Free Shall We Dance? by Kasey Michaels Page A

senseless at least a dozen times a day, poking at them like that. And the lenses aren’t all as big around as moons. I am no expert, but I believe you’re wearing gentlemen’s spectacles.”
    â€œThey were my father’s, yes, and my mother said they were more than good enough,” Georgiana admitted. “But different lenses were fitted for them.”
    â€œAnd in fifty years, you might just grow into them. In the meantime, we can search out better ones tomorrow, before I take you driving in the Park at five for the Promenade, all right?”
    Georgiana chewed on this for a moment, mentally cataloging her woefully inadequate wardrobe. “The Park? In public? I thought this was only for Amelia. And Aunt Rowena. And my mother and Mr. Bateman, so they’ll let me out of the house and you can play at saving the queen. But I thought that was all.”
    â€œReally. The question that immediately springs to mind, Georgiana, is who are you ashamed of? Yourself. Or, more reasonably, of me? My mama, for one, would understand that.”
    She stood up so quickly she banged a knee against the table and had to bite back a rather unladylike word. Country life and little supervision had done considerable damage to what were supposed to be her fragile female ways. “Now you’re making fun of me, and I must warn you, sir, that I am more than capable of giving back as good as I get.”
    He also got to his feet. “Yes, I’d already noticed that. Dare I say you fair fascinate me?”
    Georgiana looked at him, at his slightly unruly black hair, his laughing blue eyes, his altogether handsome face and figure. “Of course I do. I daresay I fascinate men every day,” she said dryly, believing not a single word that came out of his mouth, then looked toward the doorway. “What on earth could be keeping Amelia? Do you think anyone told her I’m here? I vow, this is the strangest household.”
    Â 
    B ERNARD N ESTOR made his way to the servants’ entrance of the establishment in Hammersmith and knocked loudly on the door.
    He’d been up and about very early, and had been hidden behind some shrubbery since seven, in ample time to watch the departure of what he was convinced were the butler, two footmen, and one hatchet-faced woman, all of them carrying their belongings in various portmanteaus and tied-up sheets. The woman most definitely had at least one tall candlestick shoved up under her apron.
    The one he’d decided had to be an upper servant, if not the butler, secured himself a hack within a half mile. So he’d followed the others on foot, all the way to the nearest pub, and sat himself down behind them to listen to their conversation.
    Good, thoroughly stupid English citizens, the trio of them, all of them appalled by the charges brought against their queen. And all of them finding her guilty because it suited their judgmental spleens, with no need to hear a single fact when supposition was so juicy, and unwilling to spend another night beneath the roof of such a disgraceful woman.
    And he’d been right. The fourth person had been the butler, who had already promised to assist them in gaining new employment in a more Christian, God-fearing household.
    So the queen needed a new butler, did she? Well, it had been about time Bernard Nestor’s luck had changed for the better! And it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t know how to go on. He had lived in his father’s house, hadn’t he? He’d survived in that small office behind Brougham’s butler’s suite of rooms— rooms for a butler, with only a single, near-hole-in-the-wall for his most devoted assistant. Yes, he knew how to go on, and that knowledge, plus that niggling problem with the workings of his brain box, gave him untold courage, if not a chin.
    Now he knocked again when no one answered, imperiously this time, and when the door finally opened, he stepped inside,