“She’s not my mistress.”
Not exactly true, but he wasn’t having her spoken about like that.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Nathan, really I am. But—” He broke off, shaking his head. “There’s no future in it, is there? One day, you’ll have to marry someone suitable. Have heirs.”
Nathan was shocked by how he reacted to Ross’s words. The mere thought of marrying someone other than Georgy made him feel queasy. It would be a betrayal.
“Not necessarily, Ross.”
“Yes, necessarily. Everyone expects it of you. Your family. Society. You need an heir, Nathan. It’s not as though you even have a brother.”
He stared at Ross, saying nothing, his mind a blur of whirring thoughts. He’d been considering marriage on and off for years, but since he’d discovered Georgy, he’d thrust it to the very back of his mind, unable to even consider the possibility of uniting himself with a suitable bride while she was occupying his bed.
Ross read his silence wrongly. “God, Nath! You’re not thinking of marrying her, are you?” he exclaimed. “Your mistress?”
“She’s not my mistress,” Nathan repeated faintly, even as he distantly recognised it was no answer to the question.
And it was a very good question.
Until now, he hadn’t thought of marrying her, no. It was so far from acceptable that it was almost funny. It would certainly spell the death of his fledgling political career and probably some degree of social death too. But thinking about it now—thinking about Georgy as his wife—he could picture her so easily at Camberley. Sitting up on St Martin’s Rest with him again, or skimming stones in the river. Strolling through the gardens, her belly round with his child. The vivid mental images shook him, made him feel like a boy sliding down an icy path, heart pumping, arms wheeling, waiting to fall. Happy and fearful all at once. He could have that vision—if he had the guts to reach out and take it.
“Nathan—”
“I could marry her,” he said slowly.
He would be giving up a great deal, but he had only to think about what he would be gaining…
“What?”
He smiled more widely, excitement growing in him.
“Nathan, you’re not thinking clearly. You’d be a pariah if you married this woman!”
He laughed, feeling lighter by the moment. “Thank you for your concern, Ross, but it’s unwarranted. I perfectly comprehend the implications of this, I do assure you.”
“Do you? It won’t just be you and her. Any children you had would be cold-shouldered too.”
Even that didn’t give him pause. It was easy for men like him and Ross to fall into the mistaken belief that London society was the be-all and end-all. In truth, he’d grown tired of its vagaries. It wouldn’t grieve him to leave it behind him. He could make a good life at Camberley with Georgy, and any children they were blessed with. And those children would be well-looked after and financially comfortable.
“Will you cold shoulder me, Ross?”
Ross shook his head. “Of course not, what do you take me for? But if this woman is hoping to be accepted by the Ton as your countess, she will be very disappointed. You could end up desperately unhappy together, Nathan. I don’t want that for you.”
“Is that all? That won’t happen, old man. Georgy won’t care about being accepted by society. And she’s not after my title or my money.”
Ross looked dubious. Well, maybe Nathan would look dubious if their roles were reversed.
“Listen,” he said, clapping Ross on the shoulder. “I thank you for your words of wisdom—”
“Don’t thank me, Nath! Think it through! Don’t go running off to Bloomsbury and—”
“—and just ask her? But of course I will! When I leave here, I’m going to jump back on my horse, gallop over to Bloomsbury, throw myself at her feet and beg her to have me.”
“Nathan—”
God, he felt so—so happy. And so certain. The thoughts he’d harboured only a few hours ago seemed absurd now. He’d been wondering how he could persuade Georgy to stay with him for just a little longer. Dreading her departure. Knowing he’d never be able to find this happiness with anyone else. And all he’d had to do was this—jump off the cliff of his own pride and fear. Now he was falling, falling…and it was glorious.
“Don’t say any more, Ross, there’s a good chap. I’m going to ask her, you see. And that’s all there is to it.”
Chapter 28
When Georgy stopped crying, her eyes were sore, her head was pounding and the intense outpouring of emotion had left her feeling flat.
