Last Chance for the Charming Ladies: A Clean & Sweet Regency Historical Romance Collection

by Fanny Finch

  She felt like a hopeless little girl, a silly little girl, all over again. She told Georgiana as such in her letter.

  I am at a complete loss as to what to do. I fear that I have wounded him irreversibly.

  And I deeply mourn the loss of my companion. Both my friend Mr. Norwich and my mysterious gentleman. I had not realized how much I relied upon them both until they were taken from me.

  Although that is an unfair way to put it. Mr. Norwich did not take my leave for any reason other than my own selfish behavior. I pushed him away in both of his forms.

  I wish that I knew what I wanted. It feels as though all of my feelings and thoughts are a jumble and I don’t know which way is up.

  Part of me wishes that I had not pressed so hard to find out who my letter writer was. That I could have continued to have him in my life. For I did love him.

  I do love him.

  But I am unsure as to my feelings for Mr. Norwich.

  I am terribly sad to have potentially lost his friendship. He has always been a man upon whom I could rely. I know that he was most kind to you when you were going through that unfortunate business with Captain Trentworth. Before things were all sorted out, I mean.

  He has been a loyal man and most thoughtful with me. I always knew that he was someone I could talk to in a crowd. I most enjoyed dancing with him at balls and now I suppose that I shall have to avoid him. Or that he will avoid me.

  Mother says that he will not go so far as to end our friendship. He is a generous man, far more generous than I deserve, but I cannot help but wonder if he would be quite that generous.

  I have, after all, dashed his hopes. And this was after I led him on for so long—but I did not mean to. I am in love and yet I am struggling to reconcile the man that I know from the letters with the man that I have known as my friend all this time.

  She hoped that she was not rambling too much, or that if she was, Georgiana would forgive her. Georgiana was used to her explosions of emotion and rambling by now.

  Julia concluded the letter with the sincere hope that Georgiana was doing well and to please inform her all about her wedding plans. Julia did genuinely look forward to the wedding and she wanted to hear all about how it was all going.

  Once she sent out the letter, she retired to spend the rest of the day with her mother.

  It was a surprisingly relaxing day. She did not quite manage to forget her woes but her mother did an admirable job of distracting Julia as best she could.

  And it had been far too long since she had spent time only with her mother. It was important that she focus on that relationship. She didn’t know how much time with her mother she had left.

  She could not hide forever, however. She had her obligations to society. The next day she had to go out to a dinner party.

  Julia could not deny that she dreaded it. The last that she had heard, the dinner would be attended not only by her but also by Mr. Norwich.

  They had discussed it, in fact, only a week or so ago. They had both been looking forward to it.

  She was not at all prepared to face him again. She felt so ashamed. And they would have to act as normal. Nobody knew that he had even been trying to court her.

  When it came to a man proposing to a woman and being turned down, normally everyone knew that man had been courting her. It was a small mercy, because it meant that hostesses around the area could take care to not invite both parties to one place.

  Or, if they did, it was to a much larger ball or dinner party where they need not interact with one another. It was a concession to the embarrassment that both parties must be feeling at that time.

  But nobody knew. As far as anyone could tell, she and Mr. Norwich were still quite good friends.

  Julia tried to brace herself all day for the inevitable. She would be courteous. No, more than that. She would be kind. Attentive.

  She could not speak plainly but she could show him through her attitude and actions that she still respected him. She would not approach him, of course, unless he approached her.

  She would not jump at him like a yippy sort of lap dog. She usually did, she had come to realize. The moment he walked in the door she would pounce on him, asking questions, throwing information at his head, yammering on.

  How had he ever put up with her? She must have been horrid.

  Well, she would have to find some way to apologize to him for it. For everything. All of the mistakes she had made over the years.

  But when she got to the dinner party that evening…

  The very first thing that her hostess did was hurry up to her. Mrs. Longsome was a chatterbox but well-meaning.

  “Ah, Miss Weston! How is your mother? Is she doing better? Have you heard from your father? We do so miss his company at the dinner table. Quite a wit he is.”

  Mrs. Longsome could and would go on for quite some time if she was allowed to. Julia allowed it to simply wash over her, not really worried. The longer she spoke to Mrs. Longsome, the less chance she’d have of running into Mr. Norwich and being forced to speak with him.

  Yes, she was aware that it was a cowardly thing to do. But with so much still left unsaid between them, as well as too much that had been said already and could not be taken back… She did not think that the two of them speaking with one another was the best idea.

