And she’d been left broken.
Alone.
So, yes, she believed in love. It was impossible not to every time she looked into her daughter’s face. But she also knew the truth of it – that It destroyed. It consumed. It was the source of pain and fear, and it could turn infinite power into powerlessness. Could reduce a woman to a simpering girl on a balcony, taking the brunt of insult and shame in the infinitesimal hope that her pain might save someone she loved.
Love was bollocks.
“Good night, Mother.” Caroline’s words shook Georgiana from her reverie.
She looked down at her daughter, blankets pulled up to her chin, somehow looking both young and far too old at the same time.
Georgiana leaned down and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Good night, sweet girl.”
She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her before turning to face Temple, now standing with Asriel in the hallway beyond. “What is it?”
“Two things,” the duke said, all business. “First, Galworth is here.”
The Viscount Galworth, in debt to his eyeballs to the Angel. She took the file Temple offered, looked inside. “Is he ready to pay?”
“He says he has little to offer.”
She raised a brow, paging through the file. “He has a town house, and acreage in Northumberland that earns him two thousand a year. Not so little.”
Temple’s brows rose. “I didn’t know about the land.”
“No one knows about the land,” she said, but it was Chase’s job to know more than the rest of the world about the members of The Fallen Angel.
“He’s offered something else.”
She looked up. “Don’t tell me. The daughter.”
“Offered with pleasure, to Chase.”
It was not the first time. Too often, the aristocracy had a disrespect for its daughters and a willingness to deliver them into the arms of unknown men with dangerous reputations. In Chase’s case, that particular package was never well received. “Tell him Chase is not interested in his daughter.”
“I’d like to tell him to throw himself off a goddamn bridge,” the former bare-knuckle boxer said.
“Feel free. But get the land first.”
“And if he doesn’t agree?”
She met his eyes. “Then he owes us seven thousand pounds. And Bruno should feel free to collect however he likes.” The hulking security guard enjoyed punishing men who deserved it. And most of the members of the Angel deserved it.
Most of the members of the aristocracy deserved it.
“It is also worth reminding him that if we find he’s planning to do anything but marry the girl off to a decent man, we’ll release the information on his throwing horse races. Tell him that, too.”
Temple’s black brows rose. “It never fails to surprise me just how ruthless you can be.”
She smiled her sweetest smile at him. “Never trust a woman.”
He laughed. “Not you, at least.”
“If he did not wish the information found out, he should not have used it to gain entrance to the club.” She moved to leave the room, but turned back. “You said two things.”
He nodded. “You’ve a visitor.”
“I’m not interested. Go yourself.” It would not be the first or the last time one of the other owners of the casino took a meeting meant for Chase.
Temple shook his head. “Not Chase. He insists on Anna.”
Neither would it be the first or last time that a man on the floor of the hell drank too much and called for Anna. “Who?”
“Duncan West.”
She caught her breath, hating the way the name rioted through her, as though she were a green girl. “What is he doing here?”
“He says he is here for you,” he said, and she heard the curiosity in his tone.
Matched it with hers. “Why?”
“He did not say,” the duke said, as though she were dim. “He simply asked for you.”
Perhaps it was the result of the melancholy she’d felt in Caroline’s room. Or perhaps it was because Duncan West had seen her at her weakest the prior evening and agreed to help her return to Society nonetheless. Or perhaps it was because she was so drawn to him – despite knowing better.
Whatever the reason, Georgiana surprised herself. “Tell him I shall be with him presently.”
She waited a quarter of an hour, taking a moment to make certain that her maquillage was perfectly applied. Satisfied with her outward appearance, Georgiana made her way through the web of passageways that connected her rooms to the main floor of the club, unlocking and relocking several doors carefully to ensure that no one could accidentally gain access to Caroline.
When she opened the final door and was delivered onto the floor of the club, she released a long breath. There was something terribly freeing about playing the lightskirt, though playing wasn’t precisely the verb Georgiana would use to describe her masquerade as Anna. After all, when one had worn the silks and satins of a celebrated prostitute for years, one tended to embrace the role.
Or, most of the role. Everything but the most obvious piece of it.
She hadn’t planned to avoid that bit – after all, the horse was rather out of the barn when a woman had birthed a child. Neither was it a lack of opportunity – half of London’s male population had approached her at one point or another.
It had simply never happened.
Which served Georgiana well. With no men on the floor of the club able to recount their time with her, her legend had grown. She was known now as a skilled madam, protected by the owners of the club and more expensive than any mere member of The Fallen Angel could afford.