Rogue Grooms
Page 14
“Hm.” Georgina opened her reticule and drew out the thick wad of banknotes she had been intending to use for some shopping in the village. It was quite embarrassing now, to think of the sums she spent on bonnets and slippers. She tucked them into Emily’s market basket. “Take this, then, and use it on the roof, or the plowing, or whatever you see fit. I will write you a draught on the rest when we return to the house.”
“What!” Emily cried, staring down at the money in shock. “Georgina, what are you doing? You cannot just give me your money! It—it would not be right.” But she reached out one hand, in its mended glove, to touch the notes.
“Emily, please. Please, I want to help. I want to cease being a selfish creature, and help do something truly useful.”
“It is so good of you, but—to give me, an almost stranger, your money ...”
Georgina took Emily’s hand, and spoke to her quietly, earnestly. “I will tell you something that mustn’t go beyond us just yet.”
Emily’s eyes widened. “What is it?”
“I love your brother, very much, and I am almost certain he loves me, as well. He has asked me to marry him—or as good as asked. And I will say yes.”
“Oh!” Emily cried in delight, throwing her arms about Georgina’s neck. “I knew it. I knew it from the way he always looks at you. Oh, I will be the envy of the neighborhood, when they hear I am to have such a dashing sister!”
“So, since I am to be your sister, let me help you.”
“But...”
“Emily. My money shall be yours soon enough. But I am not sure when we will be married, and you need the money now, to bring back the laborers. Please.”
Emily bit her lip, clearly torn. Then she nodded. “Yes. Georgina, you are the dearest dear! My brother is so very fortunate to have found you.”
“Yes,” Georgina agreed. “So he is.”
Emily laughed.
The next three days passed most pleasantly. Georgina went driving with Emily, took tea with the vicar’s wife, and sat and read with Dorothy in the afternoons. She finished the sketches for Emily’s portrait, and began laying it down on canvas in oils. In the evenings, she would play cards with Emily and Dorothy, or listen to Emily play on the pianoforte.
Secretly, Georgina began to make plans for the grand Season she would sponsor for Emily. She had never ushered a young girl through her first Season before, but surely it could not be so difficult for a girl as pretty and wellborn as Emily. There would be a presentation at Court, of course, a coming-out ball, routs and breakfasts and musicales...
These plans were occupying her on the third night, as she lay awake in bed, when she heard a noise. A light scratching sound.
Georgina cautiously raised her head from the pillow to look about. There was only the familiar furniture visible in the dying firelight. Her gown draped over a chair, where she had dropped it after supper. The only sound was Lady Kate’s light snoring.
Then it came again. A faint scratching in the corridor.
Georgina recalled Emily’s tales of Queen Elizabeth, who once a year came back to wander about her bedchamber of more than two hundred years ago.
She sank back down against the pillow, drawing the sheet up to her neck.
“W-who is it?” she called, deliciously chilled. “Do you bring me a message from the other side?”
The door opened, and a blonde head popped into the room. Very solid, and not at all ghostly. “The other side?” Emily whispered. “The other side of the wall, mayhap, since my room is right next to yours!”
Georgina giggled. “Emily! I thought you were Queen Elizabeth.”
“Me? Certainly not. I have no ruff.”
“What are you doing wandering about in the middle of the night?”
“I was hungry, so I thought I would go down to the kitchen and see if there was any lemon cake left from tea. Would you like to come with me?”
“I do feel a bit peckish. Contact with the spirit world will do that to a person.”
The kitchen was quite deserted when they went down there, and found the lemon cake and some milk. They took their feast back to Georgina’s room, and settled down before the fire to eat it. Even Lady Kate got a small portion.
“Do you often make midnight forays into the kitchen?” Georgina asked, scraping up the last of her cake crumbs.
Emily shook her head. “No, but I did when I was a child. Cook would leave little treats out for me, a cake or the last of a meat pie. Sometimes Alex would go with me, though he was quite a bit older and very dignified.”
