The Trouble with Honor

CHAPTER TEN

GEORGE WAS TAKEN aback by the sudden closing in of so many females, but he quickly regained his composure when the smallest, and presumably the youngest, peered up at him through spectacles that made her blue eyes look quite large and asked, “Are you a suitor?”

“God help me, Mercy, where the devil are your manners?” Miss Cabot said sternly, sailing in behind the girl and firmly planting her hands on her shoulders. “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Easton,” she said as she wheeled the girl about and very nearly gave her the boot. “My sister Mercy’s social graces are shockingly absent. May I introduce you? This is Miss Mercy Cabot, Miss Prudence Cabot and of course, you know my sister, Miss Grace Cabot.”

“Those are quite a lot of virtues gathered in one small room,” George quipped, inclining his head. “My pleasure, ladies.”

“Mmm,” Grace Cabot said, eyeing him suspiciously, as if it wasn’t his pleasure at all, as if he had come all this way in this deluge to fabricate his pleasure at meeting the Cabot girls.

“Have you come for Honor?” the youngest one inquired. “Or Grace? Sometimes callers really don’t care which of them will receive them.”

“Mercy!” Honor Cabot gasped, her face going a bit white. “Please, all of you, return to the salon, and, for heaven’s sake, if Augustine returns, divert him!”

“Why?” Prudence asked. “What are you going to do?”

“She’s not going to do anything,” Grace said with a dark look for one sister as she took the other by the arm. “Come on then, you two—”

“But can’t we invite him in for tea?” Prudence asked as Mercy twisted about in Grace’s grip to peer at George over her shoulder. “We always invite them in for tea.”

“He’s not that sort of caller,” Grace insisted, ushering them along. “Honor, you’ll be along shortly, won’t you?”

Miss Cabot responded with a dismissive little wave of her fingers that made her sister’s expression go even darker. When the girls had disappeared into the corridor, Miss Cabot grabbed George’s elbow and began to propel him along in the opposite direction. “Hardy, this is a private matter—”

“Aye, miss, of course, miss,” the butler said reflexively, making George think that Honor Cabot was frequently engaged in “private matters.”

“One moment, if you please, Miss Cabot,” he said, trying to stop her. “I am not calling—”

“Yes, but I need a moment of your time,” she said, urging him along. Or rather, tugging him.

She herded him into the same small receiving room he’d seen before and shut the door.

“Miss Cabot—”

“Didn’t you speak to her?” she exclaimed, whirling about from the door.

“What the devil do you mean? Of course I spoke to her!” George said, miffed that she would doubt it. “She is undoubtedly whiling away this torrential rain reliving every moment of it,” he added confidently. He knew how young women were—their imaginations were almost as ridiculously grand and expansive as their bonnets.

But Miss Cabot gaped at him. “You are rather cheerfully assured of yourself!”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” he asked cavalierly, and took a seat on the settee, crossing one leg over the other. “It’s not as if I am new to games of courtship, Miss Cabot.” He chuckled at the idea. “Miss Monica Hargrove was not only stunned by my approach, but dare I say, delighted.”

“Delighted, was she? Then how would you explain her response when I asked after her evening? She said she’d met no one new, and suggested there was no one new but the usual crowd in attendance.”

George shrugged. “And so?”

“And so, clearly you did not make any sort of impression at all!”

George bristled at the insinuation and coolly narrowed his gaze on Miss Cabot. “I made an impression,” he said clearly. “Your friend was suitably flummoxed. Naturally she would not admit it, for it’s none of your concern.” He articulated every word for the foolish chit and tried not to ogle her figure.

“Yes, well, you don’t know Monica Hargrove as I do,” she retorted. “She would not miss an opportunity to tell me that a gentleman of your reputation had shown her the slightest regard.”

George was about to argue, but he was pulled up short by the words a gentleman of your reputation.

“Meaning,” she said hastily when she saw his expression, “that you are... Well, you are, ah...”

