Read Online Bexley-Smythe Quintet 01 - Flight of Fancy by Catherine Gayle - Free Book Online

night.
    Georgie tried to take a step towards him, but her feet seemed to suddenly be stuck, as though weighted down by marble.
    Harry chuckled beside her. “I thought you never had doubts.”
    She took the time to grant him one brief scowl, and then forcefully lifted a foot, beginning her trek across the way with Harry by her side.
    When they drew close enough to hear one another without shouting, Harry lifted a hand in greeting. “A good evening to you, Haworth.”
    The viscount tossed his cheroot to the ground and stubbed it with the toe of his boot. “You said you were bringing someone who had business dealings with me tonight, Casemore.” His voice was gruff, and more than just slightly perturbed.
    This was not a good beginning. Why would Harry have told him such a thing? Georgie glanced at him in a bit of a panic, but in the moonlight, she was unable to deduce anything in his expression.
    “ And that I’ve done,” Harry said jovially. “Lord Haworth, meet Lady Georgianna Bexley-Smythe. My lady, this is Viscount Haworth.”
    A grunting sort of sound came from Haworth. “Bexley-Smythe?” He shook his head, his dark, short-cropped locks swaying gently in the cool night air. “The only Bexley-Smythe I have business with is Stalbridge himself, and he hasn’t bothered to grace Town with his presence as of yet so we can settle it as gentlemen.”
    Blast! Percy owed Haworth a debt, too? Was there a man in all of London her brother hadn’t swindled or hoodwinked in some way? Her hopes of flying in Lord Haworth’s gas balloon seemed to be dissipating into the fine layer of mist that had descended upon the night.
    She couldn’t give up without at least trying, however. “I can assure you, Lord Haworth,” she said, though her voice faltered, “my business with you is my own.”
    He took two bounding steps closer to her, eyes ablaze, and it required every last blessed ounce of Georgie’s fortitude not to burrow into Harry’s side and beg his protection.
    Haworth narrowed his eyes at her, looking down at her in a bit of a sneer. “What business could you, a young lady hardly out of the schoolroom, have with me?”
    “ I’m rather inclined to ask the same question,” Harry piped in. “We’re both waiting on pins and needles for your answer, Lady Georgianna.”
    Harry’s cheekiness only served to fluster her more than she already was. The added pressure from Pippa’s brother was not in her plans. Not that Georgie truly had a plan from this point on. She’d only thought through up until the moment she met Lord Haworth.
    With her lips pursed, Georgie shook her head. “I am terribly sorry, Harry, but it was not in our agreement that you be privy to this conversation. I would like to speak with Lord Haworth alone, please.”
    One side of Harry’s mouth turned down and he crossed his arms over his chest, looking first at Haworth, then at Georgie, and then at Haworth again. “I’ll be right over here on the other side of the clearing, then.” Slowly, he moved far enough away that they could converse at a normal level without him overhearing, but where he was still within plain view.
    She bit her lower lip, wishing she had spent more time on trying to sort out this predicament and less time on worrying who Pippa’s Lord Colebrooke might be. Too late for that, however.
    When she returned her attention to Haworth, he also had his arms crossed before him. In the hazy moonlight, she could make out a mocking sneer. “Well?” he asked when she didn’t immediately speak. “What sort of business could we possibly have with each other, Lady Georgianna? Or is this about the bet in the book at White’s? I had nothing to do with putting it there, you know.”
    A bet in the book? Pippa and Moira and Patience were all named in the book, but she wasn’t. Was she? Oh, heavens.
    But if she was named in the book, that would make finding a decent match even less likely than it already was, given Percy’s behavior of late.