Lord Sebastian's Secret (The Duke's Sons #3)(3)
She loved Mama and Papa—of course she did—but at this moment she couldn’t help wishing that they were not quite so…individual. Back home after months in London among people who revered convention and cultivated elegant manners, she noticed it more than ever before. Sometimes it seemed that her parents positively dared strangers to misunderstand and mock them. If Sebastian didn’t get on with her family, if he despised them… Georgina feared such a reaction, and resented the possibility for myriad reasons on both sides of the question. One thing was clear, however. She simply couldn’t marry him if he did. The thought left her fiercely desolate.
Seeing him again had set her pulse pounding. All the sons of the Duke of Langford were tall, handsome, broad-shouldered men with auburn hair and penetrating blue eyes. When you added to that the muscular frame, dashing side-whiskers, and unconscious swagger of a cavalry major, the combination was potent indeed. From their first meeting, Georgina had been roused by Sebastian’s bold, masculine presence.
She’d resisted, of course. Even her limited social experience had predicted that such a man would be insufferably arrogant. But Sebastian wasn’t. He’d approached her with all sorts of inquiries about her thoughts and feelings. And then he’d listened to her answers. It was unprecedented.
Still, she’d been suspicious. There’d been something stilted about his conversation at first. But as the season went on, it became clear that his interest wasn’t feigned. Their conversations grew deeper. He’d actually asked her help in understanding a cryptic conversation at a ball, and when she’d explained, he hadn’t punished her afterward by drawing away or belittling her. As some men did. Many men, really. Why did they find it so insupportable, seemingly, to be schooled by a female? But not Sebastian. She’d heard him tell a mutual acquaintance later that she had “more brains in her little finger than I do in my whole head.” Georgina smiled. She’d made up her mind to marry him in that moment.
And why hadn’t she already done so? She could have married in London from her grandmother’s house, Georgina thought as she entered her mother’s workroom. This visit might have been postponed until after the knot was tied. He’d have had to take her family as he found them then. But no. She shook her head. That wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t avoid, still less disown, her family. It was out of the question. If only they could, sometimes, be just a bit more commonplace for an hour or two.
On the far side of the large room, her mother sat at a cluttered desk, pen in hand. Georgina watched her scribble on the page before her. It couldn’t be denied that, as people often observed, Mama looked rather like her dogs, particularly when she was vexed, as she apparently was now, her lips turned down in her round face. A small, plump woman, with glossy brown hair and prominent eyes—though her eyes were blue, not brown—she had the same bustling curiosity. Sometimes, the similarity made Georgina smile. Today, it raised her protective instincts.
Mama’s desk was the only conventional piece of furniture in the spacious chamber. Everything else catered to her dogs. There were rafts of colorful pillows where they could lounge, piles of sticks for them to chew, and scattered heaps of other toys. Hearths at each end kept the room warm in winter, and small, hinged flaps in two of the long windows gave the animals access to their own walled garden. There was a tiled area where they were fed and a large tub in the corner where they were bathed. The pugs were kept scrupulously clean, though their sheer numbers meant that the place still smelled just a bit of dog. “Sebastian has arrived, Mama,” said Georgina. “You must come and say hello.”
“In a moment,” her mother replied without turning in her chair. “I’m just writing Lady Fairford about the puppy I promised her. She has somehow gotten the notion that I will send Treva in a basket on the mail coach. Yet I made it perfectly clear when we settled on the arrangement that she needed to send a carriage and servant to fetch her.”
Whatever the outer resemblance, Mama’s voice was nothing like the pugs’ yapping. It was deep and confident, surprising from such a small frame. Georgina often admired her parent’s sublime self-assurance. She never worried about being thought odd. And why should she? a part of Georgina objected. “The dogs are bothering him,” she added.
This got a reaction. Her mother straightened and turned. “Bothering? They don’t like him?” Her tone was sharp with suspicion. Mama based her initial judgments of people on her dogs’ reactions to them.
“They like him excessively,” Georgina responded. “Aidan and Drustan are…” She never knew what word to use for the dogs’ current activities, with which she was only too familiar. Every choice seemed vulgar. She settled on “applying themselves to his top boots.”
“Rogues,” said her mother indulgently. “I expect the boots are new. There’s something about fresh leather that sets the boys off. I don’t know why. It’s curious, isn’t it? Also, Nuala is soon to go on heat, you know.”
Memories of the sights and sounds that would fill the house when she did rose in Georgina’s mind. She stifled a sigh and said only, “Please come and get them.”
“Very well.” Her mother set the letter aside and rose. “Now that Lord Sebastian is here, we must make a push to plan your wedding, mustn’t we?” She walked a twisting path among the cushions. “You know, Ninian could stand up with you. He is trained to rise on his hind feet.”