by Jane Ashford
“What?”
“To be with someone who knew everything about me and still loved me.” He turned his head to kiss her shoulder.
“Everything about you is wonderful,” she replied.
“No, it isn’t. I’m not like you, perfect in every way.”
Georgina got up on one elbow to gaze down at him. “I’m not, you know, Sebastian.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you are.”
“You’re setting me up to disappoint you. And I’ll hate that.”
“After the last two days?” Sebastian was incredulous. Did she still not understand what she’d done for him? “You never could, if we lived together a hundred years.”
With a tremulous smile, she snuggled up against him, her head on his shoulder. Sebastian tightened his arm around her. This was happiness, he realized. It filled him like a fine champagne, fizzing in his veins, making him pleasantly dizzy, though not the least fuzzed. Somehow, against the odds, he’d found his way to it. He only had to make certain he never let it get away.
Twenty
The Gresham family arrived at Stane Castle in a cavalcade late the following afternoon. From their various locations, they had met in Cheltenham and traveled the rest of the way into Herefordshire together.
Sebastian and Randolph stood in the drive to greet them. They’d had some warning from a servant who spotted the line of carriage and riders from the outer gateway. “The whole troop,” said Randolph. He’d been restless since Miss Byngham’s ritual.
The leading traveling carriage pulled up before them, with another just behind. Alan, Nathaniel, and Robert, riding beside the vehicles, dismounted. Three other carriages, laden with luggage and attendants, were directed to a side entrance by one of the grooms.
The door of the first carriage opened. The Duke of Langford emerged, then turned to offer a hand to his duchess. She took it with a smile and stepped lightly to the ground. As his father surveyed the castle with his customary urbane assurance, Sebastian wondered yet again whether he’d ever achieve such confidence. He’d often despaired. But suddenly, now, he almost thought he might, someday, with Georgina at his side.
Their mother embraced them one by one. “How are you, my dears?” she said.
“Very well, Mama,” replied Sebastian. “Never been better!”
The buoyancy of his tone earned him an interested smile.
“Great heavens, what’s happened to Violet?” said Randolph.
Sebastian turned to find that his brothers’ wives had stepped down from the second carriage. And while Alan’s mate Ariel was charmingly familiar—a small, curvy figure with silky brown hair and skin like ripe peaches—Nathaniel’s new viscountess bore almost no resemblance to the dowdy young woman Sebastian had last seen at their wedding a few months ago. She was sleek and fashionable and…he groped for a word. Regal? The last time they’d spoken, he and his brothers had just left her future husband stranded naked with a wolf skin, Sebastian remembered. Abruptly, he wondered what tricks his brothers might be planning to play on him.
“She has come into her own,” answered the duchess, “and brought Nathaniel along with her.”
It was one of Mama’s typical remarks. Sebastian had no idea what she meant. “Where’s James?” he asked as three brothers and two wives joined them in front of the castle entry.
“Sailed away to the ends of the earth,” replied Robert.
“He sent his apologies and best wishes,” added Nathaniel.
“The navy gave him a new command?”
Robert shook his head. “No, he’s quit the navy. He married a beauty from a tropical island, with piles of treasure and her own ship. They’ve gone off to be rovers.”
“Rovers?” said Randolph. “You sound like a boy’s adventure tale.”
“Don’t I, though?” replied Robert cordially. “It was the young lady who tried to shoot him.”
“That was an accident,” said Ariel. “Mostly.”
The newcomers all seemed to understand this. He and Randolph had apparently missed a good deal. Sebastian looked forward to catching up. And it was very pleasant to be amid a jostling of brothers once again. But he was conscious of the Stanes waiting inside the great hall.
“Sebastian will be wanting to present his new family,” said Violet, as if reading his mind.
“Will he?” murmured Randolph, giving Sebastian a sidelong glance.
