He laughed at that. “The sheer sum of what you will not tell me, and you have the gall to ask for my secrets?”
She buttoned her shirt, protecting herself in more ways than one. “What is your relationship with Tremley?”
He met her gaze without hesitation. “What is your relationship with Chase?”
She was quiet for a long moment, considering the next. Considering the implications of her truth. Finally, she said, “I cannot tell you.”
He nodded. “And so it is.”
She stilled, watching him. He, too, had secrets. She’d known it, but she’d had no proof. But now, she did. And while the discovery should have made her immensely happy – as she was not the only one who spread lies between them – instead, it made her devastatingly sad.
Perhaps because his secrets would keep hers locked away.
Neither of them was honest.
There was no point in defining the way she felt for him.
And certainly no reason to define it as love.
Duncan West had saved her a great deal of heartache, she supposed, ignoring the tightness in her chest. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “That is that, then?”
He stood, pulling on his own shirt and buttoning his trousers, which she realized he’d never fully removed. She supposed he had left them on in case Chase entered. In case he had been required to give pursuit. He wrapped his cravat carefully, watching her as he completed the economical movements from memory, without the aid of a mirror.
As she willed herself not to beg him to stay.
When he was finished, he lifted his coat off the floor and shrugged it on, not buttoning it.
Stay. She could say it. And what?
She looked away.
He pulled his cuffs to bare an even inch of crisp white linen at the edge of his sleeve. When he was through, he looked to her. “You choose him.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s exactly that easy.” He paused. “Tell me one thing. Do you want this? Do you want to be so thoroughly entwined with him?”
Not anymore.
Who had she become?
He saw the reply on her face, the frustration, the confusion, and he turned to steel, hiding all emotion from her. “Allow me to leave him a message, then. Tell him I am through being beholden to him. I am done. Today. He can find another to do his bidding.” He unlocked the door. Opened it.
“Good-bye, Georgiana.”
He left without looking back, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
She watched that door for a long moment, willing any number of things to happen. Willing him to return. Willing him to take her in his arms and tell her it was all a mistake. Willing him to tell her the truth. Willing him to kiss her until she no longer cared about this world, this life, this plan that had become so important.
Willing him to want her enough for all their secrets.
To love her enough.
Knowing that it was impossible.
She took a deep breath, and sat at her desk, extracting a piece of paper, considering the blank expanse for a long moment, thinking of all the things she could write. All the ways she could change their mutual course.
What if she told him everything? What if she put herself – her heart – in his hands? What if she gave herself to him?
What if she loved him?
Madness.
Love between them would never work. Even if they found space and time to trust each other, he was not an aristocrat. He could not give Caroline the future Georgiana planned.
There was only one way that would keep her secrets safe.
That would keep her heart safe.
She reached for a pen, dipping the nib in ink and writing two lines.
Your membership has been revoked.
And you will stay away from our Anna.
Our Anna.
The words were a joke at best, the last vestige of a girl’s silly desire. She’d always secretly desired the possessive, wanted to be wanted.
And for longer than she would like to admit, she’d desired him.
She folded the paper once, twice, into a neat square, then sealed it with crimson wax, unlocking the heavy silver locket that hung at her breast and stamping it with an elaborate C before ringing for a messenger to fetch it for delivery.
It was for the best, she told herself, deliberately setting the missive aside and reaching for another file, one marked “Langley.”
She had other plans for her life. For Caroline’s.
And loving Duncan West was not in them.
Not even if she wanted it very much.
She returned to her work. To her world, empty of him.
He left the club, furious, and headed to his offices, desperate for proof that he held some kind of power in this world that seemed to be spiraling out of his control.
Tremley, Chase, Georgiana – they all wished to own him. To wield him like a weapon – his newspapers, his network of information, his mind.
His heart.
Only one of them threatened his heart.
He corrected his earlier assessment of the situation. She did not wish to own his heart. On the contrary, she seemed not at all committed to the organ.
He pulled his greatcoat around him, lowering his hat and marching up Fleet Street as though the wind was a worthy foe. He kept his head down, trying his best to keep from seeing the world.
From letting it see him. His doubt, his frustration, his pain.
And it was pain – the sensation high in his chest. He’d thought their afternoon would change her mind. He’d thought it would win her heart.
What an idiotic fool he was.
She’d been with Chase for too long to turn her back on the man, and there was something powerful in her commitment to the owner of The Fallen Angel. Something made even more remarkable by the fact that it was not tied to the physical.