It Had to Be the Duke by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 4

Perhaps it had been the fleeting thought he’d had a short while ago that accounted for his conjuring her up, but of all the people Geoffrey would have expected to stumble upon at Davenport’s son’s orgy, her name would have been the last he would have thrown into the betting pile.

My God.

Then she spoke. “Geoffrey, whatever are you doing here?”

Those words harked back to similar ones she’d uttered to him when she’d made her debut at Almack’s and found him at that miserable, stifling affair.

Geoffrey, you’ve come to Almack’s! Whatever are you doing here?

He found himself grinning wistfully. How had she not realized, he would have suffered through any ton event, and hell itself, to have spent time with her.

Making a show of taking his chin between his thumb and forefinger, Geoffrey stared at Lydia where she lay. “Would that I could say it is unexpected to find you sprawled so…” Such had been the way he’d come upon her, all those years ago, at Almack’s, her ankles sticking out from under a settee. “A game of hide-and-seek?”

Her eyes went flying open, those pools of blue as round as they’d ever been. “You remember that.”

He remembered everything.

He stretched a hand out. Did she truly believe he could have forgotten that day… that moment… her? A man never forgot his first and only love. “Yes, I remember that,” he said instead.

A little glimmer twinkled in her eyes. “You always were a flirt, Geoffrey Meadows,” she said, placing her hand in his, and there was a warmth and rightness to the soft weight of her palm in his.

“Yes.” That had been the reputation he’d earned since his days at Oxford and one that had followed him all the way to this late juncture in his life. “But it was also always very different with you, Lydia,” he murmured. Those words left him before he could think to call them back.

Her eyes sparkled. “As I said, once a flirt, always a flirt.”

Yes, well, it was far better for her to assume his accidental admission had sprung from the mouth of the rogue whom her parents had found entirely unsuitable because of their familial animosity.

“Well?” she teased, lightly gripping his fingers and prompting him back to the moment.

Leaning down, Geoffrey curved a hand at her waist. Still trim, and yet, there was a generous flare to her hips that hadn’t been there during their youth. His fingers reflexively curled into her flesh, the frothy garment offering little barrier between his hand and the heat of her skin.

Except, the moment he set Lydia back on her feet and made to draw his hand back, he froze. Nay, they both froze. Standing as close as they were, with just a hairbreadth of distance separating them, he could see the like motionless of her form. He should release her. Except… their gazes locked, and the blues of her eyes froze the air in his lungs. In an instant, it was as if the hands upon the clock rewound, reversing time. Lydia was here. His Lydia. And more…they were together. He couldn’t compel himself to break that connection. Worse, her nearness called forward memories of the last time he’d held her in those detestable gardens. When he’d taken Lydia into his arms that evening, he’d not known it would be the last he’d hold her, though he’d known that the moment she committed herself to marrying another, he’d never touch her again, in any way.

Only to find now that he’d been wrong.

Lydia broke the connection. A blush on her cheeks, she stepped away, putting distance between them. But then, she’d always been the one to do so. With an almost embarrassing unaffectedness toward him, she darted around him and made a beeline for the door. He thought she intended to flee.

Instead, she turned the lock, shutting the two of them in, alone.

Clasping her hands behind her, Lydia laid her back against the door and exhaled a sigh that could never be mistaken for anything other than relief.

A sardonic smile curved his lips. There’d been a time when he’d managed to pull a different kind of breathy exhalation from the lady.

“Of all the places I’d think to run into you, Lydia,” he said, unable to prevent the wistful quality of that pondering.

“And as I said, I should expect to run into you here.”

His neck went hot. She was right to her opinion. After all, how many times had he attended affairs such as this very one? After her he’d buried himself in roguish pursuits.

“I’ll have you know I’m not one for these affairs,” he said.

Meandering away from her place at the paneled door, she picked up a mask and toyed with the blue and green feathers adorning the article. “You’ve intrigued me, Your Grace.”

At her words, a memory came whispering forward from a time long past, a lifetime ago…

“You’ve intrigued me, Geoffrey. Whyever would you suffer through the misery of Almack’s.”

Geoffrey glided closer towards her.“To be with you, love. I’d brave it all…”

“I have it on authority that you quite enjoy these scandalous affairs,” Lydia said, intruding on the past, bringing him back to their present.

