The Ice Duchess by Tracy Sumner
Chapter 2
“He commands, you follow,” Georgiana whispered and wiggled through the throng who’d rushed the blazing bowl of snapdragon, a drunken effort to stamp out the raisin that had set fire to not only the Earl of Piddington’s sleeve but Lord Buxton’s carpet.
Why, oh why, had she opted to attend this rowdy affair?
To further the Duchess Society’s reach, Georgiana proposed as she exited the salon. Yet, they only tutored five young ladies at one time, and the roster was booked through 1821. Try again, my dear. Georgiana turned in a measured circle in the hallway, wondering where Dex had gone. Then, she noticed a path of holly berries sprinkled on parquet pine, leading away from the manor’s grand staircase and into the bowels of the house. She released a hushed breath of laughter she couldn’t contain. Vexing man.
Following the berry trail down the deserted corridor, Georgiana revised her answer. She’d accepted the invitation after making the melancholic decision to lease a home for the holiday a mere fifteen-minute ride from the Derbyshire village where she’d grown up. A ten-minute journey from her family’s small estate, a house her cousin had inherited upon her father’s death and not once invited her to visit.
Derbyshire was no longer hers.
The manor she’d leased was lovely. And lonely.
She was a fool for trying to step into the past.
Here she was, disconcerting decision to return aside, following a mysterious route her childhood companion had laid out like their adventures of old. Which was horrifying and intoxicating. More intoxicating than horrifying, which said a lot about how she was constructed.
The berry trail ended at the last door on the right. Georgiana paused, heart tripping, breath suspended until she forced it out with an audible puff. Why was she following Dex as she would have ten years ago?
What in the world was she doing?
She was opening the door and stepping inside what looked to be a rarely-used study—that’s what. Allowing her vision to adjust to the meager moonbeams clawing through the dirty windowpanes. For a moment, she simply took it in. The gentle tick of a clock. A haunting blend of shadow and light. Furniture draped in cloth, the scent of dust and disuse, and on the lowest note, a new fragrance: man.
She was going to answer the dare, cross to the scoundrel who sat sprawled on the floor, back wedged against a threadbare sofa, long legs crossed at the ankle, two glasses, a decanter, and a flickering taper beside him. As if this was planned. As if they still knew each other. When she got closer and was able to see Dex’s eyes, the color undetermined in the subdued light, she was stunned to feel her soul soaring free of her body.
His gaze, obscure at best, shouldn’t have the power to turn her inside out.
Not after all this time.
He stared up at her, his delight sending tiny grooves from his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Hello, Georgie.”
“Dex,” she returned without a quiver, settling beside him with as much dignity as she could manage, her stomach clenching because no one had called her Georgie in years. She only sat because his smile was real. If he’d pulled a fake Munro on her, she would’ve been out of the house like a shot and back to her sorrowful manor, shimmering promise surrounding the night or not.
He nudged a glass her way with his pinkie, his aroma washing over her with the movement. Whiskey and leather and some variety of mint. He’d always smelled better than fresh biscuits, better than anything to her mind. She lifted the tumbler to her lips, her fingers trembling but not enough for him to notice. “How did you organize a private party so quickly? I’m honored.”
“I raided a vacant morning room two doors down. Swiped the candle and the refreshments. I don’t think they’ll find us.” He tipped his head to stare at the ceiling. “God, I hope not.”
“You mean,” she whispered against the crystal rim, “you don’t find the effort to secure a flaming raisin between your teeth to be the height of amusement?”
His gaze found hers, a gradual study as potent as the brush of his finger across her skin. “Tell me something. Why the name?”
She took a slow sip, the brandy blazing a path down her throat. Oh. He’d heard about the society. Of course. Gossip grew like wildflowers at events such as these. “Because everyone wants to secure a duke, don’t you know? Once you’re Markham, you will.” Her laugh was stunted, dry as kindling. “The Countess Society doesn’t have the same appeal, I’m afraid. Though I’m rightly qualified.”
He shifted his legs, and she tried not to notice how long they were, how his sleek black trousers clung to his muscular thighs, his lean hips. The man was built, had always been built, like a thoroughbred. “I meant the nickname, Georgie.”
She swiveled around on her bottom to face him, irritation a swift tide through her veins. Blast and bother, if she showed a sliver of ankle to Dexter Munro, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before. “Oh, that is rich. Do you know why I’m presumed to be made of ice? Because I’m financially independent and unwilling to enter into another marital agreement? No, it’s my transparency about my situation that frightens them. I have freedom, finally, and I’ve made no bones about the fact I chose freedom over any other arrangement. I walk the streets alone. I ride my mount through Hyde Park as cracking fast as I like. Many women in my situation feel this way; they simply don’t admit it. Or act on their liberty. It shakes the entire foundation of society. What if, they ask, we are happier without?”
Dex laughed, a musical sound that lit her up like one of those raisins and turned his glass in a tight circle on the floor, making a crude design in the dust. “What about passion to go with this grand liberty? A reasonable alternative for a widow of independent means to consider.”
