Chapter 2
The planning meeting commenced the next afternoon after the cousins had collected some vital information. Georgie was working on preparing the lesson on the Battle of Toulouse when the door opened.
“Do we have a plan yet?”
She looked up from her mother’s Chinoiserie desk to see her cousin Charlie standing in the doorway to the Chinese Salon. Obviously, time to put away the work she’d been doing for the work she needed to do. “Do I have my intelligence yet?”
Charlie strode in. “Eddie said she would meet us here. All I could get from my dance partners last night was that Greyville’s men adore him and won’t hear a bad word spoken against him.”
“Greyville?”
Charlie shrugged and began to stride about the room as if caught in a prison cell rather than one of the most opulent rooms in Clevedon House. “He prefers it to the new title. Says he’s not used to it yet. Actually, prefers Grey, but I am not that lost to good manners.”
Georgie turned back to her work, but she was grinning to herself.
Charlie always moved as if she brought a strong wind in with her.
Georgie had always thought that this room should have been Charlie’s.
The décor was exotic, the furniture shining mahogany, a hue that seemed positively tame compared with the red of Charlie’s hair, and the brilliant red silk wallpaper writhing with ornate dragons that seemed just about ready to incinerate the furniture, much as Charlie often did.
Perhaps it was the Breslin red hair from her mother’s side of the family, or the no-nonsense attitude of a girl brought up amid four brothers and a sportsman father, or the lightning quick mind that flared just as quickly to temper. But Charlie somehow matched the energy in this room.
“Well, think of something,” she said now as she plopped onto a scarlet silk settee, her orange muslin gown clashing violently with the scarlet material, which Georgie knew delighted Charlie no end.
Georgie wagered that her cousin would stay right there until one of the other adults came in to catch her and all but collapsed in horror. “I’m bored.”
“How can you be bored?” Georgie asked absently, collecting the newspapers she had been perusing and putting them into a pile.
“You have only this week disgraced yourself in a phaeton race with Cyril Wright, beat my father to flinders in a mad game of chess, and sent Jalbert into spasms insisting that he include curry in the menu so you can practice for when you travel to India.”
Picking up a Belle Assemblée, Charlie flipped through it. “Should I go unprepared? Ramdas from the General’s house gave me several recipes and promised to secure the curry for me.”
“So, it’s India now? What happened to the ?”
Charlie waved a small hand. “I stand a better chance of finding someone on their way to India. I shall not give up on the , however. In the meantime, I. Am. Bored.”
Georgie nodded and checked her questions one last time. “Let me get Geoffrey through Toulouse while we wait for Eddie.”
Charlie harrumphed. “You do know we have a perfectly good tutor who is supposed to be teaching these lessons.”
“He has enough strife just getting the boys through Greek and Latin and Mathematics. Besides, I find this fun.”
“You never found it fun before...”
Georgie grinned down at her work. “Before the very Colonel Greyville whom I am about to rescue from an ill-considered marriage, came to our attention?”
Charlie smiled down at the magazine she really wasn’t reading. “I assume you shall have to meet him,” she mused.
Georgie couldn’t deny that her pulse picked up a bit. She found herself wanting to smile. She couldn’t deny she’d been thinking a bit too much about her upcoming meeting with the Colonel. “He needs to find an alternate bride. I can help.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“Well, I don’t know yet. That is what the meeting will to be about.”
Charlie didn’t even look up. “You could marry him.”
Georgie raised her head and looked out the window.
“I doubt it. I suspect that a man who is that used to giving orders would not deal with a woman who is as well. Besides, all we know about him is what the dispatches tell us. He is exceptionally talented at disposing of Frenchmen. Not necessarily a talent conducive to marital harmony.”
“Unless you need some Frenchmen killed.”
“Rather doubtful. What if he is a tyrant, a sadist, a man with unnatural tastes? What if...”
Charlie grinned. “He doesn’t bathe!”
Georgie shuddered. She admitted it was her own personal quirk.
She was known throughout the ton as being very particular about her dance partners.
No one else could definitively say why. It had nothing to do with station or elegance.
In fact, two of her favorite partners were younger sons just out of university looking for polish.
In the end, the ton just labeled her a bit snobbish.
Daughter of a powerful earl and all. Only Charlie and Eddie knew the truth.