“Did you have a good childhood here, Emily?”
“Oh, yes! The very best.” Emily smiled softly at the memory. “My father was sometimes gone, of course, to take his seat in the House of Lords, but when he came back he would bring grand presents, and would take me out riding on my pony every day. He and my mother adored parties, and gave ever so many. Breakfasts, and balls, and suppers. Damian was almost never at home, but I scarcely missed him, he teased me so horridly when he was here. Alex, though, always wrote to me from his school, and was an excellent brother when he was here. It was all such fun.” Her face darkened. “Until my mother’s accident.”
“Did your father stay away then?” Georgina asked gently. Her experience of men had always been that they were seldom about when there was unpleasantness afoot.
“Not at all! My parents loved each other. Father never left Fair Oak after that, not even for a day, until he died. But it was much quieter here, and Alex was away at war. He wrote to us every week, but I was terribly worried about him. I felt so very alone.”
Georgina reached for Emily’s hand. “I am so sorry, Emily. I do know how it feels to be alone.”
Emily smiled, and squeezed her hand. “I am not alone anymore, though! Alex is home again, safe. Best of all, he has brought you to us. None of us ever has to be alone again.”
“No,” Georgina answered slowly. “We never have to be alone again.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Georgina, you have a letter!” Emily said as she sorted through the post at the breakfast table. Then she added slyly, “Alas, it is not from my brother.”
Georgina laughed, and reached for her letter. “Why ever should it be from your brother, Emily?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just think he should write you again,” answered Emily. “That one small note letting us know he arrived at the Grange was so paltry. Has he never sent you any billets doux, then, Georgina?”
“Emily!” Dorothy admonished. “That is hardly any of our business.”
Emily grinned unrepentantly. “Oh. Sorry.”
Dorothy grinned in return. “So,” she said. “Has he, Georgina?”
Georgina laughed, choking on her bite of toast. “I am afraid not.”
“Hmph,” said Dorothy. “Well. That is scarce my fault. I never raised an unromantic child.”
“That is correct,” Emily said. “Who is your letter from, then, Georgina? If it is not too prying to ask.”
“Not at all. It is from my friends, the Hollingsworths. Nicholas and Elizabeth.”
“The people you were staying with in London?” Emily asked.
“Yes. I have been waiting to hear from them this age!” Georgina broke the seal, and quickly scanned the short missive, written hastily in Elizabeth’s sprawling hand. She then read it again, alarm squeezing the very breath from her lungs. The paper trembled in her suddenly chilled fingers. “Oh, no.”
“Not bad news?” Emily said quietly.
“I am—not certain. I do hope not.” Georgina lowered the letter to the table, and looked up into the other women’s concerned faces. “Elizabeth, you see, is in a—delicate condition. It has not been an easy time for her, I fear. And now she writes that she has had some pains, and that her physician has ordered her to bed for a few days. She says all is well now, but her husband has added a postscript, no doubt without her knowledge. Nicholas says she is not as well as she wishes everyone to believe!”
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nbsp; “How dreadful,” cried Dorothy. “Your friend must be so frightened. To be in danger of losing one’s child—that is the very worst.”
“Yes. I am sure she is frightened, though Elizabeth would never say so. She is always so very cheerful. She would not want me to worry.”
“But you do,” said Emily.
Georgina nodded as she folded and unfolded the letter in her shaking hands. “Elizabeth is my very oldest friend. She is—like my own sister. She has always been by my side in my troubles; I must be by hers. I fear, my dears, that I must leave you and return to Town.”
“Of course. I shall help you make the arrangements,” said Emily, rising to her feet.
“Thank you, Emily, so very much! I only pray that I find all is well when I arrive there.”
The town house was very quiet when Georgina at last arrived. There were no chattering voices from the drawing room, as there usually was in the afternoons—no music, no laughter. The curtains were all drawn; the butler spoke almost in a whisper.
Georgina feared for one breathless, dreadful moment that she had entered a house of mourning. That Elizabeth was gone from them.
