‘You do him an injustice,’ Georgie said swiftly. ‘The matter is more complicated than you know. What has passed between Gabriel and me is only the half of it, though I know that for almost any other guardian it would be more than enough. It is not that at all, Basty. Gabriel is obliged to marry, to secure an heir now that his younger brother and his cousin are dead. The next heirs are quite ineligible, and the future of his estate and all its people depends on him siring a son. And through my foolishness I have made it almost impossible for him to win another bride of suitable birth and breeding.’ She saw the doubt still lingering on his sweet, loving face and went on urgently, ‘You must see the truth of this. He announced our betrothal to half the noble families of the North at his family’s grand ball; he had no option because of the compromising situation in which we were discovered. And if I jilted him now, what would people say? His reputation is bad enough without that. Hal says that in common decency I cannot do it to him, and he is quite right.’
‘He gained his bad reputation over many years, and quite without your help! And if you behaved improperly, so did he, and he is a man of great experience, and a good deal older than you! I do not like to see you made a sacrifice of, even if you have been foolish. We all do foolish things, but are not made to suffer such lifelong consequences for them.’
Georgie laughed. ‘Most people would stare to hear you say that marrying one of the most eligible men in the country made me a sacrifice of any kind.’
‘We are not most people! You have no need to marry for wealth and social standing, thank God, and when have we ever truly cared what people thought of us?’
‘Have you not been listening? It is not a matter of reputation, of what strangers think, but of taking responsibility for my ownactions at last. I owe this to Gabriel, and as for compromising me, he had already asked me to marry him once before we were… surprised in each other’s arms.’
‘And you refused him? And still he forced his attentions on you? Good God, Georgie, I begin to think his reputation is not near as bad as it should be!’
‘He forced nothing on me, Basty, I promise. He never has.’ She sighed, and set out to spell out something of the true nature of her situation once more. ‘When we are alone together, we cannot seem to prevent ourselves from… from giving way to passion. It is a sort of madness that possesses both of us. So in the end it must be for the best that I marry him. If I am honest with myself, and I am trying very hard to be, I simply cannot endure that he marries another, even if someone suitable could indeed be found. I would suffer the fiercest torments of jealousy if he so much as glanced at another woman; I know, because I already have before we were betrothed, when he was obliged to court another because I had refused him. I hated it! And you must see that it would certainly be unwise for me to wed another man, when he has only to look at me and I lose all sense. I think, I fear, that if I married someone else, or he did, and if he came to me after and asked me to run away with him, I would go. No – speaking of it now, I know I would, without hesitation. And I am quite sure he feels the same. So if this, this spark that is between us is unique to us, and endures, very well. We may have a chance of happiness. If it is not, if it has revealed some defect in my character, then better I am married, I suppose, to a man who has no illusions about my nature, before some other worse disaster overtakes me. I only hope I can indeed give him the son he needs.’
‘You make no mention of love,’ her brother said tentatively.
‘I do not, and nor does he. And I beg you will not, Sebastian. Seriously, please don’t. I couldn’t bear it.’
He took her hand, and squeezed it warmly. ‘I think I understand. When did life become so complicated, Georgie?’
‘When Papa and then Mama died, I think.’
‘You must be right. Oh, my dear, I wish I could help you. I hope…’
‘I know. Let us not talk of it any more. We should go back, for I am sure there must be a thousand things still to be done.’
Bastian was still troubled in his mind, but he accepted Georgie’s evident wish to turn the subject, tucking her arm through his and leading her back towards the busy streets of the old city, and the uncertain future that awaited her.
29
A day or so earlier, a most curious and – if anyone concerned had known of it – excessively disturbing scene had taken place in a rented house on the edge of fashionable London.
A lady in her thirties was sitting over breakfast, wrapped in a lace peignoir of scandalous design. The vision of her ample charms thus revealed was, however, wasted on the gentleman opposite her at the table, or one would hope so, for he was quite plainly her brother, half-brother, or some other close male relative: they were both handsome, if a little dissolute in appearance, with glossy chestnut-brown hair and wicked dark eyes. She looked clever, though he perhaps did not; they neither of them looked kind. The boudoir in which they sat was sadly disordered, with piles of feminine clothing intermixed with trinkets and what appeared to be a large number of unpaid bills. The pair seemed inured to the chaos around them, and the gentleman addressed himself in silence to a large tankard, while the lady flicked through her correspondence in a desultory fashion. But presently she chanced upon something that interested her enormously, and as she read on, she sat up straighter, her fine black eyes flashing with concentration,her dark brows furrowed. Her companion was oblivious to her change in attitude, until she said, in a voice rich with triumph, ‘Adolphus, put down your ale and listen to me. I believe I have discovered something that may change our fortunes at last!’
