“Did I misunderstand?” he asked.
“You did, but it does not matter. It is nothing.”
“It is not nothing. If there is something that I should know, then I would very much like to.”
“So that you can begin your marriage well,” she echoed.
“Precisely.”
“Very well,” she said shakily, closing the book that was sitting beside her.
She patted the seat next to her, and he took it. He wondered what she could possibly have to say that warranted an expression as serious as hers. She had never been the sort of girl to announce anything, which meant that he truly did not know what it could be.
“You are a good brother,” she said carefully. “I do not want you to think otherwise, for you truly are the very best that I could ask for.”
“I see, so it is something you feel I should apologize for.”
“Only if you want to! I do not want to bully you into it, for then it is not an apology at all. George, I– you have always done right by me, I know that, but sometimes I cannot help but think you have held me back too much.”
“I do not recall doing that.”
“You have never noticed, but you have. You have always told me that I need to find the perfect husband, and be the perfect wife. I have had more lessons than any other person I know, lady orgentleman. You have done right by me, just as I said, but it has been… it has been stifling.”
“So you are saying that I have been too good of a brother?”
She laughed at that, shaking her hair loose from the pins in it.
“I suppose, in a way, that you have been. What I mean to say is that I have never been able to make a mistake. I have always been the perfect young lady, and that has meant that I could never be anything else. Anythingmore.”
“I see. Well, who do you want to be?”
“That is just it, George. I do not know. I did not think that there was any other way to be until I met Cassandra. She showed me what it meant to be yourself without sacrificing your position, and to do what is expected of you without sacrificing yourself. I do not want an apology from you, per se, but I do want you to know how happy I am that you have made the right decision. We have all needed her. Our family is better for having met her.”
George agreed with that entirely. Lady Cassandra Burrow had challenged them all, forced them to confront their lives in a way that they had never expected, but Philippa was exactly right. They had needed it, and she had made them all better for it.
“I am proud of you, too,” she continued. “I thought for a while that you might ruin it, but you did not. I should have trusted you more. I suppose, then, that I do owe you an apology. Ishould have believed in you, for you have never disappointed me before.”
“I have, many times, and I will do it again, but I will do my best. While you are out in society, I promise that I will let you decide what is best for you. I will not force you to do anything that you do not want again.”
The warmth in her face was undeniable, and at last George truly believed that he was the brother that he had always wanted to be. Philippa was an intelligent girl, and yet he had never trusted her to make her own decisions, but that would change. He would be better. Everything would be better, and it would start the following day when he married Lady Cassandra.
But when he was awoken before dawn the following morning, he knew that it would not be that easy. Nothing that he wanted ever was. He groaned into his pillow when his butler explained that he had a guest waiting for him in the hallway. As he dressed himself, he wondered who would possibly have the gall to arrive at his home uninvited on the day of his wedding of all things.
He had forgotten, given that he had done what was expected of him, that Buxton existed at all.
He was standing in the hallway with a grin, and when he saw George, it twisted into a smirk. George assumed that he had come to collect the last of the debt, which he was keeping in his study. He would hand it over to him, and the matter would be over with entirely, and he could enter into his marriage knowing that all was as it should have been.
“What do you want, Buxton?” he sighed.
“Good morning to you too,” he chuckled. “I have come to offer you my congratulations on securing a match. The Burrow family is most wealthy, and with that comes a sizable dowry, so I can only imagine how pleased you must be.”
“I do not care for her dowry. I do not even know its size.”
“Ah, that is quite a shame.”
“And why is that?”
Buxton chuckled, shaking his head at George as though he was a schoolboy that had done something inappropriate yet endearing. There was something in the man’s face that George loathed, and he wanted him to leave. He was tired of it all, and more than that he wished to prepare for his wedding.
