Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Every hour took her farther from Andrew. Georgiana put her lap desk away hours before the carriage stopped, and she was left with nothing to do but count the miles between them.
Even people lucky enough to be able to read while moving, and Georgiana was one of the lucky ones, find detailed work and concentration difficult in a jolting carriage.
With no partner to challenge her ideas, no colleague to share her enthusiasm, work became impossible.
Richard rode outside for the last stretch of road, leaving Georgiana alone with darkening thoughts and intrusive, sensual memories.
She rejoiced to see the Crown and Goose in Bridgewater come into view and hours of dirt, awkward conversation, and muddy ruts come to an end.
The muddy roads were frightful even in Richard’s exquisitely appointed carriage.
She sighed in gratitude that she had only one more day of travel to endure and that Murnane House lay a mere one hundred miles from Helsington.
Her brother’s staff worked their usual magic. Clean sheets, hot water, and hot tea greeted her. Perhaps she might squeeze in an hour of work.
“Tea is in your sitting room. Dinner will be served in a private parlor in one hour.” Richard pronounced. So much for time to myself.
“I won’t be much company, Richard. Perhaps I’ll take a tray in my room.
” Conversation between them lagged very early in the day.
Richard showed no interest in her work and was impossibly closed-mouthed about his own life and his work for the government.
Discussion about their family had been perfunctory at best.
“Nonsense. We’ll dine together.” He neatly ordered her evening, just as he ordered her life.
One hour later, Georgiana entered the private parlor to find a dinner suitable for the Duke of Sudbury’s offspring, proper table service (unpacked no doubt from her brother’s baggage train), and Richard, looking every inch the Marquess of Glenaire, holding a chair for her.
Georgiana resented his high-handed arrangements in spite of the comfort they brought.
She stared at the first course and cast about for something to say that didn’t sound petulant.
Neither “How are the machinations at Whitehall these days?” nor “Has our lady mother expired of her own venom yet?” seemed appropriate. She chose silence.
Richard directed servants while he maintained what he considered the expected dinner conversation.
She heard drivel about the weather, the road conditions, and current fashion.
He went on longer than necessary about the likelihood that their sister Eloise would attend Chadbourn’s wedding.
Monosyllabic answers didn’t deter him. His words became one long drone.
“Mm. Quite.” She responded to one dry statement. She wasn’t sure she heard him properly and didn’t care.
“Georgiana! You haven’t attended me this entire evening. I just told you Great Aunt Maud eloped with an elderly footman to the Antipodes, and you responded ‘quite!’ Are you well?”
“Well? Yes. Simply tired.” The pudding placed before her revolted her. It would go back uneaten. “I should leave you to your port.”
“I hardly think...”
She sat back down. Rebellion flared in her.
Fine. If he wants my company, I shall speak the thoughts that have haunted me all afternoon, and I will expect a real response.
“What caused the scars on Andrew’s face?” She heard his indrawn breath, but it didn’t stop her. She was out of patience, and there was no other opening for what weighed on her mind. He would have to endure it.
“That isn’t a proper question,” Glenaire spluttered. “It’s the man’s private business.” He tossed down his napkin.
His attack was a diversion. Georgiana’s next question would be harder to sidestep. She folded her own linen napkin deliberately and set it beside her uneaten pudding.
“He got them doing your bidding.” She opened with a statement not a question. “Did you know he was in danger when you sent him there?”
“Really, Georgiana, where is all this coming from?” Richard on the defense was a novel sight.
She refused to be intimidated when he resorted to his familiar glare.
“Did you, Richard?” She repeated.
“Yes. Death is always an option for a soldier,” he ground out.
“Capture also?”
“Capture also when one is behind lines. The French were not kind.” Richard looked as though he tasted something vile.
“They were brutal,” she growled.
“Yes.”
“Did you know that then at your desk at Whitehall?” She gave no quarter today.
“Of course. It was my duty to know. Andrew knew also. He volunteered for the mission.”
“He volunteered for the mission perhaps but not the army. He never volunteered for the army, did he?” She kept her gaze steady, daring him to deny her words.
An odd expression flitted across his face. It might have been compassion. It might have been guilt. It disappeared quickly and took the gentle face of her beloved brother with it. Only the mighty Marquess of Glenaire remained.
“He made his own choice,” he declared, eyes hard as steel, “and he did well. His service made him a wealthy man.”
