Chapter Twenty-One
Ginny made the final leg of her journey back to the Woodville house in a horse-drawn cart, courtesy of a neighbor who’d seen
her disembark at the coaching inn. He left her and her trunks at the foot of her drive, by her request. She stood and stared
at her home, a grand pile of pale gray stone, soft and worn and well-loved as the sitting room at the Grand Palace on the
Thames.
But her heart, which had ached with a near unendurability the entirety of the trip home, at last lifted a little. Even though
she could see William nibbling on the flowers around the fountain.
How would she feel if she was never welcome within its walls ever again?
It was her brother’s home, in truth; it was her brother’s prerogative to decide who would be welcome within its walls. She
could not imagine him shunning her. After all, he’d offered to work for Marchand.
She walked up the drive, her valise bumping against her leg.
The door of the house burst open.
All of her siblings, who clearly had been watching from the upstairs windows, tumbled out of the house and fell upon her with hugs and kisses.
“I fixed it” was the first thing she said to Hogarth. “I fixed all of it. Everything is fine now.”
His expression went stunned, as though he’d taken a blow to the head.
The color drained from his face.
“Get him, girls! I think he’s going down!” she said.
Felicity got one arm and Fiona got the other and Ginny got her arm around his back. They lowered him to a sitting position
on the edge of the fountain.
William paused in his flower munching to sniff him.
“Ginny, what did you fix?” Felicity asked brightly.
Bless Hogarth for not saying a word. He must have been so worried, and it must have been a struggle not to confide in them.
“Oh, just some things to do with the estate.”
She didn’t want her sisters to know. They never, ever needed to know.
“He’s been forgetting to eat,” Fiona fussed over her brother. Who did indeed look thinner.
Ginny could imagine why. “Will you two run into the house and bring Hogarth and me something to drink and perhaps a little
bite to eat? I just want to sit here for a minute. It’s a beautiful day.”
Felicity seized up Ginny’s valise and both girls skipped off.
They really were sweet, lovely girls, who deserved every happiness, and bloody Marchand was right. She was whiskey, and they
were chamomile tea.
Hogarth bent double and breathed. She patted his back.
“Oh, Ginny. Bloody hell. Thank you. Dear God. I’m luckier than I deserve to be,” he said.
“Too right you are,” she agreed.
“So what happened?”
“The Earl of Sydenham tore up your vowels.” She decided that was as much information as she needed to share. “And Marchand
shared with me your plan to teach the children from the workhouse. I think that’s a very fine idea, Hogarth, and I’m so proud
of you.”
But Hogarth was frowning at her. He was unfortunately every bit as smart as she’d told Marchand he was. He was clearly puzzling
over something.
“Did Marchand have anything to do with Sydenham’s decision?” He was eyeing her with peculiar intensity.
She hesitated. “I think he had everything to do with it.”
And just like that, her eyes filled with tears.
“Ginny!” he said. Alarmed.
She swiped at her eyes. “I’m just a bit tired from the journey.”
He frowned at her so darkly and so skeptically that she nearly laughed.
“Are you unwell?” He was so worried, and it was so sweet.
“No. I’m . . . I’m a little sad, though.”
He looked as though he intended to say something, then thought better of it. “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked gently.
She shook her head. It was true: She didn’t want to tell him. Perhaps she would, at some point. Perhaps she would need to.
He slung an arm about her instead, and they sat together.
William came over and shoved his big face into their shoulders, asking for pats. They obliged him.
“I’m looking forward to teaching boys and girls, actually. It was so very good of Marchand to arr—agree to it.”
She stared at him. Her breath stopped.
She was fairly certain she knew what Garth had almost said: arrange.
And possibly he had said it on purpose.
“It was good of him,” she said slowly.
A wave of the warmest, sweetest love for Gabriel swept through her and stole her breath so thoroughly she couldn’t speak for
a moment.
“Hogarth . . . ” she said carefully. “I think Gabriel Marchand is a good man.” Her heart beat with nervous speed.
He eyed her intently. He seemed to be considering this. “I think you may be right,” he said gently. “Believe it or not.”
That was all she was going to say about it for now.