Georgiana huffed an incredulous breath through her nose and pressed her back like a ruler against the sofa. “A lover to melt the Ice Countess, you mean? You disappoint me, Dex. As if this hasn’t been proposed in a hundred different ways since Arthur’s death three years ago.”
“By whom?” Dex asked with a brutal edge.
“Oh, don’t get your hackles up, playing big brother. Although Anthony would thank you for it.” She tapped her glass to his, took an insolent drink. “What I want from life is what I have. The Duchess Society and my modest circle of friends. The dilapidated dower house in Sussex where I will retire when my funds reach a level inconsistent with maintaining a middling life in London. The ability to make my own choices, good or bad, which may include tumbling off my mount during a wild ride through Hyde Park. Who knows? What I don’t want is another husband. My entire life has been dictated by a man’s needs, their mismanagement. I’m finally free to mismanage my own life, thank you very much.”
Dex’s head fell back, his hands going into a loose fold over his belly. “I never thought of you as a sister, Georgie.”
The trilling notes of the pianoforte paraded down the hallway and slid under the crack in the door, blending with the whisper of their breaths. She’d never thought of him as a brother, so they were even.
“You’re a matchmaker then?” he finally asked.
She rolled her head to find his eyes as green as the holly trimming the house and fixed on her. It was as good a time as any to admit she would always find him attractive, always experience a tug in her stomach—and a profound twist to her heart—when he was near. One had to accept what one could not change. A life lesson she’d embraced. “I educate those being forced into a situation conceivably not of their choosing. A true education. Many women I work with have never read a legal agreement, never managed finances or a household. In certain instances, I’ve arranged introductions. Call it matchmaking if you will, with suitable men who don’t have vile reputations or addictions their wives would have to account for. My investigator researches every one of them, A to Z. My young ladies don’t need me to teach them how to sew a straight stitch or organize a proper dinner party, although those pointless lessons are on the program to soothe anxious mothers.” She looked to the moonlight streaking in the window, to the glimmers of dust sparking the air, to him. “It’s what I do because I must. I teach things I wish I’d been taught.”
Dex brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed, a gesture he’d employed when he had a problem he couldn’t solve. “Winterbourne wasn’t a good choice. With Anthony gone, I should have stepped in. I knew more about the man than your father likely did, things whispered over a gaming hell table. I should have talked to him.”
“You were off with anthracite and basalt, and I, well, I made the right decision.” She turned away, so she didn’t have to look in his eyes during this speech. “I didn’t love him. He was seventy, his life almost over, as harsh as that sounds. Arthur solved my family’s financial problems without a murmur of complaint. It was a transaction. I lived mostly apart from him once he noted how often I voiced my opinions, consigned to the charming though worn dower house in Sussex I mentioned. There’ve been worse arrangements. He purchased a pretty vase then found he had nowhere to display it. And later, he didn’t even like the vase anymore.”
“Georgie…”
She shook off his pacifying plea. “I was happy being tucked away, out of sight. Honestly, I was. My independent spirit was distasteful, and I wasn’t willing to relinquish it.”
She felt a tickle, turned as Dex slipped a strand of hair behind her ear. “This discussion isn’t making me desirous for marriage,” he said.
“Must you be desirous?” she whispered in horror as if he’d suggested he planned to take his sword and run someone through.
Dex hung his head, his spurt of laugher striking her cheek. “Oh, Georgie, how I’ve missed you.” Heat blistered her skin as he withdrew his hand, his thumb skimming her jaw, a sensitive spot beneath her ear. He didn’t linger, didn’t even seem to know his touch affected her. “I must. If I don’t produce an heir, my family is left with a perilous path of succession. My cousin, Alistair. Remember him? He would ravage the duchy in less than a year. Hundreds of tenant’s lives held in the balance. The decision is without ambiguity, isn’t it? One I’ve put off for far too long. When my father was still strong enough to discuss my future, I promised to provide the name of my fiancée by Twelfth Night.” He tapped his fingers in a staccato rhythm on the floor. “I could hold off, perhaps, negotiate for more time, but to what purpose? It’s the last thing I can give him. The last thing I will give him.”
“So soon.” The Feast of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night, was the official end of Christmastide and just over two weeks away. But the choice wasn’t negotiable. Alistair Fontanel, Viscount Harrison, was one of the most profligate wastrels in England. A complete and utter bounder. He’d tried to kiss her when she was fifteen, and Dex had bloodied his lip in repayment. That was the last she’d seen of him. “You must marry once, I suppose. Give it a whirl,” she murmured, the most inane advice she’d ever uttered.
He laughed again, the sound shadowing her like a caress. “Dependable guidance, Georgie Whitcomb.”
She polished off her brandy, wishing she had more. Tomorrow, she would think about Dex marrying. But not now. Not in this enchanting world where she had his attention for the first time in seven years.
