Chapter Three
“Those are not gloves chosen for the drawing room, Lady Georgiana, which means you have no intention of remaining there.”
Georgiana went still upon the second stair from the bottom, one hand resting on the bannister and the other holding a bonnet which she had plainly hoped to carry as far as the side door before anyone remarked upon it.
She was three days into their acquaintance and had already discovered that Selina rose early.
She had not yet discovered that Selina sometimes did so expressly to forestall trouble.
“I was going to take the air.” She concealed the bonnet behind her skirts.
“Before breakfast, by way of the side door, in outdoor gloves, with a folded note tucked into your left cuff which the fabric does not quite conceal.” Selina came to the foot of the stairs and stopped, placing herself between Georgiana and the side door without appearing to do so.
“You intended to take a good deal more than the air. Come. We shall take it together.”
“You said you were not my gaoler,” Georgiana said.
“I am not. A gaoler would wake your brother. I am proposing to walk with you instead, which is a far worse fate, because I intend to be pleasant about it.”
The girl’s face passed through three expressions in as many moments: calculation, fury, and a glimpse of the much younger child beneath them both. At last, it settled into a sullen truce. She descended the final two stairs slowly, making a point of every step.
Selina took her plain shawl from the hook beside the side door, and the two of them went out into the early morning together. The gravel lay damp beneath their feet, while the whole garden dripped around them, green, flattened by the night’s rain, and rich with the scent of turned earth.
They had walked as far as the yew hedge before Georgiana spoke.
“You are not going to ask where I was going?” She addressed the question to the hedge rather than to Selina.
“I do not need to ask. There is a gate in the far wall which the gardeners use. It opens onto the mews, and anyone waiting there at this hour is waiting for a girl who cannot be seen leaving by the front entrance.” Selina maintained an even pace and did not turn.
“I wish to know only whether you intended to return before you were missed, or whether you contemplated a greater foolishness than one morning could contain.”
“I always come back.” Georgiana stopped walking as soon as she heard her own admission.
“Then this was not the first time. Thank you for telling me. You were not obliged to do so, and I shall remember that you did.” Selina stopped beside the sundial, which kept no useful time beneath such a sky, and turned to face her. “Who is he?”
Georgiana lifted her chin in precisely the manner her brother did; a family resemblance which both siblings would have been furious to have pointed out.
“You said you would not report to my brother.”
“I said I would keep your confidence in every matter that did not place you in harm’s way.
This may do so. I cannot yet tell, because you have not given me his name, and without it I am walking in darkness beside a girl who has learnt to conceal letters at the dinner table.
” She extended one hand, palm upwards, and held it between them. “Give me the name.”
For a long moment, the garden seemed to hold its breath. Then Georgiana looked towards the rain-beaten roses and said, very softly, “Mr Rowland. Mr Felix Rowland.”
The name struck Selina with unexpected force. Her hand closed around the fringe of her shawl, and she made herself release it one finger at a time.
She kept her expression composed. A still face was the one accomplishment poverty had not been able to sell.
The name Rowland belonged to another life: to a house long since sold and to men who had sat at her father’s table, arriving to borrow and remaining to flatter.
No particular face returned to her, only the shape and weight of the name, and the peculiar oiliness of the men who had worn it well.
The gentleman upon the assembly steps had possessed something of that same quality, folded and patien, and the slow smile he had directed across the hall three days ago might well have belonged to a man who recognised her.
“And how did you come to know Mr Rowland?” she asked, pleased that her voice remained level.
“He was introduced to me at the Fenwicks’ rout in March.
He is not like the others. He does not speak to me as though I were a child or a horse being displayed at a fair.
He listens.” Georgiana began walking again, quickly, and Selina lengthened her stride to remain beside her.
“On the very first evening, he said he could tell that no one in that house had ever asked me a question and then waited for the answer. He was right. No one ever had. Nineteen years of it, and my own brother is the worst offender of them all. Mr Rowland asks me questions, and he waits. Nathaniel has never done either in his life.”
