by Lex Croucher
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m afraid you think me an unforgivable fool.’
Thomas sighed, and she felt him shifting on the bench next to her.
‘You’re not a fool,’ he said, his voice much closer and softer than she had expected. ‘Or at least – if you are, then I must be twice as foolish and more besides.’
She felt a shock go through her as he placed a warm hand on her jaw, his thumb brushing against the corner of her mouth. She thought maybe he was reaching to wipe away her tear – but then he was leaning towards her, cradling her face in his hand, pressing the gentlest of kisses to her lips, as if he were afraid he might break her. And she felt he had, in a way; some part of her mind had clearly detached from the rest of her, because abandoning all inhibitions, all concerns that this was a line she could never uncross, she reached out to pull him properly to her. He looked almost pained in the second before she closed her eyes, but his lips parted to meet hers, and for a glorious moment she allowed her body the closeness it had been desperate for since she had first met him. His hand travelled along her jawline and behind her ear, stroking her hair, fingers tangling in it as he attempted the impossible and tried to bring her even nearer – and then suddenly he pulled away, breathing heavily, eyes closed and brows furrowed as if something had gone terribly awry.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ he said, getting up and actually walking away from her.
‘No, don’t say that,’ Georgiana said breathlessly. She had no idea how he was able to co-ordinate himself to stand, let alone think of leaving. ‘Please. Stay.’
He stopped in the doorway, apparently unable to look at her.
‘No, this is . . . We both know this is wrong. You’re incapacitated, you’re upset, and I have taken advantage of you, and—’
‘Taken advantage of me?’ Georgiana felt a little indignant now. ‘I brought you here! I – I practically dragged you into the shrubbery. And I can assure you, I did not know this would happen, but I’m glad it has. Thomas, I want this, drunk or sober – I would have kissed you before, at the Taylors’. I would kiss you any time you’d have me.’
‘Please, don’t just – you cannot want this,’ he said agitatedly. ‘We are not engaged – we haven’t even made a passable attempt at courting. You have spent too much time around these people, these people with no regard for consequences. You don’t want—’
‘No. No! Do not tell me what I want,’ said Georgiana, getting shakily to her feet and crossing to him. ‘Look at me.’
He turned towards her but closed his eyes and sighed with frustration, shaking his head.
‘Georgiana, I—’
‘Thomas. Please. Look at me.’
Finally, he did. He looked at her as if he were afraid of her, and of himself, and of every possible thing that could happen next. She put out a hand and slowly pushed away a loose lock of his hair, as tenderly as he had reached for her the first time. He shivered very slightly at her touch, his eyes fluttering closed again – and then she kissed him, hard, pushing him back against the door frame, feeling his breath catch as he pulled her into his arms. His hands were at her face again, and then the nape of her neck, the curve of her back. He was kissing her as if he needed to, as if he’d die if he stopped, and all she wanted was to be closer to him, even though surely they were already as close as they could be in every possible way – even though she could feel every contour of him against her as his hands travelled down her back again and clutched at her waist, burning everything they touched—
Georgiana pulled away from him herself this time, reaching out an arm to steady herself against the glass of the wall. Her body was betraying all logic, breaching all the parameters set in place to keep her safe; in this moment she wanted him, in every sense of the word, more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. There was no real danger – somehow she doubted he’d pull her down into the damp soil beneath the orange trees and make passionate love to her then and there, even if she begged him to – but just the realisation that she wanted more, that even kissing him wasn’t enough, was a distinctly sobering thought.
They looked at each other, as wild-eyed and rumpled as if they had just been pulled apart in a fight, and then Thomas broke the tension by laughing quietly. He scrubbed a hand across his face and then took her by the hand, leading her wordlessly back to the bench. They sat side by side, both still a little out of breath, silent for a moment as they considered their sins.
