Chapter 17 Tea And Cake
Jamie could hear Georgie humming as she dressed for dinner.
She always hummed after she had entertained the ladies, he had discovered.
Sometimes their visits had to be abandoned if callers arrived downstairs, but when the ladies came and stayed for a while, their chatter seemed to lift Georgie’s spirits.
Not that she ever seemed downhearted, for she was a kindly soul who never made him feel unwelcome, but he knew she must resent him, and regret the foolishness that had led to their marriage.
After such a brief marriage to a man she adored, how galling it must be to put up with an inferior husband like Jamie.
But tonight she was happy. She had on a gown he had not seen before, a little looser at the front to accommodate her growing belly. It was rather a striking teal colour which suited her colouring admirably.
“New gown?” he said, blushing slightly at the brief view of her shapely legs as she rolled up her stockings.
“Yes. Do you like it?”
“Mmm. It reminds me of a kingfisher.”
“Oh. Too bright, do you think?”
“Not a bit. It sets off your hair admirably. You look lovely. A kingfisher is a beautiful bird, you know. Most English birds are drab creatures, all dull browns and blacks, but the kingfisher is the brilliant exception.”
“Oh,” she said again, her tone surprised. “Goodness! What a charming compliment.”
“I am sorry — I am not very good at compliments. I wish I were.” He took his spectacles off, looking down at his shoes. “I should love to have that quickness of mind that some men have, to think up just the right words at the right time, but I have never had the ability.”
“Yet your employment is all about words.”
“It is not the words that are the problem,” he said with a wry grin. “The trouble is, they generally come to me about an hour later, when the moment has passed.” And then, because the matter lurked constantly in his mind, he added, “Yet another way in which your Henry outshone me.”
“Oh, but Henry wasn’t exactly free with his compliments, either, and when he did make one, it was for something entirely beyond my control — my ankles, for instance, or my—” She broke off, waving her hands vaguely in the vicinity of her chest.
Jamie blushed, but said, “Your apple dumplings.”
“Well, yes. And also my shoulders, for some unfathomable reason, although to my mind they are entirely unremarkable. But he never noticed what I wore, or praised my mutton pie, as you did last Sunday.”
Then it was Jamie’s turn to say, “Oh!” in a surprised voice. He went down to dinner, his lovely wife on his arm, in a very contented frame of mind.
Dinner passed off as usual, and the gentlemen lingered over the port.
Then Jamie was sucked into a rubber of whist with the duke, which was impossible to refuse.
His surreptitious glances around the room revealed that Georgie was not in her usual spot near the candelabrum with her embroidery, nor was she amongst the other ladies.
It was not until the tea things were brought in that he was able to see that she was not in the room at all.
“Has Georgie gone upstairs already?” he said to Charlotte, who happened to be nearby.
“She was feeling unwell, so she went up to bed.”
“Unwell?” he said, with a frisson of alarm.
“A headache, I think,” Charlotte said vaguely. “She said she would sleep it off, anyway. We offered the usual remedies, but she wanted nothing.”
Jamie slipped away, and made his way with rapid steps up the back stairs nearest to their apartment.
The parlour was in darkness, so he went into the bedroom.
A single candle flickered in the draught from the open door, revealing an empty bed.
He looked further into the darkness. Was there a hint of kingfisher blue on the floor beneath the window?
She was sitting, knees drawn up, her face buried in her skirts.
“Georgie?” he said softly. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
Mutely she shook her head.
“Shall I send for the apothecary? The physician from Brinchester?”
She looked up at him then, and he could see her face streaked with tears. “No. There is nothing to be done.”
“Oh, Georgie!”
With quick steps he crossed the room and sat down beside her, lifting an arm to enfold her. Without a word, she curled into him, buried her face in his shoulder and burst into a fresh flood of tears.
“Whatever is it, my dear?” he said, as soon as her grief subsided a little.
“The baby,” she whispered.
He felt the pain as acutely as a sword thrust to the heart. “Oh, no! My poor darling! I am so sorry.”
“There must be something wrong with me,” she wailed. “Other women have no trouble, why do I keep losing babies?”
“The second duchess had terrible trouble that way, too. She lost baby after baby, but she was still confined successfully four times. So there is still hope, Georgie.”
