"Don't you understand how this hurts?" he demanded, grasping hold of her shoulders, his fingers bruising he held her so hard. "Don't you feel it too?"
Anger flared then, anger at the injustice of it. "Do you think I don't?" she flung back at him, tears pricking at her eyes. "Do you think I don't want to beg you to stay and marry me? To forget the fortune you need, to forget your duty to your title and your family and whatever other obligations would come before my happiness, of which I don't doubt there are many!" She paused, staring at him with her heart full of pain and holding hard to her dignity. "It's you who are leaving me, Beau. Not the other way around. But there is nothing I can do to make you stay. Nothing I can offer you of enough value besides my heart and you have that. So do not stand there and accuse me of being cold or indifferent to your feelings when I try to make it easier for you to leave me."
She saw her words register and his eyes closed as he acknowledged the truth of them.
"Forgive me," he said, his voice bleak.
Georgiana smiled at that despite herself. "Again? Well why not once more, to add to all the forgiveness you have had already." She hadn't meant the words to have such a bitter edge. Stepping closer she put her hands on his chest to show she wasn't angry with him, not really. He looked down at her, his dark eyes full of pain and any anger she might have had fled in the light of that unhappiness. "There is nothing you can do, nothing I can do," she whispered. "I knew you would leave me today. I--I half hoped you would, even though it breaks my heart because ... because there is too much at risk now. We both know it."
He nodded and pulled her closer, enfolding her in his arms and pushing her bonnet back to bury his face in her hair. "I know," he said, his voice desperate. "If I stay I will not be able to leave you be. You tempt me in ways I have no strength to fight against and I dare not allow it. I am too weak to be close to you and not have you and I cannot use you so ill as that, despite everything I have done already. I care for you too much for that at least." He gave a snort of derision. "Hark at me and my noble sentiments. I would have taken you yesterday if you had given an inch and we both know it."
She reached up a finger to his lips and shook her head. "Don't. Please don't. For there is a part of me that will always regret not giving myself to you and damn the consequences, but it is not just myself I must think of. I have been given so much by my family, I cannot repay them by courting such disgrace as this, no matter if my heart would do so willingly."
"Oh, God, Georgiana."
He kissed her then, a kiss that seared her soul and left her dizzy with longing, delirious with the need for more. As though he taunted her with everything she could never have, he kissed her like she was everything he had ever wanted and needed, until she wanted to cry out with the pain the loss of him would bring her. He released her mouth but held her tightly still as she trembled with desire and emotion, enclosed in his arms.
They stood together, neither of them willing or able to say a word for a moment. "I have something for you," he said in the end, and she looked up as he reached into a pocket and withdrew a small box. "It ... it isn't much," he added, sounding apologetic. "You must believe me when I tell you I wanted to buy you diamonds and sapphires but ... but they would only have brought you trouble if they'd been discovered."
She smiled at him, knowing he spoke the truth and beyond touched that he had thought so carefully about a gift for her. He opened the box to reveal a delicate gold chain, and suspended on it, a small gold heart.
"Just to remind you, if you should ever be in any doubt ... that you have my heart, Georgiana."
She touched her finger to the heart and blinked away tears. "Thank you," she managed, though her voice was thick. "I will keep it always." She took the chain from the box and slipped it into her reticule. "I will have to invent a kindly old lady who will bequeath it to me, won't I?" she said, trying to joke though it seemed very far from funny.
"I would ask something in return," he said, reaching out and curling a lock of her hair around his fingers.
"Of course!" she said, wishing she had thought of it herself. "B-but I have no scissors, nothing to ..."
"I came prepared," he said, smiling at her as he brushed her lips with his own and snipped off one thick curl. He held it to his mouth and kissed it, before putting it carefully in the box her necklace had come in. "I will carry it with me always."
"Oh, don't promise that," she pleaded, shaking her head. "For your wife will discover it one day and then how should she feel? No, it is too cruel."
