by Jane Ashford
Sebastian was startled by a round of applause. Randolph had finished his reading. Long familiar with his brother’s skills, he easily joined the chorus of praise.
“You should go on the stage,” said Emma, her eyes bright with admiration.
“He’s a clergyman,” chided Georgina.
Randolph smiled, setting the book aside. “I admit I’ve enjoyed taking part in a few amateur theatricals.”
“I’m sure you were wonderful,” declared Emma, throwing Georgina a triumphant glance.
“Indeed, I wonder now if it may be some vestige…”
His voice trailed off. Sebastian frowned at him. Randolph had been in an odd mood since Mitra’s “meditation.”
“Some what?” asked Emma.
“Nothing.” Randolph smiled again and turned away.
The group was shifting. The marquess would go to his study now, Sebastian knew. Though it was not strictly polite, he could slip away. Georgina looked surprised that he didn’t come to her. Randolph approached as if to join him. But Sebastian just couldn’t stay.
He headed for the place that had been his refuge since he was small, the stables. The long summer twilight would last a while longer, and frankly he didn’t care if it didn’t. “I’ll see to Whitefoot when I return,” he told the startled groom as his mount was saddled. “You needn’t worry about us.”
Once in the saddle, Sebastian immediately felt better. He let Whitefoot amble slowly down the road from the castle and out into the countryside. He’d ridden this way often enough that he could guide the horse back in the moonlight.
It was a profound relief to have space around him instead of walls. He felt as if his spirit expanded, like a deep breath or unfurled wings. The evening air was soft on his cheek. The birds were making their farewells to the dying light. He caught the rush of a bat above his head. Dewfall had intensified the scents of leaf and water. He would have known, even if he hadn’t noticed on an earlier ride, that there was a tiny stream off to the left. From the set of the stars, he could see that he was riding west. Every element in his surroundings spoke to him so clearly. Out here, he felt more alive, more powerful. What was that phrase of Robert’s? “Monarch of all he surveyed.”
After half an hour or so, Sebastian pulled up at the edge of a stretch of forest. He dismounted, throwing a blanket he’d brought over Whitefoot’s back. Gathering bits of dry grass and dead wood, he made a small fire and sat down beside it. For him, this kind of retreat never got old. Snug in a circle of firelight, back against a massive tree trunk, he felt like the master of his fate.
And ironically, on the heels of that thought, a host of painful memories rushed at him, like an enemy patrol bursting from ambush. Though he tried to dismiss them, it seemed he was doomed to review his long struggle with words on a page, even though he was so familiar with that sad history he needed no reminders.
It had taken Sebastian a long time to understand that others didn’t see a line of type as he did. That letters marched in good order for his brothers, for example, and told them things he would never know. And then one day Nathaniel had been sitting beside him in the schoolroom at Langford. They’d been about eight and six, Sebastian supposed. His brother had been sounding out a difficult stretch of text, running his finger beneath the letters and speaking aloud. Watching and throwing in a question or two, Sebastian realized that he and his brother saw quite different things when they looked at the page. Nathaniel perceived separate segments, words, not a single clump of letters mashed together in a mocking jumble.
He’d tried to explore this mystery, but Nathaniel had been puzzled and then impatient to complete his assignment and go outside. His brother couldn’t imagine a problem with what he saw so plainly. And who was to blame him? It was bizarre.
Sebastian had tried twice more, with a tutor and then with a teacher he’d thought sympathetic at school, but he hadn’t been able to make them understand either. Partly, he’d made a hash of explaining, and partly the men were too accustomed to boys trying to shirk their lessons. It was obvious that neither had heard of anything like what he struggled to describe.
After that, Sebastian had accepted the fact that there was something wrong with him. His brain was flawed. He couldn’t master a skill that everyone else found simple. He turned his attention to ways of concealing his stupidity and working around it, with varying degrees of success, while at school. There were times when he simply couldn’t avoid public humiliation. He’d weathered such occasions through jokes and poses, playing the good-natured, thickheaded athlete, or the high-nosed, uncaring nobleman. He didn’t think anyone realized how very much he’d hated his “education.” His sporting success had masked a great deal. And after he escaped the classroom, evasion became vastly easier.
Until right now. Sebastian leaned his head against the rough bark of the oak at his back and faced the question again. Must he tell Georgina? The prospect made him more afraid than he’d ever been on a battle line. How would he even make her understand, if he did try? No one ever had. Even Sykes… Well, he didn’t know what Sykes believed as he helped Sebastian beat his way through the thickets of language. Or what he would advise about Georgina. A man couldn’t discuss his wife with his valet. Not even one who really wasn’t, like Sykes. And his not-quite wife. He couldn’t, at any rate.
The fire guttered. He’d need to add more wood if he was staying. Sebastian sighed. He would have liked to. It would be so pleasant to curl up here at the foot of the oak and spend the night. But it wouldn’t do. He’d learned long ago that running away solved nothing.
Regretfully, he rose and extinguished the remaining flames. At least the household would be in bed by the time he returned. There’d be no need to face his brother or his fiancée and see the reflection of the evening’s events in their eyes. Ought he to thank them? He didn’t think he’d be able to manage that. Pulling the blanket from Whitefoot’s back, he mounted and started slowly back the way he’d come.