“Pray tell, Miss Cabot, I am what?” he drawled. Bastard. Pretender. He knew what he was, and if she thought differently, she was even more foolish than he believed.

“Ahem.” Her cheeks began to color. “Appealing. As it were,” she said, gesturing vaguely.

Appealing? That took George back. That was his reputation? Her awkward admission could not have pleased him more. He grinned. “Why, Miss Cabot, I had no idea the true depth of your esteem.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, spreading his arm casually across the back of the settee. It was his gift, he thought with a deepening smile, the ability to bring a bloom to the cheeks of young women...as well as to the cheeks of women who didn’t bloom quite as brightly as they once had. He was a man with a calling, and that calling was to pamper and pleasure women across London.

Miss Cabot’s bloom, however, was fading quickly underneath her scowl. “You promised, Easton.”

“I did as I said I would, Cabot.”

“Then you must have done it wrong,” she said pertly.

“Wrong!” he sputtered. He had the sudden urge to turn her over his knee, lift her skirts and strike her bare bottom like a child. “By the saints, you are incurably impudent!”

“And you are positively bursting with conceit!” she exclaimed, and began to pace, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed. She suddenly stopped her pacing and faced him. “You must do it again.”

“I beg your pardon, I will do no such thing. I did it. And to my way of thinking, you owe me one hundred pounds.”

“Ninety-two pounds,” she said. “We agreed.”

“Ninety-two, then,” he snapped, and came to his feet. “You may send it to my agent, Mr. Sweeney—”

“The Prescott Ball will be held this Friday evening,” she interjected, as if he hadn’t spoken, and began to pace again. “I can secure you an invitation.”

Indignation soared in him. She spoke as if he were some underling, a charitable endeavor, and no amount of imagining her naked body writhing beneath his would ease it. “No.”

“You must dance with her,” she said, and suddenly stopped her pacing, eyeing him up and down critically.

“What are you looking at?” he demanded, glancing down his body. “Listen to me, Honor Cabot, you may send to me the ninety-two pounds as per our agreement—”

“No,” she said, lifting her chin. “Not until you have done as you promised.”

George gaped at her lovely face, her glistening blue eyes. Was she mad? Afflicted? He could not recall having ever been quite so affronted. “I find it ironic that a woman with the name of Honor would fail to do just that with her word. Or that she would toy with the happiness of two people who have done her no harm, just so that she won’t have to give this up,” he said, gesturing to the well-appointed room in which they stood.

“Is that what you think?” she asked, looking almost surprised by it.

He snorted. “I know it, Miss Cabot. Your motives are quite obvious.”

For a moment, she looked as if she were about to shout, which would not have surprised him in the least, given the bats floating about her pretty head. But she pressed her lips together, folded her arms, and said, “You need not concern yourself with my motives, sir. And do not doubt that I will honor my word,” she said confidently. “Just as soon as you honor yours. I understand that you believe you have charmed the stockings right off of Miss Hargrove, but clearly you have failed to do it. I will not hand over the money promised merely because your esteem for yourself has clouded your vision of the truth.”

One fist curled at his side, squeezing against the strange mix of angry lust rising up in him. “Good God, if you were a man I would call you out for such an insult.”

“And if I were a man, I’d be quite happy to oblige you,” she shot back. She began to pace again. “You must dance with her, and show her that you are quite earnest in your esteem. That will impress her.”

Why was she so bloody insistent? George forgot his anger a moment—he had turned Miss Hargrove’s head...hadn’t he? He tried to recall the events precisely now. He remembered the woman’s smile—quite lovely, it was. Not as lovely as this impertinent excuse for a proper English debutante, but still. Miss Hargrove had giggled and smiled and had eyed him coyly. Hadn’t she? No, Miss Cabot was wrong. George was confident he’d done as she’d asked. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what brings you to believe that you are the arbiter of seduction, madam, but I did as I promised.”

She sighed as if he were the mad one in this room. “All right, then. What did you say to her?”