“Not anymore,” he said, his words, spoken in truth. “They’ve gotten old.” He rubbed at his sore neck muscles. He’d gotten old. “I tired of them a long, long time ago,” he murmured.

The moment he’d fallen in love with Lydia, he’d committed himself to her completely. He’d not been a scoundrel…until after her. Only, the need to numb himself from the pain of losing her had driven him to a wicked lifestyle. All those efforts had been in vain. He’d been forever unable to forget her.

From across the way, he felt Lydia searching her gaze over his face. “Did you?” she ventured, a blend of curiosity and some doubt there.

“The more wickedness one is exposed to, the more immune one becomes to it, the less one is shocked or titillated or interested.”

Lydia cocked her head. “So, then, why are you here?”

He removed his cumbersome mask and tossed it upon a nearby table. “Mowbray’s son. We’re doing reconnaissance.”

The lady sidled over with the same agility she’d had as a girl. “Oh, this I have to hear, Geoffrey,” she said when she’d reached his side. Close as she was, he caught the merry little sparkle in her clear eyes.

He was no gossip, but she was not just any woman. She’d been his first and only love. The one who’d gotten away, forced to marry one of his friends. And as such, being here with her now, he slipped so easily back into the comfortable ease that had always existed between them. “Mardel is purported to be in love, and the boy’s father has worries about the suitability of the woman and the seriousness of the relationship.”

In an instant, the light in her eyes dimmed, her gaze grew stricken.

He wanted to call back his words.

God help him, even with all the time that had passed, he’d only just realized those old wounds weren’t really that old, and would likely never heal.

Clearing her throat, Lydia glanced down at her mask and then cast a look over to the door. “I should go.” Only, she didn’t make any attempt to leave. She remained rooted to this spot so very near him.

“Do you want that?” he asked hesitantly, not realizing he held his breath until she spoke.

“Oh, God, no!” She laughed, fuller and richer and deeper than the tinkling giggle she’d possessed before. He’d always been enraptured by the purity of her mirth. He’d not thought there could be a more magnificent sound. He’d been wrong. He stared on, hopelessly captivated. Lydia dusted tears of amusement from her cheeks. “Have you ever seen such a ridiculous affair?”

Actually, he had. Too many times. He knew better, however, than to say as much, particularly given the opinions she still carried about him.

“I trust Althea and Dorothy are behind your being here?”

Lydia pointed a finger toward him and made a clicking sound with her tongue. “You have it.”

Funny how so much time had passed, a whole lifetime in which they’d gone without so much as talking, and now it was like stepping back into something so familiar, so very comfortable. And yet, even when it had been comfortable with Lydia, there’d still been this… glorious thrill, one that remained still.

“Althea and Dorothy believed it would do me good to be here. A distraction, they called it,” she said, pointing her eyes to the ceiling.

Of course. That was right. God, what an unmitigated, selfish ass he was. “Forgive me,” he said. “I should have given my condolences on your loss.”

A deeper sadness filled Lydia’s eyes. “Thank you. He was… a good husband and father.”

“I knew Chombley would be.” When they’d been boys, Chombley had told Geoffrey of his love for Lydia, and swore that he’d someday marry her. He’d loved Lydia as Geoffrey had. Selfishly, Geoffrey had known the other man would be good for her and to her, but despite that, he had wanted her more. He’d known the late earl would have filled her days with happiness; a happiness Geoffrey and Lydia would have known had they not been pulled apart.

With a restlessness to her movements, she came around the sofa she’d tumbled from upon his arrival and seated herself.

He’d work to do.

There was information about Mowbray’s son to find out for the concerned father, and yet, Geoffrey instead joined Lydia on the seat. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

“No, Lydia. How are you?” he repeated quietly, and a light sheen of crystalline tears filled her eyes.

She blinked several times, and his entire being ached at the evidence of her suffering and sadness. “I don’t even know what my life is anymore,” she said and brushed a tremulous hand across her damp cheeks.

Silently, Geoffrey held over a kerchief, and with a murmured word of thanks, Lydia accepted that monogrammed article and wiped away her tears. “I was once a hostess,” she murmured softly. “I’d plan events for Chombley, and my days were so filled.”

“Did you… enjoy doing that?” he asked. Because that did not fit with the woman he’d once known who’d despised those stiffly formal affairs. Who’d spoken about the fun and light events they’d one day host as husband and wife. “Hosting those affairs?” he clarified.

