Incognita (Fairchild Book 2)

by Fixsen, Jaima

  They better. “Spare your breath, Georgy. I’ve just seen you in your skin, and even though I’m not going to be able to think of anything else, I’ll keep the thoughts to myself. You’ll have to endure the looks. Call me whatever names you like. I’m not attending.”

  “Then I should ask you now for permission to redecorate your library?”

  He chuckled. “My dear, I’m distracted enough you could probably get away with a good deal more than that.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” she said.

  “I’m trying very hard to do just that. So far the result is humbling.”

  “Good.”

  He gave a last tug at the laces, then tied them into a bow.

  “I’ll do the stockings,” she said, lifting them from his hands the moment he took them from the drawer.

  “Don’t be cruel,” William said, stretching out his hand. She had beautiful legs.

  Georgiana took a step back and folded her arms, the stockings clutched in one fist. “You said we were in a hurry. I’m not being ousted from my bed at this ungodly hour, simply so you can haul me back into it.”

  “You’d let me?” he asked flatly.

  Terrifying silence. “Absolutely not,” she said, a second too late.

  Here goes. William stepped forward. He didn’t reach for the stockings.

  *****

  They left an hour later than planned. Georgiana was too quiet.

  She regrets it, William thought, wondering how on earth he would persuade her, now that kisses and caresses had failed. Once they had climbed out of her bed at least. It was a good thing they weren’t going far. In this silence, a longer drive outside the city to Windsor or Reading might have killed him.

  She said one word when they disembarked. “Punting?”

  “Yes.”

  They boarded the little craft and pushed away from the river’s edge without spending any more words.

  He wished she’d just tell him what he was supposed to do now, but she seemed afraid to look at him, absorbed in the quiet ripple of the water. William leaned against the pole and pushed their boat under the arch of a bridge, watching the shadows swallow his wife before the afternoon sunlight reclaimed her. She was leaning away from him, trailing a hand in the water, immaculate as ever, not looking at all as if they’d rolled out of her ridiculously narrow bed a short time before. Maybe she wanted to pretend they hadn’t, returning to their familiar antagonism and forgetting anything else.

  “You used to enjoy rowing on the lake at home,” he said, remembering how she would disappear on warm afternoons. Sometimes she’d row steadily back and forth. Other times she’d lie out of sight along the bottom of her boat for so long he’d worry she’d tipped out and drowned. “Why did you stop?”

  “I didn’t enjoy it any more,” she said, not looking up from the water. It was murky and green, turning darker where the trees draped their shadows. Behind the growth edging the river he glimpsed great sloping lawns, rising to even greater houses.

  “Do you ever go fishing?” she asked.

  “Haven’t in years.”

  “I used to, when I was small. When I’d see Sophy setting out from the house with her rod and reel I often wished I could go with her.”

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I never thought she really wanted me—she seemed to need her escapes. But now I think she might have needed someone to escape with more. I wish I had let myself ask.”

  She turned her blinking eyes to the river bank, to the swaths of tall grass. Georgiana never asked—she expected, William realized. She’d scatter rebukes, corrections, and smiling reminders, the last gently spoken, but still with all the force of command. Fetch this, purchase that, and stop wearing that ghastly color. Accompany me to the opera and converse sensibly at my parties and remind the servants not to do such and such, and just give me a moment’s peace. One could comply or refuse without having to engage her personally. She’d invite Sophy to drive with her to the village, bring her up to London. But she wouldn’t ask to fish with her, or to share the private enthusiasms of any of the family.

  “Once we return home,” he said, “you and I will go fishing.”

  “I’ll make you bait the hooks,” she said, deflecting in vain. It would take more than that to discourage him. She’d never care for horses, but she liked being around water. He did too. It felt good to work his arms, poling them along the river.

  “This haze is ruining my hair,” she said.

  “Over warm?” She shouldn’t be. She was wearing the wispy pink chemise, the one he liked, under her gown.

