Chapter Thirty-Four
Georgie had known the first of August was going to be hard, so had filled her day by relieving both Lottie and Miss P of most of their lessons. At least teaching this afternoon’s deportment class would take her mind off Harry and whatever trouble the navy was about to send him to. She knew that there was due to be a big fanfare on the Plymouth dockside when the Boadicea set sail on its maiden voyage, because the details had made it into the London Tribune. Hardly a surprise when King George IV himself was going to be there to wave the new flagship off as it led out the fleet.
Lottie had been a brick during Georgie’s many hours of need this past month and, of course, so had Miss P. But she had spared her mentor all the most scandalous details of her short but eventful employment as the Pendleton children’s governess. Only Lottie knew that she had fallen head over heels with the children’s uncle and spent half a week in his bed. Miss P didn’t need to know that—but having her friend’s shoulder to cry on had meant the world.
As Lottie had never intended to go to heaven in a package marked UNOPENED either, she hadn’t judged Georgie for succumbing at all, but still understood why she had left. Out of solidarity, she only ever referred to Harry as “that blithering idiot” whenever Georgie’s cheery fa?ade slipped, which it did every single evening after all the lessons were done and when it was just the pair of them alone in their bedchamber.
“If it was meant to be, he would have come and got you,” her friend had wisely said last night when the tears of resignation had flowed. “That he hasn’t means that it wasn’t and you were brave and courageous to call it first.”
Georgie did not feel particularly brave or courageous. She was too miserable and too heartbroken to feel particularly noble about her decision, and in her most desperate moments still wondered if she was actually the blithering idiot who should have asked him to stay.
She had always craved a family and at least with Harry, she might have had a home and children of her own to love within it, even if their love was doomed to fail once his resentment began to fester. In being noble, she was now doomed to be alone forever, and while she had long been at peace with that before he had upended her life, that acceptance did not come as easily now. She mourned her lonely destiny almost as much as she mourned the loss of him, and today most of all. Because the faint glimmer of hope that he would come after her, which her foolish heart had held for more than a month, had finally been extinguished.
Harry would set sail at two and that, according to the clock on the classroom wall, was in precisely five minutes.
As she clutched her mother’s locket for comfort, one of the first-years interrupted her melancholy as she stared at the school’s ethos on the blackboard. “Which of the Four D’s is the most important?”
“Duty,” she answered straightaway, thinking of Harry. “Diligence, discretion, and decorum mean nothing unless the stanch commitment of duty underpins them. Although, I suspect it is the one we shall always struggle with the most, as it is often the most difficult to define properly. Especially as there are so many conflicting permutations.”
“How so?” The protégé-in-waiting was the most inquisitive and questioning in the class and therefore reminded Georgie of herself.
“Because as a governess, you have both a duty to your employer and to your charges. You also have a duty to make Miss P proud and still have a duty to yourself, which often…”
The sudden arrival of Miss P prevented her from waxing lyrical. “There is a family in my office in urgent need of a governess.” The older woman grabbed Georgie’s hand and practically dragged her out of the lesson she was teaching. “Urgent. Need.” Excitement danced in her wily blue eyes. “I’ve told them I have somebody they can interview straightaway!”
“What?” Georgie wasn’t anywhere near ready to contemplate another family yet. In fact, if she had her way, she would stay here at the school, licking her gaping wounds forever. “Lottie needs a job too and I am sure that she will be better suited to—”
“No, no, no! This family is perfect for you, dear. I can sense it.” Miss P tugged her into the hallway, then frowned as she began to fuss with Georgie’s hair, which was doubtless doing its own thing wildly—as usual. “They aren’t particularly traditional, and as you aren’t either, I suspect you are a match made in heaven. Serendipity, Georgina! I can feel it in my bones.”
As her beloved mentor had said the same thing the last time she had been in this position, the similarities made her uneasy. “But I’m no good at interviews. I’m certainly not prepared for an interview. I haven’t planned a thing to say…”
“I know. Isn’t that marvelous?” Miss P grabbed her hand again and dragged her toward her office, but stopped just shy. “In this case, I suspect it is most prudent to allow the master of the house to do most of the talking, so please try your very best and say yes rather than argue.”
“Is this the part when you tell me that it is best I remain mute and allow you to talk for me?”
Smiling, Miss P straightened Georgie’s locket. “Just be yourself, dear.” Then she pushed her toward the door.
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“Absolutely not. There are too many people in my office already and that big dog has already flattened me once.”
“Big dog?” That was when she saw a grinning Lottie loitering just around the corner.
“There is a little one too, now, who is clearly besotted with your blithering idiot. But as a very wise woman once said, animals are always the best gauge of a person’s character, so I’m prepared to forgive your idiot if you are, seeing as he finally appears to have come to his senses. But make him suffer a bit first. He deserves that.” Sensing Georgie’s trepidation, her friend opened the door, and there he was.
Handsome as sin, neat as a pin with not a hair out of place, but standing as awkwardly as she had ever seen him with a cheerfully panting Cuthbert in his arms. “Hello, Georgie.”
“Hello, Harry.” Despite her suddenly wobbly legs, she managed to keep upright as Norbert tried to flatten her too. “And hello, Norbert and Felix. Marianne and Grace. Hello, Lady Flora.” With her tummy doing somersaults, she bobbed a shaky curtsy that was instantly waved away by Harry’s beaming elder sibling. “And hello, Cuthbert.” She wiggled her fingers at the little dog and his dangling tail wagged back. “Shouldn’t you be leading His Majesty’s fleet into the Atlantic?”
