The Undoing of a Libertine (Somerset Historicals 2)

“Reminded?”

“Yes. I think so. She looks so much like our mother now that she’s grown a woman. She is a reminder of what he’s lost,” Russell said, eyes flickering left.

“Well, that’s not her fault she looks like your mother, is it? And what is wrong with her sporting habits?” Jeremy asked, suddenly interested in this conversation.

He recalled Georgina Russell as a young girl. She had always been there when he’d visited Oakfield, loved to ride horses and shoot at targets, for he had seen her do both on many occasions. He knew she liked to draw as well. He could envision her with sketchbook in hand, observing and then rendering nature skillfully in charcoal. Blonde, pretty, quiet, and fiercely independent was how he pictured her. Intelligent, not silly and empty-headed like most girls of society. It had been years since he’d seen her, and Jeremy had to admit he wanted to know what she was like now.

“Nothing. At least I don’t think so. Georgie is lovely—a free spirit, she’s not going to sit inside embroidering cushions all day long and be happy about it. Our mother died when she was still a child, and Pater never did pay much attention to anything after Mater left us. He’ll see Georgie married and off his hands whether she likes it or not.”

“Has anyone offered for her?”

“There is one, but he is odious. You know Lord Pellton?”

“Gawd! Please not him!” Jeremy did not temper his disgust. “A bloody degenerate that one, and far too old for her!” The thought of that reprobate slithering over the nubile body of Georgina Russell made him ill. What a deplorable waste of a perfectly fine woman. Jeremy actually shuddered at the vision that popped into his head.

Tom Russell chuckled. “She flat out refused. Caused a huge uproar in the household and has practically been kept under house arrest since. Our father and Pellton went to university together. Pater thinks she should be honored and keeps trying to convince her to agree to the marriage. He says if she won’t take Pellton, then she must do her duty and assent to another just as suitable, for he means to have her settled as soon as possible.”

“Well, your sister must have some sense if she refused Pellton. He is a sodding p

ig.”

“True that, Greymont.” Russell stroked his chin thoughtfully before his eyes lit up in inspiration. “I know! Why don’t you marry her? That would make us brothers.” He arched his brows at Jeremy, directing his gaze to below the waist. “You’d have to curb that whore-pipe of yours mind you. She is my sister after all. I don’t know how well she’d take to your proclivities—”

Jeremy just gaped at his friend. His face must have told a story of such surprise that Russell had to pause, a wide grin settling in on his square jaw. Russell was clearly amused by his own bright idea.

Jeremy kept quiet and absorbed the suggestion even though he had no intentions of curbing anything he liked to do, now or in the future.

Russell babbled on happily, “You will have done your duty to your family, my father will get his wish, and Georgie would be far happier with you, I just know it!” He clapped Jeremy hard between the shoulder blades. “See, my friend, I have solved your problem for you!”

Jeremy’s drink sloshed over the rim of his glass from the force of the blow to his back. The oaken tang of spirits wafted up his nose in a way that soothed. “I never took you for much of a schemer, Russell. And your cleverness exceeds the limits of most persons—you just act the idiot as a ruse.”

“My friend, I cannot deny your charge. It suits me. I find it ever so much fun to go around being cleverer than people think I am.” Tom tipped his glass in a salute and drained the scotch.

During their card play, Jeremy decided to accept Tom Russell’s invitation to Oakfield for a shooting party. Or at least he used the call as his guise. His friend’s proposition had intrigued him greatly. Now that the seed had been planted, Jeremy wanted to go right away.

The more he thought of Georgina Russell, the more he could picture her as the perfect candidate for matrimony. She came from a good family, would bring a respectable dowry, not too young, not too old, attractive, relatives he liked, and from what Russell said, still a lover of the outdoors, so she probably wouldn’t mind skipping the endless social battlefield of London high society. That fact alone would elevate her in his esteem. She sounded like a pearl to him.

He would go and assess the situation, see her again, get to know her better. Truth be told, she caught his eye at only sixteen years old. Jeremy remembered how appealing he found her then, even before she’d grown up. What would she be like now? How would she find him? he wondered. Might she like him?

Yes, this was good. Georgina Russell… For the first time, Jeremy felt the glimmer of hope.

Chapter Two

I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful, a faery’s child

Her hair was long, her foot was light

And her eyes were wild.

—John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1820)

Georgina breathed in the fresh air, detecting the earthy scent of rain seeping from the clouds. Just being out of the house felt a relief. The stark gloom of Oakfield’s interior was oppressive enough, but being confined and having to recall her shame was more than she could bear today.

Her father never let her forget it. Trying to marry her off to the first man who made an offer was his way of making reparation to her. It didn’t feel like reparation though. It felt like punishment for something she had not asked for, but had been laid upon her like a curse. She felt cursed in truth. She believed it. Why else would such a thing have happened to her?

Horrifying as it was, there were times she could still feel his hands groping her, the smell of his breath panting at her, the pull of her dress ripping under his hands, the weight of him, the taste of paralyzing terror in her throat. The worst had been the words. The things he’d said when he—