‘Georgiana,’ he said quietly, ‘Let me . . . Let me try to do this one thing right. I have come to care for you. Obviously. I wouldn’t have . . . Anyway, look, I don’t want you to think this is nothing to me. And I don’t want you to be dishonoured, in any way, by my behaviour. I will speak to your aunt and uncle. I will send word to your parents—’
‘You’ll – what? You don’t have to propose to me because you feel bad for me,’ said Georgiana, horrified. ‘Or out of any sense of – I don’t know – of propriety. You don’t have to get down on one knee for every girl who confesses that she likes you, or . . . There’s nobody here, Thomas. Nobody saw us. I consider my honour thoroughly intact.’
Even as she said it, she felt she was betraying herself. She did not think he owed her anything, but that did not mean she did not long for it, all the same.
‘You think I feel bad for you? Of all the things I feel, that’s not . . . God, this isn’t coming out right at all.’ He put his head in his hands, and Georgiana watched him miserably, waiting. ‘The truth is that I have been fascinated by you, and honestly a little frightened of you – you say exactly what you mean, drunk or sober, and you seemed to demand that same honesty from everybody else. And you made me want to do it. To be honest. To be open with you, even if it scared me. I love . . . I love being near you, but then there’s always—’
He sat up and looked at her, and she was astonished to see that he looked truly upset.
‘There’s always what?’ Georgiana asked, with great trepidation.
There was a pause. Thomas cast about, as if he didn’t know where to begin, and then bit his lip and tried.
‘You know, if . . . if my brother Edward were still alive, no power on earth could have kept him from this party. We were very close when we were children. He never forgave me for being the eldest, he seemed to take it as a personal slight – I think he truly believed that if he tried hard enough he might be able to make up those three years and close the gap. Everything I did, he had to do, too. Sometimes he tried to anticipate what he thought I’d do, just so he could get to it first.’ He smiled, although it seemed to pain him to do so.
‘He must have loved you very much,’ Georgiana said gently; to her horror, she saw him swallow hard, as if to keep himself from tears.
‘I believe he did. I certainly loved him. It’s funny – I never actually told him that. I thought I knew what it was to be a man – to be a brother, a son – but now I think I got it entirely wrong.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Georgiana.
‘You only say that because you don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Edward was seventeen when he died, Georgiana. I don’t know what rumours you may have heard – what stories people tell about us to fill in the gaps, but this is the truth of it – he drank himself to death. He went out one night, to some party, and it was the end of him. He made it home, God knows how, but then—’ Thomas’s voice broke and he took a second to compose himself. ‘He died alone, in his bedroom, while I slept down the hall. A stupid thing – he got very ill, and he was asleep on his back. Every day I think . . . I think of him by himself, choking, perhaps afraid for a moment, and then just – gone. Every day I think of how things could have been different. What I should have done to prevent it.’
Georgiana found herself crying. ‘But . . . But it wasn’t your fault.’
‘If the fault lies anywhere, it’s with me. I mean, I was supposed to be there. I don’t even remember why I didn’t go to that party now, some he
adache, or some . . . Well, it hardly matters. I was his brother, and I was meant to be with him, and I wasn’t. But it’s more than that. Everywhere he went, all the choices he made – he was just following my example. Back then Jeremiah and I were always pushing things too far, always sailing too close to the wind, and Edward was just trying to keep up. To prove he could be just as much of a man as I was. And now he’s dead, because I realised far too late that . . . that I was no sort of man at all.’
‘Thomas,’ Georgiana said helplessly, pressing a hand to his shoulder. ‘No. It was an accident. A terrible accident, but an accident nonetheless.’