George lowered his head. “Now you are making me quite cross.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You want to know what I said?” he asked, and shifted closer, startling her as he cupped her chin and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I said that I found her lovely.” He lifted her face to his. “And that I admired her,” he added, allowing his gaze to skim Miss Cabot’s figure. He shifted even closer, lowered his head so that his mouth was just a fraction of an inch from hers. “And that I was quite envious of Sommerfield.”

Miss Cabot’s eyes fluttered. “And?”

“And? I asked her to stand up, but she very demurely declined,” he said, his gaze on plump, wet lips that looked as if they were begging to be kissed again.

“There, you see?” she said softly, her eyes falling to his mouth, her suddenly shallow breath stirring him.

“Are you surprised? I am a man of a certain reputation, and she is a blushing fiancée. She declined for the sake of propriety.”

“She is not a blushing fiancée, she is seasoned and shrewd.”

Naive, he thought, and moved his hand to the side of Miss Cabot’s slender neck, feeling the warmth of her skin radiate through his palm. The feminine form never ceased to astound him—so soft, so fragile, with the power to incite wars among men. “She didn’t seem terribly seasoned to me. She seemed flummoxed....” He paused to breathe in her arousing scent. “Not unlike how you seemed earlier this week in this very room.”

Miss Cabot turned her head slightly, away from his mouth. “I beg your pardon, I was not flummoxed.”

“Tsk, tsk, Miss Cabot. It won’t do to dissemble now.”

She frowned, but she did not deny it. “You must speak to her again,” she insisted. “Invite her again to stand up with you.”

George sighed. He slipped his hand behind her back and pulled her into his chest. For once, she didn’t say anything, just gazed up at him with clear blue eyes. He frowned down at her, brushed his knuckles against her temple. “I think I should kiss you again. Only quite thoroughly this time. And against all my better judgments.”

“I forbid it,” she murmured. And yet she did not move.

“You are too trusting, Miss Cabot. You should never forbid a man and yet allow him to hold you like this if you have a care for your virtue.” Least of all, him. “You don’t yet understand the mind of a man. When a woman is this close, he...”

He couldn’t finish; he gazed into her eyes as myriad ideas raced through his mind of what he would do to a woman like her.

“He what?” she asked.

He couldn’t say what was suddenly raging through him: that a man could not be satisfied until he’d been inside her. But for the first time since meeting Honor Cabot, George saw her innocence. It was there, buried under the mantle of privilege and sophistication, and it made him feel strangely protective of her.

Lord, no, not that. He was a high-stepping horse, trained to never look away from his path. Bloody innocence! Whether it was an instinctive need to distance himself from such protective thoughts or his growing, maddening desire, George didn’t know—but he said, “He does this,” and put his mouth on hers, kissing her.

He did not expect Honor Cabot to kiss him back. She sank into him, her back curving as she melted against him. She ran her hands up his arms, put them around his neck and angled her head slightly as she opened her mouth beneath his. George felt almost weak in the knees as he took full advantage of it, his tongue tangling with hers. He drew her tighter into his body to feel her soft curves pressed against the hard length of him. He slid his hand down her back, to her derriere, his fingers sinking into the soft flesh of her hip. He kissed her until he began to feel that primal thrumming, the call of his body to move against her, to be inside her.

He lifted his head, and with two hands to her shoulders, he set her back. Miss Cabot very gracefully ran her thumb across her bottom lip and smiled sheepishly at him.

“There, do you see?” he said sternly. “You should not have trusted me.”

“But I do trust you.”

He braced one hand against his waist, determined to talk some sense into her. “If you were mine—”

“But I’m not.”

“But if you were, I would teach you that you cannot be so careless with your virtue. Or anyone else’s virtue, for that matter! What you are doing is beyond comprehension.”

She folded her arms. “I didn’t ask you to defend my virtue,” she said silkily.

“Don’t push me, Cabot,” he warned her, his gaze taking in her face, her hair.

