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She reared back a little. “After my season?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I had originally come to London to find a wife. If I was a family man, then Naval Intelligence would back off. Possibly for good. But instead I…” He couldn’t say the rest. Didn’t need to.
Georgiana laid her head back down onto his chest. “Instead you found me. And then I married someone else.”
“Yes,” Henry admitted after a moment.
“Why didn’t you?”
Henry cocked his head, still a little dazed to be speaking to her so plainly after all this time. “Why didn’t I what?”
Georgiana looked up sharply. Her eyes were a bit wild. Haunted. He had seen her this close to desperation only once before, in the Harringtons’ back garden. “Marry. Why didn’t youmarry, Henry?”
Because I didn’t want anyone else.
How he ached for that to be the truth. But it wasn’t. At least, not completely. Even though he had been nursing a broken heart, he still proposed to two other women with good dowries and pleasant demeanors. But they had each turned him down. Immediately.
“No one would have me,” he said with a sheepish laugh. “A rumor spread that I was a fortune hunter, which I suppose was true. But I had always intended to be a good, honorable husband. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Then my leave ended, and there was nothing left for me to do.”
At the time Henry had felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. It was only in the intervening years that he had come to see how these rejections had led him down a path that had very nearly destroyed him. Her fingers dug into his chest and she looked away, but not before Henry caught the anguished expression on her face.
“It’s all right,” he cooed, threading his fingers through her unbound hair. “I’ve made my peace with it now. All of it. At long last.”
But Georgiana only shook her head and pressed her cheek to his chest. After a moment he felt warm tears dampen his skin. As he pulled her up, she hurriedly wiped her face.
Henry’s throat tightened. He could not bear to see her like this. “Why are you crying?”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered, refusing to meet his eyes. “I didn’t know.”
He held her for a long while after that, murmuring words of comfort against her silken curls as she absorbed everything he had revealed.
Just as he began to drift off to be cloaked in a warm, deep sleep, one final question came: “But what does the commodore want from you now?”
“The same thing he has always wanted from me,” Henry sighed as the weight of so many years and secrets pressed against him once again. “My memory.”
***
After Henry’s breathing slowed into the steady rhythm of sleep, Georgiana slipped out of his enticing embrace and retrieved her silk wrapper from the floor. She shut the door softly behind her and stumbled toward her room. The sky was beginning to fade to purple, heralding dawn’s gradual approach. But she could not sleep. Not after that.
Georgiana didn’t consider herself a particularly naïve person, but Henry’s story still managed to shock her. She thought back to every time someone had approached him with stars in their eyes and how uncomfortable he had always looked. Georgiana had assumed he was being modest, but that wasn’t it at all. He had been forced to go along with this story, to repeat this lie again and again, in exchange for his freedom.
But worse than that was the guilt that burned in her chest.
For she had been behind those rumors about Henry. That he was a callous fortune hunter, though he did a fine job pretending otherwise. They had been spread by a girl angry at the world, at the choices taken from her, and heartbroken over him, for making her dare to think he wanted her for love, and not the money she only pretended to have.
Though he hadn’t come out and said it directly, Georgiana knew that those rumors had sunk his chances of marrying during that long ago season and pushed him into intelligence work.
If I was a family man, then Naval Intelligence would back off.
But they hadn’t, thanks to her.
Georgiana slipped under the covers of her bed in between the chilly sheets. Her body longed to be back in Henry’s warm embrace. How solidly he held her, like she belonged there beside him. And the rightness of it had sunk so deep in her bones that Georgiana knew she was not strong enough to deny herself. She wanted him more than she had even thought possible. Whatever she had felt eight years ago was but a speck compared to the emotion ballooning inside her. All the jagged pain, the aching loneliness she had endured would be worth it if she could make this thing between them work. But how? If he knew the truth, that she had been behind those rumors, how could henotdespise her once more? And then she would lose him forever. She was certain of that.
***
Henry couldn’t remember the last time he had slept so well—or solate. Midmorning sun was streaming through the balcony doors. He turned and found the bed empty beside him. Georgiana must have left during the night, Henry reasoned through his disappointment. Of course she couldn’t have stayed. They had already taken too many chances during this trip, and there would be consequences for them both if their affair was uncovered, both professional and personal.
And yet, despite the very real threat it posed to both his business and his heart, a sudden urge filled his chest. Henry wanted to know what Georgiana would do if they were found out. Desperately.