‘Well, I’d like to hear it, though I can’t imagine what it might be. I think we’re at point non plus, myself, and it’ll be the sponging house for us next,’ he said, without any noticeable signs of excitement.
‘You’re wrong! Only listen to this from Fanny Trent… No, it is too long to read to you, for she is such a rattlepate it is a wonder nobody has throttled her yet. In any event, shorn of all her nonsense, she tells me that she met Selina Debenham and that sour-faced daughter of hers at a posting house somewhere or other on the Great North Road – it does not signify where…’
‘Really?’ he replied in accents heavy with sarcasm. ‘Selina Debenham, you say? At a posting house? How fascinating! And you call your blasted friend, whatever her name is, a rattlepate!’
‘Only listen! Selina was in a towering rage, Fanny says, because she’d dragged the whole family up to Northriding Castle in the hopes of snaring the Duke for the girl.’ She saw he was about to interrupt again, and held up her hand. ‘You will understand all presently if you will only be patient and listen for a moment. Selina failed in her scheme, and that is what made her mad as fire. She could not help but tell Fanny that Northriding has this very week announced his engagement, at some dreary provincial ball he held and she attended. And the woman he is marrying, my dear brother, is someone you know very well indeed. It is Lady Georgiana Pendlebury! What do you think ofthat?’
Captain Hart had been swigging his ale as she spoke, and now he choked on it, and his sister was obliged to pound him on the back, which she did in an impatient and ungentle fashion. It was a while before he recovered himself enough to speak.‘Georgie!’ he croaked. ‘Dammit, Caro, you should know not to spring her name on me like that! A fellow has feelings, you know.’
‘Feelings!’ she scoffed. ‘It’s her eighty thousand pounds you had feelings for, Adolphus Hart!’
He acknowledged that there was some truth in this, but added wistfully, ‘She was a fine piece, though, sis! Marriage to her would have been no kind of hardship, setting aside the fortune. I was always sorry I never managed to persuade the minx to…’
‘Never mind that now. I presume you still have a score to settle with her, after the atrocious way she treated you?’
Hart’s fingers went unconsciously to his right temple, where he still bore the scar which Lady Georgiana had inflicted on him with a poker the last time they met. That she had been protecting herself from crude and unwelcome advances on his part was, naturally, not something that was very likely to occur to him. And he had been humiliated, too – knocked down in the dirt by a slip of a girl. It was not to be thought of, but he found that he did quite often think of it, and the memory, along with the wound, had festered. He swore now at the recollection. ‘I’ll damned well say I do!’ he replied with some heat.
‘Well, there is no denying that my last scheme to pay her back and put her in your power again did not work as well as I hoped,’ said Mrs Aubrey, ‘and you must take the blame for that, for I lured her to that house just as I promised, and it is not my fault you failed to take advantage of it!’
‘I’ve told you a hundred times,’ her fond sibling replied between gritted teeth, ‘I could not see hide nor hair of the chit when I got inside. I searched the whole place from top to bottom, opened every door I could, and saw some damned interesting sights, including you, my dear sister, in a situation I could have well done without laying eyes on, but her I could not find.’
‘We know why now, don’t we?’ Caroline said, with barely concealed impatience. ‘You may not have been attending – perhaps you were drunk – but my dear friend Lucienne told me not a sennight ago that she saw the Pendlebury girl, who I had previously pointed out to her, going into a private room with some man who must have approached her, and emerging from it with him some considerable time later. Lucienne said it was quite plain from her demeanour just exactly what they had been about – and you must admit she would know if anyone would.’
Captain Hart did not quibble with this; he was too well acquainted with the lady in question. ‘But you don’t know who the fellow was, do you? You’d think your Lucienne could describe a man she saw twice, but apparently not. Perhapsshewas drunk! I shouldn’t wonder at it.’
