Page 19

She couldn’t sleep that night. She usually curled herself into a ball in bed, tucked her cold fingers between her legs, and huddled motionless, waiting for her body to warm the sheets, drifting off in the process.

Instead, she moved restlessly, sweaty with agitation, kicking her legs as she turned over and over.

“Damn you, Georgina.” She muttered it aloud to the dark room.

She shivered a feverish shiver, because Miss Poskitt had claimed that fairy tales possessed a kernel of truth, and Miss Mahomed had claimed that repeating someone’s name made them appear, and ideas dismissably silly by day gathered weight in the night, and she could almost believe if she said Georgina again and again, it would summon them into the room. Into her bedchamber.

And then?

She kicked her legs and heaved herself from her right side to her left. Georgina wasn’t going to appear in her bedchamber. Georgina was fast asleep in Redmayne Manor, on a feather bed, smug and smiling. Had they felt their lips spark?

Sometimes kissing does that , they’d said.

Sometimes.

She kicked her legs and heaved herself from her left side to her right.

What had come over her in the Great Hall?

She’d revealed things about herself, about her family, that she shouldn’t have.

She’d sat beside Georgina voluntarily, let them beguile her, as she had at the wolf pit, and instead of a ram, a kiss had brought it all crashing down.

In the past five years, they’d gotten worse by getting better, new facets of their personality dazzling her so that she temporarily lost sight of the deeper, ineradicable flaws.

This more sensitive, more likeable Georgina, this Georgie , made her lose her head.

She became the sort of girl who drank too much champagne in the sun, who howled, who forgot her goals, who aired unpleasant family business, who received kisses that kept her up at night, sighing and fantasizing about sparks.

What Fellow of the Albion Society was that sort of girl?

No Fellow! None! None of them were girls at all, of course, but that only meant she had to try even harder, to show Papa and William Aubin-Aubrey and Sir Graham and whoever else that hers was a scientific mind.

She couldn’t impress anyone as a learned, well-reasoned individual with Georgina goading her into flights of fancy and fits of temper.

Refusing Georgina’s offer to accompany her to the Peak was the sensible decision, the correct decision. Or was it?

She kicked her legs and heaved herself from her right side to her left.

Was it sensible? Or was it cowardly? She feared Georgina’s proximity would prompt her to do something foolish.

Didn’t that ascribe to them too much power?

Wasn’t it up to her to exert some self-control?

If she allowed the Barrow Prince to slip away because Georgina Redmayne had ruffled her feathers, she’d never forgive Georgina, but more crucially, she’d never forgive herself.

She wasn’t a coward! And she was more than Georgina’s match.

Suddenly, she knew what to do, and it was so simple, she almost laughed.

Take Georgina to the Peak. Accept their help with Aubin-Aubrey.

Ignore their provocations. Simple. She’d work with such singular focus, she’d hardly notice they were there.

She’d fill her thoughts with urns and calcined bones. She’d keep them at arm’s length.

Except each night when they shared the same bed at the coaching inn.

She twisted around and lay on her back, panting as though she’d run a mile.

The breathless feeling persisted until she climbed from her bed, exhausted, to begin the morning’s chores.

Finished at last, she walked the mile to Redmayne Manor in bright sun, flushing with the realization that this was the very mile she’d run over and over in her head through the darkest hours before dawn.

The butler who opened the door wore a beleaguered expression. Her heart went out to him. He too was suffering Georgina’s return.

“Have you something in your eye?” he asked, alarmed, by which she understood her expression of solidarity had missed the mark.

Her attempts to communicate facially often missed the mark.

Once she reassured him that she was perfectly well, he directed her to the garden.

She retraced her steps from the week before, walking the serpentine paths around bright flower beds and conical topiaries.

She paused by the pergola. The wisteria seemed even more profuse, pouring over the lattices.

The morning-glory vines wrapping the columns had put out blooms of vivid blue.

Inside, Georgina was sprawled out on a bench, dappled by the light filtering through the pergola’s freight of blossoms, one arm trailing to the ground, the other thrown over their eyes.

She stepped closer and a stray piece of gravel on the pergola’s stone floor chirped beneath her shoe.

