by Lex Croucher
Mrs Burton was looking from Frances to Georgiana with utmost suspicion, but her niece had such a look of genuine astonishment on her face that she seemed satisfied that it was not a plan of her making.
Those of the party nearest rose to meet the newcomers, and after much flustered curtseying and bowing in their direction, Frances and her companions came to stand by the Burtons’ corner of the picnic. Everyone else sat down again, but Frances and her friends remained standing. This left Georgiana in rather an awkward position; once she had sat and the others had not, she had to crane her neck and shade her eyes to meet Frances’s.
It was all too literal and unfortunate a metaphor.
‘What a delightful assembly, Georgiana,’ she said, taking in the assorted crowd. ‘We were just on our way out of town, but we thought we’d come and see what constitutes a romp on this side of the bridge.’
‘Oh, well, of course we enjoy all sorts of things,’ said Mrs Burton, sounding harried. ‘Hunting, dancing, dinners . . . er . . . sleeping – all the usual things, in fact.’
Georgiana flashed her aunt a pained smile. Sleeping, indeed.
‘Oh, I daresay,’ said Frances, quirking an eyebrow at Mrs Burton.
She had a very particular way of smiling that seemed almost entirely sincere, but threatened to transform into a smirk at any moment; her eyes often sparkled with a barely concealed mirth that did not quite match the situation, and it gave Georgiana the impression that she was always enjoying a private joke that belonged only to her.
The mystery of why Frances and her friends were still standing was soon solved; two servants came rushing over with folding chairs and cushions, setting them up with military precision. Only once they could be elevated a safe distance from the evils of grass and dirt did they all sit, still towering over Georgiana and the others from their vantage points on the ground. A large hamper was brought, and wine was produced with a flourish and carefully poured before the men retreated back to the carriage to care for the horses. Miss Walters looked very impressed – in fact, she was staring at the glamorous newcomers with unadulterated awe. Miss Woodley noticed, and nudged Miss Dugray, who snorted.
Frances continued talking to Mrs Burton, who was hesitant at first but soon seemed to warm up to her, as Miss Campbell was being her most animated, charming self. Georgiana resisted the urge to listen in, and engaged Jonathan Smith and Christopher Crawley in conversation instead.
‘I have to say, I am surprised to see you. I didn’t truly expect Frances, let alone the rest of you,’ she said, trying to sound as if it were only mildly unexpected, rather than the reason she was digging her nails so hard into her palm that she’d likely be scarred for life.
‘Oh, well, Franny has a mind of her own,’ said Mr Smith, pouring a glass of wine for Georgiana and handing it down to her. ‘She beckons, and we all come bumbling along like blind little puppies following their hare-brained mother.’
‘Or lemmings,’ said Mr Crawley darkly, accepting his own glass and knocking it against Georgiana’s. ‘Cheers.’
‘Oh – cheers.’ Georgiana clumsily attempted to raise her wine to him after the fact, before taking a sip and glancing over at Frances, who had one hand on Mrs Burton’s arm as if they were the best of friends. ‘Well – she is rather hard to resist.’
‘We are certainly never bored,’ said Jonathan, although his current expression somewhat contradicted his words. ‘Occasionally at great risk of arrest, but never bored.’
Georgiana looked at her aunt quickly to see if she had heard him, but she was laughing slightly nervously at something Frances was saying to her. If Mrs Burton were to warm to her a little, perhaps she would forgive all crimes of vulgarity – both real and imagined – and stop tensing up like a woman bound for the gallows every time Georgiana spoke the name Campbell.
Jane and Cecily had, unfortunately for both parties, struck up a conversation with Miss Betty Walters; Jonathan and Christopher were now bickering about the choice of wine, so Georgiana leaned over to listen in with some apprehension. It seemed that Miss Woodley and Miss Dugray had prompted Betty to speak and were simply letting her continue. Without any assistance or interruption, she was gathering speed at an alarming rate. It was like a carriage crash; she couldn’t look away.
