‘Well, yes, because I thought you’d forgotten all about me. And I started thinking that perhaps, before, you’d only tolerated me hanging around you when you’d been so ill, because you were so bored.’
‘No,’ he said vehemently. ‘That was not how it was between us.’
‘But then what—?’ It felt as though she was experiencing yet another earthquake. ‘If you wrote to me—’ When his face tensed up, she hastily amended her statement. ‘I mean, where did your letters go? And what of mine to you? If you didn’t receive them...oh! I gave my letters to my father to post. Are you trying to tell me he...he didn’t send them? Any of them?’ It felt as if someone had just punched her in the stomach, to think Papa might have started betraying her as far back as that.
‘That I cannot say. What I do know is that my tutor used to collect all the mail that arrived at St Mary’s. To begin with. And I gave my letters to him to post.’
‘So it was him. It must have been him.’ She heaved a sigh of relief. It had been bad enough that Papa had married a woman who’d imposed such a strict new regime upon their household. When he’d turned a blind eye every time his new wife had beaten her. For things that had never been crimes before.
‘But...why would he have done it?’
‘Obviously because he had instructions to that effect.’
‘What? Why? Why would anyone want to make you so miserable? And me? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Yes, it does, Georgie, think about it.’ He leaned forward. ‘Don’t you recall Mrs Bulstrode’s reaction that day she found us in my bed with the hangings closed?’
Georgie winced. ‘She called me a trollop. I didn’t even know what a trollop was. Not until much later.’ When Wilkins had got Liza into trouble. And then, from the names flung about during Liza’s dismissal, she had worked out that a trollop was a girl who spread her legs in the stables so that a man could use her like a brute beast.
‘I heard her berating you all the way downstairs. I’ve already told you that, at the time, I just found it amusing. But recently, I discovered,’ he said, looking uncomfortable, ‘that she carried tales of that escapade to my mother. And that my mother subsequently took action to...separate us from one another.’
‘But why? Why go to the lengths of...sending you so far away and stopping us from keeping in touch at all?’ She pressed her hand to her head, which was throbbing at the struggle to make sense of what Edmund was telling her. ‘Why didn’t someone just explain to us that it was improper? And why it was improper?’
‘Because Mrs Bulstrode believed that we were past the stage of needing explanations.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Georgie, think about it. She drew back the curtains to see your skirts hitched up round your waist, while you have to admit I was wearing only my nightshirt.’
‘But I only drew the bed hangings round because I wanted to fill the air with colour for you. Like...like putting flowers in a vase, rather than strewing them all over your room. Which would have happened if I’d just let the butterflies out to fly where they wanted.’
‘I suspect they would all have headed for the window, and arranged themselves decoratively across the panes,’ he said pedantically. ‘Not that it wasn’t a splendid idea of yours,’ he added, reaching out his hand to pat hers. ‘I never forgot it. Even when I had persuaded myself I hated you, I remembered the joy you brought me that day and couldn’t turn my back on you entirely.’
‘You hated me?’ Her stomach lurched. ‘What had I ever done to make you hate me?’
‘You broke my heart,’ he said.
‘I...what?’
‘You weren’t just my friend, Georgie. You were my sunshine. My joy. You were too young, probably, to feel the same about me, but...the truth is, I loved you. When you didn’t write—or to be more precise, when they made me believe you hadn’t written—I was devastated.’
‘Oh, Edmund. Oh, no!’ She turned her hand over and gripped his as hard as she could. He returned the pressure, his face working.
‘The only way to survive the devastation,’ he grated, ‘was to twist what I felt for you and turn it around into hatred. When I returned to Bartlesham, for that short spell before I went up to Oxford, all I wanted to do was hurt you. So when you tried to greet me as though nothing was wrong, I...’
‘Looked down your nose at me. I thought it was because you’d become the Earl. I thought that you were ashamed of letting me dog your heels when you were just a boy and were doing your utmost to put me in my place, the way your mother puts people she considers encroaching in their place.’
He shook his head. ‘There was an element of that, in my behaviour, I dare say. But it was because I couldn’t bear to look at you, thinking you’d forgotten all about me, that you hadn’t cared how badly you’d hurt me. It was like a nest of snakes writhing inside me every time I caught a glimpse of you.’
Oh, how cleverly he described things. That was exactly how she’d felt. All those emotions, swirling through her, making her want to strike out, the way snakes struck out and spat venom.
‘I acted as badly, when you came back. Because, even though I never received any letters from you all that time you were away, I went to the gatepost, hoping...’ She couldn’t say more.
‘You looked for a message from me? Even after what you believed I’d done?’
She nodded. ‘I sneaked out and went to the trout stream, too, hoping you might go there, the way you used to. I thought if I could catch you there, I could make you tell me why we couldn’t be friends any more. But—’
‘Georgie,’ he gasped. ‘Even after everything you thought I’d done, you still hoped... God.’ He bowed his head over their clasped hands. ‘You had more faith in me than I had in you. I believed,’ he said, raising his head and looking into her eyes, ‘I really believed that you thought so little of what we had that you found it easy to toss aside the promises we’d made.’
‘Oh, Edmund. All these years...’ She felt her lower lip quiver. And her vision blurred.
‘Don’t cry Georgie. Just be glad we’ve found each other again,’ he said. And then leaned forward to press his lips gently to her forehead.
She sucked in a short, shocked breath.
Just as the air was rent by the sound of a scream of outrage.
Georgiana made a desperate attempt to free her hand from Edmund’s clasp. Somehow, it wouldn’t seem so bad, Stepmama finding him in here, if only they weren’t holding hands.
Or if he hadn’t just been kissing her.
But Edmund had a very firm grip and was refusing to let go. What was more, before Stepmama had a chance to draw breath, he was saying, with marked irritation, ‘Do you have to make so much noise? Have you no consideration for Georgie?’
‘Do I have no consideration? Do I...? You...’ She pulled herself together, stepped into the room and bore down on Georgie’s bed. ‘Just what do you think you are doing in here?’ she hissed into Edmund’s face.
‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ Edmund calmly replied. ‘I was kissing Georgie.’
‘How dare you?’ Stepmama uttered in an outraged shriek.
Georgie experienced a strong urge to pull the quilt up over her face. And not only to drown out the screeching. The sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs meant that any second now, even more people were going