"And you are too good!" he shouted, pulling her close again. "Dammit why should you care for her, whoever she may be. I know damned well that I shan't."
"Don't, Beau, don't please," she pleaded. "Kiss me again and then let me go for if you don't I have the strangest feeling that everything will turn sour. Please, my love."
"And what will you do?" he demanded, his tone once again cruel and desperate with pain. "When I am gone what will you do then?"
She looked up at him and this time she was powerless to stop the tears that ran down her face with abandon. "Today?" she asked, her voice choking on a sob. "Today I will go home and tell them I am unwell as they all believed this morning, when I was so quiet and drab. And they will put me to bed and the moment they close the door I will cry and cry until there are no tears left in the world that I haven't shed." She laughed then, feeling really quite beyond her own sanity, as though she would run mad in her desperate sorrow. "You see I have the advantage of you in this at least," she said, smoothing her hands over his lapels with care. "I am only a woman after all, a weak creature governed by her emotions and fanciful whims. So if I take to my bed and cry no one will think too very much of it, other than perhaps that I am a little low in spirit. But you, darling Beau, you must be brave and swallow it down and pretend that there is nothing that you care for, that nothing that has ever touched your heart, nor ever will. And I promise not to embarrass you by throwing myself into the sea on your account or something equally sordid." She tried to smile at him at that but could do nothing now but cry, and buried her face in his neck, sobbing and clinging to him as hard as she could.
It took a great effort to stop herself, and it was only the thought that his last memory of her shouldn't be of a red eyed, desperate creature that made her take a breath and steady herself again.
He was silent, but his hold on her was enough to speak for him, as was the aching sadness in his eyes. "Kiss me goodbye then, my own handsome scoundrel."
For a moment she thought he wouldn't but then his lips found hers in a tender kiss, full of longing and desire, and everything they both knew they could never have.
He caught her face in his hands, his expression fierce. "I will never forget you, Georgiana. I promise you."
"Nor I, Beau," she promised in return kissing his cheek and somehow finding the strength to move out of his arms. She was so numb she didn't even call to Conrad who caught up with her farther down the lane with a bark of reproach. There was nothing that seemed real now, nothing that seemed to exist outside of this fresh, exquisite pain that tore at her from the inside and promised that she would never be happy again. So it was that she found her way home, and did just as she'd told him she would. And while Aunt Jane instructed the maids to bring a hot brick for her feet and hartshorn and water, Georgiana cried and cried until there were no tears left at all.
Chapter 11
"Wherein a villain brings past and future scandals to darken our heroine's life."
Georgiana sat on the rock, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring into the distance. She'd come back to their meeting place every day for the past fortnight though she knew it was foolish. He was never coming back again. Soon enough she would read the notice of his betrothal in the Gazette and even the faintest hope that her idiotic heart still clung to would be gone. She scolded herself every morning that passed, telling herself severely that it wasn't the least bit of good pining for something you knew you could never h
ave and promising to put him out of her mind. And yet every afternoon she would call Conrad and retrace their footsteps to the exact same place. She just felt closer to him here than anywhere else, even though he was now miles away and perhaps already dallying with another pretty girl to chase the memory of her from his mind.
She swallowed hard as Conrad came bounding up to her and pushed his cold, wet nose under her arm, seeking attention.
"Yes, I think you miss him too, don't you, love? He always made a fuss of you, and was very obliging at throwing sticks." She ruffled his chest with affection. "Yes and I know he threw them a good deal further than me too, I'm sorry for it, truly but I do my best you know." She prattled on in this fashion for a while until even Conrad grew bored and took himself off to dig out a rabbit hole.
With care she took out the necklace Beau had left her, letting the fine gold slide between her fingers as the little heart sat in her palm, glinting in the feeble sunlight of the afternoon. The weather was closing in, the trees almost bare now and all the autumn colour stripped from the countryside. She felt like every trace of her short lived affair was being taken from her as the season died and the cold hand of winter passed over the landscape. For such a short time everything had been golden, but now it was dead and cold and lonely, and she didn't know how she would endure it.