Sebastian hoped no one else had heard him. And knew that hope forlorn. His mother, in particular, had ears like a bat. “Yes, come inside,” he said heartily, turning to open the door.
The yapping began as the duchess crossed the threshold.
“Good God, you weren’t joking about the dogs,” murmured Nathaniel in Sebastian’s ear. “Where’s the Hindu gentleman? I hope he hasn’t gone.”
“You’ll meet him at dinner,” replied Sebastian out of the side of his mouth.
Georgina came forward, and Sebastian thought he might burst with pride as she greeted his family and then presented her own with graceful ease. Wanting it all to go well, Sebastian tried to catch every word in the babble of talk that arose then.
“Welcome to Stane, Duchess,” said Georgina’s mother. “Drustan, stop that at once!”
“Please call me Adele. We are to be family, are we not?”
“And I am Charlotte,” answered the marchioness. “Drustan! He is such a little rogue.”
“That would seem to describe him,” said Sebastian’s mother.
He knew that tone, Sebastian thought. Mama was amused and appalled and kindly determined to be polite. He kept his eyes off the floor. He did not wish to know what Drustan was doing. He was sure he wouldn’t like it. Fingering the tattered cloth in his pocket, Sebastian edged closer to his mother.
“Of course, the Normans didn’t have an easy time of it in this part of the country,” the marquess was saying to the duke.
“My Norman ancestor married a Saxon lady,” Sebastian’s father replied.
You could not catch Papa out, Sebastian thought admiringly. It was simply an impossibility, like a thrown pebble falling up.
“Is that so?”
“She’d lost her husband at the Battle of Hastings. She had a large manor at Langford, which…riveted his interest.”
“I knew the boy couldn’t be a damned Welshman.”
Or perhaps you could, Sebastian amended, as his father said, “I beg your pardon?” But then Georgina’s father had special talents.
“I shall take you out to see Offa’s Dyke once we get this knot tied for the children,” the latter said.
As the duke professed himself pleased, Sebastian saw that Hilda and Emma had cornered Robert.
“Are you truly a pink of the ton?” Hilda was asking him.
Robert received the question with less than his usual savoir faire. He simply shrugged, then nodded.
“But why do they call you pink?” she added. “I’ve never understood that expression.”
“I don’t know!” Robert snapped, turning away and walking over to stand with Randolph.
Sebastian blinked. It was unlike Robert to be rude.
“Yes, our first grandchild,” his mother said to Georgina’s.
Sebastian turned and followed her gaze to Alan, who stood beside Ariel, holding her hand, at the edge of the group. His youngest brother never cared much for chatter. But Sebastian had never seen him look so contented, and Ariel was radiant.
What a thing it would be, Sebastian thought, to be a father. He looked around, glimpsing what seemed to be a similar thought on Nathaniel’s face. One day they all would be, probably, and there would be a mob of children at gatherings like this. Numbers sprang into his head. If they each had two, that would be a round dozen young Greshams. Three each would be—good God—eighteen undoubtedly lively offspring! That might be worse than the pugs
. But no, of course it wouldn’t.
“And I’m sure you hope Violet will follow along soon,” said Georgina’s mother.
“Oh, there’s plenty of time for that,” said the duchess. “No hurry at all.”
Sebastian thought that Violet was listening closely, while pretending not to be.
“I’ll never forget how your mother watched me after we were married, like a hawk ready to swoop down on a pigeon,” said his mother to his father.
The duke laughed. “She did rather.”
“Rather? She bribed my maid to… Never mind.” The duchess made one of her subtle moves, a mere gesture toward the stairs. And somehow the dynamics of the group shifted. Sebastian had seen her stop budding ballroom quarrels in their tracks and herd a crowd of partygoers more efficiently than a sheepdog. It was a kind of magic.
“Let me show you your room,” said Georgina’s mother in response. “You’ll want to rest after your long drive.”
“I heard you speak at Oxford,” Edgar Stane said to Alan as the group moved. “It was astonishing.”
