It wasn’t working.
She was all anyone in the room talked about, and it was neither her powerful champions nor her beauty that fueled the whispers.
And she was beautiful, all length and grace, smooth skin and silken hair, and a mouth – Christ. She had a mouth made for sin. It was no wonder she’d been ruined at such a young age. He imagined she’d had every boy for twenty miles salivating over her.
Idly, he wondered if she’d cared for the man who had taken advantage of her, and found he did not like the idea that she had. He had little patience for boys who could not keep their hands to themselves, and the idea of Lady Georgiana on the receiving end of those hands grated more than usual. Perhaps it was the child. No child deserved to be born into scandal.
He knew that better than most.
Or perhaps it was Georgiana, who looked every inch the perfect, pristine aristocrat, born and bred into this world that should be at her feet, and instead waited to eat her alive.
The orchestra stopped, and Georgiana had only a few brief seconds before she was in the arms of Viscount Langley – an excellent choice for husband.
West watched them with the eye of a newspaperman, considering their match from all angles. Langley was a big fish, no doubt – he’d recently assumed a venerable title that came complete with several massive estates, but he suffered from the great bane of the aristocratic existence – inheritances could be prohibitively expensive. Each of his properties had fallen into disrepair, and it was his responsibility to restore them.
A dowry the size of the one attached to Lady Georgiana would restore the earldom to its former glory, and leave him with enough money to double its size.
West did not know why the idea was so unsettling and unpleasant for him. She was neither the first nor would she be the last to buy a husband.
Nor to be sold to one.
For the price of a long-standing, irrelevant title. One valued only for its place in the hierarchy. Yes, it might buy her daughter silent judgment instead of vocal insult. And yes, it might buy that same young woman marriage to a respectable gentleman. Not titled, but respectable. Possibly landed.
But it would buy her mother nothing but snide barbs and hushed whispers. No additional respect, no additional care. Few of the aristocracy into which she was born would ever consider her worthy of their civility, let alone their forgiveness.
Hypocrisy was the bedrock of the peerage.
Georgiana knew it – he’d seen it in her gaze and heard it in her voice as she’d talked to him, far more fascinating than he would have ever imagined. She was willing to wager everything for her daughter, and there was tremendous nobility in that.
She was like no woman he’d ever known.
He wondered, vaguely, what it might be like to grow with the love of a parent willing to sacrifice all happiness for one’s sake. He’d had the love, but it had been fleeting.
And then he’d become the caretaker.
He resisted the memory and returned his attention to the dance.
Langley was a good choice. Handsome and intelligent and charming, and a skilled dancer, gliding the lady across the ballroom floor, underscoring her grace with his own. West watched her ivory skirts caress the viscount’s trouser leg as he turned her. Something about the way silk clung to wool briefly before giving in to gravity’s pull irritated him. Something about the way they moved, all grace and skill, grated.
He shouldn’t care. He was here for something else entirely.
So what had he been doing on a balcony making silly promises of social redemption to a girl he didn’t know?
Guilt was a powerful motivator.
The damn cartoon. He’d dragged her through the muck, as surely as her peers had done so a decade earlier. He’d been irate when it had run – hated the way it teased and mocked an unwed mother, a child who’d had no choice in the matter. He didn’t read The Scandal Sheet the way he read the rest of his papers, as he had little taste for gossip. He’d missed the cartoon, inserted at the last minute, before the pages went to print.
He’d sacked the editor in charge the moment he’d seen it. But it had been too late.
And he’d helped to further scandalize the girl.
She smiled up at Langley, and something tugged at West’s memory. He did not remember meeting the lady before, but he could not shake the idea that he had at some point. That they’d spoken. That she’d smiled at him in just the same way.
Lady Disrepute, they called her, in no small part because of him. It did not matter that she was everything they adored – young, aristocratic, and more beautiful than one woman should be.
Perhaps her beauty mattered most of all. Society hated the most beautiful among it nearly as much as it hated the least. It was beauty that made scandal so compelling – after all, if only Eve had not been so beautiful, perhaps the serpent would have left her alone.
But it was Eve who was vilified, never the serpent. Just as it was the lady who was ruined, never the man.
He wondered about the man in her case, again. Had she loved him?
The thought left a foul taste.
Yes, he would redeem the girl. He would make her the star of the season. It would be easy enough – Society adored its gossip pages, and easily believed the things it read in them. A few well-placed columns, and Lady Georgiana would marry her viscount and leave West’s conscience appeased and his focus on other, more important matters.
Matters that would ensure his freedom.
“You are not dancing.”
He’d expected the meeting – had attended the ball for it – but went cold at the words nevertheless, spoken with false cordiality at his elbow. “I do not dance.”