Ruth's eyebrows lifted in surprise. But then she caught sight of the letter in my hand--and just like that, the colour drained from her face, leaving her almost chalk-white to the lips.
I started to get up, afraid I'd brought on an attack of illness--and Pilot, as though sensing something was wrong, came and thrust his nose under her hand, whining anxiously high in his throat. Ruth swallowed visibly, then gave Pilot's shaggy head a mechanical pat and shook her head. "No, it's all right. There now, hush Pilot, you big, silly oaf." She swallowed again. "It's all right, Georgiana, I'm not going to faint. I'm just--" She took the letter from me. Gingerly, as though she were afraid to touch it. "I'm just ... surprised to see this again."
She glanced down at the scrawl of words across the page, then quickly back up at me again, as though she didn't want to recall what the letter said--or maybe remembered it all too well. She closed her eyes a moment, leaning against the back of the chair. And then she said, a small, fractured twist of a smile touching the corners of her mouth, "You're probably wondering who wrote this to me. Or do you already know?"
I'd been wondering, of course, all along the walk to Ruth's cottage, who G. T. could have been. The 'young charge' the letter spoke of must have been me. But the letter wasn't dated; it could have been sent to her at any time while she was with us at Pemberley. And childhood memory is so strange. I can remember certain things so clearly: the pictures in my nursery story books. The day my favourite doll was broken, and Fitzwilliam mended her for me. Feeding lumps of sugar or carrots I'd begged from our cook to the horses in the stables. Trips to London, or to visit my aunt. And of course my father's death when I was ten.
But so much of the rest is all blurred at the edges. And besides that, I suppose like most children, I wasn't terribly interested in 'grown-up' things. I don't think it ever occurred to me to wonder what Miss Granger did with herself after I'd gone to bed, or when I had a lesson with the dancing master in the afternoon.
I shook my head. "No, I haven't the least idea, I promise." A little of the colour had come back into Ruth's face, but she still looked terribly pale. "And you needn't tell me. Truly, I only came because once I'd seen the letter, it seemed only right that it should be returned to you. But perhaps I shouldn't have after all. I didn't mean to upset you."
Ruth was staring into the small fire burning in the grate, one hand still moving mechanically back and forth over Pilot's head. She shook her head slightly, though it didn't seem a gesture of denial--more as though she were trying to shake off a memory before it could take hold. And then she looked up at me, her grey eyes bright and very clear, and said, "It was Giles Tomalin. He visited Pemberley when you were eleven. Do you remember?"
Giles Tomalin. Slowly, I shook my head again. "No. I'm sorry," I added.
It seemed as though I ought to remember anyone who'd been so important to her.
Ruth smiled slightly. "It's all right. There's no reason that you should. He was part of a shooting party your father invited for the autumn sport. I think you only spoke to him once or maybe twice the whole time he was at Pemberley. He came ... he accompanied us on a walk through the Pemberley woods, once. You hardly ever talked to strangers, you were so shy--grown-up men, especially. But you liked him, because he told you that if you caught a falling leaf before it touched the ground, you could make a wish."
"Oh!" I did remember, then, just a little. Not the man's face, not exactly. The best I could conjure up was a vague memory of someone tall, with broad shoulders and--I thought--very dark hair. But I could recall the day she spoke of, a little--because she and I were usually all alone on our daily walks, and it was an occasion to have someone else along. "I walked between you, holding your hands, and the two of you made a game of lifting me up on the count of three. Is that the time you mean?"
Ruth smiled just a little again, and nodded. "Yes, that's right. That was him. He was--" She stopped, her eyes fixing unblinkingly on the fire as though she were staring back across the years. She was silent so long I wasn't sure whether she meant to continue or not. But then at last she said, "I met him the day he arrived at Pemberley--before he'd arrived. It was on the road to Lambton. I'd had to do an errand in town, and I was walking back to the house. And then I heard something--a dog barking, yelping, obviously frightened and in pain. And a man shouting. Cursing, rather. And when I rounded the curve, I saw him--it was Rakes, the farm manager the Herrons used to have on their estate back then. He had a dog--some poor, starved-looking stray--down on the ground, and he was beating it, savagely, with some kind of club."
