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14
“Ma’am.” Her maid walked into Georgina’s bedroom, her cheeks a lovely shade of pink, fingers twisting in her skirts. “Mr. Cooke is waiting downstairs for you and begs me to tell you to hurry along. His exact words.”
Georgina resolved to take a few more minutes just to annoy her cousin. “My word, Stella. Are you blushing?”
“Not in the least,” the maid replied tartly. “It’s a bit warm in here is all, and I ran up the steps. Emily has put Mr. Cooke in the front parlor.”
Georgina tried not to smile at her maid’s obvious attempts to hide her adoration of Mr. Benjamin Cooke. He always sent her female servants into near swoons whenever he appeared.
“Very good, Stella.” She smoothed down her velvet skirts. “What do you think?” Georgina turned before the oval mirror and picked up her fan, taking in the yards of crimson velvet curling around her body.
Scandalous.
Bits of jet dangled across the neckline, which wasn’t modest in the least. The waist was tight, hugging the outline of her curves. She tried to take a deep breath and failed.
“Laced you tight, I did,” Stella said from the door. “Only way to get the dress on.”
“I hope I don’t faint.” Georgina snapped the fan, thinking of the face her mother would make if she did so.
“You look like a sweet on Christmas Day.” Stella took in the rise of Georgina’s bosom above the velvet. “Mrs. Rutherford is unlikely to approve of the gown.”
“Splendid,” Georgina answered. “That is exactly what I’m hoping for.”
Georgina was still working out her anger toward her parents after what they’d sent her to endure. Of course, they couldn’t have predicted Harold being mad as a hatter, but still, banishing her to England had been extreme. Her relationship with her mother was strained, though it always had been. Cordelia Rutherford dictated. Georgina rebelled. At least they were on speaking terms, which was more than Georgina could say of her relationship with her father.
Her parents wanted her to remarry. The quicker the better. Preferably to a man her father would choose for her. Fletcher had been deemed suitable by Father, which had quickly sealed the politician’s fate. Georgina would never wed him.
She made her way to the front parlor, a cozy room Georgina had decorated in pale greens and golds. Ben had gone with her to order the furniture from Phyfe and Sons. Standing in the doorway, she took a moment to admire the clean lines and gentle curves of Phyfe’s sofa and tables, custom-made for this room. A painting of the Hudson filled with vibrant fall colors hung on the wall. Sometimes, as she settled in with the coffee she liked each morning, Georgina would stare at the brushstrokes depicting the water and trees, longing for the home her grandmother had once inhabited.
The gentleman prowling around the parlor sent her a mischievous grin as she entered, making him appear carelessly boyish when he was nothing of the sort. Overly tall, with a lean, athletic build clothed to perfection in his expensively tailored evening clothes, Benjamin Cooke was the very picture of a well-heeled gentleman. Hard to believe Ben hadn’t been born to wealth and privilege. He’d had to earn his place at her father’s side, becoming a younger, slightly kinder version of Jacob Rutherford. But the ruthless ambition, something he had in common with Leo, hadn’t been learned. Ben’s nature in that regard had been apparent even when they were children.
She often wondered where her cousin had spent the first ten years of his life.
“There you are, George.” Ben turned to her, lifting a glass filled with amber liquid. “Helped myself. Didn’t suppose you would mind. Very fine whiskey you keep in your home. But I don’t see any sherry. And here I’d thought you’d become a lady after all that time in London.”
“Perish the thought.”
A vision of a shivering ten-year-old boy superimposed itself over the brutally handsome man before her. He’d stood on the steps of the Rutherford mansion, clothing so threadbare she’d been able to see his skin beneath. The flecks of green in his hazel eyes had glowed with resolve and determination. He’d been dirty. Starving.
Ben was still hungry, just not for food any longer.
He was a mystery, her cousin, though she deemed him her dearest friend. They’d been close their whole lives, since Georgina had found him at the door, begging to be let inside, pointing at the note pinned to his chest. The note declared him to be the son of Alice Rutherford, her father’s younger sister who’d run off and married a sea captain years ago and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.
“You aren’t supposed to call me George.” She strolled into the room. “Don’t dare do so in front of Mother. You don’t want to give her fits on her big night.”
Ben looked down on her from his much larger height, a shock of brandy-colored hair falling over his brow. He wore it longer than he should intentionally. The length annoyed her mother along with Ben’s very existence.
“Cordelia already doesn’t like me. I doubt calling you George will alter her impression of me in any way. I am always thankful your mother didn’t find me on the step that day. She would have shooed me away with a broom.”
“My mother has never lifted a broom in her life. The most she manages to lift is a hairbrush. Occasionally, she strains herself by fluffing a pillow.”
“I think I saw her lift a rose to her nose once, but she struggled. Her maid had to step in.”
“You are awful.” Georgina laughed.
Mother tolerated Ben much the same way she had once accepted Father’s drooling hound, Cannonball. Cordelia had tried to send Ben to an orphanage, using every ounce of flirtatious charm she possessed to convince Father, but he’d flatly refused. Mother had finally given up when she was reminded that her husband wanted a son, which she had failed to provide. His nephew, Benjamin Cooke, would do very nicely.
Alice, Ben’s mother, never appeared in New York. Ben claimed he had no idea where she was; he only knew she’d brought him to the city, written the note, and pushed him in the direction of his uncle’s mansion on Lafayette Square.