Her features pulled. “Not at all. I didn’t particularly like hosting them, but they became… comfortable. Something I was used to doing. A routine that became so familiar that it also became so comfortable.” Coming up onto her knees, she angled herself on the sofa so she faced him. “Did you ever have anything like that?” she asked. “Something that you had to do, or took part in, and it filled your days, and you didn’t stop to think about whether or not you enjoyed it anymore? Or didn’t enjoy it?”

He nodded. “I know something of that. That was what these types of affairs”—he gestured to the doorway—“became for me.”

“Exactly.” She sank back on her haunches, and the fabric lining that gave her skirts body crunched noisily. “That was the same with me and Polite Society’s events.” As she spoke, her words came so quickly she tripped over them, as if she couldn’t even manage to slow the speed with which those thoughts came to her. “But they were part of my life, and my time was consumed by them so that I didn’t really think any more about if I enjoyed them, because there was just so much to do. And there were my children. First, they were babes, but then time just goes so quickly, and then you find yourself with daughters having their debuts, and you’re helping them find happy unions, and your sons aren’t wed, but they’re living their own lives, and with them all grown up, they have lives of their own, and I… I don’t even know who I am anymore, Geoffrey. I was a wife. I was a mother. But I don’t know what I ever was outside of the two, and now that I’m neither, what am I?”

*

Lydia’s heart hammered in her breast.

Where had those words come from?

And more, how easily they’d come.

It is the man seated beside you. Because you were always able to talk to him in ways that come so naturally.

Whereas, with her late husband, there’d been a period of… growth and learning. It had taken her some years before she’d felt any around Lawrence.

“Forgive me,” she said, embarrassed, swinging her legs over the side of the sofa. “I don’t know where all that came from.”

Geoffrey shot a hand out, covering her palm with his. “Don’t apologize. All that came… from everything you’re feeling, and you shouldn’t make apologies for anything you’re feeling, Lydia.”

She stared down at the top of his hand, sun-bronzed as it had always been from his love of riding and the way he’d loved to shuck his jacket and shove his shirt-sleeves up. And then, from a place she didn’t see coming, Lydia turned her hand over so his palm lay atop hers, and his fingers slipped through hers, twining like a perfect piece of ivy that had found its hold.

“There,” she murmured. How right it had always felt to have his hand in hers? That was something else that had remained a constant.

They sat there with their silence. Comfortable and neither rushing to fill it, and Lydia found herself laying her cheek along the back of the sofa and staring at him. “What happens to time?”

“It goes.”

“It goes, and I ofttimes fear how much quicker these years will pass and worry that I’ll be left with the same questions and regrets about who I am, Geoffrey,” she said quietly.

He shifted on the sofa, the leather creaking under the slight movement of his powerful form, and she thought he’d go. That, with her maudlin talk, she’d at last managed to scare him away. But then he lowered himself slightly to match her body’s positioning, his cheek resting against the sofa’s curved back so that he perfectly faced her. “You’ve spent your life being the perfect hostess and wife and mother. But in those years, Lydia, you should have also never neglected to think about what makes you happy. You find that, and you live for that.”

“Live for that,” she murmured. “I’ve enjoyed playing matchmaker for my children,” she confessed. And then, realizing how that sounded, she grimaced. “That is, not that I forced them into a match.” As her parents had done. As they’d denied her the man now seated across from her and instead coordinated a union between her and her late husband. “But… Society has this way of making a woman think she must be a certain way and wed a certain person, and I wanted them to be happy in their choices.”

“And are they?”

“Yes.” She paused. Except… Her brow dipped. Were her daughters happy happy? As in passionately in love with their husbands? Or did they feel the comfortable love Lydia had known with her own husband? “I… hope so. They seem as though they are.”

And yet, in those earliest days and months of her marriage, Lydia, too, had worn the perfect smile meant to deceive the world into believing her happiness. She chewed at her lower lip. She’d never questioned whether there were certain other men for whom her daughters had developed affection. What if there’d been someone other than the safe, dependable men they’d married? Wild rogues or rakes they’d thought to reform with their love?

And where it hadn’t mattered to Lydia’s parents, it certainly would have mattered to Lydia. Not to Lawrence, though. He’d always expected he’d known what was best for their children… and her.