Georgina sat up, swinging their legs off the bench. They were wearing trousers. A ruffled white shirt. A pink waistcoat. Their cravat was messy, and their jacket was nonexistent. The toe of one shiny black boot rested on the blade of a fencing foil.

“Don’t worry,” they said, noting her gaze. “I won’t put out your eye. I’ve fenced enough today.”

She saw the second foil. “With whom?”

“Robert Peach. Younger brother of Charles Peach, who came to Rosalie’s rescue. He was delivering some cheese, and one thing led to another.”

“Did he know he was fencing…?” A girl wasn’t quite right. But what if Georgina got hurt? They weren’t exactly a boy, and their not being one, in this case, would mean hell for poor Robert Peach.

“He assumed I was a roguish Redmayne cousin. With my encouragement.” Georgina flicked their foot, and the foil flew up into the air. They caught it by the hilt and jumped into a lunge, arm extended. The foil’s blunted tip pointed at Elfreda’s throat. Luckily, she was a yard away.

“I say!” Georgina grinned and reversed out of the lunge, looking tall and delighted. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” The tartness of her reply only made their grin widen.

“It doesn’t always work,” they told her. “I made it look easy, but there’s a trick to it. I could teach you.”

“You couldn’t. Your average box of bone fragments is more coordinated than I am.”

Georgina’s lips shaped average box of bone fragments . Their eyes danced with mirth, but instead of laughing, they gave a shrug.

“If you change your mind,” they said breezily, “I’m happy to try. When you’re back from the Peak.”

This was an opening. She walked closer. They dropped onto the bench and let the foil clatter down.

The way they watched her approach, legs stretched out, gaze knowing—they’d given her the opening deliberately.

They knew why she’d come. It irked her to behold them casually expecting the outcome she’d struggled toward all night.

And suddenly, ignoring their provocations seemed far too much to ask.

In fact, a little gloating seemed in order.

“You lost to Robert Peach, didn’t you?” she said. “I surprised you in a posture of defeat.”

This elicited an amused smirk—even more provoking. “There was no winning or losing. There was only the happy clashing of steel. Young Peach had never fenced before in his life. Our bout was unorthodox, but nonetheless, highly diverting.”

“Diverting and fatiguing ,” she asserted. “It wore you out.”

“On the contrary, I’m eager for a new activity.

One goes to bed so early in the country.

I find it promotes vigor during all the daylight hours.

But you—your eyelids are the color of this wisteria.

” They leaned forward, and that abominable smugness she’d imagined so clearly last night was written all over their face. “Did you sleep a wink?”

The air inside the pergola was drenched with the wisteria’s sweet scent. She felt dizzy with it. The delicate purple hues made a backdrop against which Georgina’s auburn hair took on the richness of ruby.

They were unfairly, unreasonably attractive, and they knew it.

She wanted to strangle them. She’d have to crawl onto their lap to do it, and slide her hands beneath their high white collar. Their pulse would beat against her palms, and she’d clamp her knees around their hips to keep them still.

“You’ve gone rather pale,” they observed. “Are you all right?”

It required effort to meet their eyes. “I have never been better.”

They looked at her a moment, then leaned back with a shrug. “I was thinking about the estate. When you walked up, I was lying here, thinking. Agonizing, really. It’s a disaster.”

“Disaster?” She gave her surroundings a dubious glance.

From the vantage of the pergola, she could see an immaculately kept section of garden, the eclectic mix of plants many-hued and harmonious.

The grounds were beautiful. And Redmayne Manor, while not to her taste, had sparkling windows and all its roof tiles.

“The manor’s in good order.” Georgina shifted their legs, the ankle of one coming up to rest on the knee of the other.

“But I got Robert talking, and the farms are not. Every cottage has a rotten floor and a flooded basement. Every barn is overrun with vermin. Every farmer gets broken promises instead of repairs, and a notice to quit when the lease comes around if they complain. I could speak to the steward—I told Charles Peach I would—but to what end? I can’t sack him.

It would have to be Harry. And then we’d need a new steward, and I don’t know how to guarantee he wouldn’t be just as bad.

I’m sure my father didn’t pick the current one with the idea that he’d bleed the tenants dry for a few more pounds in profit.

My father believed in making fair allowances.

And even more so, in making people fond of him.

He couldn’t have tolerated all this ill will. ”