‘I have heard such wonderful things about your families, your families both, and the delightful parties you throw, Miss Woodley – and I have often wondered if I might be invited to such a party at some point – not to impose or to ask for an invitation, of course, and not your party in particular, just a party, something of the party variety – I do have a dress that I keep in case of just such an occasion – it’s pink, but not a garish pink, although my grandmama does often say that I look quite ill in pink, quite piggish in fact – I do like pigs and would see not much fault in being compared to one, but they do so like to roll in muck and mire, and I don’t wish anyone to think of me up to my neck in the mud, ha! I love the countryside but Grandmama thinks I shall like living near the town, too, once I am used to it, and I am so looking forward to—’
Here Georgiana interrupted, for she could not bear to listen to any more.
‘Perhaps, Betty, now is not the time to compare oneself to a pig, however fond you might be of them,’ she said pointedly.
This was the last straw for Miss Woodley and Miss Dugray, who burst out laughing, Miss Dugray pressing her hands to her mouth in an attempt to stop herself. Betty, whom Georgiana had imagined was almost impossible to injure, looked hurt; her forlorn expression was directed at Georgiana rather than the others, which seemed a little unfair. She sniffed and turned away to speak to her grandmother.
Georgiana rolled her eyes at Jane and Cecily, who were still giggling uncontrollably; she had been attempting a rescue mission, not an assassination.
Frances extracted herself from Mrs Burton, and pulled her chair towards the others, leaning in close so she wouldn’t be overheard.
‘Your aunt is a riot,’ she said in confidential tones, taking another glass of wine from Jonathan, having already drained her first. ‘She could not recommend a Miss Betty Walters enough – seemed quite enamoured with her. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was trying to make you an unholy match.’
Georgiana laughed and put a cupped hand to her mouth.
‘Hush, Frances, don’t embarrass me – for the beau in question is sitting just there,’ she whispered, nodding her head towards Betty.
‘Is she?’ Frances said, raising her eyebrows and not bothering to lower her voice. ‘Gosh – I can’t say I think much of her dress, George, and she must be at least three or four years your senior. I hope she’s fabulously wealthy and well-read, and intends to be a most obliging and attentive husband to you.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that she’d be an endless source of amusement,’ Jane cut in, lip curled in a sneer. ‘She was just telling us how frequently she’s mistaken for swine.’
This was too much for Cecily, who started giggling again in earnest; this set the rest of them off, including Georgiana, who tried to rein herself in and chanced a look at Miss Walters’ back.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought she detected a slight stiffening of Betty’s posture at the sound of their merriment.
Jonathan and Christopher entertained them all for a time with a story of much debauchery from a party none of them had attended a few weeks previous – they kept interrupting each other, disagreeing about the specifics of who exactly had pushed whom in the fish pond – the whole lot relayed in low, conspiratorial tones, and punctuated with exclamations and suppressed giggles from the others.
Soon, Frances looked around restlessly and announced that they must be going on to a further engagement. Georgiana felt a pang of longing as she wondered where they could possibly be going, and how marvellous it would feel to be among their number. As they got languidly to their feet and the wine and chairs were packed back up into the carriage, Mrs Burton saw that they were to leave and came over to speak to Frances, dr
agging Mr Burton along with her.
‘It was a delight to make your acquaintance properly, Miss Campbell. Do send my regards to your parents; I would dearly love to meet them.’
‘Of course, you must all come to Longview!’ cried Frances, clasping Mrs Burton’s hand as if she were in raptures. ‘Delighted, Mrs Burton, delighted.’
Mrs Burton genuinely seemed as delighted as Miss Campbell purported to be; long after she had said her goodbyes and the elegant carriage had driven out of sight, Georgiana was still listening politely as her aunt recounted their conversation, and at length pardoned her friend of all the ill graces and grave misbehaviour of which she had previously been accused.
