Chapter 1
Lady Georgianna Packham would have known sooner that her help was needed if she hadn’t been busy chasing Napoleon across the plains of France.
“And then General Wellington and Daddy Hill pushed Marshal Soult across the River Nive,” she said, bouncing the painted horse and soldier across the bright blue scarf that wound over the rumpled sheet representing the battlefield.
“Daddy Hill?” her brother Geoffrey asked, his seven-year-old rump in the air as he repositioned the French troops farther east, knocking some over as he’d been wanting to do since they started the lesson. “Why would a daddy lead troops? That’s silly.”
Georgie nodded and shoved a loose curl behind her ear as she pointed to the tiny lead soldier in his distinctive scarlet coat who sat at the front of the British troops. “His real name is General Rowland Hill. But he has taken such good care of his men that they nicknamed him ‘Daddy.’”
“My lady.”
Georgie looked up from where, also on hands and knees, she was knocking down some more French cavalry for Geoffrey. “Yes, Minta?”
The tidy redheaded maid perched in the doorway bobbed a bit of a curtsy. “Back door, miss.”
Georgie nodded. “Well then, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait for the Battle of Paris. Read the rest of those dispatches, Geoffrey. We can set up when I get back.”
Geoffrey, busy engaging a blue-clad soldier against one in red, merely nodded. Seated next to him, thumb in mouth, three-year-old Emily nodded right along.
Giving Emily a quick buss on the cheek and Geoffrey a tousle, Georgie climbed to her feet, where she settled her dress and repinned her hair before following Minta out into the nursery hallway.
“Don’t know how you can enjoy playin’ soldiers an’ all, miss,” Minta said with a shake of her head. “Bloody business, it were.”
“I’m afraid it was, Minta. But this is the best way to lock knowledge into little boys’ heads. And if Geoffrey wants to be a soldier, he needs to learn it.”
Minta shook her head. “Seems to me he needs to learn that soldierin’s a trial and a bloody business.”
Since Minta had grown up in the train of the British Army, she should know.
“Which is why you and I will sit down with him right after we get Wellington safely through the battle of Toulouse,” Georgie answered, “so he can know the good and the bad.”
Minta didn’t seem enthused. “Won’t help, you pardon me sayin’. Bloodthirsty buggers, men, the lot of them.”
Georgie smiled as she started down the first flight of narrow servants’ stairs toward the kitchen. “Oh, I know. But at least we can say we tried.”
Georgie wondered what time it was. She always lost her sense of it while instructing the children. The light had begun to slant, though, so rather a surprising time for a call. Then again, the call had come to the kitchen door, which meant it was completely unofficial.
“Did the person identify themself?” she asked her maid.
“No’m. Just said she needed a fairy godmother.”
Georgie fought the urge to scowl. It had been four years since she’d earned that annoying nickname.
Anyone would think people would have begun to forget.
But no. At least once a month one of her ex-classmates showed up at the back door, bouncing from foot to foot, skirts clutched in her hands, eyes flickering around the kitchen, where by now the staff was so inured to these unorthodox visits that they went about their business as if nothing unusual was happening.
It seemed she was to have another.
“Neither Charlie nor Eddie was available?”
“Lendin’ library, what I hear.”
Georgie recognized the girl standing in the kitchen the minute she entered. Georgie smiled to herself. She really should not call her a girl. But any of the students younger than she and her cousins would always be thought of as girls. And this one looked like it.
Thin, pale, blonde, with her hands predictably tangled in her skirts and her eyes on a swivel, Priscilla Mayhew stood on one small foot and watched the kitchen staff as if expecting them to decamp to peach on her to her parents for being there.
“Hello, Priscilla,” Georgie softly greeted her, stepping out onto the kitchen proper.
Priscilla startled like a wild filly. “Oh, Lady Georgiana...” Even her curtsy looked frantic.
Georgie gave her a sincere smile. “You know perfectly well it is Georgie. After all, we both survived Last Chance Academy. Would you care to come with me? Mrs. Barnes, our housekeeper, has a lovely little parlor she is kind enough to lend me on occasion.”
Mrs. Barnes, who looked more like a sergeant major than a housekeeper, gave a stiff nod and then, as if she couldn’t help it, a wink. “Go on wit’ ya now, girl. Minta, let Nanny know them hooligans is up there on their own.”
Priscilla blinked like a baby bunny at Mrs. Barnes’s broad western accent. “She is not from London, is she?” she whispered as she followed Georgie from the wide, green-walled room and down the narrow servants’ corridor.