“What is it?” Geoffrey asked, and she jolted, her body and thoughts jarred to the present.

“What if they aren’t? Happy, that is?” Unease formed a pit low in her belly. “It was just so… wonderful that one of my daughters made a match with one of Althea’s sons, but what if I did the same thing my—?” She blanched. The freedom that had always come in speaking to this man also had made her forget exactly what she was saying.

“What if you did the same thing your parents did?” he murmured.

Lydia searched out for a hint of the bitterness and harsh resentment that had existed in those gardens all those years ago when she’d informed him of her decision to wed Lawrence. This time, however, there was a gentleness as they spoke about her union to the man with whom he’d been friends.

She gave a hesitant nod. “Do you think I did the same?” Her voice emerged as a fear-laden whisper. Except, once more, the words and questions kept tumbling out as she barely squeezed in so much as a breath of pause with which he might interject an answer, and mayhap it was cowardice, a fear of what he might say that accounted for her ramblings. “I’ve always thought I was different from my parents, in how they attempted to shape me into a proper lady who only undertook ladylike ventures and activities. I never did that with my girls. I didn’t balk when they donned breeches and went riding. I thought it was fabulous when they’d sneak off to swim.” Even when her husband had been horrified and fearful that they might come to harm, or that they might be discovered and their actions scandalize the world. “But when they made their debuts, I… steered them to their matches, Geoffrey.” Lydia pressed a fist to her breast. “Althea and I, we coordinated meetings and encouraged them.”

“Because you meant well and wished to see your daughters content and securely settled,” he said.

“But can the same not be said for my parents?”

“Did you dissuade your daughters from matches they might have otherwise been inclined to make?” he countered.

She paused and then shook her head.

“Did you set conditions on them, tying their decisions to the happiness of one of the others?”

“No!” That denial exploded from her. Because no matter how content she’d been in her marriage, no matter how much she’d come to love Lawrence, there’d always lingered an unshakable reminder of her family’s influence in her union. “I would never have done that.”

He smiled. “And that, Lydia, is how you know you aren’t your parents.”

“But neither did I encourage them to consider that there are… were other options. What if they didn’t find their soul mate?”

“Did you?” he asked, yet again giving Lydia pause.

Lawrence.

She’d loved him.

So very much.

And she’d miss him until she drew her last breath and met him up in the great beyond that awaited them all. “I used to think a person could only love one person.” Him. She’d once believed she’d never love another. And she hadn’t in quite the same way, not the kind of dizzying, exciting, all-consuming passionate love she’d known with Geoffrey. “But no,” she murmured, more to herself. “Lawrence was not my soulmate.” He couldn’t have been. Not when her soul had been melded to Geoffrey’s. “I believe…” Her words trailed off.

“What do you believe?” he murmured.

Her gaze locked with his. “I believe that there are many kinds of love and that it is possible to find love with different people at different times. I loved him as a very dear friend. The best of friends.” As soon as those truths left her, she winced. “I trust I’ve… offended you?”

“Because you loved your husband?” He shook his head. “Never that, Lydia. I could never have been unhappy knowing you found happiness in your marriage. I only wanted that for you. I wanted your happiness.” A half grin—his rogue’s grin, as she’d oft called it—curled his lips in a tempting smile. “Of course, I wanted you to have that happiness with me. But I would have never begrudged you coming to love Lawrence or his loving you.” A somberness replaced the earlier teasing glimmer. “Ever, Lydia. You were the light of my life, and my heart was happier in knowing that you weren’t suffering.”

The pieces of her heart that had so very recently been saddened by loss and loneliness stirred as, in the place of a mournful sorrow that had so consumed her, a lightness slipped in. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He brought a hand out, and in a smooth, effortless caress, he glided his knuckles along the curve of her cheek, and Lydia froze.

She went absolutely motionless.

Over the years, when the memory of Geoffrey and the times they’d shared had crept in, she’d convinced herself she merely imagined the passion of something as simple as a kiss upon her wrist or hand. Or the shivers that came from a touch… or caress.

And he didn’t stop. Nay, Geoffrey stroked his hand back and forth. Up and down, and her entire body, all her senses, focused on that beguiling motion.