She despised herself for her tears and even more for blurting out to Nathan that she loved him. How could she have done such a stupid, humiliating thing? God, his face when she’d said it. He’d actually paled with shock.
She began to move slowly, getting up and crossing the room to wash her tear-stained face in the basin. She tidied her hair in front of the looking-glass then wandered to the window to look down at that street below. Two ladies strolled past, their gentlemen escorts walking side by side behind them. A carriage rumbled over the cobbles. Further down, a child of about ten jogged along the street. He looked at each door in turn, checking the numbers.
He came to a halt outside Nathan’s front door.
She watched as he reached inside his coat and brought out a piece of paper, scrutinising it then looking at the number above the door again. It was when he lifted his face upwards that she recognised him. It was Danny Fowler, a boy who lived with his mother and sisters near the Camelot. Max often sent him on errands.
Having reached the conclusion he had the right door, Danny stepped forward and knocked.
The door was answered in a matter of moments. Goudge she thought, though she could only see the top of his head. The voices were inaudible but she saw Danny proffer the letter before running off again.
The letter was for her. It had to be. Georgy ran from her room and galloped downstairs so fast that Goudge was still in the hall when she landed at the bottom of the stairs, almost tripping over her own feet in her haste. He held the letter in his hand. When he saw her, he dropped the hand to his side, as though to hide it.
“Good afternoon, Miss,” he said.
“I believe you have a letter for me,” she replied and held her hand out. “Give it to me, please.”
Goudge looked uncomfortable. His neck went red.
“You are mistaken, Miss.”
“I think not. I saw the boy who came to the door—I know him. He handed a letter over.”
Goudge flushed. “His lordship left very clear instructions, Miss.”
“Did he?” She felt her cheeks heat with chagrin and temper. “Instructions that I am not to receive my own personal correspondence? I was unaware I was a prisoner here!”
Goudge looked horrified. “No, not at all! He said merely that you are to be kept safe, and that any callers were to be reported first to him.”
“That is a letter, not a caller,” Georgy said sharply.
Goudge stared down at the missive in his hand and looked doubtful. “I think his lordship would be—”
“Mr. Goudge!” she interrupted. “I must see that letter. I have been extremely worried about my brother and this could be the news I have been waiting for! Lord Harland could be away for hours and I would not know if my brother was alive or dead.” She held out her hand. “Now, please give me my letter!”
With some reluctance, Goudge put the letter in her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, then turned away and walked quickly to the drawing room. Once there, she closed the door behind her before breaking the seal and fumbling it open.
She scanned the page, which was written in Lily’s generous looping hand. Harry was home. He and Max had arrived when Lily had been here earlier. Lily would come to fetch her in a hack at four o’ clock, if she wanted to see him.
Harry is well, considering, the letter read. Georgy frowned. What did that mean? The assuran
ce that followed, that he was anxious to see her, did little to set her mind at rest. They spent so much time bickering, she and Harry, that it was easy to overlook how much she loved him. He was the reason she’d donned her disguise. For all her fighting words about her own birthright, she didn’t much care about being recognised as an earl’s sister—she had wanted to do this for him.
She glanced at the clock. Twenty five minutes to four. Lily would be here shortly.
She realised, suddenly, that the time had come to leave. Nathan had shown her today how very transitory her appeal was for him, and now Harry was back. He needed her. And petty though it was, it would be satisfying to leave before Nathan’s return. The empty house would speak to him more eloquently than she ever could.
She folded the letter away again and went back to her bedchamber to change her clothes and pack her small valise.
By the time she was ready, it only wanted ten minutes till four.
There was a writing desk in the chamber, stocked with ink and paper. She sat down and wrote a few lines, then dusted the wet ink with sand. From her modest store of money, she took several guineas and folded the note around them before sealing it and setting it on the mantelpiece.
