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George continued before either parent could interrupt. "As a matter of fact, I have already asked a lady to become my wife, and she has accepted."

The countess gasped.

His father stared at him. "What?"

"I should have preferred to inform you both under rather more agreeable circumstances, but it seems there is little point in preserving the surprise."

"Who is she?" his mother asked, her voice trembling with astonishment.

"Miss Cordelia Maubry."

His father frowned. "Good God, George. Are you telling me that you have entered into an understanding with another woman while conducting yourself in such a disgraceful fashion with Lady Bramwell?"

George felt his patience begin to fray.

"No, Father. I am telling you that I have asked a woman I love to marry me, and that another woman subsequently contrived to compromise me against my will."

His father opened his mouth, but George raised a hand.

"If you would allow me to finish."

The earl's expression darkened, although he remained silent.

George drew a slow breath. "The lady I intend to marry came upon the compromising situation that had been arranged for me. She saw me with Lady Bramwell, and I cannot begin to imagine the pain she must have felt at that moment. Yet despite the evidence before her eyes, she stopped to consider what she knew of my character." He paused, remembering Cordelia's tear-streaked face. "She returned to that room because she knew I would never willingly betray her."

His mother's expression softened.

George looked directly at his father.

"A woman whom I have known for only a few weeks saw the truth of me, Father. She recognized that something was dreadfully wrong because the man she had come to know was not capable of behaving in the manner she had witnessed."

His voice grew quieter. "And yet you, who have known me all my life, have not once considered that I might be telling the truth."

The earl stiffened. "George..."

"You believe that I would take a woman of quality into a private room in a house where I was a guest and conduct myself in such a disgraceful fashion that discovery was almost inevitable. You believe I would dishonor my hostess, compromise a lady, and make a mockery of my family's name, although I have never behaved in such a manner in society before."

He held his father's gaze. "That is what you believe of me."

A tense silence descended upon the study. His mother looked between them, her eyes glistening. His father's expression remained forbidding, although something flickered briefly in his eyes before he looked away.

George waited.

He was not certain what he expected. An acknowledgment, perhaps, that his father had judged him unfairly. Some small indication that his father understood how deeply his accusations had wounded him.

But his father merely drew himself upright.

"What matters now," he said gruffly, "is that you and Lady Bramwell have been caught in a scandal. Whatever your intentions may have been, the consequences cannot be ignored."

George's fingers tightened upon the arms of his chair.

"For the sake of the lady's family and ours," his father continued, "you must render her respectable through marriage. Her father has made his expectations perfectly clear, and I have given him my assurance that you will behave honorably."

"Father..."

"Do you understand what you must do?"

George looked at him for a long moment. Then he closed his eyes.