Ruth paused again. "I was just going to shout at him, tell him to stop, when another man rode up on a big black horse, swung himself down from the saddle, caught Rakes' club in one hand and jerked it away from him. Rakes was sullen--he said the dog was suspected of stealing chickens. But the other man just clenched his jaw and said that unless Rakes wanted to get a feel for his club on the receiving end, he'd better get the hell away from there. I think Rakes would have argued more. But he could probably see the man was one of the gentry, and he'd only get into trouble. And besides, the stranger raised the club and looked as though he were fully capable of making good on his threat. So Rakes ran."
Ruth came to a full stop this time. And then she said, "The stranger was Giles, of course. That was the first time I saw him. He went to kneel by the dog Rakes had been beating, and I went up and offered to help. The poor thing was so badly hurt, it was half frantic with pain, ready to snap at anything that came near. But between the two of us, we managed to get it wrapped up in my cloak and Giles' coat, tightly enough that it couldn't bite us or thrash and do itself another injury. Giles was swearing by the time we'd done, calling Rakes names under his breath. But then he recollected himself and looked up at me and said he must beg my pardon for bad language." Ruth's lips curved in another small smile. "And I laughed, I remember, and said that I should thank him for saving me the trouble of saying the words myself. Then Giles said he thought he could carry the dog on horseback, if I could take the horse's reins--because he was a stranger in this part of the world, and his mount didn't know the roads any better than he did. So I asked where he was going, and he said Pemberley. And I told him I was governess there."
Ruth fell silent again, her grey eyes distant. And then she shook her head and looked back at me. "And that was how Giles and I met. I told him our gamekeeper at Pemberley could help with treating the dog's hurts, so we brought the poor thing there together. And then after that ... after that Giles would make some excuse to get away from the rest of the house party at night, after dinner--that he had letters to write, or wanted to get an early start in the morning. And I would slip out and meet him, and we'd go for walks by moonlight."
"Why didn't you--" I stopped myself before I could finish the sentence. Though it didn't matter, because Ruth finished it for me.
"Why didn't we marry?" Her lips twisted again. "Because Giles wasn't just Giles Tomalin. He was Lord Giles Tomalin--the younger son of the Duke of Clarion."
I didn't say anything, but something of what I felt must have showed on my face, because Ruth shook her head. "I know what you're thinking--orphan, penniless governess seduced and abandoned by a scion of the upper classes. But it wasn't like that. Giles wasn't like that. He did ask me to marry him. I turned him down."
"You turned him down? But why?" I couldn't keep the astonishment from my voice. Ruth had been in love with Lord Giles--it had shown in every word she'd spoken. And I couldn't believe that the man who had written the letter in her hand had not been in love with her, too.
As though she'd picked up my thought, Ruth looked down at the folded paper and then let one hand rise and fall. "Because he was Lord Giles Tomalin. The younger son of a duke, whose family surely wished him to make a better match than a penniless, orphaned governess whose father had been an equally penniless clergyman. You know as well as I do what a scandal it would have made if he had married me. He would have lost all standing in society."
<
br /> "Maybe he wouldn't have cared," I ventured.
"Maybe." Ruth pressed her eyes shut a moment, then opened them again. "That was what he said--that he didn't care. But how did he know that, really? His whole life, his family, friends, everything he'd been brought up to--all gone, for me. Maybe he'd not have minded at first, but in five years' time? In ten?" She shook her head. "And I wasn't going to let him tie himself for the rest of his life to a wife that everyone would despise him for." She looked up at me again with a small smile. "I know what you're thinking now, too--that I didn't want to be the wife that everyone of his acquaintance despised. But it wasn't that. Truly. I wouldn't have minded what other people said. It was the thought that in five or ten or even fifteen years' time, Giles would wake up one morning and discover that he resented me. That I was a burden to him. I couldn't"--for the first time, Ruth's voice wavered just slightly--"I couldn't have borne that."