* * *
At Stane Castle, Georgina had dismissed her maid and climbed into bed when she heard “Psst.” She looked around, startled, in time to see her youngest sister emerging from behind the closed draperies.
“I thought Mary would never go,” Hilda said.
“Aren’t you still confined to your room?” Georgina asked. Not that unpalatable orders would ever stop her youngest sister.
“I put a bolster in my bed to make it look as if I’m asleep,” she replied. “Mama thinks I’m sulking.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.” Hilda plopped down on the featherbed beside her. “I heard what happened.”
The whole household had no doubt heard by now, Georgina thought. Joanna was good friends with the housekeeper. Papa complained to Fergus sometimes. Servants overheard all sorts of things in the course of their work.
“Do you ever think that Papa is demented?” Hilda asked.
The thought had flitted through Georgina’s mind now and then, but she decided it was best not to tell Hilda. And of course he was not.
“We have to do something!” Her youngest sister bounced on the bed. “You’re going to have to elope after all. So you see, I will have been right. It wasn’t a lie, but a…prediction.”
“You will have been right?” The phrase struck Georgina as thoroughly characteristic of Hilda.
There was a soft knock on her bedchamber door. Emma looked around the edge. “There you are, Hilda. I looked for you in your room.”
“I can’t mope about there when we are in the midst of a crisis!”
“You’ll get in trouble,” Emma warned.
“How could I be in any more trouble?”
The two older Stane sisters had to acknowledge the truth of this. Emma came in and sat on the other side of the bed.
“And I have to apologize to Georgina,” Hilda added solemnly.
�
�You did that,” said Emma.
“Not properly.” Hilda put one hand over her heart and assumed a deeply sincere expression. “I’ve thought a great deal about what you said. About not wanting me in your new household after what I have done, I mean. But what you don’t understand, Georgina, is that I will be a…a pattern card of virtue once I am in London. And not so very bored.”
“You’ve never been such a thing in your life,” said Emma.
“Well, I’ve always been stuck in this…backwater. I think it must be the most tedious place on Earth.”
“You seemed quite happy here when you were small,” Georgina said. She remembered tiny Hilda tearing around the castle and the gardens, face alight, declaring that she was the captain of a pirate ship or queen of imaginary empires.
Hilda looked disgusted. “When I was a child.”
She was still so much one, Georgina thought. And yet she was growing up very fast, too, and capable of more complicated mischief. She’d always been the most curious and quick of them. It was too bad Joanna was distracted by their father’s studies. The governess might have kept Hilda interested in her studies otherwise.
“I won’t elope,” Georgina said. She’d been thinking, too, and discovered she had strong feelings on this subject. “I don’t want my wedding to be some hurried, furtive affair, far from everyone I know. I want to be married in my home, with my family and Sebastian’s around us, and everyone celebrating our happiness.”
Emma blinked back tears.
“Well, I hope you can be,” replied Hilda. “But just now I cannot place Papa in that affecting picture.”
“Sebastian is going to make a plan.” Georgina thought of the evening just past. She was still angry at her father, but as time passed she also wondered why Sebastian had balked over such a trivial thing. She’d responded instinctively to the emotion she’d seen in his face. He’d looked…really distressed. Even now, a fierce protective instinct rose in her. Papa had behaved abominably. But had this particular tussle really been necessary? Couldn’t Sebastian have given in? She was also a little worried about the way he’d rushed off without a word.
“Sebastian is very handsome,” said Hilda carefully. “And kind and charming, but he’s…he’s not a…deep thinker, is he?”
Georgina stiffened against her pillows. “He’s a trained military man, a cavalry major.” She started to tell them how splendidly he’d cared for her in the ravine, then decided not to. That conversation might lead to details she wasn’t prepared to share with her younger sisters.
“Well, if we want to run Papa through with a saber, that might be helpful,” her youngest sister replied.
“Hilda!” Emma exclaimed. Georgina choked back a horrified laugh.
“I only mean…” Hilda seemed to grope for words. “Papa is thinking all the time, isn’t he? All sorts of…complicated thoughts. We need a sly, devious plan to get ’round him. I don’t think Sebastian is very devious.”
Georgina agreed with that. He was delightfully straightforward.
“I am much more devious than any of you,” Hilda added.
“Even Papa?” Georgina had to ask, a bit amused.
“Yes.” Hilda nodded as if to emphasize the word. “Because he is head of the household and can give whatever orders he likes. I can’t. So I have to find more indirect ways to…to accomplish my goals. I’m forced to be devious, you see.”
Georgina stared at her. So did Emma, with rather more apprehension. Hilda gazed blandly back. Her youngest sister was well on her way to becoming a force to be reckoned with, Georgina thought. Did Mama have any notion? And was she really going to invite her to London? It was becoming clearer and clearer that looking after Hilda wasn’t a task to be undertaken lightly.
“So, I was thinking, what if we fed Papa a drug?” Hilda continued. “When the kitchen maid had the toothache, they gave her a draught to help her sleep. It made her so muddled she hardly knew where she was. Or who she was. There’s some left.”