She tucked the heart back away and got to her feet, calling Conrad and walking back down towards the woods. She had the distance between here and the house to force a smile to her lips and drape the persona of Georgiana Bomford about her like a mantle, hiding the person she'd become since that fateful day in the cave. Because she wasn't the same anymore. No matter that she tried to be. Her world seemed small and confined and she chaffed at the restrictions of her circumstances as she never had before. That was perhaps the worst of all, she thought. That he had made her so dissatisfied with her lot, when she knew that she was most fortunate in every way.
With a sigh and a final scold she turned the corner into the garden of her aunt and uncle's house and paused as she noticed a fine carriage in the driveway. Her heart picked up speed. It was impossible surely? But her heart did not consider it impossible or unlikely and she burst through the front door at a run, straight into the anxious bosom of the grey haired housekeeper, Mrs Gurney.
"Oh thank goodness, child! Wherever have you been? I've been looking high and low, and the house is all at sixes and sevens. Now go on upstairs, Clara is waiting for you. She's got out your best cambric, the pale rose, oh do hurry, Georgiana!"
"B-but who is here, Gurney?" she stammered, her heart thudding too hard to allow her fevered brain to make sense of it.
"Your uncle, Baron Dalton is here!" she hissed, flapping her hands to hurry Georgiana up the stairs.
For a moment the disappointment was so acute that she could do nothing but stare at Mrs Gurney and try to breathe through the pain in her chest.
"Well don't just stand there like a gudgeon, love," pleaded the older woman, flapping her apron at her in agitation. "You must go and make yourself presentable."
"I have an uncle?" Georgiana said, as Gurney put a hand in the small of her back and physically pushed her up the stairs.
"That you do," Gurney replied, sounding as though she'd found a weevil in the flour bin.
"Who is he and what's he doing here?" Georgiana demanded, still too shaken to put enough effort into wondering why she hadn't known she had another uncle.
Gurney hustled her through the door of her bedroom where Clara pounced on her and the two women wrestled her out of her walking dress between them.
"He's your Aunt Jane's elder brother, and my ma always told me if you can't say no good about a body, best keep your tongue between your teeth."
This rather bold statement from Gurney made it clear to Georgiana that not only did Mrs Gurney not like her new uncle, but neither did Aunt Jane and Uncle Joseph. Gurney would never have ventured such an opinion of one of her relations if she didn't know full well that her mistresses' sentiments were of like mind, and this was no doubt why he'd never been mentioned before. She assumed that this was one of the heartless relations who had cast off her Aunt Jane when she had chosen to marry for love.
So once she was primped and tidied to Gurney's satisfaction, it was with no small measure of trepidation that she went to meet her new relation. Knowing what she did about how coldly her aunt's family had treated her when she married Uncle Joseph it was with no expectation of liking the man she found in the drawing room that she opened the door. It didn't take her long to realise that she'd misjudged the situation.
Her uncle, the Baron, was a tall, severe man, with an autocratic manner. His dress was obviously of the best quality and he bore himself like a duke, looking around the room with distaste and like there was a bad smell lingering somewhere close by. He had perhaps been a handsome man in his youth as he was well made with a fine straight nose and a strong jaw. But every line of a cruel and avaricious nature seemed to Georgiana to be etched clearly on a face she found devoid of any of the kinder human emotions.
Indeed when her poor aunt, who was clearly in a state of great agitation, jumped to her feet when Georgiana entered the room and made to introduce them, the way he looked her over made her blood boil.
"As I feared," he said with a sniff. "You are the image of your mother."
Georgiana glanced at her aunt who had clearly been crying and was clutching a handkerchief in one clenched hand and her vinaigrette in the other.
"It's true you are," Aunt Jane said smiling at her, before shooting a look of intense dislike at her brother. "She was such a beauty, you see."