‘She was most obliging, most obliging indeed – and with such a family, how could she not be! I think she has been treated most unfairly, for I cannot now imagine the rumours I have heard of her conduct to be true. She was telling me of her parents, her father especially, such a rich history . . . Oh, I do hope they invite us for dinner, Georgiana. Miss Campbell seemed most sure they would. A fine family! A fine girl.’
Georgiana deemed it best to stay quiet on the subject of her aunt’s rapid reversal of opinion, simply agreeing politely with her when appropriate, all the while dancing a jig on the inside. As the picnic came to an end and they climbed into their respective carriages, Georgiana found herself quite pleased with how the day had turned out after all.
The only fly in the ointment came as she settled into the seat – next to a rather sunburned Mr Burton – and turned for one last look back at the grounds, awash with gold in the evening sun.
Among the stragglers she caught a brief glimpse of the red, tear-stained face of Miss Betty Walters.
Chapter Six
A
note came the very next day, inviting Georgiana to be a guest of the Campbells the following Friday. The invitation did not extend to include her aunt and uncle, but Mrs Burton took this surprisingly well, giving Georgiana her permission at once. She seemed to feel that it would only increase the likelihood of an invitation of her very own at a later date; Georgiana rather thought that this was wishful thinking, but admired her optimism.
Emmeline helped her pack her four best dresses – ‘Four?’ cried Mrs Burton in horror upon seeing her trunk. ‘Four dresses, for one night away? What do you plan to do to the first two – swim in them?’ – and Georgiana made the journey early on Friday morning, eager to arrive with plenty of the day ahead of her. She found herself so agitated, so entirely incapable of sitting still, that eventually she sat on her hands just to keep them out of trouble. She still couldn’t quite believe that she was to be a guest of Lord and Lady Campbell; if she did not have the note right in front of her – if she had not read and reread it a thousand times, checking again as they neared the house that she had definitely been invited and had not somehow misinterpreted a practical joke, or a letter asking her to please not come for a visit – she would not have believed it.
Longview was just as unbelievable as everybody had made it out to be. The estate was directly north from the town, and sat perched atop the hill which afforded it the magnificent views that had given it its name. The grounds were large and rambling, the gardens close to the house pruned to perfection, and Georgiana could imagine no finer place to sit and read than by the wild natural lake that they passed on their way up the drive. The house itself was intimidatingly grandiose; it seemed so integral to the landscape that Georgiana felt it must have been standing there since at least the dawn of time. It was rendered in pale gold stone, fronted by neat rows of wide windows that gleamed in the early morning sun.
It made perfect sense that this house had created Frances Campbell.
As Georgiana was exiting the carriage, the front door opened and Frances tumbled out to greet her. She was wearing nothing more than her shift and a peculiarly ornate dressing gown, her dark curls tumbling loose about her shoulders. Her uncle’s coachman looked away, blushing, as he brought Georgiana’s trunk to the door.
‘George! You’re here!’ she cried. ‘You made it all the way up the driveway and everything, you clever thing!’
‘Are your parents not here?’ Georgiana asked, still a bundle of nerves, looking behind Frances as if expecting them to appear in the doorway in matching dressing gowns.
‘No! Oh God, did I not say? They’re away. The house is empty – it’s ours!’
Georgiana would not have quite described it as empty; Frances draped an arm around her shoulders and steered her inside, and they passed at least a dozen servants on their way from the frankly enormous marble entrance hall to the guest bedroom that had been prepared for her. It was vast and high-ceilinged, furnished with an ornately carved four-poster bed, side tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and numerous portraits of stern-looking relatives and their even sterner-looking dogs. Georgiana had never been inside such an ostentatious bedroom in all her life. She could have ridden a horse around it quite comfortably.
A maid unpacked her trunk for her, accepting the need for four dresses without question, and Frances left Georgiana to ‘refresh’ herself. The person peering nervously back at her in the over-gilded mirror looked insipid and demure – dressed and ready for any and all excitements that could possibly take place inside a church, or a particularly lively convent. There was nothing to be done about it now, Georgiana thought bracingly. She would just have to wear enough clothes for the two of them.
