“My lady.” Harry laughed, a nasty, hoarse sound. “I may be merely your servant, but credit me with some intelligence. You were closeted with your three aristocratic brothers all day, and then you summoned me to your library. What is this if not a dismissal?”

She was losing control of the conversation. She spread her hands helplessly. “I just need to talk to you.”

“What do you wish to talk about, my lady?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” George squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think. He wasn’t making this any easier for her. “Tony is pressing me to make a decision about us. And I don’t know what to do.”

“Are you asking me what to do?”

“I . . .” She drew a breath. “Yes.”

“It seems simple enough to me, poor commoner that I am,” Harry said. “Let us continue as we have.”

George looked down at her hands. “But that’s just it. I can’t.”

When she looked up again, Harry’s expression was so blank she might’ve been staring in the eyes of a dead man. Lord, how she’d begun to hate that wooden face. “Then you’ll have my resignation by tomorrow.”

“No.” She wrung her hands. “That isn’t what I want at all.”

“But you can’t have it both ways.” Harry seemed suddenly weary. His beautiful green eyes were dulled by something close to despair. “You can either be my lover or I will leave. I’ll not stay as some convenience for you, like that gelding in your stable here. You ride him when at Woldsly and forget him the rest of the year. Do you even know his name?”

Her mind went blank. The fact was, she didn’t know the horse’s name. “It isn’t like that.”

“No? Pardon, but what is it like, my lady?” Anger was breaking through Harry’s wooden mask, painting scarlet flames across his cheekbones. “Am I a stud for hire? Nice for a romp in bed, but after the tupping, not good enough to show your family?”

George could feel a blush heat her own cheeks. “Why are you being so crude?”

“Am I?” Harry was suddenly in front of her, standing too close. “You must forgive me, my lady. That’s what you get when you take a common lover: a crude man.” His fingers framed her face, his thumbs hot against her temples. She felt her heart skitter in her chest at his touch. “Isn’t that what you wanted when you chose me to take your maidenhead?”

She could smell spirits on his breath. Was that the reason for this hostility? Was he drunk? If so, he showed no other signs. She inhaled deeply to steady her own emotions, to try to counter his terrible sorrow. “I—”