Sebastian enjoyed Alan’s smile. He had sometimes wondered how his youngest brother felt about the family’s general inability to understand his work.
* * *
Everything was going more smoothly than she’d hoped, Georgina thought at dinner that evening. It seemed her fears had been groundless. Of course, the duke and duchess practically defined politeness. But His Grace actually seemed to be enjoying a discussion of dog breeding, though she was certain he had no interest in pugs. And the duchess was obviously charming her father.
Violet was talking with Mr. Mitra about India. From what Georgina could hear, she was balancing questions and travelers’ tales in graceful proportion. The exchange seemed quite cordial, and it struck Georgina that Violet might rival the current duchess someday. She had blossomed amazingly in the months since her marriage. Georgina felt a little glow at the idea of such possibilities.
Across the table, however, things were not going quite so well. Perhaps they shouldn’t have seated Robert next to Hilda. It had been a treat for her, and Georgina hadn’t thought Robert would mind. He was looking surprisingly sullen, however, under the onslaught of her chatter. Quite unlike the darling of the ton that Georgina knew. In fact, she suddenly glimpsed a resemblance to Randolph that she wouldn’t have predicted in this Gresham brother.
The latter was deep in conversation with Ariel. Georgina hadn’t been aware that they were acquainted, and she wondered what they were finding to engross them so. Further down the table, Nathaniel was being kind to Emma. It was gratifying to see her sister beam under his gentle inquiries. The viscount was also managing Joanna Byngham on his other side with impressive dexterity. Georgina had caught him giving the governess perfectly blank looks once or twice, but he’d responded to her with grave courtesy. Nathaniel was, as she’d heard Sebastian say, a complete hand.
Scanning the rest of the dinner table, Georgina met Sebastian’s blue gaze. It was like coming to rest after some exhausting task, or bubbling with laughter at a shared jest. For a while, she lost herself in beatific visions of the future.
The meal wound down without any noticeable disruptions. At the marchioness’s signal, the ladies rose to retire. Joanna excused herself in the corridor outside the dining room and headed toward her own chamber. The rest of them started upstairs. But on the upper landing, Georgina’s mother was met by a servant, who bent to murmur to her. “I must check on Nuala,” she said in response. “Do go on without me. I shan’t be long.” She hurried off toward her workroom.
“Nuala?” asked the duchess.
“One of the dogs,” Georgina replied. She did not add that Nuala was on heat, or try to picture the scene her mother would face. She was just glad it wasn’t taking place in a public room.
“Ah, yes.”
They entered the drawing room. Hilda and Emma went to sort out some sheets of music for later. Violet and Ariel sat together by the fire. Georgina had started over to join them when the duchess said, “May I speak to you?”
“Of course.”
“Let us sit over here.”
The older woman drew her into a far corner of the large room, well out of the others’ earshot. A quiver of apprehension went through Georgina. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Had she? No, of course she hadn’t. She glanced sidelong at the duchess, always the epitome of cool elegance. She could find no clue about what was to come. The thing was: one didn’t expect her to simply chat.
“I don’t mean to be abrupt, but the wedding is tomorrow.”
Georgina nodded. They sat in facing armchairs, turned a little away from the other women.
“And I wanted to speak to you privately.”
The duchess seemed uneasy, which was ominous. “Of course.” What could this be about?
“I didn’t have much opportunity to talk with you after your engagement was announced,” the duchess said. “The season was nearly over. We were packing up to leave London. And I wasn’t sure…”
Georgina began to be really alarmed. Any matter that could unsettle the Duchess of Langford must be dire indeed. Did she not want the marriage to go forward? Did she have some criticisms of the Stane family after all? A fire of rebellion rose in Georgina. She’d fight even this formidable woman for Sebastian!