But then, suddenly, that touch stopped. He stopped. Lydia’s eyelashes flew open, and she found him staring at her. His hooded, opaque gaze, however, revealed not a hint of what he was thinking. Or whether he remembered how very good it had been between them.

Someone tried the door handle, jiggling that metal.

Heat scorched her cheeks, and she straightened quickly, lifting her head from where it rested along the back of the sofa.

Catching her eye, Geoffrey rested a fingertip against her lips, urging her to silence.

“It appears someone has beaten us to the library, sweet.” That deep, male murmur stretched from the corridor into the library.

“But I wished to explore Mardel’s naughty collection.” If words could pout, that high-pitched, slightly squeaky intonation would have been the visual of it. “Perhaps they’ll invite us in, allow us to join them, and we can all enjoy the books and one another?” The young woman’s hopeful query, breathless from desire, brought Lydia’s eyebrows shooting up once more.

Lydia fanned her flaming face and then caught the small smile upon Geoffrey’s hard lips.

She made herself drop her hand to her lap. He’d been naughty the moment she’d met him. And that reputation had followed him through the years. By his own admission, he’d ceased his wild ways, but also he’d been worldly enough to know about and—according to scandal sheets—experience the manner of wickedness the young pair engaged in on the other side of that panel.

The door handle rattled once more. “Hullooo? Do you want to shaaare?”

Lydia’s cheeks burned several degrees hotter, as there could be absolutely no doubting the double entendre contained within that request.

“It looks like they aren’t interested in your offer, dear heart, which means I’m going to have to pleasure you enough for four.”

There came a breathless giggle followed by a long, desire-laden moan and then a rhythmic thumping against the panel.

Lydia winced. “I’d say that is bad form, is it not?”

“Oh, undoubtedly so.”

Thump, thump, thump.

The young woman whimpered. “Pleeease,” she begged, and Lydia swiftly directed her gaze up at the ceiling, at the walls… anywhere but at the man seated across from her.

They would stop.

Surely soon.

“Ooh, don’t make me wait.”

“You don’t want it quick. I’m going to take you long and slow.”

Lydia winced. Apparently, they’d not be stopping anytime soon.

Except, the longer she remained seated there, those desirous groans and moans filled her ears and conjured wonderings about the wickedness that pair engaged in. She tangled her fingers in her skirts and refused to think about it. Or tried to. Lydia tried and failed.

A faint, wet, suckling sound filled the quiet.

“Mmmm,” the young woman sighed. “Suck me harder.”

Attuned as she was to the man seated beside her, she caught the slight, audible uptick in Geoffrey’s breathing. The slightly labored rise and fall indicated, despite his naughty reputation, he was as aroused as Lydia herself was.

It had been so long. So very long since she’d been held in a man’s arms.

And even longer since she’d been held in his.

And mayhap it was their reunion after all these years apart, or their being alone together in the midst of this scandalous affair, or her body’s yearning still to be touched and to touch another, all combined with her friends’ urgings that she experience joy and pleasure again, that brought her alive.

“Pleeease,” the young woman begged, her cries now loud and clear as the rhythmic banging against the door grew increasingly frenzied.

Her heart hammering, Lydia shifted slowly up onto her knees.

Geoffrey chuckled. “I daresay this isn’t the time to leeeave.” His last word raised several decibels as Lydia leaned in. He blinked slowly. “Lydia?” he whispered hoarsely.

She looked him square in the eyes, and then gripping him by the fabric of his jacket front, she dragged herself closer. And she kissed him.

There would be time later for shame and shock, but for now, her body had been awakened to the remembrance of desire, and she gave herself freely over to it.

He stilled, and then with a growl, he caught her firmly by the nape, a possessive, powerful touch that she’d so desperately loved and had forgotten how very much she’d missed, as he turned her head slightly, availing himself of her mouth, deepening the kiss.

She parted her lips, allowing him entry, and he swept inside, alternately swirling his tongue around inside and lashing against hers.

Outside the door, the young woman’s moans echoed loudly.

Wait, no… Those were hers.

Lydia’s and Geoffrey’s moans melded with the strangers’ outside, and that heavy ache between her legs grew sharp, so acute as to be painful.

Then Geoffrey’s hands were moving over her. Catching her by the hips, he guided her atop his lap so her shamefully short skirts rucked high about her waist and exposed her legs to the night air and his touch.

She whimpered, pressing herself against him. She’d missed this.