She swallowed and shook her head again. "Besides, we only knew each other for two weeks--that was all the time he was visiting here. What did we each really know of the other's character? A marriage between us was ... impractical. Completely against all reason and common sense."
She spoke with sudden vigour, and I could just imagine her trying to scrub and snip out her feelings for Giles as neatly and efficiently as she did all the housework of her cottage. Except that there was a note in her voice that said she hadn't even yet been entirely successful.
I hesitated, then ventured, "Haven't you ever ... haven't you ever wondered what happened to him? Where he might be now?"
"Of course I have." Abruptly, Ruth got to her feet, crossed to the fireplace, and threw the folded up letter down onto the flames. "I've thought that he's probably bald, fat, and married with seven children by now--and that in all likelihood he doesn't even remember my name."
The dry paper caught fire at once. In an instant Giles Tomalin's letter was smouldering at the edges, the next it was blazing and crumbling into ash. Ruth blinked hard, staring down at it. Or at least I thought she did. Her voice was at any rate softer when she turned back around to me. "Thank you for bringing the letter back to me, Georgiana. I'm ... I'm glad you were the one to find it, if it had to come to light again after all these years."
Wednesday 21 December 1814
I went out for a walk this afternoon, thinking that I might catch up to Kitty and the boys, who had gone out earlier.
Well, if I am completely honest, I was also hoping to find Edward and my brother, who rode out early this morning on a tour of the estate farms.
I didn't find Edward. But I did catch up with Kitty and the boys, just beyond Pemberley's gates. The boys were pretending to fish in the stream using sticks. And Kitty herself was sitting on a wooden stile at the edge of a field with a young man. They were too far away for me to recognise him, or to see more than that he was dressed in a red hunting coat and wore a tall beaver hat. Even at a distance, though, I could see how close together his head and Kitty's were, and that he was holding her hand while she laughed.
But then they caught sight of me, and the man, whoever he was, let go of Kitty's hand abruptly and swung himself up into the saddle of the horse he had waiting. He was off, riding down the road by the time I reached Kitty's side--though her cheeks were still flushed.
I hesitated. And then I said, "Who was your friend? He must have been in a great hurry, if he couldn't stop and wait to be introduced."
He'd been incredibly rude to depart the instant he saw me--though I didn't care about that. I was thinking of the other morning's conversation with Elizabeth.
Kitty's gaze fixed on the small square of scarlet riding coat we could still see, growing smaller in the distance as the man galloped away. She smiled--a small, secret smile. "That was Lord Carmichael."
"Lord Carmichael!" I truly was worried, then.
Lord Henry Carmichael does not live in our part of the world, but he comes once or twice a year to visit an elderly aunt on her estate near Kympton. And that fact--that he visits his elderly aunt, I mean--is probably the best thing known of him. I've only met Lord Carmichael two or three times myself--but I know his reputation; everyone in this area does. And even the handful of times I met him was enough to convince me that the reputation is richly deserved.
He is fair-haired and blue-eyed, and handsome in a rather obvious way--his is the sort of face that will grow dissolute and puffy with age. He's ... a rake-hell is the best word for it, I suppose. He came into his title very young, and has since spent all his energies on running through the family fortune as fast as he can. He gambles, races horses, drinks to excess, and spends a fortune on clothes. The first time we met, I remember him telling me in a drawling voice that a true gentleman cannot really be considered to 'dress' unless he spends at least eight thousand pounds a year on his apparel.
And he has an even worse reputation when it comes to his dealings with women. Or, rather, with respectable, unmarried women. In London, he's whispered to have conducted affairs with the wives of half the House of Lords.
I don't for a moment think that Kitty is rich enough or beautiful enough or of a distinguished enough family to tempt him into actual marriage. But he would be perfectly willing to amuse himself by toying with her, while he's stuck on an otherwise dull family visit.
"Are you sure--," I began.