“And he asks you to write to him in secret, conceal his letters, and slip through the gardeners’ gate before the household wakes.”
“Because Nathaniel would forbid it.” Georgiana flung the answer over her shoulder. “Nathaniel forbids everything. There is nothing sinister in keeping a matter secret when the alternative is my brother’s disapproval falling upon it like a roof.”
Selina walked several paces in silence, granting herself time to choose her words. The wrong ones would drive the girl directly towards a man whose intentions Selina did not yet trust.
“I am going to say one thing, and I ask only that you do not defend him while I say it. Hear me now, and consider it later, when I am no longer standing here to be argued with.”
“You will say that he is after my dowry.” Georgiana folded her arms.
“I will say that he is teaching you which doors in this house open quietly.” Selina stopped.
“He asks for secrets and calls it trust. The two are not the same. He is discovering what you will conceal and how well you will conceal it, and a man does not require that of a young woman whom he intends to court openly.”
“He is not measuring me,” Georgiana said, cutting across her too quickly. Her hands opened and closed around the bonnet ribbons. “You have not met him. You have not so much as seen him, yet you stand in a wet garden and tell me what he is.”
“No, I have not met him.”
“Then you cannot know.” The words emerged upon the verge of breaking.
“I cannot. But neither can you, and that is the whole of my objection.” Selina allowed a moment to pass until the girl’s breathing eased.
“Perhaps he is precisely what you believe him to be. I have been mistaken before, and I should be glad to be mistaken now. So I shall offer you a bargain. You will not slip away to meet him again without telling me first. I am not asking you never to see him; only never to meet him in secret. If he is the man you believe him to be, he will not object to meeting you in daylight with a companion present. If he does object, you will have learnt something of his character, and the lesson will not have cost you your reputation. That is all I ask.”
“And if I refuse?” She had begun twisting the bonnet ribbons between her fingers.
“Then I shall keep watch beside this hedge every morning at six. I have very little else to occupy me, and I am extremely patient. You will find that your gardeners’ gate has acquired a chaperone.
” Selina’s voice softened. “I would rather have your word than stand guard over you, Lady Georgiana. But I shall stand guard if I must.”
“You are not at all what I expected.” Georgiana began tearing a leaf carefully down its spine.
“What did you expect?”
“A woman who wept, recited improving maxims, told my brother everything, and called it care.” She dropped the ruined leaf upon the path.
“I do not weep while on duty, and I have already promised not to carry his name to your brother. As for improving maxims, I have read too widely to place much faith in them. Three disappointments out of three. You may apply to your former governess if you find that you miss them.”
Georgiana’s mouth twitched despite herself. “Nathaniel will hate that you know something he does not.”
“Your brother hates a great many things that are good for him. I have made a study of them over the past three days. The list is long and continues to grow.”
The girl remained quiet for some time. A blackbird worked at the wet lawn, hauled up a worm, then appeared to think better of it. In the house, one shutter opened and then another. Beyond the stable arch, a housemaid began beating a rug from an upper window, and the day commenced without them.
“You truly will not tell Nathaniel?” Georgiana moved round to stand directly before Selina, blocking the path.
“I shall tell your brother that you have a correspondent of whom he would not approve and that I am managing the matter. I shall not give him the gentleman’s name.
” Selina drew the shawl more closely about her shoulders.
“If I do, he will take precisely the wrong course. You will run directly to Mr Rowland merely to defy him, and I shall have lost your trust for the sake of proving a point. I have no interest in points. I am interested in keeping you out of the mews.”
The tension which had held Georgiana rigid since the second stair finally eased. She did not thank Selina. Instead, she slipped her arm through hers as they walked back towards the house. Neither of them remarked upon it, and neither withdrew.
***
Selina found the Duke in his study an hour later. He rose when she entered, though he need not have done so for a companion, and made no remark upon the courtesy. Several letters lay open upon the desk before him. He turned two of them face down without appearing conscious of the movement.