“I think you should do all the talking during the marital settlement discussions, Garth. I’ll make sure you’re prepared. I’ll
go with you. But you’re the earl, and the official head of the family now, and I think you should take on that role and everything
that goes with it. I will help, if you need help. But I want you to do it.”
“All right,” he said. “I can do that. You’ve carried us for so long. I am so grateful. We all are.”
“I haven’t minded.” Her voice was hoarse. “You all mean everything to me.” How would Hogarth’s expression change if she told
him about Gabriel?
Would she lose them forever if she married a beautiful rogue?
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
Felicity and Fiona emerged from the house lugging a little picnic hamper, and they all sat in front of the fountain and ate tea cakes and fruit and cheese, sharing bites with William.
Back in her own bedroom at last, she unpacked her valise and trunk, which Hogarth and their man of all work had fetched from
the drive.
Like a madwoman she sniffed carefully every dress she’d worn when Gabriel held her or kissed her, hoping against hope to find
some trace of his scent on them. She found nothing.
She put them away in her clothes press. Every single one of those dresses was a veritable museum of memories. All she needed
to do was look at her goldenrod pelisse and she would see him gazing across at her, comparing the stars in the sky to her
freckles, trying and failing not to fall in love with her.
Next, she opened up her valise to retrieve her hairbrush and stockings.
She went still.
Something was wedged into the bottom of it. A little box of some sort she didn’t recognize. She wondered if one of the maids
at the Grand Palace on the Thames had tucked it in there.
She reached in, pulled the string that held it closed, and lifted the lid.
Inside, tucked inside cotton wool, was the shepherdess she’d seen in Fleegle’s Emporium of Wonders.
The one who had belonged to Henrietta Parker! The one whose friends had all been used for skeet. Gabriel must have gone back
for it.
She gave a little happy cry when she realized it was wrapped in one of his handkerchiefs.
She gently unpacked the shepherdess and gave her a spot on her window ledge.
Then Ginny sat at her window, watching the lowering sun through the trees in the rambling park behind their house. She held
the clean, soft, bright loveliness of his handkerchief to her face and breathed him in. She closed her eyes. Her heart felt
a thousand times too big for her chest. Her head ached from fatigue and from weeping too much lately.
“I love you, Gabriel,” she said aloud, fervently. Willing her words to sail through the ether and to reach him, sink right
into his heart, wherever he was tonight, lonely and missing her. “I love you I love you I love you.”
She retrieved from her reticule the heart-shaped stone she’d found outside the earl’s house and transferred it into a wooden
box on her writing desk that held the others.
She gently stirred and sifted them through her fingers.
She looked out at the view she’d known and loved her entire life.
“Mama,” she said aloud. Her voice was graveled.
“If you’re listening . . . we did it, Mama.
Felicity and Fiona are getting married to lovely men.
I did what you asked me to do. So I wonder, would you mind terribly if I asked for something for myself?
” She paused to pull in a few breaths. “Because I’m in love with a man.
His name is Gabriel Marchand. Oh, but you would like him.
He’s the kind of handsome that stops your breath.
He’s brilliant and strong and caring and competent and passionate and very funny.
He loves me, too, more than his own life.
And I know he’ll take care of me. Maybe you understand.
Maybe you loved papa that way, too. But Gabriel doesn’t have a title.
He’s not even a gentleman. He owns a gaming establishment.
Are you gasping right now? Are you appalled?
I hope not. That would break my heart.” She cleared her throat.
“But I may never be accepted into polite society ever again if I marry him. I should be very fair and tell you that Francis Balfort would like to marry me, too. And, as you know, he’s the third son of a duke. ”
She paused.
“The thing is, Mama . . .” Her voice broke. “I do not think I can do without Gabriel. I do not think I could bear to go on.
You know I’m not in the habit of saying such things. I go on, no matter what. It’s what I do. And it makes my heart ache not
to fulfill all of your wishes. I know you want what is best for me. But he is best for me. So if you could send me a sign to let me know that you approve, I should be so grateful.”
Exhaustion overcame her.