Feeling passion. She’d never thought to again know it. To feel it. Lydia hadn’t minded the marriage bed. Despite some of the disappointed tellings her friends had shared about their own relations with their husbands, her experiences had never been painful or awkward.

But neither had there been explosive passion and skin-tingling pleasure.

“Lydia,” Geoffrey rasped between kisses, her name an entreaty whispered against her mouth.

And I missed Geoffrey, too.

Panting, Lydia took his nape in her hands, the same way he had hers, and deepened the kiss.

Somewhere, a cry reached a crescendo pitch, and through the fog of passion roused in Geoffrey’s arms, Lydia took forever to register that sound belonging to another.

There came several more rapid thump-thumps from the lovers outside, followed by a low guttural groan, indicating the gentleman had joined his lover’s climax, and then silence.

Nay, not silence—the ragged, uneven breathing of Lydia and Geoffrey.

Embarrassment should bring her jerking away from him with a sense of shame at what she’d done here, in this place, with this man. Perhaps it was that she was an older woman, no longer in the bloom of youth, and she knew her mind and what she wanted, but she didn’t break away from Geoffrey and his ministrations. She wanted this moment to continue on. She wanted to find that same peak she’d only brought herself to this past year.

She tipped her head, allowing him access to her neck, and Geoffrey obliged.

Lydia’s eyes slid closed as he lightly nipped and suckled at the sensitive flesh there.

It was like coming home. As though he’d never forgotten.

And mayhap he hadn’t. Mayhap, for all the women who’d come after her, he remembered with the same keen intensity she did, just how magnificent it had been and what the other had loved.

He slid a hand between her legs, palming her in that most intimate of places with a tenderness that threatened to shatter her.

Breathless, Lydia moved her hips reflexively against him, urgently.

He slid a finger inside her wet channel, and whimpering, Lydia buried her head in his shoulder and inhaled deeply the scent of him. The citrusy scent of bergamot flooded her senses. He still smelled precisely as he had all those years ago. How very good this was. His smell. This moment. How very good she felt. This pleasure. His touch.

Then he slid a second finger inside and proceeded to move those long, powerful digits within her. A quiet cry escaped her.

“I love the feel of you,” he praised.

I love the feel of you touching me.

His gaze locked with hers; passion burned from those endless depths. “It has always been you.”

And her heart soared.

Those words floated in her mind, along with her echo of agreement, but she could not get them out. He’d reduced her to a place of acute sensation, where desire and the power of his pleasuring made it impossible for her to form a coherent word.

He continued stroking her, the drag exquisite as he drew Lydia deeper into a web of wanting, and she was content to find herself wrapped up in his spell over her.

The place between her legs throbbed and ached, and Lydia’s hips took on a rhythm of their own. She thrusted and retreated. Thrusted and retreated. The sensation built, drawing her up to that exquisite cliff she longed to fall from, and then Geoffrey kissed her, claiming her mouth once again, and that joining of their mouths, that special, intimate reunion, tossed her over the edge.

Lydia screamed softly, but Geoffrey swallowed her cry. His fingers continued to move within her, gliding inside, teasing, caressing, until he’d drawn every remnant of pleasure from her, and she collapsed against him.

His arms came up, and he folded her in the deepest, warmest embrace.

Struggling to get her breathing to rights, Lydia simply lay against the powerful wall of his chest and allowed herself that slow descent back to reality.

“I’ve scandalized you,” she said against his neck.

“An impossibility. You know me, love. I can’t be scandalized,” he said in his teasing tones, hoarsened ones, that put a dreamy smile on her lips.

Love.

How easily they’d slipped back into the way it had been.

Alas, the present always reared its head. With a sigh, she sat back on his lap. “My friends will be looking for me.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “That never stopped us before.”

Lydia laughed, a breathless giggle. Giggling? At her age? “Yes, but they are more protective than they were then,” she explained, brushing her fingers along the dusting of silver at his temples.

“I’m older,” he murmured.

“More distinguished, and dashing for it,” she said softly. “If that is possible.”

He laughed, his broad, powerful frame shaking against hers. He thought she flirted. Or teased. And yet, she didn’t. “I’m quite serious, you know. I have quite the discerning eye, Your Grace.”

They shared another smile, and then Geoffrey shifted her off his lap, guiding her skirts back down, signaling this time, this moment they’d stolen together, was at an end.