Harry shrugged. “I couldn’t—after Cuthbert shredded my best pair of dress breeches and the reserve pair exploded—I had nothing to wear. It is apparently bad form to salute the monarch naked from the waist down.” His dark eyes danced with mischief and something else. Something vulnerable and hopeful and utterly disarming. “It was just as well, as I was too busy to spare them the time in the end.” He flicked one of his pocket watches. Except, for once, there was only one pocket watch clipped to his waistcoat. “So the Royal Navy had to give somebody else the bloody Boadicea.”
That didn’t bode well. Or did it? She was currently so overwhelmed and confused but hopeful that she didn’t know which way was up. “Busy doing what?”
“Firstly, having a long, hard look at myself.” He shifted Cuthbert to free one hand, which he raked through his thick, dark hair. “My blasted sister’s idea and a good one, because… um… I discovered, after some serious soul-searching, that the navy wasn’t making me happy and hadn’t been for years. So then I had to go through all the rigamarole of resigning my commission, which of course the top brass weren’t particularly happy about.”
Bizarrely, neither was she. “I hope you didn’t resign your commission for me.”
“Of course I didn’t.” He lifted the puppy. “I did it for Cuthbert. Dogs, it turns out, are a huge responsibility which you cannot ignore for days on end. It wouldn’t have been fair to him to sail away. He would have pined for me.”
His heated gaze locked with hers to let her know, in no uncertain terms, that he had pined for her. “And, I realized, that after years of living somebody else’s dreams, it was long past time to find some of my own so I have other responsibilities now too. New ones. Exciting ones. An adventure that has nothing to do with the Royal Navy.” His eyes shimmered with excitement as he smiled. “Do you remember that bankrupt ship we passed in the Sound? The Siren?”
“I do—but I didn’t realize that she was called the Siren.”
“Well, as it seemed prophetic, and because at ten pounds a tun and within only one trip laden with cargo I’d earn fifty times my annual navy salary, that was too sound an investment not to take a punt on. So I bought it.”
“You are the Siren’s captain now instead?”
He shook his head. “No. That would be Simpkins, as somebody needs to procure all the cargo contracts, and who better than me? I don’t like to brag, but after all my years at the Admiralty, I know practically every merchant in England. Besides, Simpkins has banned me from his vessel until I can learn how to stop interfering, so I’ve pretty much hung up my sea legs. I still have to teach young Felix here how to navigate a ship in preparation for his epic, single-handed, insect-collecting voyage across the seven seas, of course, but when I’m not doing that, I’ll mostly be here. Back in London. So I was wondering… um…”
He edged toward her, still carrying his dog. “Well… two things, actually. The first was if you would like to accompany me and my blasted sister’s mad brood to Gunther’s this afternoon, and the second was if… um… you might be inclined to take a voyage down the aisle with me sometime?”
Tears pricked her eyes at that pretty proposal, but Lottie was right. He did deserve to suffer a little. “And why would I want to do that?”
“Because Gunther’s makes the best ice cream, of course.” He shuffled from foot to foot. “And because I am madly, utterly, and completely in love with you and I am really hoping that you might feel similarly afflicted. If you aren’t—and heaven knows I’d completely understand if you weren’t after my clumsy and unfair ask me not to sail away outburst—then I’m hoping you will at least have enough affection for young Cuthbert here to take a punt on a lifetime’s adventure with us anyway.” He reached out to caress her fingers. “Only he’s missed you dreadfully and a growing lad needs two parents.”
Little Grace suddenly thrust herself between them. “Can Marianne and I be bridesmaids?”
“You can be the bridesmaid,” said Marianne, jabbing her sister. “I shall be the maid of honor and Felix can give Miss Rowe away.”
“You can both be bridesmaids.” Lottie stepped forward to tug the girls away. “Because I am the maid of honor.”
“And I’ll be giving her away!” That came from the already weeping Miss P.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Felix, typically, was now outraged.
“I’ll need a best man if Georgie says yes.” Harry smiled at his nephew and then turned it hopefully to her. “Will you nail your colors to my mast, Georgie?”
She pretended to ponder it. “I suppose you are nine-tenths lovable, even if you are still resoundingly one-tenth insufferable.”
“An improvement at least from the last time you took my measure. I’m an ambitious man, as you know, so it’s good to have something to strive for. As Nelson famously once said, he who ceases to be better ceases to be good.”
“I am pretty sure that was Oliver Cromwell.” She was laughing as the happy tears finally escaped and breathless by the time he had tugged her into his arms because his gaze was so intense, even though his expression was playful. “But despite your insufferableness and your inability to quote any military leader correctly, my colors are yours to nail where you see fit.”
“Was that a yes?” asked Felix, looking totally baffled.
“I still don’t see why you get to be the maid of honor,” said Marianne with a peeved glance at Lottie.
“Is it time for ice cream yet?” That came from Grace as her mother shepherded them all out of the door. “Only Uncle Harry promised it an hour ago, and I am starving.”
But by then, Georgie wasn’t really listening because Harry was kissing her and nothing else really mattered, and he was still kissing her when the door clicked closed. Reluctantly, she prized her lips from his to find Cuthbert staring up at them. “We should probably save our passions for later, as aside from this being grossly inappropriate when we are in Miss Prentice’s school and all around us are impressionable young girls, we are being unfair to the children when you promised them ice cream.”
“Not according to Sun Tzu.” He tugged her back and did unspeakably wonderful things to her earlobe with just his teeth that completely overruled her concerns about propriety. “Who—and I know, my darling, you will immediately correct me if I am wrong—was adamant that all is fair in love and war.”