Chapter 27
Georgia skipped into her rooms, tossing down her bonnet and gloves onto the bed and opening a drawer to take out linen and a clean chemise.
She did not know if she would be going into the water completely naked or wearing a shift, but a spare would not hurt.
Warm sunshine slanted in through the windows, and she could see the woods from her room, just above the roofline of the house.
There had been a moment earlier when she had known utter despair and even anger.
When Keaton had hesitated in announcing his trust and then been interrupted, leaving a single word dangling without context.
In that moment, she had felt the rug pulled from beneath her feet.
Her foundations had crumbled, and she had felt utterly alone.
The prospect of an ignominious return to Silverton had loomed, an endless future of subservience either to the Vexleys or whomever they decided to marry her off to.
But I will not go to any arranged marriage, even if I am once again in their power. I have changed. I have tasted freedom. They will find me a very different prey!
“Oh Lord, but I hope my resolve is never put to the test!” she exclaimed.
“Georgie?” Amelia’s voice sprang from the doorway.
Georgia jumped. “Amelia! You quite startled me out of my skin!”
“I did knock, more than once. You were quite distracted, I think. What do you not wish to be put to the test?”
Georgia considered her response and then shook her head angrily. Amelia was not someone she needed to keep secrets from.
“I have been in Keaton's company for far too long. He keeps secrets, and it is contagious,” she said aloud, earning a frown of confusion from her cousin.
“I have resolved that regardless of what happens with my marriage to Keaton, I will not go back to being powerless at Silverton. Never again. And I will certainly not go back to Lord Emsworth or any like him. Never!” she added emphatically.
“Good for you. But why should you?” Amelia asked, puzzled.
“Because my marriage is... has been... no, still is precarious,” she replied.
She sat down on the bed heavily, trying to order her thoughts. She played with the fabric of the shift in her lap.
“I married as a matter of urgent convenience. It was always our plan to annul after a month or so, when the scandal had died down. You remember what it was like.”
Amelia sat beside her, nodding.
“That time is fast approaching, and...”
“But surely he cannot divorce you so quickly and easily. Does it not take months? A special dispensation from the Archbishop of some such?” her cousin questioned, her pretty forehead wrinkling.
“It would only require a divorce if our marriage had been consummated... and I do not think that it has,” she answered.
Amelia went quite red, and Georgia matched her. They both were consumed by a fit of giggles.
“Whatever do you mean, you do not think that it has?” Amelia asked, astonished.
“Well, what constitutes consummation?” Georgia turned over the question, “I am not sure that threshold has been crossed, but there has been...”
She could not seem to finish a single sentence. She buried her face in her hands. Amelia fell back onto the bed, doing likewise.
“I wish I could advise you, cousin. But I fear I know less than you, although I hoped that would soon change.”
She stopped laughing as Georgia looked sharply at her. She looked back, sitting up slowly.
“What was that? You had better say more now that you have heard as much as you have,” Georgia said, forgetting her own concerns and turning to give Amelia her full attention.
Amelia rose, looking thoroughly miserable, and paced the room.
“I was not supposed to speak of it. Father will be dreadfully angry. But... oh, it's all quite horrible, but my friends tell me it is quite normal, so I do not know if I am being a silly girl or if I am actually right and all this is as monstrous as it seemed at first and...”
Georgia rose too and took Amelia's hands in her own. The girl was babbling, words spilling from her.
“Take a deep breath and tell me,” Georgia began, kindly.
“Papa promised my hand in marriage to Lord Emsworth,” Amelia blurted.
Georgia's face fell—her mouth dropped open, and for a moment, she was utterly speechless.
“Lord Emsworth? Oh no! Amelia! How could he?”
“It seems that Lord Emsworth felt himself owed a marriage. He threatened Papa privately and Papa offered me. I refused, and... one day I was bundled into a carriage and sent to Lord Emsworth's house where you found me. I was to remain there until the banns had been read and the date finalised.”
“A prisoner!”
Amelia nodded miserably, tears filling her eyes now.
“I have so enjoyed being here at Westvale, not having to worry about life with that beast of a man. But, like you, I fear going back. Unlike you, though, I do not think I can simply stand my ground and refuse.”
Georgia seized her cousin's arms fiercely. “You can and you will! You are not property to be disposed of. You have agency and free will!”
Amelia laughed. “I am supposed to be the naive one, Georgia. I have no inheritance coming to me. I am entirely dependent on my father.”
“I do not either, Amelia. I will be a pauper before I...” Georgia stopped, suddenly hearing Amelia's words, “What inheritance?” she asked.
Amelia clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh my! I was so caught up in my own dilemma that I quite forgot. I was to write to you. Outside of some businesses that were left to Elias, your father left you quite nearly everything. Papa has his will. I was in Papa’s office trying to divine how long I had left with this marriage business, how far it had progressed. I found the will in his bureau.”