A profound regret swept through her.

“This was…” she paused, reaching for a word. “unexpected, Geoffrey,” she said softly.

“Which part?” He winked, drawing a laugh from her, and Lydia caught a throw pillow and slapped him playfully with it. His amusement faded, replaced with a somberness she couldn’t recall from him. Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. There’d been one time, that last time. “I should be going. My whole mission and all.” Was it her own feelings of regret at this latest parting that accounted for an imagining of that same sentiment from him?

“Yes, and Althea and Dorothy will be looking for me.” Lydia would resume the discontented, rather lonely life she’d lived this past year.

Ever the gentleman that he’d been with her, Geoffrey helped Lydia from the sofa, and together they made their way across the room to the doorway.

Turning the lock, Geoffrey clasped the handle of the door and drew the panel open. “After y—”

“You!” Althea’s horrified exclamation exploded in the room.

Lydia’s stomach dropped as she took in her and Geoffrey’s audience. She took in the four people present: her friends to the Duke of Mowbray and Baron Davenport who comprised the gathering.

“Don’t go taking that tone with our boy,” Mowbray snapped.

Althea scoffed. “Oh, come. Your boy hasn’t been a boy for some thirty years now.”

A small commotion erupted, as each respective pair dissolved into a clamorous defense of the other.

While the group quarreled, Lydia slid closer to Geoffrey.

“If we think this interfering is bad, can you imagine what their poor children have endured over the years?” she whispered.

“Mowbray’s son’s reputation certainly makes sense now,” Geoffrey spoke from the corner of his mouth. “Oppressive busybodies.”

“No good ever came from their relationship…” the baron was saying.

Althea chortled.

“You think that’s funny, you harridan?” the gentleman shot back.

“I think it’s amusing that you and I and Dorothy and that one”—Althea jabbed a thumb in Mowbray’s direction—“can at last manage to agree on something. Lydia was always too good for—”

“That is enough,” Lydia called over the din. When her words failed to penetrate the increasing melee, she raised her voice. “I said that is enough.”

The increased volume, layered with a sternness, managed to break through their noise. Silenced, the group looked to Lydia. “Now, I, along with His Grace, deeply appreciate the support and devotion of our friends…”

“Do speak for yourself,” Geoffrey muttered at her side, and she repressed a smile. He leaned close and whispered at her ear, “But then, you were always the more diplomatic of our pair.”

Althea gasped. “My God, is he flirting with her even now?”

Lydia felt her cheeks burning once more. Had she even blushed this much as a debutante? And what’s more, what would they say if they knew the manner of activity she and Geoffrey had engaged in just a short while ago?

“Been so long since anyone’s flirted with you that you fail to recognize it,” Davenport mumbled.

Fire sparked in Althea’s eyes. “I’ll have you know I have plenty of fellows flirting with me. Plenty. Why, your own son just this very night was making an overture for—”

Horror wreathed the other man’s features. “My son is here, too,” he croaked. Then his eyes bulged. “And he was flirting with you.”

Althea bristled. “How dare—?”

Lydia cleared her throat loudly, interrupting her friend and giving the other woman a warning look.

“What?” Althea asked. “His son was flirting with me, and it was rude of Davenport to suggest—oh, fine,” she mumbled when Lydia gave her a look.

“However,” Lydia went on, “you may rest assured we are not some young children just out, but rather, completely grown adults capable of making decisions as to who we wish to speak with. And I daresay we can all agree that one of the benefits of our increased years is the absence of having to answer for who we speak to and when.”

The pair of gentlemen—once scoundrels, since reformed, and now widowers—bowed their heads with the proper contriteness.

The same, however, could not be said of Lydia’s more obstinate friends.

“You are done here, gel,” Althea muttered.

As one, Althea and Dorothy reached into the doorway, and each collected Lydia by an elbow, tugged her out, and led her off.

As she found herself dragged away by her well-meaning friends, she couldn’t resist stealing a last and final look over her shoulder at Geoffrey.

Hands stuffed in his pockets, his hair mussed, he’d the look of the roguish gent who’d stolen her heart all those years ago.

Catching her eye, he winked.

Lydia swiftly yanked her focus forward as she found herself riddled with terror by the realization that he’d the same effect on her senses and heart all these years later.