Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Archduchess Maria Margarethe of Austria, of the Tuscan line, widow of the former Count von Hartenberg, sauntered into the room, trailing a Kashmiri shawl behind her on the floor, and paused when she saw Georg leaning against the fireplace. “Georg.”
Georg pulled himself up, straightened his shoulders, then made a stiff bow.
“Mama.” His eyes travelled over her fashionable ensemble of a primrose silk dress, short-sleeved and cut very low, and the heavy jewellery that adorned her.
She was dressed for the heat of August at the beginning of winter.
Her face was framed by tiny ringlets, and her eyebrows were plucked so finely that they were almost invisible.
She was, for her age, youthful looking, and the traces of her former beauty were still evident. The rouge had bled into the fine lines around her mouth, which she pulled to a smile that did not quite reach her eyes.
“My son. How tiresomely long it has been.” She stepped up to him and lifted her cheek for him to dutifully kiss.
“Indeed.” When had he last seen his mother?
A year ago? Two? He hardly knew where she was when she was not in Vienna; it was a state of affairs his father had been only too familiar with.
She was a restless spirit who was always travelling, constantly at some spa for her health, as she liked to explain.
Georg had understood only much later what she really meant by that.
She was actively avoiding his father, and quite possibly him.
Even later, he understood the true reason.
She was consistently, passionately in love with all sorts of men, and none of them had been his father.
It had suited her, of course. She flitted from lover to lover like a butterfly, never staying longer than a few moments on each petal.
She appeared to be happy with her chosen life.
But it had destroyed his father.
His mouth hardened. “I suppose you did not receive the invitation to my betrothal ball in time.” The truth was that he had not really expected her to attend.
Her smile froze momentarily, then she fluttered her lashes in a manner that was artificially abashed. “Oh dear. No, I did not. Imagine that, my little Georg is betrothed and soon to be married!” She paused, and when he did not deign to reply, she added, “When was it?”
“Yesterday.”
She pursed her lips. “I had a commitment yesterday in Baden.”
That meant she had been occupied with her newest lover.
“Baden being, of course, so very far away from Vienna.” The popular retreat was about a two-hour coach ride away from the capital.
She lifted a fine hand, the blue veins prominent against the pale skin. “It was the most inconvenient timing, you know.” She placed her hand on his sleeve with a practised, apologetic weight. “What is she like, your bride?”
“Do you not wish to meet her?”
“What an excellent idea, Georg. I heard she is a great beauty; an English beauty.” She dropped her hand and poured herself a drink. “She will suit you well.”
Georg could not, for the life of him, imagine Evie and his wayward mother in the same room; perhaps it was for the best that she had missed the betrothal ball after all. He repressed a sigh. “Would you like to meet her?” he repeated.
She drained the glass and refilled it, then drank again, quickly.
“My dear boy. I would positively adore meeting her. But I am to travel to Italy tomorrow.” She paused, her gaze drifting. “I am accompanying Auersee.”
Her newest lover, no doubt.
“I am very much in love with him.”
Ah. Of course. He repressed a harsh comment. After a moment, he said, “I suppose you shall not be back for the wedding, either.” He kept his voice light.
“When is it?”
“In the summer.”
“Ah.” She tilted her head aside, pondering.
“I would very much like to be. But I might be in Rome by that time. Oh! I have just the idea. Why do you not come and visit me there? Together with your wife. I should like that very much. I think.” She smiled again, that empty smile that never reached her eyes.
“What do you think, Georg? Would that not be fabulous?” She clasped her hands together.
He regarded his mother in silence. “It would be fabulous indeed.”
She gave him another smile. “How wonderful, Georg. Let us do that, then. But I must leave now. My dearest love is awaiting me.” She gathered her shawl and drifted out of the room.
He knew he was not to see her again for a year, or longer.
And that, Georg told himself almost savagely as he poured himself a drink, was precisely why he refused to believe in passion and love.
He walked home from his mother’s residence, sending his coachman ahead.
It was snowing again, but not the pretty, flurrying kind that drifted through the air; this was sleet, the sort that stuck to his woollen overcoat and turned to mush underfoot.
His boots and trousers would be splattered before he arrived. He did not mind it.
He did not know what, exactly, he’d expected from visiting his mother. Or why he’d imagined it could have turned out any differently than it had. Still, the sinking feeling of disappointment settled over him, familiar as an old wound, the same that had haunted his childhood.
Cursing softly, he stepped straight into a puddle and paused, staring at the water as it slid off his Hessian boots.
When it came to women, his mother had dominated his life through her absence.
He had not been fully aware of it until now.
His resistance to forming close attachments; his refusal to believe in love.
She had constantly been in love with all sorts of men.
Just never with him. Him, she seemed to regard as a sort of accessory that she did not entirely know what to do with. Dispensable, and better out of the way.
The image of his bride floated again in front of his mind. Evie, with her wide, gentle mouth tilted up and a glowing, hopeful look in her eyes.
She clearly wanted things he could not give. Love, and all that.
He had made it clear early on that he was not the one to give it.
Seeing that light again in her eyes on the night of their betrothal had left a sense of disquiet in him, a pang he could not quite account for. And the odd desire to live up to it.
Evie, his bride, who was so very different from his mother, or from any other woman he’d ever met. He was guarding himself from her as though she were the sum of all enemy forces.
Which was, of course, absurd.
He took a turn into the street where his town house was located.
He had preferred to rent it, separate from the family residence where his mother was currently staying.
It was his bachelor quarters, his safe haven; he’d not allowed any woman in it.
If he were honest, he’d not allowed any woman inside his immediate private sphere at all, and that did not only include his home.
He’d drawn a wall so high, so impenetrable, that no one was able to see beyond it, save for Julius and Klemens.
He paused in front of the heavy, oak door, wondering whether he would make an exception with Evie. Whether that would not make his life so much easier, more bearable. Whether it would finally lift the burden.
What burden, confound it?
He shook his head and wiped the moisture from his coat, half amused, half vexed with himself.
“Her ladyship, Lady Evangeline, is here to see you, Your Excellency,” his butler said as he took his hat. “She is awaiting you in the drawing room.”
Ah.
There it was, that immediate lightening of, confound it, what was it exactly? An easing, a lifting of some sort.
Gladness.
His bride had come to visit him. He glanced down at his sleet-damp coat, his mud-spattered boots, and ran a hand briefly over his jaw. He was not, by any measure, in a state to receive a lady. He ought to change. Shave, possibly. Take a bath.
That would take the better part of an hour.
“I’ll be with her anon.”
He took two steps at a time up the staircase and tore open the door to the drawing room.
A gentle fire was burning in the grate, a tea set on the table, her blue shawl draped over a chair.
His mouth curved in an involuntary smile. He’d been pondering on never allowing a woman into his home, and yet he was all too glad to see her here. But where was she?
His glance travelled through the room.
Perhaps she’d had to step out to seek the privy.
He stepped further in and saw that the adjoining door to his study was slightly ajar.
His brows drew together as he crossed to it and opened it.
The room was half in shadow. A single candle stood on his desk. He scanned the room: the desk, the shelf, the lamp on the table. Then his eyes shot back to the desk.
There, in the shadow. Against the wall.
He narrowed his eyes.
A figure was crouching on the floor.
In front of his open strongbox on the shelf.
Evie.