something I always conduct. This issue, her chosen profession, would have surfaced during our discussion, I feel sure.”

“An agreement with Atherton would have been a fine business arrangement,” he said in a jagged tone. “A unique girl beneath the stammering blushes, which is unfortunately what no man in thetonwants. I admire her audacity, but I can’t imagine, not for one moment, kissing her. Laying a finger on her person. Isn’t gaining an heir a major objective in this muddle?”

Georgiana closed her eyes, took a shallow breath. “Most marriages are not built or based on…” She fluttered her hand helplessly.

“Desire. Is that the word you’re looking for?”