Georgia reeled. Her past unraveled like the threads from a carpet being unpicked before her. Her time at Silverton had been as a ward to her uncle, a dependent on his household. Reliant on his charity, such as it was.
And all this time, there was an inheritance? All this time, I could have had a house of my own. My brother's house. My parents' house! North Roseton Manor. Uncle Benjamin kept it from me!
“Have I set the cat among the pigeons?” Amelia asked, anxiously, “I did think that this was the kind of thing you must have known about.”
“Known about yet chose to live in the servant's wing at Silverton since I turned eighteen?” Georgia asked archly.
She instantly regretted it. It was not Amelia's fault. She hugged her cousin tightly.
“Do not fret, Amelia. You are safe here under the Duke's protection. And my own. You do not have to marry anyone you do not wish to.”
Keaton sat at a wrought iron table upon the lawn, a cane in his hand and a folded bundle before him. He turned his head as Georgia approached as quietly as she could.
“Your scent rides ahead of you on the breeze. You cannot sneak up on me,” he reminded.
Georgia stopped beside him and kissed his cheek.
“I have linen to dry myself with and a change of clothes in case of wetness. Shall we cross another item from my list?”
Keaton stood, gathering his own bundle and offering his arm. He strode across the lawn towards the woods, cane quartering the ground before him.
“Oh, and did you set the ring aside for Mr. Thorne?” Georgia asked.
“I could not find the wretched thing,” he muttered, “I have tasked the servants with locating it. After all these years, I will not misplace it just when it is needed.”
“I'm sure it fell from a shelf and is sitting in the middle of the floor,” she shrugged.
“I hope so.”
When they reached the trackless depths of the copse that harbored the mere, Keaton hesitated.
His cane clacked against an upthrust root and then a stone.
Georgia placed his hand upon her shoulder and stepped from the path.
It felt warming and reassuring to have his hand upon her like that.
Her own lingered atop his, fingers stroking his gently, giving him reassurance as he trusted her to guide him into the unknown.
She called out obstacles, telling him where to put his feet, step up, down, or one side or the other.
Their fingers never left each other. Keaton stood close behind her as they moved slowly among the trees, the house becoming lost to sight behind them.
She heard the cane fall softly to the ground, and the hand that had held it touched her waist, slipping around her to splay out on her stomach.
Georgia slowed, letting his body touch hers.
He held her to him, and she put her hand over his, savoring the embrace.
Her head fell back, and she felt him nuzzle into her hair.
The air beneath the canopy of leaves was warm, suddenly unbearably so.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the heat rising within her and the warmth of the air that held them close.
“We are not at the mere yet,” she reminded him softly.
“Hang the mere,” he retorted, kissing her neck.
“No, I want to feel the cool water,” she insisted, “and I have my list to complete.”
“If our marriage does not end, then what need do you have for a list?” he asked, his mouth muffled by her flesh.
“I want it.”
“I want you.”
“I want to swim.”
Keaton's hand fell lower, going beneath the level of her navel, stroking her skirts. She stepped away from him with a giggle.
“Direct me to this mere,” she ordered.
“How can I? I am a blind man,” he replied.
“Then use your vaunted other senses!” she laughed.
Keaton sighed. He was quiet for a minute.
“I distinctly heard the sound of a duck. That way,” he pointed to what seemed to be an impenetrable cluster of alder.
“And that sound was?”
“…A quack,” he answered after a moment of utter bewilderment.
Georgia laughed at his serious imitation, then picked her way through whip-fine branches and undergrowth to her waist. Suddenly, it opened out and the water lay before her. A grassy sward ran to the water's edge, where rushes grew. It was mirror still and bright as the blue day.
“I smell the water,” Keaton said.
Georgia beamed, dropping her linen bundle onto the mossy grass.
“And I, for one, cannot wait to get into it!”
She kicked off her shoes and rolled down her stockings, then began unbuttoning her gown.
As she was wriggling out of the dress, her bare foot stepped on something hard and cold.
She looked down and saw a ring staring back at her.
Keaton had dropped his own bundle, discarded his coat and waistcoat, and was hauling his shirt over his head.
For once, the sight of his muscled torso did not draw Georgia's eye. She was gaping at the ring, dumbstruck.
It bore a large, red jewel in a gold band. The metal around the jewel had been worked into an intricate line, splitting and whirling apparently at random.
But she knew the pattern was anything but.
It was the last path her father had taken, on his last journey to Africa. It had been marked on a map in his study, over the mantle for years. Elias had asked a goldsmith to work it into a ring that had belonged to their father, to represent their father's explorations.
She picked it up, hands trembling.
Where could it possibly have come from? It could not have just been lying here!
Then she spotted the unfolded corner of the linen bundle and realized that the ring had been contained within. As she had dropped it, the material had unfurled, and the ring had rolled out.
It would have been discovered by a servant had I not wished to come swimming. They would have found it when refreshing my linen. I have not seen it in years. Who put it there? Did Amelia somehow come across it at Silverton and bring it with her?