“Do you think that men are the only ones allowed to desire?”

That certainly sparked his interest. George arched a dark brow. “Do you desire me, love?” he asked silkily, and reached for her hip once more, abruptly pulling her forward so she might feel just how much he desired her.

In all his years, he had never met a woman who could not be intimidated, if only a little. But Miss Cabot looked him in the eye and said, with a coy little smile, “You profess to know women, Easton. What do you think?”

He chuckled low. “I think you’ve not the least idea what you want, lass,” he said, and lowered his head to hers again to trace a line across the seam of her lips with his tongue.

Honor gasped at the sensation, but George had only just begun. He lifted his hand to her jaw and angled her head, nipped at her bottom lip. “Is this what you want?” he asked, crushing her pelvis to his as he slipped his tongue into her mouth.

She made a little sound in the back of her throat. Her hands found his shoulders, and for a moment, he thought that she might push him away, but she merely opened her mouth beneath his as she slid her hands down his arms, then up again, so that she might tangle her fingers in his hair. He brushed his hand against her breast, cupping it, squeezing it, his fingers finding the turgid tip through the fabric of her gown. He was hurtling headlong down that slope of physical desire, of emotional entanglement, and with a growl deep in his throat, he picked her up with one arm about her waist and twisted about, putting her down on her back on the settee.

Honor gasped again; her breath lifting her chest. George traced a wet path to her bosom, his tongue finding the valley between her breasts, his hand pressing against her flesh, kneading her, tantalizing her. He lifted one breast free of the confines of her gown, and Honor made a sound—of protest? Of delight? Whatever it might have been, George caught it with his mouth as he kissed her again, before moving to her breast and taking it into his mouth.

She suddenly fell back on a very long sigh and sank her fingers into his hair. George suckled her, his eyes closed to the storm brewing inside him, to the sparks that were igniting and filling him with rivulets of fire. He tasted her fragrant flesh, felt the hardened nipple in the crease of his tongue. He was hard, the pulse of desire thrumming in him, the image of his body sinking deep into hers as he lifted the other breast from her bodice.

But there was something else in him, too. The faint clatter of hooves, the high-stepping horse marching steadily forward, looking neither right nor left. As much he wanted to undress her, to spread her legs and deflower her, to feel the wet warmth of her desire, he could not. He could not ruin one debutante or entice another. This was not the sort of man he was, no matter what people said, and it took all the strength he had to push himself up and away from her, to move his lips from her breast. He braced himself with both hands on either side of her, gazing down at this young woman with the shining blue eyes.

“Never,” he said angrily, “never trust a man in that circumstance.” He pushed himself up off the settee, then caught her hand, pulling her up.

Honor Cabot looked slightly chastised. She took a moment to arrange herself into her gown and looked contritely at him, on the verge of saying something when the door suddenly opened.

She whirled about, shaking out her skirts and pulling her long hair around to cover the flush of her bosom.

A woman stepped into the room. George recognized her instantly—she was an older, graying version of Honor.

“Mamma!” Miss Cabot exclaimed, and quickly put some distance between herself and George. “Ah...may I introduce you to meet Mr. George Easton?”

God help him but he was still hard, still wanting Lady Beckington’s daughter. Fortunately, the countess seemed unaware and looked blankly at George. “My lady,” he said, bowing low.

She looked at him curiously, as if she were trying to place him. “Ah, yes,” she said, nodding. “Of course. You’ve come about the horses, haven’t you?”

Horses? George looked at Miss Cabot for help. “I beg your pardon, I think there is some confusion—”

“The earl has all but sold them, hasn’t he, Honor? I think the sorrel is left.”

“Mamma,” Miss Cabot said gently, “the horses... We sold them ages ago.”

“What?” Lady Beckington gave her a nervous laugh. “We haven’t! We have the sorrel. Please, do wait here, sir. My husband will be along shortly to settle the terms with you.”

