Page 48 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
He believed he had her. Wrapped nice and tight, when this was the first time she’d been free. Having a delicious love affair, no husband in sight, her own means of income, however trivial.Free. That was quite something to consider giving up. Vexing, arrogant male. “I’ll get myself to the museum at one o’clock without your assistance, thank you. I have transport, pitiful state the carriage is in, but it’s mine.”
Dex pulled her into his arms and rolled her to her back, his laughter echoing off the crack in the ceiling and smooth as silk, slipping right through it. “Not going to give an inch, are you, Georgie girl?”
She brought his lips to hers, whispered against them, “Darling, what kind of strategy would that be if I did?”
CHAPTER10
Dex missed her enough to go blind.
He’d come to London the day after Georgie and done some very embarrassing things since then. Ridden by her townhouse twice, visited her favorite bookstore and a tea shop on Strand she frequented. Searched the gossip sheets for a mention of the Ice Countess, popped in White’s, which he loathed, perusing the betting book in the event she was listed. Even made an appearance at an excruciating musicale in the hopes she’d be in attendance. These endeavors doing nothing but creating a heightened state of unease—because the woman hadn’t said no, but hadn’t, in any manner, saidyes.
Then, there were the gifts. Delivered to Georgie’s residence like clockwork.
Somehow, he couldn’t help himself.
He’d never had anyone to court or shower with, well,love. Dogged, when he finally put his mind to the process of courting. And starry-eyed, which was an absolute surprise. A hard knock to his plan to stay hidden all this gallivanting around, shopping for fripperies, and peeping from carriage windows. The damned broadsheets had made mention of his attending the musicale and maybe even the bookstore. Marked as looking for a duchess, which was right in a broad sense.
Now Georgie knew he was in London, but so did all the overeager mothers.
He was flooded with calling cards, invitations, requests for tea—but only silence from his girl.
He tossed his quill to the desk and sent ink splattering across his ledgers. Chauncey thought it daft, but Dex had chosen to rent rooms on St. James rather than stay in the Mayfair residence or the cottage in Richmond Park, both so much his father’s spaces Dex couldn’t embrace them, even if he’d been managing every aspect of their survival for years. For a few more days, conceivably for the last time, he wanted to sleep on a squeaky bed, conduct his research at a desk nicked from time, pace warped planks, and dispassionately record life from a grimy windowpane. Though his current view offered little beauty. No rolling hills, no verdant swathes of woodland stretching to the horizon. No scent of charred wood or turned earth or frost-coated pine needles.
His dilemma? He missed Derbyshire almost as much as he missed Georgie.
In a way, they’d become one in his mind, in his heart.
He’d walked the moors with her, the forbidding wind stealing across the desolate expanse capturing their breath and pinkening her cheeks. Two loves of his life intrinsically linked. It rose above the physical what he felt for her, above the emotional, as it did for the untamed land in the north.
So layered, his feelings, a mere man had no hope of explaining them.
He only knew itwas.
He pressed his hand to his heart, holding back the familiar ache. She didn’tneedhim. Her efforts in the past month had been her way of telling him this. Her marriage to Arthur had wrought significant damage, damage running soul-deep. It was up to Georgie to decide if the love of a geologist posing as a gentleman was sufficient to heal her wounds.
He could do no more, or not much, Dex determined, as he grabbed his hat and coat and rang for his carriage. It was time to shop for today’s gift. The last, because tomorrow was Twelfth Night.
Tomorrow, he would find out if Georgie was any readier to be a duchess than he was to be a duke.
* * *
Georgie missed him enough to go blind.
And for the past three days, he’d made every effort to increase her loneliness.
She stared at the parcel resting on the escritoire between a brass hair clip and Lady Anton’s creased calling card. The package was as attractive as the others Dex had sent, a rose-pink ribbon drawn about brown paper and sealed with crimson and gold wax.
The last gift, as their meeting at the museum was taking place tomorrow.
In nineteen hours, to be exact.
Georgiana lifted her gaze to the gilded mirror on the wall, bringing the wrapped box to her breast. She felt different. Did she look it? Was she forever changed? She pinched her cheek, swept her hand down her throat, which only brought to mind the memory of Dex’s teeth catching the tender skin beneath her ear and sucking as she moaned, craved,begged.
Raw yearning flooded her, weakening her knees until she had to brace a hand on the desk to steady herself.
Her need was potent.
When she’d never needed a man, never allowed herself the option. Never been presented the option. And now, for the first time, it had happened. When she was liberated. The word rang through her mind like the din of a church’s bell.