by Lex Croucher
‘Or,’ said Frances, angry now and slurring her words, ‘he never meant to propose. He never meant to! And I’m just as stupid as every other . . . every other stupid girl who’s ever crossed his path. Except even more stupid, even stupider, because I – because we . . .’
She collapsed on to Georgiana’s shoulder, crying in earnest again now. Georgiana hushed her and smoothed her damp hair, her fingers catching in the tight whorls of it.
‘That girl. Annabelle Baker. She’s not a whore, George. She’s nobody. She’s nothing. Just the daughter of some merchant. But he’s been seeing her for months. Clandestine meetings in that pub. It was all paid for in his name – her room, board, everything.’
‘Oh God, Frances. How did you find out?’
‘What? Oh – I had our lawyer look into it. Jeremiah must think I’m just some . . . some common harlot. He thinks I’m nothing. But I’m not, George. Whatever I am, I’m . . . I’m something. I’m someone.’ She was shaking uncontrollably against Georgiana’s side.
‘Maybe . . . Maybe this isn’t the end,’ Georgiana said carefully. ‘He’s a little wild – but so are you, Frances, that’s why it works. Perhaps he just needs to get it out of his system.’
‘How can I want him now? It would all be a lie. And I can’t think of him without seeing her. That slut.’ Her voice was rising in volume and Georgiana looked nervously in the direction of the dining room.
‘Come on, Frances. You must go home. Get some rest, and I’ll call on you tomorrow, and we can talk this through. He’s a rat – he’s an absolute rat, I can’t believe he’s done this – but it’ll be all right, you’ll see. You just need to get to your bed.’
Frances stiffened, and wiped her eyes with the corner of the blanket, suddenly glowering at her.
‘Oh, my apologies, am I embarrassing you, George?’ she asked, a touch too loudly for comfort. ‘In front of most esteemed friends of the Burtons?’
‘No! No. You’re just having a bad night, that’s all,’ said Georgiana hurriedly. ‘Everything always seems better in the morning than it did the night before, you know that. I’m sure it will stop raining tomorrow, and I’ll come to the house for a drink, and we can talk and play chess and . . . and we can work it all out.’
She had no idea how exactly this situation could be ‘worked out’, but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Georgiana. Whatever paltry comfort she could offer right now, Frances was not in any state to hear it.
‘Fine,’ said Frances crossly, clumsily getting to her feet. She rubbed her eyes, her fingers coming away dark with make-up, and then froze, looking at something over Georgiana’s shoulder. ‘Oh well, if it isn’t Thomas Hawksley.’
Georgiana turned to see that Thomas had indeed come out into the hallway behind them. All traces of what had passed between them were gone from his face; he looked completely inscrutable and blank, as if they were no more than passing acquaintances.
‘Miss Campbell,’ he said by way of greeting, with a stiff half-bow. ‘Miss Ellers – I simply came to see if you were . . .’ He seemed to suddenly notice Frances’s thoroughly bedraggled state. ‘Miss Campbell, are you quite well?’
‘Quite,’ Frances spat back, bristling like a very wet and agitated cat. ‘I’m in no need of rescuing, Mr Hawksley, so you can rejoin your little party.’
‘Frances,’ said Georgiana nervously, ‘he’s only asking.’
Frances narrowed her eyes at him, eyebrows slanting with derision.
‘Oh, really, George. He’s just looking for another chance to play the hero. I’m sure he thought Cecily would want to thank him most thoroughly after what he did for her at the cottage, and now he’s after somebody else to ply with sob stories and . . . and sink his hooks into.’
This was such a terrible assessment of Mr Hawksley’s character that it left Georgiana speechless.
‘I can assure you, Miss Campbell, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,’ he said forcefully. ‘Miss Ellers knows I have only the highest regard—’
‘Oh, bore off, Thomas. We’re not in the market for tragic recluses. All that moping and misery shan’t win you any points here – she’s not going to fuck you just because your brother died and she feels sorry for you.’ Thomas’s mouth opened, but he did not speak. ‘Miss Ellers is far too . . . far too interesting to waste her time on someone as dull, someone as dry, someone as tiresome—’
‘Goodnight, Miss Campbell,’ Thomas said, in a voice as brittle as bone.