By the time she had propped it there the clock was chiming the hour. Georgy crossed to the window to wait. Soon enough, a hack clattered up the quiet street, slowing outside the house. She threw the casement up quickly and leaned out as far as she dared. The carriage door opened and Lily began to descend. Georgy called her name and Lily looked up, frowning when she saw Georgy.
“Wait there,” Georgy instructed. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Lily nodded and retreated into the interior of the hack.
Mr. Goudge was loitering in the hall as she descended the stairs. He stared at her valise in horror.
“You are leaving, Miss Fellowes?”
“Indeed I am, Mr. Goudge. Now, please let me past. My friend’s carriage is waiting.”
Mr. Goudge frowned anxiously, “I beg you will reconsider,” he said. “His lordship will be very displeased to find you gone. He will be home soon, I am sure, and will be able to escort you to your friend’s house personally.”
She smiled at him. “Pray, open the door.”
He looked troubled. He stared at her until she stepped forward and gently pushed him aside. For a moment, she thought he would not move, but then he stepped back. Taking hold of the door handle, she turned it and opened the door.
“Thank you, Mr. Goudge,” she said. And then she walked out into the cold January day.
Harry was staying at Max’s flat above the Camelot.
Georgy flew through the front door and past a smiling Max to find her brother lying on a battered chaise. His eyes were closed but they opened when she called his name. He began to struggle up, his face rather grey.
“Oh Harry!” she cried, going to his side and pressing him back down.
“It’s good to see you, George.” He found her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, searching his face.
“He looks worse than he is,” Max said behind them. “It’s the journey. The poor lad’s been jogged over every pothole between here and South Yorkshire. It’s aggravated his wound. He needs to rest up for a week or two and let himself heal.”
“I’ll be fine tomorrow,” Harry protested.
Georgy and Max exchanged a glance before she returned her gaze to her brother. He was thinner than normal, the flesh spare on his lean frame.
“You should have seen him when I first got him, George,” Max said. “At least his face is pretty again now.”
Harry laughed weakly. “You promised me tea and crumpets when Georgy came,” he complained, turning the subject quite deliberately.
“I hear and obey,” Max said dryly.
“So,” Georgy said, when Max had gone. “Tell me everything.”
“Get me a cushion, then,” Harry replied, “and help me sit up. I can’t talk to you from down here.”
Georgy fetched several cushions and fussed behind him, pretending not to notice his grimace as he shifted his body up into a sitting position.
“Where exactly is your wound?” she asked. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Here.” He gestured at the right side of his lower abdomen. “The physician said I was lucky the knife didn’t pierce anything important.”
“It pains you greatly.”
He shrugged. “It’s better than it was. And I’ll soon be back to my old self, I promise.”
He told her about the weeks of travelling from village to village, until he’d finally found someone who’d known of their mother and set him on the right track to locate her home village, Hutton-in-the-Vale.
“It’s quite a nice little place, actually. Not many souls in it. I went to the inn first and started talking to some of the villagers. After a while someone came in who remembered Mama from years before. I was walking on air—I’d been in scores of little inns just like that one, and at last, someone knew who I was asking about.” He grimaced. “My good mood didn’t last long. I headed over to the church after that and spoke to the curate. He got the register out for me and I started looking for marriages from the 1780s. I got as far as 1785, and then there was nothing till 1788. Two pages had been cut out. Neatly, with a blade, close to the binding. The curate couldn’t believe his eyes.”
It wasn’t precisely unexpected. Even so, Georgy felt the disappointment like a physical blow. The knowledge that their own flesh and blood had done this somehow made it even worse.
“What did the curate say?”
“Something about speaking to the bishop.” Harry laughed again, a cynical bark that she knew covered up an ocean of disappointment and pain. “What else could he say? The pages were gone and they certainly weren’t going to be anywhere in Hutton-in-the-Vale.”
“What did you do then?”
