“Well, I would say that Miss Darrington is a very clever young lady,” his aunt continued when Hamilton had been silent for some minutes. “For I truly believe that she is correct in her assertion.”
“I know that she is correct, Aunt. I just wish I could have admitted it at the time.”
“Before you dismissed her, Hamilton?”
“Yes, before I dismissed her,” he said with a sigh. “Long before I dismissed her.”
“Then it rather seems to me, my dear boy, that you have a choice to make.” Lady Cynthia had become rather firm again.
“What choice, Aunt Cynthia?”
“Do you let Miss Darrington go and with her all your hopes for future happiness? Or do you simply return to the dreadful Mr Winstanley and his employment registry and find yet another young lady to make utterly miserable?”
“All my hopes for future happiness?” Hamilton said, wondering just how much his aunt had perceived of his regard for Miss Darrington.
“You obviously love her, Hamilton,” Lady Cynthia said, almost as if she had read his mind.
“But she is the governess,” Hamilton said quite reflexively.
“And Carwyn Thomas was a low-born Welshman,” she said quite flatly. “Hamilton, for heaven’s sake, do not keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. It is time to break that chain.”
“And afford myself the luxury I did not allow my sister?”
“Rolling around in your own guilt will do absolutely no good whatsoever, Hamilton. You made a mistake a long time ago, and it is time to forgive yourself for it.”
“It is rather a large mistake, Aunt Cynthia, is it not?”
“Most mistakes generally are, Hamilton. But if they go unforgiven, they tend to become larger still. They grow to such a size that they are no longer manageable. Please, you must not let this one becomes so.”
“In truth, I know I do not deserve it.”
“You do not deserve what?”
“I do not deserve the happiness that such self-forgiveness would bring.”
“I do not believe that Hamilton, and neither would Josephine.”
“You might be mistaken on Josephine’s part, Aunt Cynthia. But I thank you for your kindness.”
“It is not kindness, Hamilton, it is common sense born of knowing both you and your sister so very well. Josephine would not have wanted this.”
“We can never know, can we?” Hamilton wondered how much longer he could dwell upon the matter without finding himself spiraling into the dark pit he seemed to fall into daily since he had first heard of the death of his sister.
“Perhaps we can, perhaps we cannot. I daresay it is trying which is the important thing.”
“I do not understand.”
“No, you do not understand, Hamilton. Fortunately for you, Miss Darrington understands it perfectly.”
“Miss Darrington? What exactly do you mean?”
“She did not leave you when you sent her away you know.”
“No, not immediately. I tried to trace her myself and, unfortunately, in the end, I was forced to question my driver.”
“Why did you not simply ask him in the beginning?”
“Because I did not want to create any sort of hurtful gossip around Miss Darrington.”
“Well no, because you love her.” Lady Cynthia smiled mischievously.
“My dear Aunt, I do wish you would not follow that particular line.”
“But it is true, is it not?”
“My driver admitted to me that she had gone no further than the inn on the edge of the village.”
“And so you went there?” Lady Cynthia said, ignoring his refusal to answer her question.
“I went there, only to discover that I had come too late. Miss Darrington had already left.”
“And so you decided to come here to me.”
“I had thought that you might know something of her whereabouts; the two of you seem to have grown rather close.”
“We have grown very close, Hamilton. In truth, I like that young lady very much indeed.”
“Enough to know where it is she now hides herself?”
“She does not hide herself at all. She is rather more a woman of action than one of self-pity.” Lady Cynthia shook her head in exasperation. “And when I said that she did not leave you, I truly meant it. Even now she works to find a solution.”
“A solution to what?”
“She seeks to find a way to open your heart again, I believe.”
“And is my heart so closed?”
“I hardly think you need to ask so ridiculous a question, Hamilton. Your heart has been closed for years, and whatever chinks of light used to make their way out were thrust into darkness the very moment you discovered that Josephine had died.”
“Because I could not go on, Aunt Cynthia. I did not know how to live in a world that she did not also inhabit. I do not know how to live with myself.”
“Because you have assumed that your sister despised you.”
“Yes.”
“And so we have come full circle. But at least Miss Darrington has chosen to step out of the perpetual motion of your repetitive thinking and has gone in search of answers.”
“What do you mean gone in search of answers? This conversation is beginning to lack sense.” Hamilton could not begin to imagine what his aunt meant by it all.
“Your governess, Hamilton, being the only person of sense in your entire household, yourself included, is, as we speak, making her way to Beddgelert.”
“She has gone to Beddgelert? But why?”
