Chapter 11 The Pawn Shop #2
What kind of husband would he be? Better than Henry, he hoped, who could not even cherish his wife’s miniature.
Jamie could surely do better there. He would not lose it at cards, or allow it to end up in a pawn shop.
He would keep Georgie’s image safe, and he would keep her safe, too.
That was what a husband was supposed to do, after all, to protect his wife, and not get drunk and fall down the stairs and leave her alone in the world.
There was never any certainty in life, for illness and misadventure were everywhere, but there was a fecklessness to Henry Hastings that Jamie could only despise.
He would do better than that, he told himself as he walked home under a starlit sky, his feet crunching on the new snow, and even though Georgie would never love him, he would do everything in his power to make her happy.
***
Georgie’s second wedding was surprisingly like her first. The same friends and neighbours crowded into church to see the same rector in his surplice, with the same tears from his sister.
Mr Clark was again called upon to give the bride away.
Georgie even wore the same pelisse and bonnet, although her gown was a new one.
Only the husband was different. And her feelings, of course. Then she had walked joyfully up the aisle towards Henry’s smiling face, now she felt only calm resignation. Jamie was smiling, though, which was something. He had his friend Dr Ingleton beside him, and the Brannons in a front pew.
In a very few minutes it was done, the register was signed and she had her new marriage lines tucked into her reticule. Then it was back to the rectory for breakfast and a slice of wedding cake, hastily made by Mrs Burnley and Betsy only two days before.
By ten o’clock in the morning, the newly married couple were hurrying through the rain back to the cottage.
“Well, this weather is not an auspicious start,” Jamie said, as he prodded the parlour fire to life.
“You’re not superstitious, are you?”
“Not really, but I had thought I might stroll around town today to show off my new wife. However, I can hardly expect you to get soaked through just to satisfy my male pride. Besides, if you should catch a chill and die of an inflammation of the lungs, I should look pretty foolish. Till death us do part is not supposed to be as quick as that.”
She chuckled. “Silly boy! I’m used to walking in the rain, although it will probably clear up in an hour or so. We can go out then, if you like.”
“Where would you like to go? Shopping? Or would you like to look around one of the colleges or churches? There are some very fine buildings in Oxford. We have no need to rush back to Staineybank, so we can undertake a tour of all the principal sights, if you wish. Whatever you have not seen before.”
“I’d need Mr Payne to explain the features of all the buildings,” she said, laughing.
“To be honest, a tour of the principal sights sounds very dull, and shopping sounds expensive. I wouldn’t mind a walk beside one of the rivers, if the sun comes out.
But first, I feel I should call upon Henry’s aunt to tell her I’m married again. ”
“His rich aunt? Then we must arrive in the duke’s carriage. That should impress her.”
“I think she wouldn’t be impressed by anything I do, even if I’d married a duke myself,” Georgie said, with a wry smile. “Still, the neighbours will enjoy the spectacle.”
Mrs Obadiah Hastings lived in a large house in one of the most favoured locations in Oxford.
Even the weather smiled upon her, for the sun emerged just as the carriage drew to a halt.
Jamie let down the window and opened the door, then courteously extended his arm to assist Georgie to alight.
When had she ever been accorded such civility before? Not from Henry, she was certain.
“That was Uncle Claud’s house,” she said, indicating the familiar building across the road. Her home for several years after her parents had died, and now just another house in a row of similar houses.
“A fine looking place. Who lives in it now?” Jamie said. “A relation, presumably.”
“It was left to a great nephew, but he lived in Hampshire and had no need of it, so it was sold.”
“A pity you could not have had it.”
“It belonged to the family through a will several generations back. My uncle only had it for his lifetime. His meagre savings were all he had of his own, which provided my cottage and dowry, so he did what he could for me.”
“I did not mean to criticise. Ah, the manservant is on the step awaiting us. Shall we see if Henry’s aunt is at home?”
Mrs Hastings was at home and already entertaining two of her friends. They all wore black and looked, Georgie thought, rather like crows, albeit large, overfed crows. They were drinking wine and working their way through a pound cake, already half gone.
“Georgie, dear, what a surprise!” Mrs Hastings gushed with an insincerity that made Georgie’s teeth ache. “I had no idea you were even in town, or I should have called upon you. Lucilla, Jane, you will remember my darling Henry’s widow.”
The two ladies nodded vigorously. “Of course,” one of them said, although Georgie did not recognise her. “But the gentleman…”
Three pairs of eyes turned towards Jamie.
“Mr James Hammond, secretary to the Duke of Brinshire,” Georgie said. Then, taking a deep breath, she added, “We were married this morning.”
The three ladies exclaimed and offered their felicitations and smiled genially upon them, all of which effort required the consumption of more cake. A footman offered wine to Jamie and Georgie, and Mrs Hastings cut cake for them, although considerably thinner slices than for her friends.
