Chapter 27 #2
“Jack knows London as well as anyone,” commented his proud mother, seemingly moved by this exhibition of patisserie prowess.
“It has been such an age since I was last in Town. Other than Nell’s come out, and her marriage, and a few visits here and there, I have been quite confined to the countryside.
My lungs are weak, I’m sad to own it. But, Jack, you must take me all around town in the weeks I am here.
I heard you went to the Royal Academy exhibition recently, and you with him, Miss Fanshaw? Do you still draw?”
“I do,” admitted Lucy with a sad feeling of foreboding. The cakes had been a mere bridge over troubled water. Now the dowager strode back into the current.
“You were always such an admirer of her work, Jack,” she declared. “Don’t you remember? You were forever bringing me some sketch or other, asking for them to be framed and hung. You had quite a collection in your bedroom.”
Jack gave a somewhat rigid smile. Lucy was very aware of Nell and Nora watching the exchange—both studying her face for any betraying blush.
They weren’t alone. The captain’s interest had been piqued.
He looked from Jack to Lucy, and then to his sister, a questioning crease in his brow.
As far as he knew, Jack was still an admirer of Miss Sedgewick.
He didn’t realise the Orton womenfolk had decided otherwise.
“Do you have any of your artwork here, Miss Fanshaw? I’d dearly love to see it,” said the dowager viscountess. “And how improved you must surely be after all these years! Do go and fetch some, I beg you. And you go with her, Jack. You can help her carry them.”
“I can bring a sketchbook,” Lucy attempted.
But Jack got to his feet with a smooth, “Of course I’ll help,” and went to open the door.
No sooner were they through it, the door safely closed behind them, when he whispered, “I’m so sorry, Lucy.”
She shook her head, walking briskly to her studio at the end of the hall. Jack hurried along with her, apologising again. “I knew Nell and Nora both had no sense, but to see my own mother act so tactlessly…! It’s almost more than I can bear.”
“I’m sure it’s very awkward for you.”
“For me!” He closed the studio door behind them and fixed her with a look.
“It’s you I’m sorry for. You’ve been nothing but a target since you came to town.
But I suppose…I suppose it’ll soon be at an end.
George’s parents arrive next week. He’ll tell them then, and the engagement can be made public.
” He toyed with a stacked pile of canvases, straightening their corners into alignment.
“I suppose you’ve written to your aunt by now? ”
But she stared at him, aghast. “George’s parents are coming to town?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“N-no… Not yet…”
“Perhaps he only just heard. I only heard it myself last night.” Jack looked up at her, grey eyes subdued. “I could tell her. My mother. She’d keep the secret if I asked her too. And it would save you any more of…this.”
“No! No…don’t tell her, Jack, please.” She might have to marry George if all town believed their engagement.
“Jack, I…” Yes, it was time for the truth.
She’d promised herself to tell him, if that argument outside Mr Thornton’s hadn’t distracted her, if he hadn’t climbed into her bedroom and started to roll up his sleeve…
Her heart raced, making her dizzy. “I need to tell you something—”
The door opened. Captain Sedgewick came in, his smile hard-edged with suspicion. “Ah, you didn’t get lost as I began to fear! Direct me, Miss Fanshaw, tell me what to carry. I am, as always, your slave.”
She moved jerkily, selecting random canvases with barely a look, hands shaking.
What a coward, to welcome this reprieve!
Jack’s gaze was on her as she moved about the room, but the captain stayed, talking without pause, obsequiously praising every canvas before taking it from her hands with exaggerated care.
When both men were loaded, she followed them back to the parlour.
There was no other opportunity to speak privately with Jack again. But the ordeal eventually came to a close—at least temporarily. The Ortons left, but not before giving an impossible-to-decline invitation to dine at Lady Ashburton’s that night.
Lucy sagged onto the sofa as the door closed behind them, grateful for a few minutes’ respite, Caroline having gone to speak to her housekeeper after seeing their guests to the door.
Eyes closed, heels of her palms pressed against them, she breathed slowly in and out until the darkness of her vision danced with dots.
But when she opened them again, nothing had changed.
The cursorily inspected canvases lay stacked against the wall, and she got to her feet, taking as many as she could carry, and tiredly returned them to her studio.
She’d just gone back to the parlour for another load when George Simmons walked into the room on the heels of a hurried knock.
“Mr Simmons!”
“Miss Fanshaw!”
“We have to tell Jack!”
They stopped in confusion, for they’d said that last part in unison.
George recovered first, smiling grimly. “We seem to be of one mind, at least.” He gestured to the sofa, and Lucy took a seat. “Tell me what has happened,” he said kindly, sitting near her, where the captain had lately sat. “You look sorely troubled.”
“Oh, Mr Simmons, it is awful! His mother, all of them, Nell and Nora, they all seem convinced Jack must be about to offer for me at any moment—now I’m supposedly an heiress, which I am not.
They are continually dropping hints, and it is agony having them all act as though Jack is in love with me, of all things, and that we are as good as married!
He hates it too, of course he does. And I think he will tell his mother about our engagement just to put an end to it.
It’s only a matter of time. And then where we will be? ”
“In a rare mess, alright,” muttered George. “And I thought things were already bad enough.”
“Why? What is it? You agree with me—but why?”
She was hardly coherent in her urgency to know what had brought George here in almost as agitated a state as her own. His normally mild countenance was tight, unhappy, and very serious.
He let out a breath. “Jack himself.”
Lucy’s heart twisted, but Caroline came into the room before George could say more.
“Excellent, the very two people I wanted to see. Yes, yes,” she smiled, coming to sit with them, amused by their woebegone expressions.
“You’re both right. It’s time to tell him.
” She smoothed her skirt with a brush of one hand then adjusted a hair pin, still smiling at them both.
It was fair to say she was preening. “The cure has run its course. I knew he wouldn’t like the taste of the medicine, but I suppose”—she gave a laugh—“that was rather the point.”
“How you can laugh, Caroline,” began George, “when our friend—”
“George, George! One has to be cruel to be kind.”
“Not this cruel.”
“Don’t fall out with me. I’ll take all the blame. Indeed, it was all my doing, but it was done for good reasons, you agree with that at least.”
“I believe it was hardly necessary.”
“Perhaps if you’d wanted them to wait another seven years and maybe suffer a failed marriage or two along the way.
I have no regrets, George. I’m good, but I’m not kind.
That’s the difference between us. The end justified the means.
” She turned her attention to Lucy, who was entirely confused, and smiled a proud, satisfied smile. “And it has all ended well, hasn’t it?”
“I…I don’t really understand.”
Miss Sedgewick’s smile took on a cunning slant. “You will. Tonight. When you tell Jack the truth.”
Still confused, Lucy looked to George for help. He started to speak, but Caroline raised a hand, cutting him off.
“No, George. Lucy must be the one to do it.”
“Caroline,” George said, an unfamiliar note of steel in his voice. “You didn’t see Jack last night. He is suffering. He is not himself. If he is angry…I would not subject Miss Fanshaw to that.”
Caroline only laughed. “He won’t be angry, George. He’ll be anything but.”