“She is making that arduous journey into Wales, my dear boy, to find some proof, if proof exists, that your assertion that your sister despised you is simply incorrect. As far as she sees it, the answer to that question is the only way of reaching you. The answer to that question is the only way of ensuring your future happiness and, by reflection, the happiness of your sister’s children.”
“I cannot understand what she hopes to find. I cannot imagine that there is anything there to discover.”
“Fortunately, Miss Darrington is not so easily dissuaded. If there is the smallest hope of finding something there which would ease your mind and your heart, she intends to find it. Now, what do you intend to do, Hamilton?”
“I must go to her,” he said, surprising himself as much as he had clearly surprised his aunt. “I must pack this day and follow her into Wales.”
“That’s the spirit, Hamilton,” Lady Cynthia said, her eyes suddenly filled with tears of emotion.
“In truth, I do not know what I shall do or say when I get there. I feel I must warn you that, in the end, I might not be able to achieve all that you think I can. I might not be able to allow myself the happiness I denied my sister.”
“But you promise me that you shall try?”
“Yes, Aunt. I promise you that I shall try.”
Chapter 30
“I was so surprised to get her Ladyship’s letter, Miss Darrington, really I was.” Mrs Evans was a tall and lean woman in her middle forties with a kindly face and the air of somebody who had lost a great deal.
“And it is so kind of you to welcome me as you have done. It is wonderful for me to see the place where Eleri and Ffion were born.”
“And you are their governess, as Lady Lyndon tells me.”
“Yes, I am their governess,” Georgette responded vaguely, wondering why it was that Lady Cynthia had chosen to give Mrs Evans the impression that she was still very much employed at Drayton Hall.
But perhaps Lady Cynthia had a little more faith in her nephew and assumed that he would very quickly come to see the error he had made in dismissing her.
“And tell me, Miss Darrington, how are they?” As soon as she had begun to speak of the little girls, Mrs Evans’ eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Mrs Evans, they really are the most beautiful little girls I have ever set eyes upon. And they are so sweet in their natures and so keen to learn.”
&n
bsp; “That is just how I remember them, Miss Darrington. Oh, they were so precious to me. They were so precious to everybody here.”
“This town suffered very badly from the infection, did it not?”
“It did suffer, and that’s the truth. But none suffered more than this household. There was none who lost everybody, only the Thomas family.”
“It is such a great tragedy, Mrs Evans, that I can hardly bear to think about it. How the girls must have suffered, and how you must have suffered, my dear.” Georgette laid a comforting hand on the older woman’s arm.
“There is many a day I wake up, Miss Darrington, and wonder at the point of it all. With my own husband long gone, and no children of my own, I had come to see Mr and Mrs Thomas as my own family. And their little children, I love them as if they were my own flesh and blood.”
“I truly am so very sorry.”
“And then, when their grandparents were taken too, just days later, I had never seen such confusion and grief in such little girls in all my life. I thought I should never recover from it.”
“Their Nain and Taid,” Georgette said sadly.
“Yes, Miss Darrington. Tell me, do the girls still speak of them?”
“Yes, it is Eleri and Ffion who taught me the words.”
“They told you of their family?”
“In bits and pieces, yes. I daresay it is because they are so very young that they simply tell me odd pieces of information here and there. They told me once that their mother had walked up Mount Snowdon before they were born and that she had gone up there with their Nain and Taid. It was then that the girls told me exactly what the words meant.”
“They still have a little Welsh then?”
“They have a lot of Welsh, Mrs Evans. I have been most keen that they should continue with their own language. And I have learned a great deal myself.” Georgette gave a self-deprecating laugh.
“So, you are allowed to teach them? Welsh, I mean?”
“Well, not exactly.” Georgette winced, not really knowing how much she ought to say.
“The Duke, Mrs Thomas’ brother, seemed not to like the idea at all. I mean, the idea of Mrs Thomas falling in love with Mr Thomas and marrying him.”
“Yes, I believe that is quite correct, Mrs Evans.”
“Forgive me for asking, Miss Darrington, but what is it that really brings you here?”
“You have been so very kind to me, Mrs Evans, that I can do no other than be honest with you,” Georgette said, wondering quite where the notion had come from. “The Duke, it seems, had long since recovered from his own little concerns over his sister’s marriage. Unfortunately, he rather left it too late to make that known and, before he had a chance to reconcile with the sister he loved so dearly, she and her husband had died.”
“Oh dear, that is so very sad.”
“I think so too, Mrs Evans. And it affected him so greatly that he can hardly bear to look upon the girls. They look so much as their mother did at that age, by all accounts. And whenever he hears them speaking in Welsh, he is reminded of everything he has lost. And he is more greatly reminded that the reason he had lost his sister in the first place was of his own doing.”