For ten minutes they exchanged the sort of bland, inconsequential nothings which passed for conversation in that household, until a disruption occurred, and a well-grown boy of perhaps four or five barrelled into the room, shrieking, chased by the harassed maid.
Georgie recognised her — Sally, she thought, dredging around in her memory.
Sweet on one of the grooms, if she recalled correctly.
Well, here she still was, so presumably that went nowhere.
The conversation, such as it was, died away as the boy rampaged about the room and the two visiting ladies cooed over him.
“My heir,” Mrs Hastings said, with a lift of the chin, as if she dared anyone to contradict her.
Mrs Hastings had never had children of her own. Henry had been her favourite nephew, but when he died and she had needed to look elsewhere for an heir, perhaps she had found none of Henry’s cousins to her liking and chose instead to mould a child to her preferred design. Poor little boy!
The noise becoming overwhelming, the two ladies soon made good their escape, and Georgie was beginning to watch the clock herself, when the child knocked over a small china ornament, which smashed to the floor.
“Now Henry, that will not do!” boomed Mrs Hastings. “Take him away, Sally. Let him run round the garden for a while.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
Sally bobbed a curtsy, dragged the child away by his trousers and closed the door behind her. Silence fell in the room.
Georgie was too shocked to speak. Henry? Why give him that name? “Henry?” she croaked.
Mrs Hastings smirked. “It seemed… fitting. A child should be named after his father, do you not agree?”
Georgie jumped to her feet, and turned for the door. Jamie was beside her in moments, his face anxious.
But Mrs Hastings laughed, a deep, throaty rumble. “Yes, Sally succeeded where you failed, my dear.”
“Sally?”
“Yes, Sally. You really did not know your husband very well, did you? I always said it was a mistake for him to marry you, and so it proved. You could not even give him a son, and you drove him away to find his happiness elsewhere. Why else would he spend so much time in low taverns? Why else would he turn to Sally for comfort? You destroyed him, and I shall never forgive you, never. Oh, get out of my sight, and take that pathetic creature with you. To take up with a mere secretary after my Henry — well, I hope he makes you miserable and beats you every day and twice on Sundays. Get out, both of you!”
They went. Faced with such hatred, there was no reason to stay.
Georgie could not even cry, for the depth of Henry’s betrayal was too deep for tears.
Shocked to her core, she let Jamie tuck her arm in his, and side by side they walked out to the waiting carriage.
Jamie handed her in and climbed in beside her, the footman closed the door and gave the office to the postilion, and the carriage rumbled into motion.
For a few minutes there was silence. Then Jamie removed his spectacles and rubbed them on a corner of his greatcoat.
“I would never do that, of course,” he murmured diffidently.
“Beat you twice on Sundays, that is, or even once. Naturally, I shall beat you thoroughly on every other day of the week, but not on Sundays. I am a good Christian, after all. On Sundays and Holy days, I shall make you attend three services — that should be sufficient punishment for any wife, no matter how recalcitrant.”
Georgie looked up at him, saw his eyes twinkling down at her and smiled. “You’re trying to divert me from Henry’s perfidy.”
“If I can. It does no good to dwell on such things.”
“But I can’t believe it!” she cried, sitting more upright as the carriage swayed over the cobbles.
“Henry never spent a night away from me, not once, and when he visited his aunt on his own, which he occasionally did, it was only on a Sunday afternoon and he was back in under two hours. Where in that is there time for a dalliance with Sally? I thought she was sweet on one of the footmen, anyway. She was always loitering near him whenever I was there, and she certainly never showed any interest in Henry.”
Jamie frowned. “How old would you say that child is? Or, to put the question more directly, when must the dalliance have occurred?”
Georgie pondered the matter. “I would say, at a guess, that it must have been shortly before Henry died.”
“Precisely. So let me describe a situation for you. Suppose Sally loitered a little too near the footman and found herself in a difficult situation.”
“Oh!” Georgie cried, seeing at once where the story was going. “If it was known, they’d both have been dismissed without references.”
“Precisely. But then Henry died and you lost your baby, which happened very soon after, I think?”
“Within a week, yes. So Sally went to her mistress and pretended that her child was Henry’s.”
“Who was not there to deny it,” Jamie said triumphantly. “What do you think? It is plausible, is it not?”
“Very. I’d sooner believe Henry’s aunt is being imposed upon than Henry being unfaithful to me.”
“I agree. What man, married to you, would ever be tempted to stray?”
Georgie looked up at her husband, feeling tears prickling. “You are a good man, James Hammond.”
“I try to be… when I am not beating my wife, that is.”
She laughed out loud, and rested her cheek on his shoulder.
For answer, he took her gloved hand in his and gave it a little squeeze.
The carriage soon brought them back to the cottage, and even the onset of more rain did not cast Georgie down, for it was her wedding day and she was only just beginning to appreciate her good fortune in her new husband.