Free Bexley-Smythe Quintet 01 - Flight of Fancy by Catherine Gayle Page B

breathing was coming in slight hitches.
    As soon as Eloise was out of sight, Georgie shoved her reticule under her arm, darted out the front door, and half-ran down Berkeley Square to the waiting carriage, oblivious to anything around her.
    Lord Haworth lifted a brow at her hasty arrival. “Any problems?”
    “ No. But we should go before they realize I’ve run off. Eloise will only search for my gloves for a few minutes before she comes down to tell me she can’t find them.”
    “ And do you have the money?”
    Georgie opened her reticule and removed a small purse, tossing it over to him. “It’s all there. You’ll forgive my brother’s debt, now? And you’ll take me up in your balloon?”
    “ Unlike your brother, I always follow through with my promises.” He held out a hand to assist her into the carriage. “So let’s be off.”
    By some anomalous quirk of nature or another, Georgie did not trip over herself in her mad scramble to climb aboard his vehicle. She took her seat, clasped her hands together in her lap, and did everything she could to contain the giddy squeal threatening to erupt from her lips.
    She was going to fly!
     
    “ Make the pounding stop,” Cedric mumbled into his bedding, wrapping a pillow around his head to cover his ears. The pounding didn’t stop, however.
    When he cracked his eyes open, the afternoon sun streaming in through his window was more than enough to leave him blinded. Good God. How long had he been asleep? At the moment, he didn’t even know what day it was.
    “ Open the door! Monty, I swear on your future grave if you don’t open this door in the next half second, I’ll plant you a facer so hard you won’t be able to father children.”
    That had to be Bridge. Only he and Joshua would speak to him in that way, and the voice was too deep to be Joshua’s. Not only that, but no one else in Cedric’s acquaintance would so grossly misunderstand basic human anatomy.
    Cedric dropped his pillow and pushed back the bedding. Bridge? In Town? When had that happened? He was still far too tired to sort through all of that on his own. Scratching his head, he got up and turned the lock.
    “ What are y—”
    “ It’s Georgie,” Bridge interrupted, pushing past Cedric and into the main room. “She was planning a walk with her maid, but forgot her gloves upstairs. She sent Eloise back up to fetch them, and when Eloise returned, she was gone.”
    “ Gone?” Cedric’s fatigue was gone with that one word. He instantly reached for his trousers, pulling them on as fast as he could without falling over from the effort.
    Bridge narrowed his eyes at him. “I thought you were looking after them.”
    “ Me?” he nearly shouted. Bridge had a lot of nerve, to try laying any blame on Cedric.
    Last night’s overcoat was draped over a chair, wrinkled, but it would have to do. He put his arms in the sleeves and looked at his friend once again.
    He hadn’t seen Bridge in months at this point, and he doubted that in all that time his friend had done much to tend to his appearance. His hair was too long, he was too thin, and there were lines forming on his face. For some reason, his clothes were more haggard and worn than Cedric’s, and he hadn’t spent the entire night trying to sort out the mystery of Georgie’s fascination with Haworth.
    In short, Bridge looked like he’d aged decades in the last few months.
    There wasn’t time to delve into that at the moment, though. He shook his head. “Never mind. That can wait. We need to find Georgie.” The task would be a much easier prospect if she would have told him what she was planning with Haworth, or if he’d found Haworth last night at Vauxhall. Since he hadn’t done either, he didn’t really have even the slightest inkling of where to start looking.
    Still, he finished pulling all of his clothing on and headed out the door, signaling for Bridge to come with him. One thing was certain—she wasn’t in his bachelor