Three pairs of eyes turned towards Jamie.
“Mr James Hammond, secretary to the Duke of Brinshire,” Georgie said. Then, taking a deep breath, she added, “We were married this morning.”
The three ladies exclaimed and offered their felicitations and smiled genially upon them, all of which effort required theconsumption of more cake. A footman offered wine to Jamie and Georgie, and Mrs Hastings cut cake for them, although considerably thinner slices than for her friends.
For ten minutes they exchanged the sort of bland, inconsequential nothings which passed for conversation in that household, until a disruption occurred, and a well-grown boy of perhaps four or five barrelled into the room, shrieking, chased by the harassed maid. Georgie recognised her — Sally, she thought, dredging around in her memory. Sweet on one of the grooms, if she recalled correctly. Well, here she still was, so presumably that went nowhere.
The conversation, such as it was, died away as the boy rampaged about the room and the two visiting ladies cooed over him.
“My heir,” Mrs Hastings said, with a lift of the chin, as if she dared anyone to contradict her.
Mrs Hastings had never had children of her own. Henry had been her favourite nephew, but when he died and she had needed to look elsewhere for an heir, perhaps she had found none of Henry’s cousins to her liking and chose instead to mould a child to her preferred design. Poor little boy!
The noise becoming overwhelming, the two ladies soon made good their escape, and Georgie was beginning to watch the clock herself, when the child knocked over a small china ornament, which smashed to the floor.
“Now Henry, that will not do!” boomed Mrs Hastings. “Take him away, Sally. Let him run round the garden for a while.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
Sally bobbed a curtsy, dragged the child away by his trousers and closed the door behind her. Silence fell in the room.
Georgie was too shocked to speak.Henry?Why give him that name? “Henry?” she croaked.
Mrs Hastings smirked. “It seemed… fitting. A child should be named after his father, do you not agree?”
Georgie jumped to her feet, and turned for the door. Jamie was beside her in moments, his face anxious.
But Mrs Hastings laughed, a deep, throaty rumble. “Yes, Sally succeeded where you failed, my dear.”
“Sally?”
“Yes, Sally. You really did not know your husband very well, did you? I always said it was a mistake for him to marry you, and so it proved. You could not even give him a son, and you drove him away to find his happiness elsewhere. Why else would he spend so much time in low taverns? Why else would he turn to Sally for comfort? You destroyed him, and I shall never forgive you, never. Oh, get out of my sight, and take that pathetic creature with you. To take up with a mere secretary after my Henry — well, I hope he makes you miserable and beats you every day and twice on Sundays. Get out, both of you!”
They went. Faced with such hatred, there was no reason to stay. Georgie could not even cry, for the depth of Henry’s betrayal was too deep for tears. Shocked to her core, she let Jamie tuck her arm in his, and side by side they walked out to the waiting carriage. Jamie handed her in and climbed in beside her, the footman closed the door and gave the office to the postilion, and the carriage rumbled into motion.
For a few minutes there was silence. Then Jamie removed his spectacles and rubbed them on a corner of his greatcoat.
“I would never do that, of course,” he murmured diffidently. “Beat you twice on Sundays, that is, or even once. Naturally, I shall beat you thoroughly on every other day of the week, but not on Sundays. I am a good Christian, after all. On Sundays and Holy days, I shall make you attend three services — that should be sufficient punishment for any wife, no matter how recalcitrant.”
Georgie looked up at him, saw his eyes twinkling down at her and smiled. “You’re trying to divert me from Henry’s perfidy.”
“If I can. It does no good to dwell on such things.”
“But I can’t believe it!” she cried, sitting more upright as the carriage swayed over the cobbles. “Henry never spent a night away from me, not once, and when he visited his aunt on his own, which he occasionally did, it was only on a Sunday afternoon and he was back in under two hours. Where in that is there time for a dalliance with Sally? I thought she was sweet on one of the footmen, anyway. She was always loitering near him whenever I was there, and she certainly never showed any interest in Henry.”
Jamie frowned. “How old would you say that child is? Or, to put the question more directly, when must the dalliance have occurred?”
Georgie pondered the matter. “I would say, at a guess, that it must have been shortly before Henry died.”
“Precisely. So let me describe a situation for you. Suppose Sally loitered a little too near the footman and found herself in a difficult situation.”
“Oh!” Georgie cried, seeing at once where the story was going. “If it was known, they’d both have been dismissed without references.”
“Precisely. But then Henry died and you lost your baby, which happened very soon after, I think?”
“Within a week, yes. So Sally went to her mistress and pretended that her child was Henry’s.”
“Who was not there to deny it,” Jamie said triumphantly. “What do you think? It is plausible, is it not?”