  “No.” A dragonfly darted across the water.

  “I like your hair,” he said. “Why did you stop enjoying boating?”

  “For a time, I don’t think I enjoyed anything,” she admitted.

  He remembered that too. After losing Julius, he’d eventually turned to Fanny, Sophy’s mother—a temporary solace that lasted only until Fanny’s conscience got the better of her. Georgiana had turned to no one. Her sister was the kind of person who half-listened to your sorrows and then hurried to tell you how much worse she had it herself.

  “It was a terrible time,” he said, knowing she’d understand what he meant.

  “Eventually I came to enjoy parties and dinners—the planning mostly. It gave me things to do, to think about. More so than boats and idle drifting.”

  “I like drifting,” he said, pushing them to the left, so they could float under the shade. Her dress—a light muslin, not the one of pomona green—wavered between white and grey in the light filtering through the leaves. There had been no solace for Georgiana. She’d gone from grief over Julius straight to fury over his affair and his bastard child, hurling herself into feats of organization, the fixing of innumerable details.

  “I’m good at planning. I like success,” she said.

  “And now?” he probed, steering their craft into a gentle eddy, where they could spin and watch the current pass.

  “It seems rather useless. I’m alone.”

  “You don’t have to be,” he said.

  She pulled her fingers out of the water, flicking diamond drops over the murky depths. “It’s easy for you. People like you, even when you’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

  “Sophy never liked me,” he said. It was an old hurt, a deep one.

  “She did in the end.”

  Maybe she had, but it had been short-lived. Sophy was further away from him now than she’d ever been. “I know it was lonely. I couldn’t understood why you never took lovers,” he said. “I’d prefer you didn’t now—I want you for myself if I can persuade you—but I would have welcomed it once. I expected it, actually. You know I wouldn’t have stopped you.” He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she tried it now.

  She looked at him, then back over the water. “Sometimes I did, in my head,” she admitted. “But when it came right down to it, there didn’t seem much point, if it was only to even the score with you. You wouldn’t have cared.” She dipped her hand to the water again, stirring it with her forefinger. When she spoke, it was simply, without a hint of pride or apology. “I couldn’t. That’s just not who I am.”

  “I know,” he said, around the sudden thickness in this throat. Best just to say it. “It shames me. If I had half your honor—”

  “We should never have had Sophy. And she is partly my own,” Georgiana said. “At least, it feels so.”

  “Still?”

  Georgiana nodded.

  He waited until his unsteady lips would permit speech. “I miss her,” he said. “Let’s go to her. Let’s write.”

  “I think of it everyday,” she said. “But I don’t know how. She loves Tom Bagshot. So much that it frightens me. He must despise us.”

  William couldn’t reassure her there. Tom Bagshot had no reason to love them. And he couldn’t think of Sophy without remembering her broken face, pleading with them to let her have the one she loved. Pushing her to marry Alistair had b
een a mistake.

  Georgiana turned to him, lifting her hand out of the water to shade her eyes. “Do you think we would have had other children? Together? If things had gone differently?”

  “I’d like to think so.” If today had happened ten years ago, they might have. They could have been out on the river today, with a little boy or girl in play clothes as rumpled as Georgiana’s skirts. “Do you think we’d have been happy?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We were never—you know. We were never like Henrietta and Percy, or Sophy and her Tom.”

  He took his time, poling them forward. “We could try to be.”

  She smiled at him. “I expect we are too old.”

  “Maybe. But today I’m pretending to be at least a decade younger.”

  She looked him over. “You make a good forty-seven. If you were younger you’d have to start tying your cravats like Jasper.”

  He shook his head, studying her in the quiet that settled between them. She’d always been lovely, but right now, with her sun-dappled skirts and fly-away hair, she didn’t look cold, like a piece of blown glass. It gladdened him, that she was his wife. “I should call you Penelope,” he said with a teasing smile.

  “Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “Why not Letitia? That’s just as bad.”

