Free Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) by Jaima Fixsen Page B

longer.” Before she could stop him, he snatched an evil looking pair of scissors from the basket beside her.  
    “Don’t,” she said, reaching for his arm.  
    “Have you changed your mind? Do you like it?”  
    “What else am I to do?”  
    It was the desperation in her eyes that decided him. “Anything you like,” he said, opening the scissors. His fingers were too large to fit into the handles further than his first knuckles, but despite his awkward hacking the blades devoured the cloth, snipping through the wadded folds and littering arrow shaped bits onto the carpet. Georgiana stared at him, her hands stuck to the arms of her chair. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t do anything you please. You could travel. Learn to paint. Form a dramatic society. Write a novel—clever or disgusting, whatever you choose.” He swallowed. “Take a lover. Or join the Quakers. Anything, if it makes you happy.” He dropped his hands to his sides, his aching thumb still trapped in the scissors.  
    She swallowed.  
    “I miss her too,” he said. “Let’s leave.” Until London recovered from the news, neither of them could be happy here. When he went riding he missed Sophy, and he suspected the parties were no better for his wife. Jasper wasn’t speaking to either of them, and though their daughter Henrietta was trying to be diplomatic, she was too occupied with her young children to give her mother more than occasional company.  
    “Together?” Georgiana asked. “Just what do you think we would we do?”  
    His heart, which had been thumping so wildly, turned to a lump of lead. On the eve of Sophy’s desertion he had promised his wife he wouldn’t let her be lonely. He hadn’t been thinking. Outside of plans for Sophy, they hadn’t had a real conversation all year—and for a good number of years before that.  
    Defeated, but still unwilling to desert the field, he slumped into his chair, staring at the fragments of silk scattered between them. He couldn’t imagine how many hours she had spent, stitching flowers or fruit or birds. “You deserve to be happy,” he said.  
    On her second attempt, she managed to speak. “I find it is very seldom that people get what they deserve.”  
    He felt the barb, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry. You know I tried to keep her.”  
    “I can’t speak of it,” she said, raising a warning hand. This was her usual response to disappointment and conflict, but it was troubling him more and more. Beneath her disarranged flounce—she had started in her seat when he seized her embroidery—she was wearing two different colored stockings, one white, one the palest blush. She did not make mistakes like that. Ever. The lines around her eyes made her look tired, and she seemed ready to break at the lightest touch.  
    “Let me take you away,” he said without thinking. “We’ll go to Brighton.”  
    Her hand fell. “You can’t be serious,” she said, failing to hold back a bitter laugh.  
    “Of course I’m serious. Forget Sophy. Forget everything. Let’s go away.” Maybe it would be miserable. He hadn’t travelled with her for twenty years. She refused to admit that she got sick in carriages. In fact, she refused to get sick, mastering her stomach by sheer will. It made her about as friendly as a basilisk. But perhaps this trip would be different. He would be patient and they could travel slowly. Away from town, she could think of other things—the sun on the sea, the breezes that would play with her curls and pull at her skirts. She was still as slim as a girl. If she smiled . . .  
    “I don’t want to go to Brighton,” she said.  
    “What do you want?”  
    She looked at him with desolate eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t want to sew. I don’t want to eat. Or sleep. Or walk, or drive, or—or see people. I don’t want to go to Mrs. Fanshawe’s ball and I don’t want to buy a bonnet to match my new pelisse.”  
    “What about furs?” he