‘If I had done things differently, he might still be here. My mother, too. I don’t know if it’s truly possible to die of heartbreak, but I believe she did. She was so full of joy before, so full of life – she was the one who made everything work, the business and our family – but the loss of my brother was too much for her to bear. Family was everything to her, and she had lost so much already by coming here and leaving most of hers behind. After Edward died, she couldn’t eat, nor speak. My father gave everything he had trying to keep her alive, to keep her anchored here, but it wasn’t enough – and once she was gone, he was completely adrift. We . . . We lost everything, and all because I thought that all of this’ – he gestured around him, at the party in general – ‘was what really mattered.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Georgiana said fiercely. ‘I don’t, Thomas. You must know that there isn’t another version of this story where you did everything right, and all was well. There is only what happened. If it hadn’t happened that way, it might have just been the next night. The next party. You might have told him to change his ways, and he might have gone out and done exactly the opposite, because he was young and headstrong. There is no way of knowing, and there is nothing about this that you can change now if you just . . . if you just blame yourself hard enough.’
He closed his eyes tightly, tears finally breaking free, and then lifted a hand to brush them away. They were quiet together for a while, the only sound the gentle drip of condensation from the glass roof and the distant sounds of revels.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘To burden you with all this. I don’t even know why I’m telling you, we never really . . . I don’t speak of it. Jeremiah was there for the worst of it, but we don’t talk like that, and I think he expected I’d soon be my old self again. He is disappointed, I think, to find me changed. He’s changed, too, or perhaps – perhaps I just couldn’t see him clearly before. These parties, this scene – there is nothing for me here anymore. Yet here I am, trying to cling to the threads of my old life, trying to remember how it was to be—’ He broke off, and Georgiana squeezed his shoulder in support. ‘God. I’m sorry. You must think me mad.’
‘You must stop apologising,’ Georgiana said gently through her tears, smiling weakly at him. He attempted to return the gesture, and when he couldn’t, she took his face in both hands. ‘Thomas, not for one second have I ever thought you mad. You are in mourning for all that you have lost. And no matter what you choose to believe about yourself, please know that you have been unable to convince me that you are anything other than good. A good brother. A good son. A good man.’
She pushed his hair back from his face and kissed him gently on the forehead; he let himself lean into her, and she could feel his shoulders shaking with sorrow that he had held back for far too long. When he pulled away his eyelashes were wet with tears. He opened his mouth to speak again – but was interrupted by an earth-shattering boom from somewhere outside the orangery. They both jumped, looking up to see fractured light exploding across the night sky, their view warped through the glass.
Somebody was setting off pyrotechnics on the lawn.
Thomas shook his head, bemused, and then they both laughed shakily through their tears.
‘I meant what I said before,’ Georgiana said, wiping her eyes, when the fireworks came to a polite pause. ‘That you’re not . . . You are not obligated to me. But in the interest of honesty, I can’t pretend that I don’t want that. Want you. I mean, clearly, as I can’t be trusted to be around you without accosting you in a cellar, or a greenhouse.’
‘I can hardly blame you,’ Thomas said, smiling faintly. ‘There is nothing more attractive, of course, than a gentleman . . . a gentleman kissing you and then crying on you in a stranger’s garden.’
He clearly meant to sound jovial, but she knew he was embarrassed. She shook her head at him, smiling fondly.
‘You are exactly correct,’ she said, interlacing her fingers with his. ‘Nothing gets a lady going like a bit of late-night weeping.’
He laughed, then put her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
‘I’m not sure you can call it that. Evening weeping, at most – it’s barely eleven.’
‘Oh.’ Georgiana hadn’t actually noticed the time passing; in all honesty, she had momentarily forgotten they were even at a party. ‘Eleven? I suppose . . . I suppose I should catch up with my friends.’
She had suddenly thought of Frances – jaw set, shoulders squared as she set a course for certain disaster. Now that she knew Thomas was not angry with her, it was much easier to be forgiving, and she felt a pull of guilt in her friend’s direction. As dreadful as she had been, this was not a night for Frances to be alone.
Thomas, she noticed, was attempting to conceal a grimace.
‘You don’t have to come with me,’ Georgiana said quickly, and he looked instantly relieved. ‘I’ll find you again, after.’
‘All right,’ Thomas said, clearing his throat and getting to his feet, offering her his hand to help her up. ‘Find your friends. I shall return to the party, where I shall be the life and soul – leading every dance, spinning every yarn.’
