‘No, my lord,’ said Rowland. And took a breath, then closed his mouth.
‘Yes, what is it? You may as well tell me, so that we can clear the air once and for all.’
‘Well, it’s just that with her ladyship being so used to getting her own way, in these parts, it might be helpful to all of us down here if you would have a word with her.’ His face went beetroot-red.
‘Point taken,’ said Edmund.
It was for him to tell his mother to cease interfering with his plans. With an effort, he returned to discussing estate business with the poor man who would have to carry out those plans in the face of probably strident opposition from Lady Ashenden. But he could only manage to keep part of his mind on turnips, drainage and potential yields. The other part kept straying back to Georgiana and the way she’d looked in that gown. The wild, almost primitive surge of lust he’d experienced after breathing in her pure, undiluted scent. His insane desire to prove to her, right there on the riverbank, that he was just like any other red-blooded man.
No wonder his sleep had been so disturbed the night before after a scene like that. Especially as she’d told him that she would hold him personally responsible for whatever happened to her in London.
And as the day wore on, and his mind kept straying to Georgiana’s proposal, a couple of other things she’d said started to niggle at him. For instance, she’d flung the words, ‘Out of sight is out of mind with you, isn’t it?’ As though she was accusing him of turning his back on her. Which made no sense. For she was the one who hadn’t answered any of the letters he’d written to her. Apart from, ironically, the first. The note he’d thrust into the gap between the stone wall and the gatepost of the main drive, which was where they’d always left messages for each other if they couldn’t meet at their place for any reason.
Dr Scholes has persuaded Mother that I need to live in a warmer climate if I’m going to reach adulthood. I am leaving tomorrow. But I will write to you. Please write to me, too.
She’d written back.
I will. I will miss you.
Miss him—hah!
The footman, who’d been about to remove the cloth and bring in the port, flinched. Which alerted Edmund to the fact he must have actually said the word, rather than just thinking it.
Which infuriated him even more. Dammit, he couldn’t even sit down to dinner in peace because of her. He hadn’t been this unsettled since...since he’d first gone to St Mary’s. And waited for letters that never came. Six months it had taken him to accept the fact that she wasn’t going to keep her word. That she didn’t miss him at all.
He unstoppered the decanter which his footman had placed, warily, at his left hand and poured himself his usual measure. When he thought of the hours he’d spent, walking along the beach, howling his protests into the wind so that nobody would witness his misery, he couldn’t help grimacing in distaste.
It had taken a stern talking-to from Dr Scholes to put an end to it.
‘It is as well you learn what fickle creatures females are,’ the elderly scholar had told him. ‘Not that they can help it. They may well mean whatever it was they said at the time they said it, but five minutes later another idea will come into their head and they will forget all about the first one. Or simply change their mind.’
The explanation had made so much sense it had made him feel like the world’s biggest fool. He should already have learned, from the example of his parents, that men and women never said what they really meant, but only what they hoped would get them out of hot water. But it had been Georgie’s casually broken promise that had made him vow never to trust another person so much that he became that vulnerable, ever again.
And until he’d gone to the stream in answer to her summons, he had kept that vow.
He got to his feet abruptly, waving permission to the hovering footmen to clear the table. There was no clarity of thought to be found in port. What he needed was a good night’s sleep. But he was not likely to get it, not with his head still so full of Georgiana.
So he went to his study, sat down at his desk and out of habit when first considering a complex problem, drew out a fresh sheet of paper and trimmed his pen. But what to write, when it came to Miss Georgiana Wickford?
Why is she angry? he wrote. As though he’d betrayed her, not the other way round. What could possibly make her think that? He hadn’t chosen to leave. To leave her alone. So it couldn’t be that. But...
He closed his eyes, and concentrated. And another inconsistency popped up.
If she was so angry with him, why had she asked him to marry her?
It made no sense.
Especially not when she’d told him she’d almost expected him to wriggle off the hook.
From where, he wondered indignantly, had she acquired such a low opinion of him? He was a man who kept his word. Why, he’d even gone to the stream, in answer to her summons, because of a promise he’d made when he’d been too young to know any better. Even though she’d broken hers to him.
Angrily, he scratched another question mark. And put the matter aside. Because all he was doing, by concentrating on Georgiana, was getting even more angry than when he was trying not to think about her at all.
* * *
The next day, during the hours when he was supposed to be going over the accounts, his mind wandered to Georgiana’s peculiar view of what a London Season would be like. And he got a vivid flash of himself, as a bewildered youth, being put on a coach and shipped off to St Mary’s.
He leaned back and twirled his pen between his ink-stained fingers. She was clearly as scared as he’d been back then, about going to what was, to her, a foreign country. He seemed to recall that he’d even had the odd notion that he was being sent into exile, for some crime he hadn’t been aware he’d committed.
That same fear might explain why she had acted so irrationally and said so many other things that made no sense. Perhaps all she needed was reassurance. Perhaps he would not feel so guilty about not being able to accede to her ridiculous demand she marry him, if he could explain that, for him, going to the Scilly Isles had turned out to be the best thing that had happened to him. Once he’d stopped bewailing her betrayal, that was. Dr Scholes had encouraged him in all his studies, even going so far as helping him catalogue the incredible variety of moths to be found on the Isles at various times of the year. He’d encouraged him to row, regularly, which had improved his physique to no end. He’d allowed him to mix with the locals, too.
There, that was something he could do. Encourage her to look upon her London Season as an opportunity, rather than a form of torture.
Because he couldn’t leave things as they were. His conscience wouldn’t permit it, no matter how often he told it to be silent. It kept reminding him that he’d made a promise. And even though he couldn’t keep that promise in the way she thought she wanted him to, he ought to find some other way to prove he was not the sort of man to wriggle off the hook.
* * *
The next morning, when he was out rowing on the river, he came up with an answer that was so utterly perfect he couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t suggested it to her at once.
There were men who, for various reasons, did seek out the kind of marriage she’d asked him to contemplate. He couldn’t actually foresee that much difficulty in arranging such a match, if she was so sure that was what she wanted.
There. That was something constructive he could do. He could suggest she look, in London, for the kind of man who did want a paper marriage.