Caroline’s green eyes were wide with excitement as she touched the rosebud as well. “You’ve flowers. A great deal of them.” She lifted Georgiana’s hand. “Come. You must see.”
Georgiana dressed for expedience rather than impression, pulling on her most comfortable breeches, a half corset, and a fine linen shirt before Caroline led her downstairs to the dining room, where a dozen bouquets waited for her.
Two dozen. More.
Roses and peonies and tulips and hyacinth – arrangements in a tremendous variety of sizes and shapes and colors. Her breath caught, and for a moment, she thought they might be from Duncan.
But then her gaze settled on the white roses, arranged in the shape of a horse. She raised her brow. “Did something else happen?”
Caroline smiled, looking very much like the cat that got the cream. “There is another cartoon.” She lifted the paper from beside Georgiana’s breakfast plate. “It’s a good one, this time.”
Dread coursed through Georgiana. She doubted very much any cartoon was “a good one.”
She was wrong.
There, on the front page of the News of London, was a cartoon at once familiar and thoroughly unfamiliar. A woman sat high atop a horse, dressed in beautiful attire, a dress worthy of a queen, her long hair streaming out behind her. Riding a half length behind, a smiling girl, dressed in her own finery, sat on her own steed.
But where the last cartoon had featured Georgiana and Caroline suffering the disdain of family and peers, this one was different. In this picture, they were surrounded by men and women on their knees, paying fealty, as though they were queens themselves.
The caption read: “The Fine Ladies on their White Horses: Winning the Hearts of London.”
Most of those presented as subjects were men, some in uniform, some in formal wear. Georgiana’s attention fell to one of the men in the foreground. If she did not recognize him from his straight nose and his blond hair, she would have recognized him by the feather that protruded from his coat pocket.
The feather he’d plucked from her hair.
The feather he’d rescued after he was nearly killed at The Fallen Angel.
It was a very good cartoon.
“I think it’s us,” Caroline said, pride and pleasure in her young voice.
“I think you are right.”
“Though I am not certain why I’m carrying a cat.”
Tears threatened as Georgiana thought back on the day they’d walked in Hyde Park. The day she’d told Duncan that she wanted Caroline to have a normal life. “Because girls have cats.”
Caroline blinked. “All right. Well, I also think this is why the horse with white roses arrived. Though it does seem to be a little much.”
Georgiana chuckled, tears welling. “I think you might be right.” She seemed unable to keep the wretched things from spilling over.
“It’s a beautiful cartoon, don’t you think?” Caroline looked to her. Noticed. “Mother?”
Georgiana brushed the tears from her cheeks, trying to laugh them away. “It’s silly,” she said, taking a deep breath. “But it’s very kind of Mr. West.”
Caroline’s gaze narrowed thoughtfully. “You think it came from Mr. West?”
She knew it. But instead she said, “It is his newspaper.” Georgiana looked down at her daughter, whose rose was toppling out of her hair. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, reminding herself that this was what she lived for. This girl. Her future. “Shall we see who sent them?”
Caroline collected all the messages that had come with the cards as Georgiana ran her fingers over the cartoon once more, tracing the edge of Duncan’s shoulder, the line of his sleeve. He’d put himself into the cartoon.
Even as he gave her up, as he gave her everything she’d thought she wanted from the beginning, he honored her with his love.
Except, now, she did not want any of this.
Caroline returned with the messages, and they began to sift through the cards, each sender more eligible than the last. War heroes. Aristocrats. Gentlemen.
Not one of them a newspaperman.
She grew more and more frantic as she got closer to the end of the pile, hoping that one of the bouquets was from him. Hoping that he had not forsaken her. Knowing that he had.
Do not tell me you love me. I am not sure I could bear it when you leave.
She should have told him. From the beginning. From the first moment that she loved him. She should have told him the truth. That she loved him. That if she could choose her life, her future, her world… it would be with him in it.
There was a knock at the door to the room, and her brother’s butler entered. “My lady?” The words came with slight censure as they always did. Her brother’s starchy butler did not care for her choice of trousers over skirts when she was at home. But truthfully, no one ever came to see her.
She turned toward the man, hope flaring. Perhaps there was another message from him? “Yes?”
“You have a visitor.”
He had come.
She was up and out of the room, desperate for him, sailing into the foyer to meet the man who stood there, hat in hand, waiting. She stopped.
It was not Duncan.
Viscount Langley turned to face her, surprise in his eyes.
“Oh,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said, all affability.
The butler cleared his throat. “Traditionally, one waits for the guest to be seen to a receiving room.”