Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Joy, warm and familiar, surged through Andrew when Cambridge came into view. It would always be home to him. When his carriage rumbled up the cobbles into town, good spirits faded with each turn of the wheel. Georgiana was the heart of his home; without her, he had none.
“Here we are then, home again, and glad of it.” Jamie declaimed as he leapt from the chaise.
Andrew responded with a nod. The homecoming failed his every fantasy.
Quiet, at least, was a relief. Jamie’s incessant chatter flooded the entire trip and drained Andrew’s supply of conversation to the dregs.
Andrew took a moment to look around at the dark emptiness of his house while Harley saw to the baggage.
“I’ll have the shutters open in a trice,” Harley’s cheerful voice drifted from the back, “and start dinner.”
“Good man.” Jamie’s voice moved toward the kitchen, following the promise of food.
Andrew let instinct pull him up the stairs to the book-lined center of his house. He yanked open the inner sash and the diamond-paned windows. The shutters flew open under his hand.
Soft April light filtered between the familiar narrow rows of houses. It glowed off the deep red brick and fine English stone. Andrew breathed in deeply the smells of river water and cooking fires. No grandeur lay here, merely the familiar and the dear.
Neat pages and an index list remained as he left them, arranged on the worktable.
Books on the small wheeled shelf, arranged for maximum utility, stood unchanged, waiting for his hand.
He ran a finger over them with a smile and placed another hand lightly on the shelves behind, savoring the feel of leather and the scent of paper.
He trailed his fingers along the shelves absentmindedly until he came to the door of his bedroom gaping open.
A quick jerk of his hand slammed it shut.
Shutting out memory proved to be more difficult. The room lay dark and cold, like a tomb, like death itself. Jamie could have his room. He would sleep by the fire.
“Dinner will be catch-as-catch-can. Need to see if the markets are open still.” Harley broke into speech without preamble when he burst into the room.
“Forget that. I have a delivery for you to make first.”
Eyebrows shot up. “No matter to me, but there won’t be dinner here tonight if that’s the way it is.”
“That’s the way it is.” Andrew reached inside his satchel, pulled out a leather-bound book, and handed it to Harley. He had wrapped it in brown paper along with his hopes and dreams.
* * *
Some objects inspire fear and others loathing; the parcel on Georgiana’s worktable did both. The notes and papers she expected couldn’t be in so small a parcel, and her thoughts were jumbled. He is back. But where is he? All he sends is this package for goodness sake.
She paced to the windows looking for wisdom in the brown grass and newly bloomed trees outside. He didn’t come! A parcel. He sent a bloody parcel. Her eyes strayed to the fearful thing. Some objects inspire hope along with the danger that hope will fail.
“Oh bother. Where’s your backbone, woman?” she asked herself.
It took one movement to reach the parcel and another to tear open the covering. A folded piece of ivory vellum covered in a strong dark hand as familiar to her as her own fell out.
Georgiana,
I couldn’t reach you to finalize the draft. I have taken the liberty of obtaining a publisher for the work. All final decisions about the disposition of the work are, of course, yours. I believe the terms of our partnership have been discharged, and that partnership is now at an end.
A. Mallet
Liberty? Insufferable liberty. It looked plenty final to Georgiana, bound in gilt and leather, heavy in her hand. The work had been hers to publish, not his.
And the letter–no words of love, no joy of greeting, only business. She threw it down. Is there truly nothing between us but the work?
“An end? Who is he to tell me when it is at an end?!” Her words echoed in the cavernous emptiness of Helsington.
She hefted the leather bound book again. It wasn’t large, but it had a comfortable weight to it. It felt familiar, soft and warm, in her hands. She ran a finger over the engraved gold letters: Poetry by the Female Authors of Ancient Greece.
She opened it and inhaled the clean scent of new paper, heavy linen pages. She admired the watermarked inner lining. That title was repeated on the title page: Poetry by the Female Authors of Ancient Greece.
She concentrated on the title before she noticed what was written below in smaller letters: By an English Lady of Scholarship.
“‘An English Lady of Scholarship.’” A smile played at her lips, appearing and disappearing. It was, of course, impossible to use her name.
Below that she saw written in yet smaller letters, With the assistance of A. Mallet, gentleman scholar of Cambridge.
“‘A. Mallet, gentleman scholar of Cambridge.’” Anger flared again.
