Georgie’s mama promptly crouched down and threw open her arms, and the girls tumbled straight into them. Georgie admitted that she stared. Who was this person? She wondered vaguely. She couldn’t remember her mother ever being so demonstrative, never mind wrinkling her dress so egregiously.Slowly, feeling as if she had suddenly developed arthritis, she unwound herself from her place on the couch.
“I asked your cousins to wait a bit so I could see you first,” her mama said as she stroked little girls’ hair. “Your grandmama would not be put off, however. She is on her way.”
Of course she was. And here Georgie had thought she couldn’t feel more exhausted.
“Chalmers,” she said, her voice perfectly placid. “Did I hear Miss Breck was bringing a tea up to the girls to fortify them? With cinnamon buns?”
“You did, milady,” he allowed with a small bow.
She nodded. “Girls, may I speak to my mama alone for a bit? Miss Breck is waiting to give you treats.”
Both girls straightened. Sophie met Georgie’s eyes head-on. “You will not leave?”
She met her eye-to-eye. “I will not leave. When you have gorged your fill, you may come back to find me right here in our new yellow salon.”
“Is that all right, Grandmama Packham?” Sophie asked, so suddenly small and uncertain.
Her mama dropped a kiss on each forehead. “I will watch over Aunt Georgie while you are enjoying those cinnamon buns,” she promised.
“Good,” Amelia said. “We are sad today. Uncle Grey died, you know. You’re not going to die, are you?”
God bless her mama. She gave the girls another good squeeze. “Everyone dies sometime,” she said. “But today I will be waiting for you right here.”
The girls both nodded and dropped unsteady curtsies, and then Sophie took hold of her sister’s hand and led her and Bark out of the room, Chalmers closing the door behind them. Sitting down without a word next to Georgie, her mother did something she never did. She wrapped her arms around Georgie. AndGeorgie did what she had never in her life done before. She burst into tears.
18
Georgie had no idea how long she cried. She knew she cried to exhaustion. She knew she lost every barrier and bit of training that had seen her through her first twenty years, the same discipline that had allowed her to take control of every kind of situation her family had faced. She knew she had never once so much as dampened her mother’s clothing. Well, she did now.
At one point she thought she heard the door open and quickly click close. She wasted no attention on it. She knew that her mother, the most quietly controlled woman she’d ever known, watered Georgie as well. She knew that sooner or later she would have to get back on her feet and take control again. It was her duty. Her responsibility. Her privilege. At least her Aunt Berenice would put it that way when she saw her again.
But for now, she was a lost child who needed her mother.
“You fell in love with him,” her mother said very matter-of-factly, pulling back to hold Georgie’s face in her hands.
Georgie fought fresh tears. “Silly, isn’t it? I barely knew him a week. I was married for two days—a day-and-a-half, really. Is that a record?”
Her mother briefly rested her forehead against Georgie’s, still holding her face. “Not silly at all. I fell in love with your father the first time I saw him laugh. You have been falling in love with Greyville ever since you began reading his name in the dispatches to Geoffrey. During that week you spent with him you were just lucky enough to realize he was the man you’d hoped he’d be.”
Georgie sucked in a ragged breath. “I was lucky, wasn’t I?”
Her mama just nodded. Georgie squeezed her eyes shut against the pain.
“Your grandmama is here,” her mother finally said when both their eyes were once again fairly dry. “Will you see her?”
Georgie wanted to say no. She wanted to send everyone away and crawl up to her bed and curl into a small ball and sleep. She wanted to close her eyes and keep everyone and everything out. She knew better, though. Nothing, in the end, was changed. She still had to create order out of disaster. And she had to begin to do it now.
“Of course,” she said, sitting up to find her mother holding out a sturdy man’s handkerchief to her.
“Your father won’t miss it. I figured a woman’s handkerchief simply didn’t have the volume needed to handle this situation.”
Georgie accepted it with a smile. She noticed her mother had another for herself that she applied briskly. Then Georgie climbed to her feet and walked over to the bell pull.
“Please have the Dowager join us,” she told Chalmers when he immediately responded.
Georgie caught her breath. Chalmers already wore a black armband for mourning. He saw her attention and touched it, as if that would make it real. “We have a store of these still from the last marquess. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Georgie assured him, her chest feeling too tight to take a good breath. “Thank you for your prompt attention.”