He turned abruptly and disappeared back towards the party.
Georgiana stared after him, aghast. How could she have been so pathetic? So spineless? She had said nothing at all while Frances had attacked his character. After all he had done – after what he had shared with her that night – he had watched her sit there and say nothing in his defence. She was furious with Frances, and she wanted to abandon her on the stairs and rush after Thomas to make sure he knew so – but Frances was crying again, attempting to put her bonnet on with trembling fingers. Georgiana pushed down her anger and helped her, feeling oddly detached, and then accompanied her to the doorway.
‘We’ll . . . We’ll speak in the morning,’ she said.
Frances looked totally lost for a second, silhouetted against the rain, and then threw herself forward to pull Georgiana into a brief and tight embrace. Georgiana didn’t quite return it, her hands dangling uselessly at her sides, but she did lift one in a pale attempt to wave goodbye as Frances stepped up into her carriage, still clutching the Taylors’ blanket to her shoulders. The coachman raised his whip, and they sped off into the night.
Georgiana re-entered the drawing room with trepidation, but nobody seemed to have noticed her absence. She sat down beside her aunt, trying to catch Thomas’s eye, but unsurprisingly he would not meet her gaze – and just ten minutes later, he and his father abruptly began saying their goodbyes. She noticed that the latter looked rather relieved.
Mr James Hawksley grasped her hand and wished her well when he reached her, but Thomas gave only a curt nod in her direction, his eyes fixed on the wall above her, before assisting his father from the room. Words rose up and then caught in her throat as she watched him leave.
Mrs Burton, who had been making great headway with the bottle of sherry, did not seem to notice that her niece’s insides were at this very moment being shredded like tissue paper. She was still playing the parlour game, and leaned sloppily over the arm of her chair to ask for assistance.
‘Georgiana, my dear – can you think of a rhyme for “dishonourable”?’
Georgiana picked up her aunt’s glass and knocked back a mouthful of sherry.
‘Yes, Mrs Burton. Intolerable.’
Chapter Twenty
G
eorgiana did not call upon Frances the next day.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the poisonous words Frances had spat at Thomas – the fact that every single barb had seemed to find its target – the expression on his face as he bore it all, as he absorbed every blow without argument, not looking for one second as if he expected Georgiana to defend him. The fact that, to her endless shame, he had been right.
After all Frances had done – after the moment Georgiana had so long waited for had been ruined – she found that she felt quite uncharitable towards her friend. No matter how distressed she had been, it did not excuse her outright cruelty.
She continued to feel disinclined to reach out to Frances as she spent the next few days drifting around the house, swapping surprisingly scandalous romance novels with Emmeline and eating ferociously, writing to nobody and receiving nothing in return. Occasionally she wandered to her uncle’s desk, but every time she thought of Thomas – of the moment they had nearly kissed, and the moment Frances had ensured they probably never would – she put off writing to Frances for another day. She felt that Frances surely owed her some sort of apology, and should therefore be the one to write first, to provide it. Georgiana had never had a close friend, had never really cared for anybody befor
e or felt cared for in that way, so had equally never had the chance to feel hurt or let down. She was certainly not going to ask her aunt for advice on how to proceed, which meant that the only guidance she had came from her books – and she had yet to discover one in which a heroine had to navigate the repercussions of a drunken, emotional outburst at a quiet Thursday night dinner party.
Georgiana found herself in a very irksome and restless sort of mood. One morning when she and Mr Burton were alone at the breakfast table, as Mrs Burton had gone into the town to see about some wallpaper, she attempted to make conversation with him. Her uncle quickly disappeared behind his newspaper, as was customary. She felt she had been quite charitable in trying to engage him when she was feeling so dour, so did not take the rejection well.
She was eating an apple, and in the silence the crunching of it was all she could hear. Experimentally, she took a bite that was so loud as to be indecent. Mr Burton was not roused. She tried again, this time smacking her lips. The newspaper trembled. She waited a full minute to lull him into a false sense of security, and then took another enormous bite.