She almost got lost on her way to the garden, and had to ask multiple bored-looking servants for directions. When she got there, she saw Frances sprawled out on one of two well-stuffed velvet chaises that had clearly been dragged outside at her bidding. Her eyes were closed, and she was smoking a pipe. The scene looked like some sort of erotic painting.
Georgiana had been mentally preparing for a visit full of strait-laced afternoon teas and excessively formal dinners; she had been rehearsing witty lines and opinions on various subjects, so that she could thoroughly impress the Campbells with her spontaneous acuity and charm. She had gone so far as to write a list of her favourite works of literature, music and art, for when quizzed on her preferences her mind always went instantly blank, as if she had never encountered so much as a pamphlet or a tin whistle in her life.
The far more informal reality of the visit actually unfolding in front of her was an enormous relief; Georgiana accepted a draw on Frances’s pipe, and a glass of wine when it was offered, slipping off her shoes and reclining on the other chaise.
‘George, George, this is the good life,’ Frances said, sighing happily. ‘You know, I was rather enamoured with a boy actually called George, once, on a rather accursed visit to Brighton. He was just so expressive. Fancied himself the next Byron. He wrote me my very own poem. It was bloody dreadful – I think he compared me to a wood pigeon – but I told him I’d treasure it forever. What I’ll really treasure forever is the memory of how frightfully good he looked in his obscenely tight breeches when he bent over to pick up my handkerchief.’ Georgiana laughed rather uncouthly into her wine. ‘What about you, George? I sense hidden depths lurking behind those dimples. Have you secretly been corrupted by caddish men? Or have you never admired the beautiful flank of a gentleman in retreat?’
‘Nobody is quite as thoroughly corrupted as you are, with your particular eye for the fit of a man’s breeches,’ said Georgiana, and Frances gave her a rakish look.
‘Don’t avoid the question, George. You must entertain me.’
Georgiana considered inventing a more intriguing romantic past for herself – illicit affairs, dramatic missed connections – but she simply didn’t have the range to make them sound like anything other than tales stolen from her collection of romance novels.
‘In all honesty, there has been nobody. My parents were too preoccupied to pay much mind to that sort of thing, so they did not encourage my affections in any particular direction. I thought I liked somebody once, when I was seventeen. I tried to talk myself into it, anyway. His name was Patrick Elliott. He
was the son of a good friend of my father’s, so he was around the house often, and I thought that the proximity would surely breed familiarity and affection, I suppose in the way that you grow fond of a dog or . . . or a much-used hat. He had a little money, too, enough to be quite comfortable, but I’m afraid that was where his list of commendable attributes came to a rather abrupt end. Patrick was encouraged by his parents, who wanted the match, and he started pompously bringing me flowers almost every morning.’ Georgiana shuddered at the memory, fingers clenching around her wineglass. ‘As soon as he became earnest and eager, I realised I didn’t want him at all. If anything, he started to repulse me. I looked for an excuse to leave the room every time he approached. I hid – I actually physically hid behind a church pew once so that he wouldn’t see me, and then realised that of course he could see the top of my bonnet the whole time. He got the hint, in the end.’
‘Oh, you wicked thing,’ cried Frances. ‘I’m sure you quite crushed him. Puppyish creatures they all are! It is a wonder anybody marries at all, honestly. Most men think it’s the pinnacle of romance to give you a slightly more pronounced nod of greeting than they give the next girl. And behind all the bravado, there’s nothing there – can’t hold a sword, can’t hold a woman. I had honestly never thought myself the marrying type. I fancied myself a wealthy, eccentric spinster – you know, holding extravagant dinners with acrobats and fire-eaters, surrounded by like-minded ladies, pitting all my sister’s children against one another for sport at Christmas – and that’s what I told my parents, to their deep chagrin. But then Jeremiah started looking so attractive last summer, and he’s . . . Well, I think he’s perfect for me.’