“No. Mrs. Barnes is from The Castle. She is convinced we would all run mad if she weren’t about to manage us.”
She was also kind and patient enough to allow strange young women to sneak in the back door for help.
“Here we go,” Georgie said, pushing open the door into the housekeeper’s sitting room.
Georgie had always loved it here. Rather than solemn and important like the public rooms of the house, Mrs. Barnes lived amid chintz and overstuffed sofas. Smelling of cinnamon and furniture polish and warmed by a constant fire, it reminded Georgie of a room from a fairy tale.
Priscilla blinked again. “Oh, my. This is...”
Georgie nodded. “Lovely, yes. Please. Sit.”
Priscilla shook her head in some wonder. “Like a nest.”
She sat and looked around, as most visitors did, no matter the room. Her next question was also inevitable.
“You really all live in this one house?”
Georgie smiled. “All thousand or so Packham cousins. With my mother and father so often preoccupied with government affairs, Uncle Samson in default charge of the family, and Aunt Ellen and Uncle William dying so young, it seemed easiest to keep us all in the immediate vicinity to more easily maintain supervision. It has actually worked out quite well. And I only need run down the corridor to see Charlie and Eddie.”
Georgie spent the time until the tea service arrived asking after Priscilla’s parents and younger sister, who had been a year behind her in school.
They chattered until tea had arrived, been poured, and waifish Priscilla had devoured three seed cakes and a slice of bread and butter.
One of the great mysteries of life, Priscilla’s frail frame, considering what she put away at a sitting.
“Now then,” was all Georgie had to say.
Priscilla sputtered a bit, then set down her cup and clasped her hands like a novice in church. “My life is over,” she whispered.
Georgie might have been far more concerned if this statement hadn’t been the opening line of almost every visit she’d had.
“How is that?” she asked equably, having long since learned that an air of calm saved much time and drama.
Priscilla let loose a pathetic little sob. Georgie waited patiently. Priscilla wasn’t one for show. Her pale little face was pinched and sad. Georgie knew that whatever it was, she would help the girl.
“Timothy,” Priscilla whispered, head down.
Now Georgie worried. “Your Timothy? The Squire’s son? What about him?”
Not dead, Georgie prayed. She’d met Timothy. He was everything Priscilla needed. Calm, certain, loving. And right next door.
Priscilla shook her head, still focused on her twining hands. “He is…lost to me.”
Georgie took a slow breath to keep from saying what she instinctively wanted to. Had he no compass? Could he not read the stars? I thought he was smarter than that.
“Lost how, Prissy?”
Finally, the girl looked up to expose huge, tear-swollen blue eyes. “My father,” she gulped. “He won’t...he has forbidden...”
Georgie sighed. Oh, dear. Not something as simple as a lost bracelet or ill-timed billet doux, then. A real problem.
“He won’t allow you to marry Timothy.”
This time Priscilla shook her head so hard that two pins flew out of her tightly curled hair. “Oh, Georgie, what shall I do? My father has arranged a marriage for me to the Marquess of Coleford. I can not marry him. He’s so old! And he’s poor.” Now came a real sob. “And he...he lives in…Wales!!”
Oh, dear. Poor Priscilla. After being raised in London and Oxford, she must think Wales was comparable to the moon.
Georgie could have told her that Wales was perfectly lovely.
Wild and beautiful with a wonderful store of fairies, gnomes, and pixies to liven any fireside.
But considering the woeful look on Priscilla’s face, Georgie suspected that pixies would never balance out a loss of home and society.
Georgie suspected that, given the challenge, Priscilla would do perfectly well anywhere she went.
But she’d never been made to. Every minute she was not incarcerated in Last Chance Academy, she’d lived no more than two rooms away from her mother and younger sisters.
Which meant that not only would she be miserable in a marriage that involved travel to Wales, her husband would be even more miserable.
Timothy, on the other hand, lived down the lane. A perfect distance for a committed homebody.
“I don’t suppose you have a lost bracelet you’d rather I find,” Georgie tried.
Priscilla hiccupped in surprise. “Pardon?”
Georgie waved her off. “Nothing. Merely thinking out loud. You have spoken to your father? He knows how worthy Timothy is?”
Priscilla also had a nice line of scowls when she wanted to. “Do you really think that my father would ever consider a squire’s son as worthy as a marquess?”
Georgie sighed. “Yes. Quite.” She thought a moment. “The Marquess of Whom again? I don't recognize the name.”
“Well,” Priscilla said, finally pulling out a handkerchief to mop her eyes. “He is from Wales.”
“Yes, I see.”