“I went back to the inn. I had this idea that maybe I’d find someone who remembered the marriage ceremony, maybe even a witness. So I bought a lot of men a lot of ale and asked them all about Mama and the fancy gent she’d married. But none of them seemed to remember anything useful. It was twenty-five years ago, after all, and it was probably a small wedding. Mama had no family to speak of.” He paused for a moment. “I realise now that one of those men I was speaking to in the inn must have been waiting for a man coming in who would ask questions about Mama. But at the time, it didn’t occur to me.”
“Oh, Harry.”
“After a while, when it became clear I wasn’t going to get anywhere, I went to the posting inn nearby. By then I was so despondent, I wanted to come home to London and just forget everything. But it was late. I didn’t want to take a room—I’d spent almost all the money I had by then—so I just paid to sleep in the stables. I spent as much of that night as I could in the taproom, deciding it was best to be well-oiled, since I’d not be sleeping in much comfort. And I wanted to drown my sorrows too of course.
“After a while another stranger came in. We spoke and he bought me more ale. We didn’t talk about anything much, but he got out of me who I was. I thought nothing of it, George. I was such a fool! By the time I toddled off to the stables, I was three sheets to the wind and fell straight to sleep. When I woke up, god knows how much later, the same man was standing over me with a knife.”
Harry fell silent for a moment and Georgy didn’t prod him to go on, just waited silently, her fingers resting in his tight grasp.
“We fought,” he said at last. “And—I can’t begin to tell you what it was like. It was desperate and ugly. I realised how much I wanted to live. You go through life and you don’t even think of it being snuffed out so easily. When I thought I was going to die, something came over me. I fought him like a maniac. I didn’t even feel the stab wound at first—I was too busy trying to hurt him. And then Joshua—that was the innkeeper—arrived. He’d heard us and had come out to see what the row was about. He hit my attacker with a rake and the bastard ran off into the night.<
br />
“I don’t remember too much after that. I passed out. Apparently the physician came, but I don’t recall. I took quite a bad fever—they thought I was going to die. Joshua, bless him, gave me his best room, and his wife and daughter looked after me. I owe them a great deal.”
“We’ll pay them back,” Georgy said soothingly.
“Max paid for the room. Though I owe them ten times that.” He paused. “When I finally came round, I wrote to Max and he came for me. The journey home took forever. We could barely go ten miles without a stop. Poor Max must have been tearing his hair out.”
“Don’t be absurd.” It was Max himself speaking. He’d come in bearing a tray with tea and a mound of buttered, toasted crumpets. He piled several on a plate and handed them to Harry, who began to devour them as though he’d not seen food in days.
“Now your news, George,” Harry said through a mouthful of crumpet. “Lily says you didn’t manage to find any evidence either.”
“Just a few letters. Let me show you.”
She rose to her feet and went to her valise, pulling out the packet of letters she’d taken from Dunsmore’s house. She drew out the most damning one and passed it to Harry who wiped his hands before he took it from her. When he’d finished reading it, he looked up, his face bleak and angry.
“You noticed the date?” Georgy asked, and he nodded.
Max looked quizzical.
“It was written the day Mama died,” Harry explained. He passed the paper to Max.
“Unfortunately, it proves nothing,” Georgy said. “It’s too vague. It doesn’t name Mama or say what our uncle was sending this Monk to do. Although I can tell you one thing at least.” She sent Harry a grim, satisfied look. “Monk is dead.”
She told him it all then. Well, not quite all. She left out the parts about sharing Nathan’s bed, though she admitted he’d discovered her identity and confessed how he’d helped her. When Harry questioned her about Nathan’s motives, she shrugged.
“Perhaps he was being chivalrous.”
“But this Harland is a friend of Dunsmore, George,” Harry said after a while. “He was spending Christmas at his house. Why would he help you? Are you sure he has nothing to do with the attacks himself?”
The Lady’s Secret Page 26