George didn’t understand what was happening, but he could see a slight tremor in Miss Cabot. “I shall wait with Mr. Easton until the earl arrives, then,” she said. “Shall I ring for Hannah?” she asked, moving to her mother’s side.

“Who? Oh, no, that’s not necessary,” Lady Beckington said, and turned around to the door. “Good day, sir.” She walked out of the room without looking back.

Miss Cabot did not speak; she lowered her head a long moment, closed her eyes then slowly opened them and lifted her gaze to George.

“I don’t understand,” he said simply. How could a mother see her daughter in such an obviously compromising position and merely walk out the door?

“Perhaps if I tell you that two summers ago, my stepfather sold some horses at Longmeadow. But not the sorrel,” Miss Cabot said. “And even if he were so inclined to sell more today, he could not walk down here to settle terms with you without assistance.”

Understanding dawned. When Miss Cabot had said her mother was not well that afternoon outside of Gunter’s Tea Shop, George had vaguely thought of pleurisy. “How long has she been like this?”

“This?” Honor said, looking at the door. “Moments? Weeks? Months? Sometimes she is perfectly fine. And sometimes not at all....” Her voice trailed away and she looked at the carpet.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” George asked. “When you first came to me, why didn’t you tell me?”

“And have half of London know it?”

She was speaking to a man who had protected his mother all his life. “Miss Cabot, on my honor, I’d not tell a soul. You have my word.”

She flushed, her fists curled at her sides. “You can see, then, my dilemma, Mr. Easton. I do not think Miss Hargrove will be keen to have four sisters and a madwoman under her roof. No one will want a madwoman under their roof, will they? I need...I need time until Grace and I can marry or...something,” she said, her eyes blindly searching the ceiling. “If I could take up a sword and fight for it, I would. If I had a vast fortune at my disposal, I would use it. But I am a woman, and the only options I have are to connive as I promise myself to the highest bidder before all is discovered.” She lowered her gaze to him again. “That may seem as if I am lacking in honor to you, but on my word, it is all I have. I don’t want to hurt Augustine or Monica. I truly want only to divert her until I can think of something. What else can I do?”

George’s heart went out to her. He’d loved his mother dearly, a lowly chambermaid with the duke’s bastard son to raise by herself. She’d never been accepted anywhere. The other servants judged her to be without morals. The duke had used her and left her to her own devices.

But Lucy Easton had been determined, and when she’d learned the duke was ill, she’d somehow managed to convince him to give George a stipend. He didn’t know how she’d done it—he didn’t want to know. He knew only that his mother had sacrificed everything for him, and that the stipend had enabled George to attend school, to meet young men who would become his peers, even if they did view his claims of having been fathered by a royal prince with great skepticism. Had it not been for George’s mother, he would be mucking stalls in the Royal Mews yet.

“Please, help me,” Miss Cabot said, her voice meek. “Please, come to the ball.”

God in heaven, how could he look upon the worry and sadness in those eyes and refuse her? “Even if I come, even if I might divert her as you wish, there are any number of things that might happen afterward. What will keep her from telling everyone what you’ve done when she discovers it? What will keep her from taking her suspicions to Sommerfield? Don’t you see? It could be even worse for you then.”

“I know. But I have to try. So I will take that risk.”

George gazed at her beguiling face. He supposed he’d done some things that would be considered mad by most when he’d seen no other option.

“Will you?” she asked softly.

“I will do it once more, Honor,” he conceded. “Only once.”

She smiled in a way that began to burn in the soft part of his gut. “Thank you, George.”

Another deeper trickle of warmth rushed down his spine at the use of his Christian name. He was standing on dangerous ground here, soft pliable ground into which he could sink quickly and become mired. That it had happened so quickly shook him enough that George abruptly moved to the door. “Once more, Miss Cabot. No more than that. But don’t mistake me for someone who cares for you or the consequences of what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I won’t,” she quickly assured him. “Never.” And she smiled.