  “…it is rather sad that Mr. Norwich had to send his regrets and not come after all…”

  “What?” Julia blurted out. “Mrs. Longsome, what did you say? Mr. Norwich will not be attending tonight?”

  “Oh, but I thought that you must know! Your families are such great friends, after all. You two are always talking together at parties and such. Why, there was even a time where…”

  “Mrs. Longsome, please, did he say why he would not be attending?”

  “Did you hear nothing at all?” Mrs. Longsome looked torn between concern over this and eagerness to be the one to share such news with her. “Well, it appears that he has been called back to his home estate by his father. He has quit Bath entirely.”

  “Entirely?”

  “Oh, yes. If he has not left already I expect that he will be gone by tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after. But it should not take him long to set his affairs in order so that he can depart.”

  It felt as though all of the air had gone out of the room.

  Mr. Norwich had left. He had gone. And but for what reason other than because of her?

  Julia did not buy that excuse about his father sending for him. She did not buy it for a single moment.

  Others might believe it. And why should they not? They knew nothing about what had only just gone on between her and Mr. Norwich.

  But she knew. And this astounded her.

  She had not realized that she had hurt him so deeply that he must flee. For it had to be in order to avoid her that he had gone.

  Oh, she must be the most awful and ungrateful of people. To drive away a good man in such a fashion!

  It was a good thing that nobody knew about their almost-courtship. She would never hear the end of it through the gossip chain.

  Nobody would have dared to say anything to her face. That was not proper. But she would have managed to hear all the same. Just as Georgiana had unfortunately heard all those barbs about becoming an old maid, before Captain Trentworth had shown up on the scene again.

  She was glad that she had taken the risk along with Mr. Norwich in the writing of the letters. It meant that at least now that things had gone sour, nobody knew about it.

  Yet, Julia could not suppress the ache in her chest at the thought of him leaving. Not only was it because of her and her own awful behavior, but it was also because she was going to miss him.

  She did miss him. Who was she going to speak with at parties now? Who could she rely on as a wonderful dance partner at balls?

  She had thought that having to see him at these social events and enduring the awkwardness would be awful. And it would be. She knew that it would be, she could tell. B
ut it would be a different kind of awful from this and she wanted that other kind of awful.

  This was miserable. She felt his absence like someone had taken something out of her chest and left it nothing but an echoing and empty cavern.

  The dinner party felt dull to her. As though the lights had been dimmed. She could hardly remember any conversation afterwards on her way home.

  When she got home she slept roughly, lightly, waking up several times, discomforted.

  “How was everything?” her mother asked when Julia came down to breakfast the next morning.

  “Everything was quite up to standard. Mrs. Longsome gives her regards and says that they miss Father at their parties.”

  “And how was Mr. Norwich? Were you two able to remain civil to one another?”

  “He was not there,” Julia admitted.

  Mrs. Weston frowned, setting down her knife and fork. “Not there?”

  “He has gone out of town. Back home to his country estate. They said it was because his father summoned him but I know that it is because of me.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Mrs. Weston’s face was sympathetic. “It will all blow over with time, I can assure you. At the least, you do not have your own broken heart to worry about.”

  But I do, Julia wanted to scream. I loved the man I was writing to. I do still love him.

  She knew it was cruel of her to think in this way. But it felt as though Mr. Norwich had snatched that man from her. That the man she was in love with had melted away like snow in spring.

  Now she was left with a double image. A man that was both the person she knew and loved and a friend that she was realizing she did not know nearly so well as she thought she had.

  In fact, she did not know her friend at all.

  He was a stranger to her. He had long harbored thoughts of love for her that she had not even guessed at. And she had always considered him to be the sort of man who had not a care in the world. Yet it turned out, through his letters, that he was a very thoughtful and serious person who was private, hiding himself from others.

  She could vividly recall when she had spoken of Mr. Norwich to Georgiana, who had not yet met him. She had called him the sort of person who had everything in the world and so did not always consider why others would take things so seriously.

  How foolish she had been! How she had underestimated him! It made her stomach clench in embarrassment to think on it now.

  Georgiana had told her of Mr. Norwich’s kindness towards her during the trying time of her courtship with Captain Trentworth. There had been much frustration and mistakes made by the captain and Georgiana during that time. Although, if you asked Julia, the majority of the blame still lay on the captain’s shoulders. Though she had forgiven him, for he adored Georgiana, and Georgiana loved him dearly.

  When Julia had heard about it all from Georgiana she had been uncommonly impressed with Mr. Norwich. She had taken it to be because Mr. Norwich had felt some measure of attraction towards Georgiana.