“Greene, please,” she beseeched the dour butler. “Please tell me quickly what has happened. If the worst has happened...”
“The worst, Mrs. Beaumont?”
“If Lady Elizabeth has—has ...”
Before she could choke out the rest of her sentence, there was the soft sound of slippers pattering along the upstairs corridor. Elizabeth appeared at the top of the stairs, looking rather pale in her sky-blue dressing gown, but alive and whole.
Her hand rested atop the growing mound of her stomach.
“Georgie!” she cried, starting carefully down the staircase, her hands on the banister. “You are back.”
“Of course I am back! Did you think I could stay away after receiving your letter?” Georgina pushed her gloves and bonnet into the butler’s hands, and hurried up the stairs to Elizabeth’s side. “Should you be out of bed?”
“I have been up all day,” Elizabeth replied, kissing Georgina’s cheek in welcome. Her shoulders felt rather thin and frail to Georgina as she hugged her. “I thought I would go insane, laying about up there all alone! I have not seen a soul except Nick all week.”
“Here, let me help you down these stairs. We can sit in the drawing room, and you can tell me everything.” Georgina slid her arm about Elizabeth, and guided her carefully down the rest of the stairs. “Where is Nick?”
“At Gunter’s. I sent him there to fetch some pastries.” Elizabeth gave a sigh of relief as she sank down onto the chaise. “I am quite famished.”
“Shall I ring for some tea?” asked Georgina. “I could use some myself.”
“Oh, yes, please do.” Elizabeth smiled up at her. “Oh, Georgie, I am so very happy to see you! But you should not have interrupted your holiday for me. As you see, I am quite well. It was merely a twinge.”
“Nicholas said it was not a twinge.”
“That husband of mine! I told him he must not worry you.”
“Of course you should ‘worry me’! You are my dearest friend, Lizzie. If you are ill, I want to know about it.” Georgina settled into the chair next to her chaise. “And you are not interrupting anything. Alex had to leave Fair Oak; something about an emergency at his other estate.”
“He left you all alone?” Elizabeth cried.
“Hardly all alone. I was with his mother and sister, who, by the way, are quite charming. So all was well.” Georgina grinned mischievously. “Though I confess, I did rather miss Alex.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Of course you did! As I am sure he was desolated to leave you. Tell me more about his family, now. They must not have been such high sticklers as we feared.”
“Not at all! They were very welcoming. His sister, Lady Emily, is a very pretty girl. Just the right age to make her bow.”
The tea had arrived, and Elizabeth busied herself with pouring and arranging. “Are you thinking of sponsoring her, then?”
“Perhaps. She is certainly in need of a sponsor. We would have such fun shepherding her about, you and I!” Georgina sipped thoughtfully at her tea. “But then, if she were my sister-in-law, I would be quite obliged to sponsor her, would I not?”
Elizabeth’s cup clattered in its saucer. “Sister-in-law? Are you—did Wayland ... ?”
Georgina laughed. “Oh, no! Nothing of the sort. Not yet. But I have received a few proposals in my time, as you know.”
“A few?” Elizabeth snorted. “Only fifty or so.”
“And thus I can tell when one is imminent. Usually. I do not think Alex took all the trouble of introducing me to his family, and kissing me in his ancestral garden, if he only meant to offer me carte blanche.”
“Indeed not! Shall you accept?”
“I think it—very likely I shall. I have not felt at all this way in a very long time,” Georgina mused. “Perhaps never. He is so ...”
“Handsome? Brave?”
“Oh, yes! And such a divine kisser. It would be such a shame to let those things slip away simply because he is a duke and I should make a most odd duchess.”
“Indeed it would be a shame! And you would not make an odd duchess, you would make a fine one. The finest in the realm!”
Georgina smiled, a bit shyly. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course I do! He will be the luckiest man in England to have you,” Elizabeth said stoutly. “Oh, I feel I should be bowing and scraping, and calling you ‘Your Grace’!”