“I’m not sure I want to keep hoping,” she said softly. “It’s too painful to keep trying when it all comes to grief in the end. And Jamie, the worst of it is that we need never have married. If we’d known this would happen—”
“But we did not — we could not have done. We did the right thing,” he said.
“Oh yes, the right thing at the time, but it was all for nothing, wasn’t it? We’re tied for life and we could have stayed free and happy.”
And that was when the sword through Jamie’s heart twisted, and tore him apart.
***
Jamie was not at all sure what he said or did after that.
Her words cut so deep that he could barely think.
‘We could have stayed free and happy.’ How else could he interpret that?
It meant she was not happy, there could be no other interpretation of it.
‘Free and happy… free and happy…’ echoed in his head, like the tolling of the great church bell at a funeral.
And in a way, it was an apt analogy, for surely this marked the death of his marriage.
No baby — nothing but regret, and the greatest grief was that she was ready to give up on even the possibility of another baby.
It was too painful, the repeated hope and then disappointment.
He spent the night in the spare bedroom, not sleeping very much, feeling horribly alone…
lonely. He missed her warmth beside him, and the sight of her glorious hair spread out on the pillow.
He missed her soft breathing in the darkness, and the gentle sway of the bed as she turned over.
And when the first lightening of the sky allowed him to stop pretending to sleep at last, there was nothing before him but long years of dreary estrangement.
Three months they had been married. Three months of sunshine and smiles and warm kisses and the joy of a wife of his own, someone to share his unexciting life.
Someone who listened to him, and took care of him, and made him feel like a man instead of a nonentity.
Someone to love.
How had he got to that point so quickly? Astonishing woman, to worm her way into his heart without him even noticing. And now… now there was nothing.
He forced himself to get up, to open up the fire in their little kitchen and heat hot water for washing.
Then he crept into his room… no, Georgie’s room now…
to find clothes to wear. She was still asleep, curled up on her side facing the wall so that her face was hidden from him.
He crept out again, dressed quickly, ate some stale bread and butter and went downstairs.
Work. That was what he needed now. A couple of hours of steady work, and then he would go back upstairs and see if Georgie wanted any breakfast.
At first he was so sunk in his own misery that he scarcely noticed what else was going on in the house.
The study was at the furthest corner, well away from the front door and the stairs, the usual sites of bustle.
But eventually the unusual amount of movements about the house filtered through his abstraction, and even he could not ignore the unmistakable sounds of a carriage arriving, and before breakfast too.
He slipped through the library into the Chinese room which gave a view over the front drive and saw a smart town carriage pulled up before the steps, and a man being ushered into the house by an obviously agitated Froggett. Was it…? Surely that was the physician from Brinchester?
Jamie made his way quickly to the Marble Hall, where a couple of footmen and several maids stood in a huddle, whispering together.
“Robert, was that Dr Percival I saw arriving just now?”
The huddle split into its constituent parts, the footmen bowing, the maids bobbing curtsies. “Oh… yes, sir.”
“Is someone ill? Not the duke, I trust?”
“No, sir. Mrs Payne, sir.”
“’Tis the baby, sir,” one of the maids said, her handkerchief to her eyes. “’Tis so sad.”
“This house be fated,” another maid said darkly. “Children don’t thrive here.”
The duchess came lightly down the stairs just then, still in her nightgown and robe, and chased the servants away. “Jamie! You are up early. You have heard about Sophia, then?”
“I have. Can the doctor do anything?”
She shook her head doubtfully. “I do not think so. She has the village midwife, the apothecary and the physician arguing over her bed about possible treatments, but I am not optimistic.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Bless you, but no. She has her mother with her, and that will be the very best restorative. A girl needs her mama more than doctors and lozenges at such a time. I am going to give them ten more minutes and then chase them out. Is Georgie better?”
“Um… Georgie?”
“She went to bed early last night with the headache.”
“Oh… oh, yes. She is still asleep.”
“Rest is the best thing for her. Send down for a tisane if she would like one when she wakes. Hester has an excellent receipt.”
“Thank you, but I think she already has the ingredients.”
“Excellent. Forgive me, Jamie, but I must go back to Sophia.”
“Of course, of course.”