Chapter Twenty-Eight
Martina climbed the stairs, balancing the breakfast tray carefully as she went. It was a dark, stormy day, perfectly matching her mood. She should be delighted—the impoverished Mannings were no longer impoverished, Billy Stiles was dead, and Neddy cared about her.
But Neddy didn’t know who she was, and it was past time to tell him. Rafferty had disappeared, leaving nothing but his butler’s uniform behind. And she was going to have to tell Georgie he was gone.
At least there was one happy ending in the Manning family, for Norah, the one who least deserved it. She would marry Andrew Salton now that a marriage settlement was no longer necessary to ensure the Mannings’ future. There was nothing for Georgie. Rafferty was a fool and a half—the girl wasn’t going to fall in love with a proper young man. She was going to love Rafferty till the day she died, Martina was sure of it. And that left two miserable human beings among the people she loved.
And she was doomed to join them. At least she had a real reason for heartbreak, not a bunch of foolish notions about society and what it demanded. Georgie didn’t care one bit about society, and yet she was being sacrificed on its altar. And Rafferty refused to understand.
Georgie’s door was shut against the morning chill, and Martina knocked softly. There was no answer, but she pushed open the door, moving into the shadowy room. “Good morning, Miss Georgie,” she said softly, setting down the tray and moving to the curtains, pulling them back to reveal the gloomy day. “You’ve slept for hours past your usual time, so I thought I’d go ahead and bring your breakfast tray. Bertha said I was to tell you to get up and not be such a slugabed, and I?—”
Georgie hadn’t moved, or responded, and Martina’s words petered out as she approached the bed. Georgie lay there, pale with fever-flushed cheeks, and Martina put a quick hand to her forehead. The girl was burning up with fever.
“Georgie!” she cried, and Georgie opened her eyes for a moment, then closed them again.
“I think I’m sick,” she said in a soft, raspy voice.
“I’d say you are. I’ll send for the doctor. Don’t you worry, you’ll be right as rain in a couple of days. You just lay still until the doctor gets here.”
Georgie tried to sit up and failed, slipping down in the bed, and then she started coughing, great hacking sounds that broke Martina’s heart. “You can send Rafferty for the doctor,” she managed to wheeze, and Martina would have given anything to be able to lie.
“Rafferty’s gone, miss,” she said.
Georgie’s eyes opened fully, staring at her, and then closed again. And those was the last words she spoke for two weeks.
It was a strange, nightmare time, Georgie thought later. She would go through stages where she was shivering with cold, followed by unbearable heat, and her coughing was so bad it felt like she was ripping her throat out. People came and went, but she was only vaguely aware of them as she travelled down the path of her sickness. She only knew that Rafferty wasn’t there.
But slowly, slowly, she began to emerge from the cocoon of illness, and when the doctor declared her well enough to allow visitors, she finally sat up in bed and faced the shambles of her life. Rafferty was gone, disappeared as if he’d never been there, and all she had to show for it were a few pretty dresses and a wonderful pair of shoes.
“You’re finally better,” her mother announced as she breezed into the room, an extravagant new dress flowing around her. “I declare I was so worried about you I could barely eat. I would have come to see you, but you know I’m sadly sensitive to suffering, and it wasn’t the thing. But now that you’re well, you can get up and celebrate with us.” Her mother stayed by the door, in case Georgie’s illness was catching.
“Celebrate?” she echoed in a raspy voice. “You mean my recovery?”
“Oh, that too, of course!” her mother said hastily. “I declare, we’ve been so worried about you we haven’t had a chance to celebrate our good fortune. And you must not have realized it, but Rafferty has left us. Such a handsome man,” she said with a soulful sigh. “But we have a delightful new butler. Not as good-looking as Rafferty was, but full of such dignity that even I feel awed. You shan’t have him for a project, but it’s time we focused on getting you married as well.”
“I’m never getting married,” she said in her raspy throat. “I’m going to live in the country with cats and books and be very happy.”
“Oh, not that again. You’ll change your mind soon enough once you meet the right man.”
She had met the right man, and he was gone. She watched her mother go in a sail of silk and closed her eyes. Two more weeks in bed seemed like a fine idea, but Martina knocked at her door an hour later, a worried expression on her face.
“Are you feeling up to getting dressed, Miss Georgie?” she asked. “The family is celebrating in the drawing room and they want you to join them.”
What were they celebrating? She didn’t really care. “I’d rather stay in bed,” she said listlessly.
“The doctor said you were well enough to come downstairs,” she persisted, flinging open the curtains to let in the fitful autumn sunlight.
“The doctor was wrong. I’ll come down tomorrow.”
There was a wealth of sympathy in Martina’s dark eyes, and, for a brief moment Georgie thought back to the young man who’d saved her life. Had she dreamed that?
But in truth, she didn’t care. She lay back and closed her eyes, shutting out the daylight. Rafferty was gone, and nothing else mattered. Martina tried a few more times, but Georgie simply closed her eyes, shutting out everything.
It continued this way for several days. Much to Georgie’s dismay, her body grew stronger and lying in bed was growing tedious, but she was loath to leave the sanctuary of it. She didn’t want to join in her family’s celebration, which seemed to infuse the entire household with revolting good cheer. She just wanted to hide away.
It was the morning of the fifth day when she heard the footsteps approach her bedroom door, firm, determined footsteps, and her door was flung open, revealing a stern Bertha.
“It’s time you got up, Miss Georgie!” she announced, brushing flour off her apron. “It’s time for you to face the day and get on with it, and no more nonsense.”