But Kitty interrupted before I could say anything more, wriggling her shoulders impatiently and rolling her eyes. "If you're going to start preaching a sermon the way my sister does, you can save your breath. Lord Carmichael"--she nodded in the direction Lord Carmichael had ridden--"is everything charming. He has five carriages--five!--and his own stable of horses. And a house in London in Mayfair. And a vast estate in Kent. And we've a connection, he and I--we share so many of the same opinions about so many things. It's perfectly remarkable. And besides, it was all quite respectable. He is thinking of buying a new barouche, and wanted my opinion as to the colour of the seat upholstery. Any project of that sort wants a woman's touch, he said. Even Elizabeth couldn't object to anything in the conversation between us." And then she smiled that small, secret smile again, and added, "Well, almost anything."
Kitty is the same age I am. But sometimes I feel far older. Or rather, she seems much younger--not much older than her nephews, really--in her single-minded determination to do exactly as she likes and take whatever pleasure she can grasp, no matter who suffers the cost.
But I also felt as though I were being the most insufferable prig--because, really, I'm not Kitty's mother nor even her older sister, and it's no business of mine to criticise how she behaves. But I couldn't stop myself from saying, "And what about Captain Ayres? Would he have found anything to object to?"
I thought--just for an instant--Kitty might have looked at least faintly guilty. But then she waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, John. What he doesn't know can't hurt him. And besides, he deserves to be punished for writing me such incredibly dull letters. Nothing in them at all except pages of how glad he is the war is over, and now he and I can settle down in peace to a quiet life." She made a face. "A quiet life! I ask you, who wants--"
Before she could finish, Thomas and Jack ran up, red-cheeked, sweaty, and panting, and demanding us to judge who had been the winner of the last race. "You both were!" Kitty proclaimed grandly. She made a ceremony of kissing each of the boys on both cheeks. And I told them they had each won the prize of picking out any sweet or pastry they liked at Mr. Todd's shop.
The boys raced off ahead of us down the lane. And Kitty narrowed her eyes at me. "Speaking of love affairs, what is the trouble between you and Colonel Fitzwilliam? Have the two of you quarrelled?"
I felt slightly sick, because if even Kitty has noticed something amiss between me and Edward, it must be obvious indeed. But I said, only, "Why should you think that?"
"Oh, well." Kitty shrugged and tossed the strings of her bonnet over her shoulders. "I just thought you might have. And if the two of you really had quarrelled, that would make hi
m fair game." She looked off into the distance with a dreamy smile. "He's not the handsomest man in the neighbourhood, I suppose--but there's something quite thrilling about him all the same."
I felt my jaw drop open slightly. But there's no point in even being angry with Kitty. She really is like one of her nephews. Coming over and demanding that I loan her a particular toy that she thought I might have outgrown.
Thursday 22 December 1814
Caroline Bingley arrived at Pemberley today. I haven't seen her--nor yet even exchanged letters with her--since last May, so I wasn't at all sure what to expect. For as long as I've known her, Caroline has been the same--very proud, sharp-tongued, and excessively conscious of her own importance. Which sounds uncharitable, but it honestly is the strict truth. Caroline tried her level hardest to make my brother fall in love with her, so I had ample opportunities to observe her.
But last spring while she was staying here at Pemberley, she did fall in love--really in love, I think--with Jacques de La Courcelle, a French expatriate. Who turned out in the end to be a sham and a fortune hunter, and who married my aunt Catherine de Bourgh--despite the twenty year difference in their ages--for her money.
I was incredibly sorry for Caroline when she left here, just after their engagement was announced. And now--
Now I suppose maybe I am sorry for her still, in a way. But I certainly have to work a great deal harder to feel so.
She looks as handsome and as expensively dressed as ever; when she arrived this afternoon she wore a dark-red velvet pelisse trimmed with gold frogging over her travelling costume that set off her dark-gold hair and blue eyes. And this evening at dinner she wore a very low-cut gold silk gown with six inches of elaborately beaded trim around the hem, and pearls both at her throat and in her hair.
Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 Page 4