‘No, you shan’t,’ said Georgiana.
‘No, I shan’t,’ Thomas agreed as they made for the exit. ‘But I think I could stretch to fetching us both a drink.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
G
eorgiana’s friends seemed to have been swallowed up by the party. It was a living thing, swelling and retreating as it reached into every corner of the house, quietening to a murmur in places and then suddenly roaring to a crescendo in response to stimuli Georgiana couldn’t pinpoint. In the crush of the ballroom, a woman dressed like a scarlet bird knocked hard into Georgiana’s side, then kissed her cheek with her false beak by way of apology and rushed to join the dancers. Some of Christopher’s half-naked friends had filled one of the water fountains with wine, and were lapping at it like thirsty puppies. The hallways, when she reached them, were full of giggling couples and groups of friends shrieking hysterically together as they fumbled for door-knobs and disappeared into rooms that Georgiana did not dare enter.
She made her way back outside, having seen nobody she knew within, and wondered for a moment if she were hallucinating, or if there really were now people in full military regalia – armed, and everything – squaring up against each other on the back lawn. A crowd had gathered to watch, and when a horn sounded, the two rows of party militia ran towards each other, screaming like banshees, swords aloft. She saw a girl who seemed to be dressed as an acorn standing alone at the edge of the spectators, and approached to ask her what was happening.
‘Oh – they’re fighting for Lord Haverton’s favour,’ she replied, as if this should have been obvious.
Sure enough, the man himself was sitting in a sedan chair, watching with a rather bored expression as the sound of swords clashing together began to fill the night air.
‘They’re not really going to kill one another, are they?’ Georgiana asked, wincing as a sword flew so close to one gentleman’s face that it trimmed a little of his facial hair. Clearly, they had not been blunted.
‘Oh? Probably not,’ was the girl’s rather concerning reply.
‘Have you seen – do you know Frances Campbell?’ Georgiana said, raising her voice over the sound of drunken battle cries, but the girl just shr
ugged.
‘Miss Campbell?’ said another girl, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘I just saw her with some blond dandy in the sculpture garden. She asked me to leave. She was quite rude about it, actually.’
That certainly sounded like Frances. Georgiana thanked her and walked away, keen not to be present when people started sustaining their inevitable horrifying injuries. She had no idea where the sculpture garden might be, but she made her way around the house in what seemed a promising direction until she found herself wandering through an extravagant and alien grove. Greek statues towered above her on white marble plinths, and the many topiaries were sheared into strange, bulbous shapes – she was just studying one to try to work out what it could possibly be when she heard a disturbance up ahead.
Moving closer, she heard a tremulous voice through the bushes that seemed vaguely familiar; as it got louder, she realised that it was Frances. Georgiana hadn’t recognised her at first because of her tone; it was rapid, frenetic – almost manic. It immediately gave Georgiana the impression that she was eavesdropping on something very personal. She ducked behind a particularly girthy topiary and, peering around it, saw that Frances was talking to Jeremiah Russell. He was leaning back on a bench with practised ease as he listened, although even from this vantage point, Georgiana could see that his fingers were tapping out an endless, agitated rhythm into the stone.
Frances was not even attempting to appear calm. She was standing before him, gesticulating with her arms outstretched as she spoke. Georgiana was reminded of the illustrations she had seen of courtrooms, of defendants pleading their cases while impassive jurors looked on. She knew she should leave, but there was something about the way Jeremiah was leaning away from Frances, the desperate tone of her voice, the way he wasn’t meeting her eyes; it gave her such a deep sense of fore-boding that she decided to stay put.
‘I’m not stupid, Jeremiah,’ Frances was saying, but somewhat gently now, as if she were trying her utmost to be understanding, ‘I know you’ve been avoiding me. Just . . . Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Perhaps it was all too much too soon, perhaps – let’s court. Let’s do things properly. Why not! We can have chaperoned dinners, I can . . . I can spend time with your parents.’