Rogue Grooms (18 page)

He knew he should let her go, for her own good. He could not, though. He had come to rely on their time together. He was being selfish, he knew that, but he could not give her up.

Despite the difficulties that could lie ahead for them, despite the fact that he was more confused than he had ever been before in his life, he could not bring himself to let her go.

 

“I am just going out to visit Mrs. Smith, our old nursemaid, who has been ill,” Emily said, putting on her bonnet and gloves before the mirror in the morning room. “Would you like to come, too, Georgina?”

Georgina, who had been sketching before the fire and chatting with Dorothy, said, “Oh, I should like to, Emily! Fresh air sounds wonderful. But I should finish this sketch today so that I can finish your portrait before I leave Fair Oak.”

“Nonsense,” said Dorothy. “There will be plenty of time for finishing portraits later, I am sure.” She winked, looking so much like her son that Georgina had to laugh. “Plenty of time. You two should go out into the sunshine, while we still have it. Give my best wishes to Mrs. Smith.”

“If you are sure, Dorothy, that you will be quite all right?”

“Oh, yes. I have been intending to finish my book.”

Georgina smiled. “Then, I should very much like to go with you, Emily. Let me fetch my bonnet, and we can be off.”

Twenty minutes later, they set off in Emily’s little pony cart, with Emily competently at the reins, and Lady Kate beside them.

“Most of the fields lie fallow now, of course,” Emily said, drawing up the pony cart so Georgina could take a closer look at their surroundings. “A great many of the laborers have had to find other work. We have managed to keep on enough to cultivate those fields over there, though.”

Georgina surveyed the recently harvested fields. “What is grown there?”

“Wheat and oats. We used to grow barley, as well. There are some turnips and potatoes just over that hill, and cook keeps an excellent kitchen garden. We are never short of vegetables! And I have kept a few head of cattle, to pull the plows and give us milk and some meat. Only enough for the household, though.” Emily’s rosebud mouth pursed thoughtfully. “I would like to have some sheep, as well, but they cost dear just now.”

“Do you still have many tenants?”

“Oh, yes, some. You will meet some of them today, I am sure. Their rents are very welcome, though I wish we could do more for them. They have been a great help to Mother and me, teaching me about farming and livestock.” Emily laughed. “I would not have known a plow from a turnip before last year!”

“What of your bailiff?”

“Mr. Pryor? He left soon after Damian died. When I looked over the books after his hasty departure, I found he had been skimming off the top a bit. So good riddance, I say! I’ve done better without him. Mr. Montgomery, one of the tenants, helps me a bit.”

Georgina was shocked. “Do you mean to say, Emily, that you have been managing this farm all by yourself?”

Emily seemed surprised at Georgina’s surprise. “Yes. There was no one else to do it. Mother is not well. Alex, although he left the army as soon as he got my letter about Damian’s death, was delayed several times, and did not make it home for many months. And he is a military man, not a farmer; he knew as little as I did. I could not just let us starve.”

“So you knew nothing of farming when you started?”

Emily shrugged blithely. “Not a thing! French and needlework were all my governess taught me. But I read everything I could find, and asked all our tenants and neighbors for advice. We have not done too badly, considering.”

“I should say not.” Georgina looked out at the fields again, in complete awe that this young girl, this duke’s daughter, had managed them all on her own. She had been worried about wheat and drainage and soil cultivation, when she should have been enjoying her first Season.

If only there was something Georgina could do to help Emily, to help Alex and his family...

“Emily,” she said. “I have always lived in cities and towns, and I know nothing of farming. How much would it take to put all your fields under cultivation again, and to bring in a new bailiff, an honest one?”

Emily’s forehead creased in thought. When she at last named a sum, Georgina said in surprise, “Truly? I would have thought it a great deal more.”

“Oh, we could
use
a great deal more, to be sure. The roof on Fair Oak needs repairing, the garden restoring, and, as I said, I should like to bring in sheep. But to hire a new bailiff, and bring the laborers back in time for hay making in a few weeks and then fall plowing, that should do it.”