The newspaper was lowered, and Mr Burton’s eyebrows bristled over the top of it.
‘Georgiana—’ he began, but Georgiana cut him short.
‘George. It’s George, now.’
Mr Burton looked perplexed. ‘George?’
‘Yes, I would like to be addressed as George. That is what my friends call me, in any case.’
‘I can’t call you George,’ said Mr Burton incredulously. ‘The King’s name is George, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Georgiana, taking her apple with her as she left the table.
Mrs Burton, who had lately taken to watching Georgiana closely like a sort of disappointed bird of prey, invited her firmly into the parlour after dinner that evening. Once she had Georgiana trapped inside, she picked up her hideous embroidery and began to work.
‘You’ve been spending quite a lot of time with Miss Campbell,’ she observed, needles clicking.
‘Yes,’ Georgiana said, not sure if she was being told off or congratulated.
‘Are you forgetting your commitments to other friends, Georgiana?’
Told off it was, then.
‘What other friends?’ Georgiana asked, a touch bitterly.
‘Well! You know I am fond of Frances, Georgiana – but I’m sure you promised Miss Walters another visit, unless I’m very much mistaken.’ Mrs Burton said, embroidering even harder.
‘Right, yes.’ Georgiana felt suddenly guilty; she had not spared a thought for Betty Walters in quite some time. ‘I’ll send her a note, Mrs Burton, I promise.’
‘Very good,’ said Mrs Burton, with a knowing smile. ‘I did see you getting on frightfully well with Mr Hawksley at dinner, Georgiana. And at the pianoforte.’
If she knew just how well they had been getting on, Georgiana thought, she’d probably embroider a hole in herself from the shock of it.
‘Yes, well – he’s very good with his hands,’ Georgiana said carelessly. ‘Er – with the piano, I mean.’
But her aunt did not seem to have noticed; she probably assumed that Georgiana knew of no other uses for a man’s hands.
‘I don’t mean to pry,’ she pried, ‘but goodness, he is rather handsome, Georgiana. And he’s . . . Well, it would be an advantageous match.’
‘He’s rich enough to buy us all, you mean.’
‘Oh, honestly, must you always be so uncouth?’ Mrs Burton sighed and put her embroidery down in her lap. ‘I’m just saying that if you do like him, it might be wise to let it be known. With subtlety, of course. But not every subtlety.’
‘He’s not interested, Aunt,’ Georgiana said firmly. ‘I am certain of it.’
The truth – that she thought he had been interested, that they had recently come within inches of kissing, that she felt she had thoroughly ruined her chances with him by being an unforgivable coward – was far too complicated to explain. Georgiana got up to leave, waiting to see if Mrs Burton would protest; she did not. As she reached the doorway, however, she heard her aunt clear her throat.
‘You should mind me, Georgiana. Handsome, wealthy, kind young men aren’t that easy to come by. Especially not ones who are . . . good with their hands.’
Georgiana rushed away before she could think too hard about what exactly that meant.
The next morning, an unfamiliar carriage arrived at the door; its owner became evident when Jonathan leaned casually out of it and called, ‘Hop in, bumpkin – we’re going to Cecily’s for luncheon.’
The luncheon in question had been arranged in the shelter of a large, ornate gazebo, for the day was startlingly hot; Jane and Frances were already seated, although they seemed to be turned fractionally away from each other, as if they had recently been arguing. Georgiana avoided Frances’s eye as she sat down, wondering not for the first time if Frances might be angry at her for not writing or coming to call, and then determinedly resolving not to care.
Cecily, at least, seemed delighted, kissing Georgiana on the cheek and offering her a plate of food.
‘There’s going to be a party,’ she said, cheeks flushed with excitement.
Georgiana was confused. ‘There’s always going to be a party,’ she replied, cutting a slice of cheese and eating it while Jane laughed drily.
Frances was oddly silent and unresponsive, gazing down at her plate without seeming to see it.
‘Not like this,’ said Cecily, popping a grape into her mouth and sighing dreamily.