“You’ve visited my father,” he said, the turn in conversation surprising her. “Though he didn’t mention it to me.”
“Of course.”
“You think I’m a bad son. When I’ve tried, visiting Derbyshire at least once a year, managing the accounts for the estates from afar because he was ill.”
She shook her head. “Maybe I think he was a bad father.” At Dex’s startled exhalation, she clarified, “For a man who wanted to guide his future, I mean. For a person with a life passion. He can be forgiven as it’s not typical in our circle.” A desire to be something more, to learn and to know, pieces of Dex that had wrapped silken thread around her heart and yanked tight. “He blames me, in part, for the love you have of all things deceased and captured in sediment.” She released her own laugh, shocked to hear it sounded authentic. “I believe that’s how he phrased it.” In between coughing blood into his embroidered handkerchief.
“We were children. What to do but roam every square inch of our environs?” Dex edged his finger over until it covered one of hers, a tentative touch. The ache in her belly was immediate and overwhelming. “The fossils were a dividend to such friendship.”
A burst of merriment in the hallway had them bounding to their feet. Although Georgiana was a widow and Dex a family friend, the twilight splendor of this impromptu picnic painted an intimate and vaguely improper picture neither of them could refute. There was a bump against the wall, more laughter, inebriated conversation. Georgiana grimaced, realizing they were being interrupted by a trysting couple. She looked around with a nervous giggle. The room wasn’t a bad spot for it.
“Get behind the sofa,” Dex whispered, adding a hand signal that looked like he was giving an order to his dog. “Under the dust cover. I’ll get rid of them.”
Blowing out the candle, she kicked it across the room, scrambling to do his bidding for the second time this evening. “How?”
“I’ll figure that out when they stumble in,” Dex growled and yanked the sheet over her as she dropped to a crouch, a cloud of filth raining down like snow. Not a minute later, he lifted the length of canvas just enough to catch her gaze. That look, she thought with a burst of excitement she was mad to feel—she should’ve been afraid of that look. That smile. His eyes had changed color, too. Always a dreadful sign. Now hazel, with dazzling, devilish streaks of gold racing through them. She’d have loved to record mood to color, a notion as crazy as the exhilaration pulsing through her.
“A wager,” he whispered as the study’s doorknob rattled. “Remember those?”
“Are you daft? I’m not wagering like we did when we were children!”
His smile captured his entire face. “Are you saying no to a wager? You? Georgiana Elaine Collins Whitcomb?”
She glanced at the door, where the commotion continued though no one had tumbled in on them yet. Waving her hand frantically, she said, “Yes, yes, I’m amenable!”
“The couple about to interrupt our reunion. I say it’s Lady Alexander and Lord Welford.”
She searched her mind for interactions she’d helplessly recorded this evening. “Lord Ambrose,” she blurted. “And Lady Delmont-Burris.”
“Inspired,” he murmured and tapped his travel-weary Hessian on the faded carpet, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. No silly patent heels for this man. His expression was wicked. She’d forgotten how much she liked being wicked, too. “If I win, you draw up a list of three suitables from your society.” He sketched his hand in a lazy loop, nothing complimentary about her life’s work in the gesture. “I need help finding a wife, and you can advertise having assisted a lowly man saddled with a dukedom. Fairly charitable my piece, as it’s good for both of us. Will completely legitimize your organization’s name if one pauses to consider.”
She rocked back on her heels, flustered but definitely, definitely not overcome with jealousy. “Dex, the suitables I typically locate are men.”
He released another of those dangerous smiles. “Not my proclivity.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” she couldn’t help but reply.
His brow winged high, just the one. A trick Dex knew made her want to punch him. Or used to. And, blast it, he’d left it to her to ask, “What do I get if I win?”
He gazed at her, a flurry of emotions sweeping his face. “What do you want?”
“An adventure,” she answered without thinking.
The moon moved behind a cloud and shadow swept over him. “Done,” he returned and dropped the sheet as the door burst open, and the amorous couple stumbled in.
In the end, she and Dex both won.
Lord Ambrose and Lord Welford made fumbling excuses for entering a deserted space when their respective spouses were in other parts of the house, while Dex made gracious asides, offering no explanation for his presence in the room, not one word. And no one asked.
After they left, Dex’s footfalls closed in on her. “My, that was interesting. To be safe, stay here for ten minutes, then return to the party. I’ve got to get back to my father. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the wager over lunch at Markham Manor, one o’clock.” With the toe of his boot, he nudged something beneath the sheet. “Merry Christmas, Georgie,” he said and crossed the room, the door a soft snick behind him.
Dazed, Georgiana rooted around, brushing her hand over a round pebble. She sighed and flipped the canvas back, dust swirling and shimmering in the moonlight. The rock was a dazzling cerulean glow against her pale skin. It had been in his pocket, she surmised, as heat flowed from the stone and through her body.
What have I gotten myself into, she wondered as she closed her fingers around a Christmas gift only Dexter Munro would think to give her.