“But the poor man could not have known that he would lose her so completely. He could not have known that he did not really have time to set things right between them, could he?”
“No, Mrs Evans, he could not. And that is why I am here.”
“To put things right?”
“In a manner of speaking. If I can, that is.”
“But how?”
“I do not know what I really expect to find. I think I am just looking for some tangible piece of evidence that Josephine Thomas did not despise her brother in the end. You see, that is the thing which pains him most. That is all he can think about whenever he looks upon Eleri and Ffion. If only I could find something that would dispel the notion, something that would let him know that, despite their differences, his sister still loved him.”
“And she did, Miss Darrington,” Mrs Evans said with absolute certainty.
“Did she talk of him often?”
“My dear, I think I heard every single minute of her childhood. I can’t think that any young lady has grown up with a brother she adored more than Mrs Thomas adored the Duke. It broke her heart to stand in our little chapel without him there to give her away on the day she wed Carwyn Thomas.”
“But did she resent her brother for it? Was she not angry with him?”
“Lord, no.” Mrs Evans shook her head. “That just wasn’t her way. She was a gentle creature with a romantic heart and the softest of ways, just like her little girls. She could no more resent him than she could resent her own children.”
“Did she not talk of the break between them?”
“Not very often. I suppose it was just a fact that couldn’t be ignored and didn’t need to be said. When she talked to me, or to Mr Thomas’ parents, it was only of all the good that had existed between them. There was never any bitterness, only sadness.”
“It is a great relief to me to hear you say that, Mrs Evans. If only I could find some way to prove it to her brother. If only I could give him something of the relief I feel myself.”
“Then you might be better off to look through the little box of letters she wrote him,” Mrs Evans said with a shrug.
“The letters she wrote him?”
“Yes, Mrs Thomas used to write to her brother regularly. But she never sent them; she just kept them in the box. I never asked her why; I just thought that she might decide to tell me one day. But, of course, she never did.”
“Mrs Evans, do you know where the letters are?” Georgette said, feeling suddenly as if she were truly getting somewhere.
“Yes, they are under her bed, Miss Darrington. You may help yourself to anything; Lady Lyndon said that you might.”
“How very kind you are, Mrs Evans,” Georgette said sincerely.
“Not at all. If I can do anything to help my dear little angels, I shall do it.”
Leaving Mrs Evans to prepare the two of them an evening meal, Georgette hurried upstairs to the master bedroom. The house had been a complete revelation to her and very much larger than she had ever imagined before.
Built in a beautiful pale gray stone, the house sat on the banks of a wide river with the most breathtaking countryside apparent from each elevation. The view was just as Eleri and Ffion had described it and, as she looked out of Josephine Thomas’ bedroom window, Georgette found that she was suddenly crying. The full force of the tragedy hit her terribly at that moment as she imagined the laughter and happiness of a young woman, so in love with her handsome and poetic husband, with two small children and all of life ahead of her. And how that life had been brutally cut short before she and the brother she had loved so dearly had ever had a chance to see each other again. And that Eleri and Ffion had been taken from the only home they had ever known must have been a truly frightening experience for them. Georgette, at that moment, could only see tragedy everywhere she looked.
Of course, she knew it would not do. Life had to go on for the living, and for her to dwell in the past, a past that was not her own was by no means helpful.
Hurriedly swiping at her tears with the back of her hand, Georgette made her way over to the large wooden-framed bed. The room was a beautiful one, and she would have been extraordinarily glad for it herself. It was certainly very much larger than the bedroom she had enjoyed back home in London, and the windows were enormous. She rather thought that one could lie in bed and simply stare out at the beauty all around without even having to move.
And the fabrics and furniture in the room were absolutely delightful. There were little tables and tiny fabric-covered stools; there was a beautifully woven wicker chair with a most striking, hand sewn patchwork quilt folded neatly upon it.
Georgette could not help imagining that Josephine herself had sewn much of the fabric work which adorned her home, and she wondered at the beautiful
simplicity of a woman who had grown up in the very heart of one of the largest mansions in England.
Stooping to a crouch, Georgette peered under the bed, instantly spying the box of letters. She drew the box towards her, feeling a little like the eavesdropper she had been when she had overheard the Duke arguing so dreadfully with his aunt. But surely Josephine herself would not have minded; after all, Georgette’s only wish in all of it was to find a way for Josephine’s brother and children to beat a path back towards each other. No mother could surely object?
A Governess for the Brooding Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 24