“How would you know that?” Georgina wondered.
“I make it my business to know things,” was the worrying reply. “I know where the bottle is kept, too. We could dose Papa and then hold the wedding before he regained his senses.”
“No, we couldn’t.” Georgina didn’t know whether to laugh or shudder.
“Why not?”
Georgina couldn’t help but envision her father stumbling about in a drugged haze before the entire Gresham family. She did shudder. “It wouldn’t be… We just can’t, Hilda.”
Hilda heaved a great sigh, like a workman delayed by petty objections. “Well, that would be easiest. Because the dose is right here, you know. But…all right. My other plan is to send Randolph to town for a special license. You get them from bishops, don’t you? He’s a clergyman; he must be acquainted with any number of bishops. He could bring it back and then just perform the ceremony himself before anyone caught on.”
“But Georgina wants to marry with all her family around her,” Emma said. “She just said so. And I think she’s very right.” She gave Georgina a sentimental glance.
Hilda grimaced. “We are facing an emergency here, Emma. It may be necessary to cut corners. Mama could be present. And you and I.”
Emma tossed her head, refusing to be overborne by her stronger-minded sister this time. “That’s not what Georgina wants. Anyway, don’t those license things cost a great deal of money?”
“Georgina is an heiress,” Hilda replied. “She has heaps of money.”
“Not in my pockets,” Georgina replied. As it happened, oddly, she knew quite a bit about special licenses. During the London season just past, she’d become acquainted with a young lady who’d fallen in love with a man her parents found unsuitable. Selina had looked into every alternative for marrying and poured out her findings, along with her woes, to Georgina.
“Well, duke’s sons must have some money,” added Hilda. “Randolph could pay.”
“It’s not so easy,” Georgina replied. “I am not twenty-one until December. So to get a special license, Randolph would have to swear, before the Archbishop of Canterbury at Doctors’ Commons, that he had our parents’ consent. He would not wish to offer a false oath. Especially in those circumstances.” Indeed, she was certain he’d refuse. “As is only right,” she added dutifully.
“Both parents?” Hilda asked. “Or would just Mama do?”
“I…don’t know.” Georgina’s legal knowledge didn’t stretch that far.
“I wager Mama would be enough. I could get her to write a letter.”
“You could not,” said Emma.
“Of course I could.” Hilda was scornful.
Georgina decided not to ask how she could be so certain. “I don’t think Randolph will be swayed by…technicalities. He knows very well that Papa does not consent.”
“Oh, pooh. He mustn’t let a little thing like that stand in his way. I’ll explain it to him,” Hilda said.
“Please do not! Promise me you won’t.”
Hilda sulked. “Somebody has to do something!” she declared after a while. “We can’t just droop about like simpering ninnies and let all our hopes…collapse. While we die of boredom.”
“I told you, Sebastian is making a plan.” Georgina wondered again where he’d gone in such a hurry after the reading. “And I would hardly call these last few days boring.”
“That’s true.” Hilda smiled. There was a gleam in her eye that Georgina didn’t care for at all. “I shall offer Sebastian my help. If I explain it to him very carefully, I wager he can convince his brother to adopt my scheme.”
Georgina thought that extremely unlikely. “You are not to plague Sebastian,” she ordered.
“I’m not going to plague him,” Hilda began. “I daresay he will be very glad of a…little boost.”
“No,” replied Georgina. “You should b
oth go to bed. It’s late.”
Hilda hopped down with suspicious docility. “You must check the corridors as we go, Emma. To make certain no one sees me.”
Emma stood up, but crossed her arms over her chest. “I am not helping you any more. Not ever.”
“I am only going back to my room,” Hilda wheedled. “Where I am supposed to be.”
“Yes, but…”
“So you would be helping me obey Mama and Papa, in this case.”
Watching Emma puzzle over this distinction, Georgina didn’t hold out much hope for her future entanglements in Hilda’s pranks. She would have to keep a close eye on her youngest sister. And warn Sebastian. And speak to Mama. And rein in Papa. And what else?
Her life had been so serene, so settled. And now in the course of one weird evening, it had been turned upside down. For a perfectly ridiculous cause. It would have been funny, if it did not include the threat of losing Sebastian. Georgina set her jaw. That would not, could not happen.
Thirteen
By a fortunate coincidence, Georgina encountered Sebastian as she was accompanying her mother to her workroom the following morning. “Come along,” she said, taking his arm.
He hesitated, not offering his usual warm smile. Nor did he meet her eyes. “Is something wrong?” She immediately judged it a silly question. A great deal was wrong, obviously.
“No,” he said. But he still hung back.
Georgina put his reluctance down to the dogs milling around their feet. “It might help if we both talk to Mama,” she explained.
He walked with her then, clearly not in his customary good spirits. Her mother had gone ahead, and they found her sitting at her desk, sifting through a sheaf of papers. “Mama,” said Georgina. She had to repeat it before she captured her mother’s attention. “Our wedding is in less than two weeks’ time,” she said then. She refused to admit any doubt into her declaration.