“I couldn’t make up my mind what was right,” the duchess said. She frowned at the carpet. Georgina watched her. You could see traces of Sebastian, of all the Gresham brothers, in her burnished hair and chiseled features. “I felt I must say something.” The duchess paused again, then seemed to make up her mind. “There are people who think Sebastian is dull-witted, but he isn’t.”
Relief flooded Georgina. If this was all. “I know,” she said.
Sebastian’s mother leaned forward, her blue gaze intense. “He lets his friends rally him about it. And his brothers. Playing the big, slow cavalryman. It’s…charming of him, I suppose. Although sometimes I could just shake him.”
“I know,” said Georgina. If Sebastian said he was stupid one more time, she might consider doing that herself.
“But in truth, he’s as quick as any of my sons. In his own way. You mustn’t be deceived by the…the act he puts on. I do wish, sometimes, that he would stop it.”
“I know,” said Georgina a third time. She leaned forward and put a hand on the duchess’s knee to get her full attention. “I know.”
“You…you do?”
The uncertainty and worry in the older woman’s expression were a kind of revelation. If the Duchess of Langford had such doubtful moments, then everyone must, now and then. It gave Georgina an odd sort of hope for the future. “He told me everything,” she said.
“And what is everything, exactly?”
“You don’t know?” Georgina blinked at her in surprise.
The duchess sighed and sat back in her chair. “I know that Sebastian is all too ready to accept harsh judgments of his intellect. Without putting up much argument. I have observed, all his life, that he is…less adept with words than Robert, say. Or any of the others, really. But it is not everything—to be glib.”
The last sounded like a cry from the heart, and Georgina agreed wholeheartedly.
“He finds the words eventually,” the duchess continued. “If he doesn’t give up trying. And I did not mean to criticize Robert, who is a marvel of wit.”
Georgina nodded, remembering times when Sebastian had seemed positively eloquent.
“I know that Sebastian hates reading,” the duchess continued. “I do not believe that he simply isn’t interested, as my husband thinks. Sebastian won’t speak about it. Or, no, he turns every attempt to mention the matter into a joke. In his bluff, I-am-only-a-simple-soldier role. I do get so weary of that pretense.” The older woman fell silent, gazing at Georgina.
Now, she hesitated. They’d agreed that Sebas
tian’s admission was their secret. She couldn’t reveal it, not even to his mother. She longed to reassure the duchess—which was an amazing position to be in, she marveled. But what could she actually say?
“I would never ask you to betray a confidence,” the duchess said, her tone full of reluctant understanding.
“Sebastian told me why he often feels dull-witted,” Georgina replied carefully. “We…discussed the fact that it is not a good reason.”
The duchess’s face was tight with curiosity and concern. She started to speak, then pressed her lips together.
“I also told him that he must never call himself stupid again. If he does, I shall shake him. You may count on that.”
Tears suddenly pooled in the older woman’s eyes, just the blue of Sebastian’s. “It is not necessary that I know the whole,” she replied, her voice a little choked. “I’m just very happy that he told you.”
Georgina struggled with tears herself. She saw Violet and Ariel glance in their direction and politely look away. They seemed interested, but not worried, which said a lot about the Gresham family.
Hilda started over from the pianoforte. Violet intercepted her with a question.
“That’s the secret of a long and happy marriage, you know,” the duchess said. She sat straighter, rapidly regaining control. “Speaking to each other. Not holding things back and letting them grow all out of proportion.”
Georgina nodded her respect for the advice. It occurred to her that her parents did that, in their own slightly peculiar way.
Sebastian’s mother took her hand. “You are so welcome in our family,” she said.
A laugh escaped Georgina.
“What is it?”
“We welcomed Sebastian into ours, officially, last night.”
“Officially? I’m intrigued.”
“I can tell you all about that,” Georgina replied. Her worries about shocking the Greshams had somehow evaporated. She proceeded to describe the ritual, in detail. “Randolph was frightened by the candle,” she finished. “I don’t blame him, you understand. It was rather…unnerving.”