Wealthy? she thought. Perhaps, but what had war cost him? She wondered how much he earned with each of his scars.
Richard’s eyes were implacable, and it was Georgiana who broke eye contact at last. Andrew made his own choice. Andrew, at least, had been given one. She had no choice at all. Her eyes dropped to her plate.
“Really, Georgiana, none of this is a fit subject for a lady. I won’t have it.”
Ask me about my work then. “What shall we discuss if not that, brother? How is our esteemed father? How goes the estate?”
“His Grace is well, and Sudbury thrives—as I believe we discussed this morning.” He spat it out impatiently.
That was it then for family intimacy. Richard was one more man who didn’t care to inquire about what really mattered to her.
“I beg you to excuse me. There is work to do before bed.”
She thought he might ask, “What work?” Instead he saw her gone with a bow and relief he didn’t bother to hide.
Alone in her room, Georgiana leaned against the door. ‘The French were not kind,’ her brother had said. Andrew’s scarred body flashed through her mind. The French were brutal. Richard knew. Richard sent him.
Emotional collapse accomplished nothing and held no place in Georgiana’s universe. She forced herself upright and picked up her inlaid lap desk and the heavy portfolio with it, both thoughtfully arranged on her bedside table by Richard’s servants.
She flipped through pages of vellum until she located her most recent translations of Praxilla of Sicyon’s fragmentary poems. The work looked adequate, but Georgiana no longer settled for adequate.
There was no eros here, merely domestic concerns.
She closed her eyes momentarily, forcing her mind into Praxilla’s world.
Blank walls greeted her in every direction.
She knew nothing of Praxilla’s world. She damned her lack of education for the thousandth time.
A moment later she picked up her quill and began to write notes for the partner she could no longer see, the colleague she could no longer debate.
She wondered if he also worked alone by lamplight in the house on Little Saint Mary’s Lane. It gave her comfort to imagine him there. A slight smile relaxed her face and eased her heart. She listed questions for Andrew and began to anticipate his answers. He would answer. He wouldn’t fail her.
* * *
Sir Isaac Newton glared down at Andrew from his pedestal on the end of the book shelf.
He, Sir Francis Bacon, and marble busts of the other distinguished Cambridge alumni seemed to view Andrew’s work with great skepticism.
They were cold comfort and no substitute for Georgiana’s wit and enthusiasm. He ignored them.
A familiar voice broke into his concentration. “All these wonders and you wish to read Praxilla? Isn’t she the dreadful poet who—”
“—dared put cucumbers and the sun and moon on an equal footing?” Andrew capped Geoff Dunning’s quote, the well-known assessment of the poet.
“Good morning, Dunning. How are you?” Pleasure flooded him.
There had been no one to speak to in over a week—not since Georgiana left, taking half the work and all his heart. Company felt good.
“I am well, Andrew, but surprised to see you here. Good to see you working, though.” The greeting appeared to be equally sincere. Geoffrey Dunning may be a bit of a fuzzy academic, but he was a kind man and an excellent scholar. “But Praxilla? I thought old Selby had you on the Neoplatonists.”
“This isn’t for Selby. I finished a passage for him two days ago. He doles his bounty out slowly. I’m still waiting for another.”
Dunning nodded sympathetically. “But Praxilla?” he asked. “A diversion?” If Dunning suspected Andrew was helping Georgiana, he didn’t say.
“Have you actually read Praxilla?” Andrew asked.
“No, no. Goodness no. Her work isn’t much studied,” Dunning said, shaking his head. “Zenobius put her in her place two thousand years ago. You just quoted him—cucumbers and all.”
“Yes, I know what Zenobius said. ‘Only an idiot would put cucumbers on a par with the sun in the same verse.’” Andrew thought Zenobius as narrow-minded as Watterson and the others. They maligned Praxilla as they maligned Georgiana.
“Does seem a bit strong. Perhaps Zenobius mistook her meaning. Did she really write about cucumbers?” Dunning’s suggestion stunned Andrew.
“Listen to this verse, yourself, Dunning. Tell me what you think of it.
The fairest thing I leave is the light of the sun
And the next the bright stars and face of the moon
and also ripe cucumbers, apples and pears.
Andrew pointed to the text. “What do you think it means?”
“Probably not much more than is obvious. She seems to be cataloging pleasures of life—things one would miss.” Dunning squinted to reread it. “Perhaps for Apollo in Hades.”