She could barely keep her eyes open as she splashed water from the basin on her face, plaited her hair, and threw a clean
night rail over her head.
She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow, Marchand’s handkerchief clutched in her hand, held against her cheek.
Ginny was very proud of how Hogarth acquitted himself during the marriage settlement negotiations for his sisters, which, over a span of days, were accomplished with surprising thoroughness and efficiency in a room filled with solicitors, the prospective grooms, and their fathers.
It was a process that could take months, depending upon the estate, so the civility and speed with which it was all concluded delighted everyone.
She’d sat near Hogarth, mostly quietly—which was no mean feat, as she was very used to being in charge, and as she’d told
Marchand, she quite liked it—while hard but cheerful bargains were driven about allowances and so forth for Felicity and Fiona.
Such an unsentimental yet ultimately loving thing to do, she supposed. It was meant to protect them, but it also enriched
their husbands. There was no doubt about that.
A man who would pay any price for the privilege of being with her, Gabriel had said.
His voice was in her head throughout the entire process.
All parties parted happy and hopeful and excited about their futures.
A fortnight later, a radiant Felicity and Fiona were married in a joyful double ceremony in their parish church, which was
packed with family and townspeople who had watched the Woodville siblings grow up and were pleased to see them at last successfully
leaving the nest.
Francis had come for the wedding, too.
The sight of him amazed Ginny into breathlessness: How absurdly, dangerously gossamer their connection seemed to her now,
and how flimsy the reasons to marry him. How on earth had she ever lightly contemplated committing the rest of her life to
him?
The notion of lying sweaty and sated across his naked body seemed so inconceivable she could scarcely breathe for panic.
He was the same sweet, admiring young man he’d always been.
If he noticed anything different about her, he didn’t remark upon it.
This struck her as shocking, since her spirit felt so utterly transformed—or rather, her spirit had at last fully bloomed.
He could see her only through the lens of the life he’d lived, which meant he could not know her heart.
It wasn’t his fault that her heart had chanced upon its own true mate.
And then the moment she’d dreaded occurred: He’d asked if he could call upon her and her brother in a week’s time at the Woodville
house.
Her gut went cold.
“Yes,” she told him. Her voice shredded from nerves.
His eyes had gone meltingly soft. He’d been emboldened to take her hand. “Thank you, dear Ginny.”
Yet again she confronted, with dread, the ticking of a clock toward a decision.
She had not found a single stone heart in the three weeks since she’d been home.
Her eyes had been so frequently on the ground that she had crashed into a pillar, a tree, a settee, Mrs. Haddock, accidentally
stepped on a cat, and collided with William.
In her time away from Gabriel her feelings had not ebbed or faded even a little; longing had cut a deep channel through her,
and like a river, it flowed endlessly. His presence was nearly as vivid to her as if he stood at her side.
The absolute certainty of his love, the absolute conviction that he would come to her at once if she needed him, had changed the very way she moved in the world.
Every breath seemed richer and deeper and freer, every moment safer and more peaceful, because she was surrounded at all times by the invisible eiderdown of his love.
And the thought of him yearning for her all this time was nearly unbearable.
A little flame of fury at last ignited in her heart every time she looked for a sign and didn’t find one.
Each passing day without a sign fanned it higher.
She had not asked for a thing in her life for eight years. One little sign! One little sign that she should claim her own
happiness, even if it looked different from everyone else’s. Was it too much to ask?
Apparently, it was.
And perhaps it meant that she shouldn’t.
Perhaps it was her mother’s way of protecting her. Perhaps there was wisdom in it that she could not currently see.
Perhaps . . . perhaps it was a decision she would need to make all on her own.
You can decide the point of you, he’d said.
And when she bravely tormented herself by imagining life without Gabriel, a life married to some other man, her heart contracted
into a tight, hard fist. Protecting itself from the very notion.
She had known the rambling park behind their house in every season, and the sky was blushing with the dawn when she sat at
her writing desk and sifted through her stones one more time.
She could have sworn she heard her mother’s voice.
What does your heart tell you, Ginny?
Goose bumps rained over her arms when she realized the truth:
Her own heart felt like a stone without him.
And she knew this was her sign.