“How dare he? How dare he make final arrangements without me? Only a man would violate a partnership in so odious a manner. I had the right to decide. I alone.” She chose to forget his message, forget that he said the final decision was hers to make.
She had no issue with him putting his name on it and leaving hers off or even with taking it to the printer, but he ought to have spoken with her first. The more she considered what he had done, the angrier she became. The beast. How dare he take it to a printer without consulting me!
Harley had left without waiting for a reply. She knew, without a doubt, that he was in league with the bounder. She sat to pen a reply anyway.
* * *
“She was there, all right. Fair put out she looked when I handed her the parcel.”
“Put out? Did she open it?”
“I put it in her hand like you said. You never said to watch her open it. She’s there.” Harley shifted a large crock and two smaller ones in his arms while he talked. “She has the package. Seemed to me like she expected a different messenger.”
A long and colorful string of Portuguese curses met Harley’s impudent remark.
“He has you there, I believe, Andrew.” Jamie didn’t pretend not to hear. He lifted an eyebrow helpfully and liberated one of Harley’s crocks.
Harley grinned at Andrew. “Haven’t heard that language in a while. Would make a sailor blush. One more thing, it looks like the lady is moving.”
“Moving? Where?” Andrew felt every sense go on alert.
“Don’t know. House stood empty. She opened the door herself.” Harley kept speaking, but he followed when Jamie gestured him back to the kitchen. “Boxes piled by the door—a fair number of them.”
She opened the door herself. “No servants?” Andrew was forced to follow.
“Looked like they all ran off. Bloody deserters.” Harley threw the words over his shoulder.
“Tell me, Harley,” Jamie asked, “what are these delicious smelling containers you brought back with you, and what tavern did you rescue them from?”
Andrew followed in silence, his face thunderous. Dinner did little to improve his expression. Jamie’s amusing stories did less and neither did the bottle of French wine Harley had miraculously produced. She was leaving. He would send her notes to her, of course he would, but that would be the end.
Jamie savored the last of the wine, and Andrew scowled into the dregs of his glass when a loud knock echoed through the house.
Andrew strode to the door himself and threw it open.
“Damn. Couldn’t come herself?” Georgiana wasn’t the only one who hoped for a different messenger. A startled and wary William handed him a message. She must have sent him hard on Harley’s heels.
“C’mon to th’kitchen. May as well be comfortable while he carries on.” Andrew ignored Harley’s impudent orders to the footman and Jamie’s avid curiosity, his attention riveted on the paper in his hands.
Mr. Mallet,
It isn’t for you to dissolve our partnership, particularly after the high-handed and completely unacceptable manner in which you appropriated my work. I will wait upon you tomorrow afternoon to resolve these matters.
Lady Georgiana Hayden
Andrew felt a grin spread across his face and then fade. She was in a royal snit.
You’re very welcome for the anxious and tedious efforts I have made on your behalf, Your high-and-mighty Ladyship.
Wretched woman. The final disposition of the work rested with her decision. He was pretty sure he had told her that.
He figured he probably deserved her temper, though. He overstepped when he got the book printed. Glenaire was right about that. Still, he had hoped for a chance to explain.
He read and reread the final sentence. “I will wait upon you tomorrow.” She was in a snit, and she was coming to make war.
Andrew spent eleven years learning how to make war.
She would come to make war on his home ground.
Joy rose in a mighty torrent—joy in the steely control of a man determined to have his way.
When he sat back down to his dinner, his eyes had a marshal gleam.
“Prepare the camp for battle, Harley. We shall have a visitor tomorrow.” Settle matters, we will.
* * *
Promptly at two o’clock in the afternoon, Lady Georgiana appeared at the door. A suspiciously well-groomed Harley showed her to a seat in the front parlor. He bowed respectfully and told her he would announce her before disappearing up the stairs. That alone should have warned her to be careful.
Far too busy keeping the balance between two conflicting desires—the desire to put her lying cheat of a partner in his place and the desire to fall into his arms—she failed to notice Harley’s strange behavior. She lost all ability to think clearly.
The sound of two pairs of boots on the enclosed stairs caused the pounding in her ears to get louder and made coherent thought even more difficult.
“Get on with it, man, hurry up!” she snapped.
Her eyes widened at the sight of Jamie Heyworth’s toothy grin descending the final step.