Georgie literally gagged at the smell of an unwashed body.
Especially if the person had been lazy enough to believe that a good dousing with cologne would conceal all ills.
Georgie had actually kissed Beau Brummel’s hand once in gratitude for his bringing cleanliness into fashion.
Not the smell of hard work, she admitted.
Prissy’s beau Timothy had carried the scent of the stables on him, and an honest hard day.
He had also smelled of fresh air, gorse, and rain.
The unwashed dandies in town smelled of slovenliness, selfishness, and sloth, even clad in the latest, most precisely tailored fashion, which should have shattered Weston’s heart.
And people wondered why she had turned down four offers since she’d come out at seventeen. It would have been more, but she had never let those gentlemen close enough to risk the question.
The real aversion also quite nicely covered her real reason for not marrying, which would have confused even those who loved her.
“I’ll try again tonight at the Wilkenson’s ball,” Charlie offered. “I imagine I could quiz a few of Gabe’s chums. Several are home on leave.”
Gabriel, Georgie’s cousin, and Charlie’s older brother. Captain Gabriel Stephen Aloysius Packham, of the Lifeguards.
“Although,” Charlie grinned, “I’m not sure they could be a reliable judge of whether Colonel Greyville smelled. Men are much less sensitive about that sort of thing.”
Georgie smiled right back. “Especially those used to living off the land and sleeping on the ground.”
“And consorting with sheep.”
“Charlie!”
Charlie opted for wide-eyed innocence. “Pushing them aside so they can sleep on the ground,” she clarified, her eyes sparkling just a little too much.
“Who smells now?” they heard from the doorway.
It was Eddie, munching on an apple as she entered. As opposed to her cousins, Eddie bore the classic pale English blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty, which was almost washed out by the boring pastels she insisted on wearing.
“No one smells,” Georgie answered, putting her maps and papers aside.
Charlie grinned. “Yet. What news, Edwina?”
Eddie scowled at Charlie’s address, even as she shoved her cousin to the side of the settee and plopped down next to her, her own cream muslin day dress complementing the scarlet cushions perfectly.
“It is the concerted opinion that the tack to take with Priscilla’s father is to make him see that Prissy would pine for her family in far off Wales, where the marquess will need to stay for quite a while to restore his property. ”
“And we will do that how?”
“I don’t know yet. While I have been assured Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew would be very susceptible to the threat of their family being so catastrophically divided, the Mister doesn’t attend many social events.
I’ll work with Prissy to see how to get his attention.
Possibly mention that I haven’t seen my beloved sister for so long because she’s in. ..sob...Wales.”
Both cousins nodded. It never occurred to them to worry about the fact that Eddie had no sister.
“Well,” Charlie said, tossing the magazine back onto the table. “Whatever we do, we should do it soon. Certainly before Prissy’s father inserts the notice.”
Georgie tucked her stack of papers into the bottom drawer of the desk. “I very much fear the notice has gone astray,” she said as she casually stood and straightened out her lemon morning dress.
Both cousins stopped in place. “You didn’t!” Charlie crowed. “Of course you did. How?”
“A certain reformed pickpocket who has been helping at the orphanage.”
Eddie shook her head. “You, Lady Georgiana, are devious.”
Georgie gave her cousins a dignified bow. “We needed time.”
“To see to the colonel.”
“Yes.”
“And nurse his wounded heart.”
She sat in the dragon-armed side chair. “I sincerely doubt that will be needed.”
“But it might be wanted.”
“What might be wanted?”
The cousins turned to see Georgie’s mother stroll in, the picture of aristocratic elegance in a robin’s-egg blue walking dress that accentuated the kind of blonde elegance Georgie envied.
The Countess’s hands were full with the morning post, and her sharp brown eyes as calm as a bishop’s over prayers.
“What are you girls plotting now?” her mother asked.
“A picnic in Richmond,” Georgie said.
“A visit to the Tower,” Charlie said at the very same moment, reclaiming her seat in a dignified way that fooled no one.
The duchess nodded absently and walked over to the Chippendale writing desk Georgie had just surrendered. “Well, whatever you are up to, make sure you take John along.”
“Of course,” the cousins responded, knowing that John the footman would never peach on them.
“And fit in time to see your grandmama. She has complained.”
“She always complains,” Charlie protested.