She didn’t miss a beat. “It is rather hard to find a promising gentleman. I sometimes think it would be easier to find a goose that really did lay golden eggs. So many of the gentlemen in society haven’t a thought to their head, truly. They consider being knowledgeable about hunting or hounds sufficient and don’t worry with anything else. And one must make conversation about something at the breakfast table. Wouldn’t it be awful to be in a marriage with a lot of awkward pauses?”

He’d never thought about it. “If you say so.”

“I do. Nothing but the clicking of the silverware against the china and the slurping of tea. Horrible. Then there are the ones who wear corsets and use rouge and patches.” She scrunched up her nose. “Have you any idea how unappetizing it is to kiss a man wearing rouge on his lips?”

“No.” Harry frowned. “Have you?”

“Well, no,” she admitted, “but I have it on good authority that it’s not an experience one would want to repeat.”

“Ah.” That was about the only thing he could think to say, but it seemed to do.

“I was engaged once.” She gazed idly at a herd of cows they were passing.

Harry straightened. “Really? What happened?” Had some lordling jilted her?

“I was only nineteen, which, in my opinion, is a rather dangerous age. One is old enough to know quite a bit but not wise enough to realize there are many things that one doesn’t know.” Lady Georgina paused and looked around. “Where, exactly, are we going today?”

They had crossed into Granville land.

“To the Pollard cottage,” he said. What had happened with her engagement? “You were talking about when you were nineteen.”

“I found myself engaged to Paul Fitzsimmons; that was his name, you know.”

“I understand that part,” he nearly growled. “But how did you get engaged, and how did it end?”

“I’m a trifle fuzzy about how I got engaged.”

He looked at her, brows raised.

“Well, it’s true.” She sounded defensive now. “One moment I was strolling on the terrace with Paul at a dance, discussing Mr. Huelly’s wig—it was pink, can you imagine?—and then suddenly, boom! I was engaged.” She looked at him as if this made perfect sense.

He sighed. That was probably the best he would get out of her. “And it fell through how?”

“Not long afterward, I discovered that my bosom beau, Nora Smyth-Fielding, was in love with Paul. And when I saw that, it was a short step to realizing that he was in love with her. Although”—Lady Georgina frowned— “I still don’t understand why he asked me to marry him when he so obviously doted on Nora. Perhaps he was confused, poor man.”

Poor man, my arse. This Fitzsimmons sounded like a half-wit. “What did you do?”

She shrugged. “I broke the engagement off, of course.”