  She could not blame him for that. Georgiana was a remarkable woman. And if he was in love with Julia all that time and knew she did not love him back, why shouldn’t he consider another woman instead?

  In any case, she had thought it was all because of his attraction to Georgiana. And because Captain Trentworth had known Mr. Norwich’s brother and was staying at his house as a result.

  But now she could easily guess that Mr. Norwich would have been so kind and supportive no matter who the lady in question was.

  How badly she had misjudged him.

  How could she say that she was in love with someone when she did not, in truth, know who they were? When they were a stranger to her? Someone that she had written off and misjudged all of these years?

  If only she had seen him for who he truly was. If only she had not been so narrow-minded in her judgment, so self-centered.

  At the very least, she supposed, she could learn not to make the same mistake with others in her life. If it was not already too late with some of them.

  Mrs. Weston seemed to sense her continued dark mood, for she said little and allowed Julia to eat her breakfast in silence.

  The next two weeks felt empty, drained of color. She had not realized until he was gone how much she had relied upon Mr. Norwich for companionship at balls and dinner parties.

  He would even accompany her and her friends, or her and her mother, when they went shopping. He would carry their parcels for them. And when she wanted to go out on an excursion, he was the male chaperone who would go with her and the ladies so that they would be safe from any misadventure.

  Now that he was gone, she found herself without one of the pillars of her social life. She would have to find a new male chaperone for some things, and she did not look forward to it. Why on earth would she want to pick another man when they were all so dull-witted and boring and full of themselves?

  Julia had always struggled to find a man who could hold her attention. A man who appreciated her wit. This was not new. But it was only now that she realized that Mr. Norwich had been fulfilling those roles for her, those needs, and she had not even realized it.

  Every time she had to talk to a man at a dinner party or dance with one at a ball, she found herself wishing that she was speaking with Mr. Norwich instead.

  How she had relied upon him. She had gone to him in between each set of dancing in order to speak with him. Now she could not.

  When she got a new bit of gossip she would instinctively turn to find him and share it with him—but now he was not there.

  She was tempted to write to him. To share through letters all that was going on. To tell him that she missed him.

  But how could she do such a thing? It would be selfish of her to focus only on the ways in which she missed him. She had to think about what she had been to him and not only on what he had been to her.

  He was her dear friend. But she had been his source of unhappiness. The woman who had taken him for granted.

  She could not write to him now talking about how she missed him. He was not a servant who had the job of entertaining her. She had no hold over him, could make no demands.

  It was as she was trying to balance herself in this new, strange equilibrium that Georgiana’s response arrived in the mail.

  Julia opened it eagerly, hardly breathing as she tried to read her friend’s words.

  Georgiana had always been the more level-headed out of the two of them. Georgiana, surely, would know what to do. How to sort this out and make things right again.

  My dear Julia,

  It feels as though it has been an age since I saw you last. I confess that I deeply miss your cheerful and energetic company…

  The letter detailed how the wedding plans were going. How wonderful Captain Trentworth was. How Georgiana’s brother and sister-in-law were faring. And so on.

  Julia read through that part happily but with a bit of annoyance. She was desperate to know what Georgiana thought about the entire Mr. Norwich situation.

  But she did acknowledge that it was clever of Georgiana to put all the other news first. If she had put it after the Mr. Norwich part, Julia should never have read it.

  Clearly, her friend knew her all too well.

  At last, Georgiana got to the part that Julia was dying to read.

  …as for your situation with Mr. Norwich.

  I must say that I am a bit surprised. I had never guessed, not even once, that he harbored such feelings for you. Which I can assume was his aim.

  He was, as you know, perfectly thoughtful and kind to me when I stayed with you in Bath. He even insinuated that he would be happy to marry me if I had no other options.

  I thought it strange that he should suggest such a thing. His admiration for me was genuine, I could sense, but it did seem premature.

  Now that I know he was in love with you, it makes much more sense. If a man cannot be with the lady that he loves, then saving another woman from the ruin of spinsterhood is a perfectly accept
able option. Especially if one does truly respect the lady in question.

  The one facing spinsterhood, I mean. I should hope that if a man is in love with a woman that he would of course respect her as well. I do not see how it is possible to love someone that you do not also respect.

  But in any case.

  While it was astonishing to me in the moment to read, as I reflected upon it, it made quite a lot of sense that he should be in love with you. I think that a great number of men have been in love with you at one time or another, my dear.

  If you truly do not love him in return then I think perhaps some distance would be wise. This will give the both of you time to reflect and to calm yourselves after what has happened. You can both begin to heal.