Georgina giggled. “You should not!”
“Should not what?” Nicholas entered the drawing room just then, his arms full of boxes fragrant with cinnamon and sugar.
“Oh, darling!” Elizabeth cried. “Georgina is back, and she is to be a duchess.”
“Is she indeed?” Nicholas deposited the boxes in his wife’s lap, and grinned at Georgina. “Well, I did say that only the fiery La Beaumont could be a match for old Hotspur Kenton. And I was right, wasn’t I?”
Elizabeth bit into a cream cake. “You are always right, darling.”
Nicholas looked down at her in surprise. “I thought you were always the right one, Lizzie.”
“Um, see, there you are. Right again.”
Georgina only laughed at them.
Over the next few days, Elizabeth grew stronger and stronger. She was able to come downstairs every day, and even to accept visitors and go for short drives.
One fine, sunny afternoon, Georgina set up her easel near the tall windows of the drawing room to work on Emily’s portrait. Elizabeth sat nearby, a book open on her lap. But she was fidgeting and sighing so much that it was obvious she was not reading it.
“What is amiss, Lizzie?” Georgina asked, mixing a bit of golden yellow on her palette. “Are you feeling ill again?”
“Quite the opposite!” answered Elizabeth, closing the book with a snap. “I am feeling very well again. So well that I want to go shopping, or even to a ball. I have so much work to finish up in the studio, as well.”
“You heard what the physician said. No dancing, and no standing at your easel for long periods of time.”
“Yes, and Nick is quite fastidious about making certain I follow those orders. As are you, Georgie!”
Georgina laughed, and dipped her brush into the paint. “We only want you to be well.”
“I am well! So is the baby. I can feel her kicking, as strong as ever. We both want some fun! Do you not think a small party would be all right, Georgie? If I only sat and talked?”
Georgina shrugged. “Perhaps a small party. Nothing that would turn into a great crush. Lady Ellersby’s card party on Thursday, maybe?”
“I am sure we could persuade Nick that whist is quite unlikely to harm my health!” Elizabeth opened her book again, but she did not look down at it. “Are you not bored, Georgie? We have been so quiet here of late.”
“I have not been bored at all. I am enjoying having the time to work.”
The butler came into the drawing room then, a pair of cards on his silver tray. “You have callers, Lady Elizabeth.”
“Oh, delightful!” cried Elizabeth. “Who is it today?”
“Hildebrand Rutherford, Viscount Garrick, and Mr. Frederick Marlow,” answered Greene.
“Alex’s friends!” Georgina said. She hastily put down her brushes and palette and wiped her hands on a paint-stained rag.
“Do show them in, Greene,” said Elizabeth. “And have some refreshments sent in.”
Georgina smoothed her hair back, and went to sit beside Elizabeth, smiling in welcome as Hildebrand and Freddie came in. Their arms were full of posies.
“We heard you were ill, Lady Elizabeth,” said Hildebrand. “So we brought you these to cheer you.”
“And we heard you were back from the country, Mrs. Beaumont,” said Freddie. “So we brought these to welcome you.”
“How very sweet!” cried Elizabeth, accepting the bouquet of pale yellow roses. “I am quite recovered now, but these are sure to make me feel even better.”
Georgina took the mass of white lilies. “And I have never had such a dear welcome back! Won’t you sit down, and tell us all the delicious gossip we have been missing?”
“If you will tell us how you enjoyed rusticating, Mrs. Beaumont,” said Hildebrand.
“I found it delightful,” answered Georgina. “The country air is so bracing, you know.”
Freddie and Hildebrand looked at each other with matching, gleeful grins. “Oh, yes, we do know,” said Freddie. “Did our friend Wayland not return to Town with you? We had not heard he was back.”
“Oh, no. He had an emergency to see to at his other estate, so he left Fair Oak a few days before I did.”
Freddie looked deeply disappointed. “Do you know when he means to return? Has he written to you, Mrs. Beaumont?”