Heat rose and she squirmed in her seat. “No,” she managed breathlessly. “I have not broken my vows.” She resisted the urge to ask the same of him. It was none of her business. “Besides, a divorce is out of the question. It would require an Act of Parliament, which would create precisely the kind of scandal I am trying to avoid.”

In all honesty, Juliet would probably welcome a scandal; if Mother was forced to relinquish her dreams of a title, her sister could marry simpering Simeon instead. But Mother would be hurt. She truly cared about the opinion of the ton and loved the gaiety of London. She wouldn’t want to be banished to the wilds of Lincolnshire. She’d experienced enough heartache when Georgie’s father had died. Georgie refused to add to it.

Wylde tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “So, we can’t avoid being married.”

Georgie grimaced. “No. I’m sorry. It was never my intention to—”

He waved away her apology with an impatient flick of those long fingers. “What’s done is done. We’ll just have to make the best of it.”

He said it in the same way a battlefield doctor might say, We’ll have to remove the leg, then. With a sort of fatalistic resignation.

Georgie battled a paradoxical sense of pique. Surely being married to her wasn’t that bad?

“You’ll barely have to see me,” she said brightly. “I’ll return to Lincolnshire once the season’s over and you can continue your, ah, gentlemanly pursuits here in town. We can lead completely separate lives.”

There, that sounded suitably worldly and sophisticated. Precisely the kind of arrangement that would appeal to someone like Wylde.

There was something profoundly depressing about such an arrangement, though. Where was the companionship, the shared laughter and affection that had characterized her own parents’ marriage? Where was the happy union she’d once dreamed of for herself? Georgie stifled a sigh. Six unsuccessful seasons had proved how little gentlemen desired a sharp-tongued bluestocking with an unladylike interest in commerce. She had to face reality.

Yet that niggling sense of dissatisfaction wouldn’t go away. This was all so insipid. So logical. So unexciting. She wanted to start having adventures, to start living her life, instead of watching it go by as if it were all happening to someone else. A secret marriage of convenience would fend off Josiah, true, but she’d still be plagued by other bothersome fortune hunters. She’d still have to spend the next twenty years turning them down, being seen as an eternal spinster too picky to choose a husband. Eventually she’d be relegated to the side of the room with the wallflowers and the dowagers, an object of pity and scorn.

No, it was not to be borne. It was time to take control of her life.

“Wait,” she said. “What if we don’t keep our marriage quiet?”