  “It doesn’t suit you. Penelope does.” Not being a scholar, she wouldn’t understand, but he thought it a likely comparison. It saddened him though, how close the allusion was to the truth. Eighteen years was a long time apart.

  “It doesn’t suit me at all.” She looked at him sideways, a smile hiding in the corners of her mouth. “Stick with Georgy.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Anna, a city dweller for most of her life, was used to enduring the stagnant late-summer heat.

  “It’s more a matter of deciding not to be worn down by it,” she explained to Henrietta. “It can’t be changed, so one must carry on.”

  Henrietta made a face. “Percy and I leave for the country on Tuesday. It will be nice to have shade. And a breeze.”

  Hiding a smile, Anna didn’t reply that both could be obtained in London. In fact, they were enjoying both now in the garden behind Lord Arundel’s house. She would miss Henrietta. “I’m sad to see you go. You’ve been so kind to Henry and me.”

  Henrietta dismissed this with a twinkling eye. “It’s no penance, passing time in your company. And Laurie needs a playmate or he gets rough with Will.”

  Anna glanced down the garden, where Henry and Laurie were battling with sticks found on this morning’s walk in the park. Henry was leaping about, slashing the bushes with the better of the two sticks. It had a knobby end and the boys had quarreled several times over its possession. Now they were handing it off every ten minutes, measured with Lord Arundel’s borrowed watch, resting on Henrietta’s lap. It was a fine time piece, but dented, probably from being used as a toy. Little William liked to grab it when he tired of snatching at his mother’s hair.

  “They do get along,” Anna said. Henry was manageable with Laurie. She didn’t know what she was going to do when his playfellow was gone. “How do you get your boys to like you?” she asked.

  “Pardon?” Henrietta asked.

  It wasn’t a tactful question, but Anna was out of time. A month had passed since Captain Beaumaris left, and in that time, she’d visited Henrietta most days. She’d watched, trying to mimic Henrietta’s laughter, her easygoing manners, but Henry never curled into her lap or raced across the room to bestow careless pats on her legs. He held her hand when they walked on the street because she scolded when he didn’t, and shied away from the rest of her touches.

  “The other day, when I told him we weren’t coming to see you, he threw his tin hussar at me,” Anna said.

  “How badly did you bruise?” Henrietta asked.

  Anna showed her with her fingers.

  “Where?” Henrietta asked.

  “Here on my leg,” Anna said, gently indicating the spot. It still hurt.

  Henrietta glanced down to the boys, romping now beneath the branches of the hedge, their happy noises tumbling across the grass.

  “I try to love him, but he doesn’t care for it,” Anna said, her words coming out in a rush.

  Henrietta’s forehead creased, and even that was pretty. Normally Anna would be jealous, but it was impossible to dislike Henrietta.

  “He has seen so little of you,” Henrietta said, troubled. “It’s hard for you both.”

  Anna fought back her swelling throat, fingering the fraying edges of the ratty blanket Henry had left in her lap, like a gigantic dead moth. “I wanted him with me for so long, but it’s not going as I planned. He doesn’t like me. And he screams if he can’t have his blanket, or his hussar. He’d be happier if I left him alone with his nurse.” Try as she would, Anna could not summon any charitable thoughts for the insufferably competent Lucy Plunkett.

  “Jealous?” Henrietta asked.

  Anna nodded.

  “She’s had more time,” Henrietta said.

  “I know it isn’t her fault,” Anna said. “She didn’t steal him from me. But they used her to do it.” She didn’t know when the wet nurse was dismissed and when Lucy had taken her place, or if there’d been other nursemaids in between. The first three years of Henry’s life were lost to her, a closed book in a language she couldn’t understand. As for the future—well, it was hard to hope for better, when her efforts were so fruitless.

  Henrietta took her hand, squeezed with gentle pressure. “Henry’s young. Give him time. You have all his life to do it. He’ll love you before too long.”

