“He knows?” Her eyes were wide.
“He knows.”
She gazed across the room at Richard. “I see.”
I let out a breath.
She turned back to me. “You mean that you wrote to him and told him that he could come here and… and have me?”
“I did.” I winced. “I do feel awful about it. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Obviously, if you do not like him, you must say so, and I shall tell him to leave you be, and—”
“Well, he did ride all this way,” she said. “He is not, you know, swoonworthy, but he is, well, he is here.”
That was a not-so-rousing sort of approval that I was glad my cousin had not heard. Of course, perhaps he would not mind in the end. Richard did not seem very particular when it came to women, I had to say.
She went back across the room to him, and she was an entirely different creature.
They sat together on a settee and she blushed and giggled and he spoke to her in a low voice and I began to feel as if they were being entirely untoward in front of my quite young sister, and I began to think I must speak up and say something.
But soon enough, Mrs. Bennet excused herself, saying in a far too cheerful voice that she had a headache.
And not long after, the colonel followed her.
Georgiana was still playing. “I think they are going to have a love affair.”
“What?” I said, rounding on her. I had known they were being very untoward. I should have put a stop to it earlier.
“Well, people are always having them in operas,” she said. “There’s nothing so boring as being in love with your wife, after all. It’s much more exciting to have a love affair.”
“No,” I said to her. “No, it is not.”
“Oh, how would you know, Will? You are very boringly in love with your own wife, and she with you.”
“There is nothing boring about it, I assure you,” I said to her. “And I hope someday you are quite happily settled as well.”
She smiled at me. “I wish that too. You and Elizabeth are quite happy. If I could find a man who looked at me the way you look at her, I think I should be happy too.”
“My dear sister, you must settle for nothing less,” I said.
She nodded slowly.
“Georgiana,” I said carefully, “I have something else I would speak to you of. I wish you to know that you have not… lost my good opinion. That even if you had, I should always love you and want the best for you, no matter what happens. You are my one and only sister. I could never disapprove of you.”
She gave me a look. “Elizabeth should keep her mouth shut,” she muttered. “I told her that in confidence.”
“But it is not true,” I protested, “and surely it is more important that you are assured of my continued love and affection and approval than anything else.”
She smiled shyly, meeting my gaze for a moment and then looking away. “Thank you, Will. I love you, too, you know. Even if you are sort of prim sometimes.”
I let out a frustrated noise. “I amnotprim.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The next morning, I had servants reporting to me that the colonel was seen leaving Mrs. Bennet’s bedchamber in the wee hours of the morning, and I simply paid them coin and told them to look the other way.
I hoped that would be the end of it, then, but I was not sure why I had thought that, for it wasn’t as if something like that tends to only happen once and the two parties are never interested in doing it again.
And then, of course, there was the way they were with each other.