“Hm.” Georgina opened her reticule and drew out the thick wad of banknotes she had been intending to use for some shopping in the village. It was quite embarrassing now, to think of the sums she spent on bonnets and slippers. She tucked them into Emily’s market basket. “Take this, then, and use it on the roof, or the plowing, or whatever you see fit. I will write you a draught on the rest when we return to the house.”

“What!” Emily cried, staring down at the money in shock. “Georgina, what are you doing? You cannot just give me your money! It—it would not be right.” But she reached out one hand, in its mended glove, to touch the notes.

“Emily, please. Please, I want to help. I want to cease being a selfish creature, and help do something truly useful.”

“It is so good of you, but—to give me, an almost stranger, your money ...”

Georgina took Emily’s hand, and spoke to her quietly, earnestly. “I will tell you something that mustn’t go beyond us just yet.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “What is it?”

“I love your brother, very much, and I am almost certain he loves me, as well. He has asked me to marry him—or as good as asked. And I will say yes.”

“Oh!” Emily cried in delight, throwing her arms about Georgina’s neck. “I knew it. I knew it from the way he always looks at you. Oh, I will be the envy of the neighborhood, when they hear I am to have such a dashing sister!”

“So, since I
am
to be your sister, let me help you.”

“But...”

“Emily. My money shall be yours soon enough. But I am not sure when we will be married, and you need the money now, to bring back the laborers. Please.”

Emily bit her lip, clearly torn. Then she nodded. “Yes. Georgina, you are the dearest dear! My brother is so very fortunate to have found you.”

“Yes,” Georgina agreed. “So he is.”

Emily laughed.

 

The next three days passed most pleasantly. Georgina went driving with Emily, took tea with the vicar’s wife, and sat and read with Dorothy in the afternoons. She finished the sketches for Emily’s portrait, and began laying it down on canvas in oils. In the evenings, she would play cards with Emily and Dorothy, or listen to Emily play on the pianoforte.

Secretly, Georgina began to make plans for the grand Season she would sponsor for Emily. She had never ushered a young girl through her first Season before, but surely it could not be so difficult for a girl as pretty and wellborn as Emily. There would be a presentation at Court, of course, a coming-out ball, routs and breakfasts and musicales...

These plans were occupying her on the third night, as she lay awake in bed, when she heard a noise. A light scratching sound.

Georgina cautiously raised her head from the pillow to look about. There was only the familiar furniture visible in the dying firelight. Her gown draped over a chair, where she had dropped it after supper. The only sound was Lady Kate’s light snoring.

Then it came again. A faint scratching in the corridor.

Georgina recalled Emily’s tales of Queen Elizabeth, who once a year came back to wander about her bedchamber of more than two hundred years ago.

She sank back down against the pillow, drawing the sheet up to her neck.

“W-who is it?” she called, deliciously chilled. “Do you bring me a message from the other side?”

The door opened, and a blonde head popped into the room. Very solid, and not at all ghostly. “The other side?” Emily whispered. “The other side of the wall, mayhap, since my room is right next to yours!”

Georgina giggled. “Emily! I thought you were Queen Elizabeth.”

“Me? Certainly not. I have no ruff.”

“What are you doing wandering about in the middle of the night?”

“I was hungry, so I thought I would go down to the kitchen and see if there was any lemon cake left from tea. Would you like to come with me?”

“I do feel a bit peckish. Contact with the spirit world will do that to a person.”

The kitchen was quite deserted when they went down there, and found the lemon cake and some milk. They took their feast back to Georgina’s room, and settled down before the fire to eat it. Even Lady Kate got a small portion.

“Do you often make midnight forays into the kitchen?” Georgina asked, scraping up the last of her cake crumbs.

Emily shook her head. “No, but I did when I was a child. Cook would leave little treats out for me, a cake or the last of a meat pie. Sometimes Alex would go with me, though he was quite a bit older and very dignified.”

“Did you have a good childhood here, Emily?”