  Anna blinked, washing out her lungs with a deep breath, trying to use the flood of air to push away her leaden mood. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Of course you should.” Henrietta squeezed again and retracted her hand. “You are trying, so it will come out right. Not trying, that’s the biggest mistake. But you won’t do that, I think.”

  Henrietta pried a strand of her hair from Will’s fingers, which were heading to his mouth, then glanced down at the open watch. “Time to trade sticks!” she called. Henry handed the prize over, grudgingly accepting the shorter, thinner branch from Laurie. He stomped around a bit, but within moments the two were laughing again.

  “You make it look easy,” Anna said.

  “I have help,” Henrietta said. “And I never lost them. I am so glad that you have him back again.” She looked down at William and stroked his hair. “I am fortunate with Percy. I’ve always known that. And you will be too with Alistair,” she said, looking up at Anna with a smile.

  “I certainly am so far,” Anna admitted. She did not like deceiving Henrietta. The longer she knew her, the more she wished they could be cousins in truth. It was all too easy to love her.

  All was quiet when Anna and Henry returned to Rushford House, but that didn’t mean Lord and Lady Fairchild weren’t home. Wary, lest she spur Henry into another tantrum and spoil everyone’s quiet, Anna nudged along her heavy-eyed boy. “Upstairs,” she whispered. He was too tired to resist, shuffling along beside her, half asleep. If she was careful, she could put him into bed for a nap.

  He stumbled on the second step, but she caught him and lifted him up, letting him sag against her shoulder, his cheek warm against her neck, his sweep of dark hair caressing her. She bit her lip, fighting a sudden onslaught of tears. He was so much bigger now than the bundle that had been stolen from her arms—back then he’d been about the size of a loaf of bread, and not much heavier either. There was weight to him now, sturdiness in his limbs, though now they dangled limp around her waist.

  A moment to get control, then she climbed upwards again, treading softly down the hall to the back stairs that would take her up to the nursery. Halfway there, a door opened, putting Lord Fairchild in her path. He raised a finger to his lips, then closed the door behind him with a soft click. His wife’s door, Anna realized. Before she could stop herself, she scrutinized his clothing: buttons
, cravat, jacket. Perfectly tidy, but that didn’t mean—

  “Can I assist you?” He offered his arms, but she couldn’t hand him Henry. This half-conscious embrace was too precious.

  “I don’t want to disturb him,” she whispered back.

  “At least let me help you with the doors,” he said, moving along beside her. He opened the door to the stairs and followed her up, stepping softly, but not as softly as she. Anna already knew where the treads creaked from stealing upstairs most nights to sit and watch her sleeping son. When he was asleep, she could smooth his hair without him ducking away from her hand, bring his soft paw to her own cheek, and count the pulse that beat at his wrist. He couldn’t fight or scorn her when he was sleeping.

  Lord Fairchild opened the door at the top of the stairs, then the door to Henry’s room. Lucy was there, putting away some folded laundry. She hastened to draw back the bed covers. Anna set Henry down, blocking Lucy with her back so she could arrange his arms and hear him sigh as he sank into the pillow.

  “I’ll take off his shoes,” Lucy said, pushing forward. “You can leave him with me.”

  Dismissed, Anna turned for the stairs. She was halfway down when Lord Fairchild spoke, his voice low. “My dear, you have a tear drying on your cheek.”

  She turned, frightened a little by Lord Fairchild’s level glance. He came down a few more steps, stopping three above. “It’s nothing,” she said, brushing her cheek with the back of her hand.

  He was silent, not needing to contradict her lie. They both knew. Without a word he sat down on the stair, motioning her to do the same.

  “Lucy—” Anna began.

  “Won’t find us. She has a novel sticking out from under that pile of Henry’s trousers,” Lord Fairchild said. “We could go to the drawing room, but you seem more comfortable here. Is it the portrait of my grandfather there that makes you freeze? I would too, if I weren’t used to ignoring him.”

  That won a reluctant smile from her.

  “Please sit down,” he said.