"A pity she was also a whore."
Both Georgiana and Aunt Jane jumped in shock at the cruel vulgarity of his words.
"No, Lionel," Aunt Jane replied, with unusual force. "That is the outside of enough. I will not allow you to come here, to my house, and speak in such an abominable manner. If you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head you can leave now."
"I will do no such thing, madam," her brother replied with froideur. "I have come here, to your house," he said, announcing the word with derision as though he stood in a hovel. "To speak to Miss Dalton and make things clear to her. You may leave while I do so."
"I will do no such thing as to leave her alone with you!"
Georgiana, quite stunned by this went and sat beside Aunt Jane who was clearly on the edge of hysteria. Taking her hand she held it in hers and squeezed to try and comfort her. Aunt Jane covered her hand with her own and clung on tight.
"Aunt Jane, what on earth is this about?" Georgiana asked, turning her back on a man she had quickly decided forced her emotions well past mere dislike into the uncharted territories of revulsion and abhorrence. "Why does this ill-mannered creature refer to me as Miss Dalton. I have and will always be Georgiana Bomford."
"You will keep a civil tongue in your head, young woman!" the man purporting to be her uncle raged at her.
Georgiana turned and stared at him with disgust. "Sir, you have been in my company for barely a few minutes, reduced my aunt to tears, called my mother a whore and generally behaved in a crass and loutish manner ill befitting a gentleman. Therefore I can only deduce that you are not a gentleman."
Her uncle seemed torn between his obvious desire to cross the room and deliver her a blow to the head and whatever his purpose had been in coming here in the first place. In the end his objective seemed to win out as he reined in his temper but looked at her with undisguised hostility.
"What do you know of your parents, Miss Dalton?" he asked, his voice harsh.
"Very little," she replied, meeting his eyes and refusing to be cowed by his high-handed manner. "Only that they both died when I was but less than a year old."
"And do you know how they died?" he demanded, and from the obvious relish he took from asking the question, Georgiana knew that here, at last was the shadow that covered her name.
"I do not." She spoke with dignity and clung to her aunts hand
as she began to sob, leaning against Georgiana's shoulder.
He gave her a cold, serpentine smile that made unease slither over her flesh. "Your mother was conducting an affair with another man, a duke of all people, though how she managed that is beyond me," he added with a sneer. "Your father, the previous Baron Dalton discovered the two of them together and challenged the duke to a duel."
Georgiana drew in a breath as her aunt began to cry harder beside her. She had constructed many stories about her parents when she was very small, inventing tales of lost princesses and bad fairies. As she had grown older she had come to believe that something had happened that would not cast her in a good light, and had instinctively shied away from asking too many questions. But never, in her wildest imaginings, had she considered anything so dreadful as this.
"Your father was killed outright by the duke," her uncle continued, unheeding of his sister's misery or of the obvious hurt he was inflicting upon his niece. "The duke in turn was forced to flee, taking your mother with him." He paused to give her such a callous smile that real fear bloomed in her chest. "Of course she abandoned you and left you without a second glance to run off with her lover."
"No, Lionel!" her aunt pleaded, sobbing. "You cannot be so cruel as that. She had no time to fetch Georgiana, she would have I'm sure!" She turned to Georgiana, her eyes full of compassion as she clung to her hand. "She loved you, sweet child. I'm sure she did. She would never have left you if she'd had a choice. I'm certain she intended to send for you once she was settled."
"You know nothing of the sort." The Baron strode across the room to look out the window at the pretty garden that lay behind the house, though his eyes seemed to find nothing to please him. "The whore ran away and left her child and it was the only favour she ever did you, Miss Dalton, as she drowned with the duke when their ship went down in a storm."
Georgiana clutched at her aunt's hand and tried to keep calm. They couldn't both succumb to hysterics and she determined that this vile man would not see that he'd hurt her or discomforted her in any way.
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