“Oh, yes! The very best.” Emily smiled softly at the memory. “My father was sometimes gone, of course, to take his seat in the House of Lords, but when he came back he would bring grand presents, and would take me out riding on my pony every day. He and my mother adored parties, and gave ever so many. Breakfasts, and balls, and suppers. Damian was almost never at home, but I scarcely missed him, he teased me so horridly when he was here. Alex, though, always wrote to me from his school, and was an excellent brother when he was here. It was all such fun.” Her face darkened. “Until my mother’s accident.”

“Did your father stay away then?” Georgina asked gently. Her experience of men had always been that they were seldom about when there was unpleasantness afoot.

“Not at all! My parents
loved
each other. Father never left Fair Oak after that, not even for a day, until he died. But it was much quieter here, and Alex was away at war. He wrote to us every week, but I was terribly worried about him. I felt so very alone.”

Georgina reached for Emily’s hand. “I am so sorry, Emily. I do know how it feels to be alone.”

Emily smiled, and squeezed her hand. “I am not alone anymore, though! Alex is home again, safe. Best of all, he has brought you to us. None of us ever has to be alone again.”

“No,” Georgina answered slowly. “We never have to be alone again.”

“Georgina, you have a letter!” Emily said as she sorted through the post at the breakfast table. Then she added slyly, “Alas, it is not from my brother.”

Georgina laughed, and reached for her letter. “Why ever should it be from your brother, Emily?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just think he should write you again,” answered Emily. “That one small note letting us know he arrived at the Grange was so paltry. Has he never sent you any billets doux, then, Georgina?”

“Emily!” Dorothy admonished. “That is hardly any of our business.”

Emily grinned unrepentantly. “Oh. Sorry.”

Dorothy grinned in return. “So,” she said. “Has he, Georgina?”

Georgina laughed, choking on her bite of toast. “I am afraid not.”

“Hmph,” said Dorothy. “Well. That is scarce my fault. I never raised an unromantic child.”

“That
is correct,” Emily said. “Who is your letter from, then, Georgina? If it is not too prying to ask.”

“Not at all. It is from my friends, the Hollingsworths. Nicholas and Elizabeth.”

“The people you were staying with in London?” Emily asked.

“Yes. I have been waiting to hear from them this age!” Georgina broke the seal, and quickly scanned the short missive, written hastily in Elizabeth’s sprawling hand. She then read it again, alarm squeezing the very breath from her lungs. The paper trembled in her suddenly chilled fingers. “Oh, no.”

“Not bad news?” Emily said quietly.

“I am—not certain. I do hope not.” Georgina lowered the letter to the table, and looked up into the other women’s concerned faces. “Elizabeth, you see, is in a—delicate condition. It has not been an easy time for her, I fear. And now she writes that she has had some pains, and that her physician has ordered her to bed for a few days. She says all is well now, but her husband has added a postscript, no doubt without her knowledge. Nicholas says she is not as well as she wishes everyone to believe!”

“How dreadful,” cried Dorothy. “Your friend must be so frightened. To be in danger of losing one’s child—that is the very worst.”

“Yes. I am sure she is frightened, though Elizabeth would never say so. She is always so very cheerful. She would not want me to worry.”

“But you do,” said Emily.

Georgina nodded as she folded and unfolded the letter in her shaking hands. “Elizabeth is my very oldest friend. She is—like my own sister. She has always been by my side in my troubles; I must be by hers. I fear, my dears, that I must leave you and return to Town.”

“Of course. I shall help you make the arrangements,” said Emily, rising to her feet.

“Thank you, Emily, so very much! I only pray that I find all is well when I arrive there.”

 

The town house was very quiet when Georgina at last arrived. There were no chattering voices from the drawing room, as there usually was in the afternoons—no music, no laughter. The curtains were all drawn; the butler spoke almost in a whisper.

Georgina feared for one breathless, dreadful moment that she had entered a house of mourning. That Elizabeth was gone from them.

“Greene, please,” she beseeched the dour butler. “Please tell me quickly what has happened. If the worst has happened...”

“The worst, Mrs. Beaumont?”