‘The earl who owns Haverton House is back. Where you had that queer little picnic,’ said Jane, reaching for her wineglass. ‘He usually hosts the last big event of the season. I’m convinced he doesn’t care if we burn that house to the ground, as he has nobody to leave it to.’
‘Oh, it’d be such a waste to burn it,’ said Jonathan. ‘It’s like some sort of shrine to decadence. The interiors are wall-to-wall red velvet and gold leaf, and stuffed to the brim with the most outrageous and obscene art. And his parties – you haven’t lived until you’ve been to one of Lord Haverton’s parties.’
‘Have I really been dead, all this while?’ Georgiana said, but her curiosity was piqued. ‘Are all invited? Family – chaperones? I can’t imagine Mr and Mrs Burton on a backdrop of red velvet, admiring pornographic sculptures.’
‘Oh, it’s strictly unchaperoned,’ Cecily replied, skewering more cheese on the end of her knife. ‘Only for the under-thirties. That’s one of the rules. But he’s an earl, isn’t he, and his uncle tends to be there, so my parents are more than happy for me to go. I think they’re still hoping I might catch his eye. Jonathan might have more luck there.’
Jonathan threw a piece of bread at her, narrowly missing her glass of wine. She scowled at him.
‘That won’t work on the Burtons,’ said Georgiana thoughtfully, moving Cecily’s glass out of harm’s way. ‘If these parties are as infamous as you say, I think Mrs Burton may put her rather immovable foot down. I shall have to think of something.’
‘His uncle is just as bad as he is, if not worse,’ said Jonathan. ‘Last year I’m convinced I saw him disappearing into the orangery at about half past three in the morning, wearing nothing but his hat, and loading his pistol as if he were off to commit a little moonlight homicide in his birthday suit.’
‘Nobody turned up dead, as far as I can remember,’ Cecily said, shrugging.
Georgiana shot a parody of an alarmed expression at Jonathan, who snorted into his wine.
‘Haverton should just marry someone tolerable and get on with things,’ said Frances, finally breaking her silence. ‘It’s so selfish. The house will end up going to some very distant relative that nobody around here has ever heard of.’
‘Perhaps his hopes for marriage extend beyond loveless practicality and the logistics of his real estate holdings,’ Jane replied.
It was innocuous enough but for her tone, and Frances immediately rose to meet it.
‘Why don’t you marry him?’ she snapped. ‘I’m sure your parents will be thrilled to be rid of you.’
Georgiana’s hand tightened around her glass of wine as Jane flinched. It could have passed for a joke, but nobody laughed – instead, Jonathan turned to Georgiana and pressed a beseeching hand to her arm.
‘I’ve been agonising over what to wear – you must advise me. If I have to think about it for a second longer, I’m afraid my brains might start leaking out through my ears.’
‘It’s a costumed ball,’ Cecily explained to Georgiana, who frowned immediately.
She didn’t have a single thing suitable for a costumed ball, and unlike the rest of them, did not have endless resources that would allow her to throw something together in less than a week.
‘What sort of costumes?’ she asked Cecily.
‘Oh, whatever you want, really, but the theme is “nymphs and dryads”.’
‘Right, so whatever I want, as long as I look like a creature from Greek myth. Very helpful.’
Georgiana mentally rifled through her wardrobe and came up short.
‘I might eschew clothes altogether and simply paint myself water-nymph blue,’ Jonathan mused, arching his brow at Georgiana. ‘Join me in my depravity – just drape a sheet over yourself and say you’re a nymph of the bedroom.’
‘I’m sure that’ll give just the right impression at an unchaperoned party where apparently we’ll all be lucky to escape without being shot by an elderly man in the nude.’
Everybody except Frances laughed.
‘James is going to be there,’ Cecily said, absent-mindedly dropping a grape into her wineglass and watching it bob about with a beatific smile. ‘I saw him the other night – he said he was going to buy me a horse. You know, I think he might propose.’
‘Cecily! That’s wonderful,’ Georgiana said with genuine delight, as Jonathan clapped Cecily on the back. ‘I think it truly baffling that you weren’t married the moment you turned eighteen. You must have been beating suitors off with a stick.’