Cross looked up. “No one remembers that bit. They just remember the nudity.”
“How is that to help me land a husband?”
He grew serious. “Trust me. Nudity helps.”
“You used to be the one I liked best.”
“I am still the one you like best.” He leaned forward. “The important thing is when West makes an arrangement, he delivers. Look at the amount of attention he’s devoted to you.” He turned back to the page and read. “Lauding your grace and charm.”
The lauding was not free, however. He’d sent Chase a note with the paper. A request for payment.
The girl receives her attention.
You owe me the earl.
The missive was written in thick black scrawl, so confident that there had been no need for Duncan to sign the note.
Her gaze flickered from the note to Tremley’s file on the edge of her desk, waiting for delivery, to Cross, still reading, “He regales the reader with the number of titled men and women who have accepted Lady G— into their hearts and minds and world!” He looked up. “It’s a pity it’s not true.”
“It does not need to be true. I am only interested in one suitor.”
And she should thank her maker that Lord Langley was willing to at least consider her as an option. The lack of invitations and notes indicated that Georgiana remained too scandalous for the men of London.
“Langley.” Cross did not hide his disdain for her plan.
“You take issue in Langley choosing me for his lady?”
“Not at all. Except he’s not interested in choosing a lady.”
She met his gaze. “We don’t discuss his file. Ever. This will be the last I say on the subject: His interests are not a concern, as I’ve no need of being courted.”
“Then what’s the hope for West?”
She wouldn’t allow herself a hope for West. Nothing beyond their simple arrangement. Pleasure. Carefully. Until he made good on his promise and she was matched. “You cannot imagine that I’m angling for West’s attention.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know what to imagine. But Temple seems to think —”
“Temple is addled from too many rounds in the ring.”
Cross raised a brow, but did not reply.
She took a breath. Released it.
“West is —” She stopped, searching for something to say that would make sense of the moment. Of the way her entire, carefully constructed world seemed to come unraveled every time the man appeared. Of the fact that that his impact on her world did not make her wish he was far from her.
Of the fact that it somehow made her wish he was nearer.
There was an irony in that, she supposed, that he remained such a gentleman around her despite knowing her secrets. The evening before could have been full of scandal. Of more.
And he’d resisted her.
As though it had been the easiest thing in the world.
As though the kisses they’d shared hadn’t moved him at all.
As though they hadn’t been thoroughly earth-shattering.
She felt her cheeks warming again.
“West is complicated,” she said.
“Well, then he’s a terrible match for you, as you are so very simple.” She smiled at the teasing in the words, grateful that Cross, somehow, blessedly, had not pushed her to elaborate. Instead, he brushed a speck from his trouser leg and said, “The men have not found anything on him.”
A whisper of guilt came with the reminder of her earlier demands for information on Duncan. Before she’d met his sister. Before she’d propositioned him. Before she’d desired him quite so much. She pushed the unwelcome emotion aside. She’d made the mistake of trusting another so long ago and been left destroyed. She would not make that mistake again.
She ignored the way her reply unsettled. “Tell them to keep looking.”
He nodded, quiet for a long moment before he leaned forward. “Do you remember how you found me?”
“Of course.” Neither of them would ever forget the night he’d been tossed out of another gaming hell, beaten black and blue for counting cards and running the tables one too many times. Georgiana had known the moment she’d heard the story that Cross was the fourth for which she’d been searching. They’d found him drunk and on the brink of destruction – at his own hand.
“You saved me that night.”
“You would have saved yourself.”
“No,” Cross shook his head. “Without you, I would be dead or something far worse. Bourne and Temple would be dead in an alleyway in the East End. You saved us all in one way or another.” He paused. “And we are not the only ones. Every person employed by The Fallen Angel. Most employed in our homes… they’re all yours.”
“Do not paint me a savior,” she said. “The color does not suit.”
“Nevertheless, it is what you are. Every one of us, saved by Chase.” She did not reply, and he did not stop. “But what happens when it is Chase who needs saving?”
Her gaze snapped to his, the words coming quick and unbidden. “I don’t.”
He leaned back. Waited for a long moment. When she said nothing else, he said, “Perhaps not. But do not doubt that we will not stand idly by should hell freeze over.”
He stood, brushing his hands down his trousers. “Pippa would like you to come to dinner next week.” He paused. “You and Caroline.”
She raised a brow. Cross’s wife was the least likely person in London to invite someone to dinner. He smiled, seeming to understand her surprise, the love he had for his wife lightening his face, setting something off deep in Georgiana. “It’s not a dinner party. It’s dinner. And will likely end in all of us covered in dirt.”