Stephanie and the Wicked Deceiver (Wild Marchmonts #2)

19. A Sample Chapter of Georgette and the Unrequited Love

Prologue

If you were to see all the Fortune sisters together in a line, you would be living in a fairy tale, for the girls, first because their mama was a trifle frail, and later because she was no longer with them, were too unruly ever to have been held in line for more than a second without some of them escaping to another room in the cavernous Castle Fortune, or into the rivers and wilderness beyond. For the benefit of this presentation, we will imagine them all kept in place to shake your hand. We shall capture them all in this day of 1813, and make it a sunny day. First will be Miss Fortune as was, the lovely and gentle Violetta, twenty-three, who must now disappear into the mist of Scotland to be with her husband. Loud and vibrant Cassie, twenty-two, is next, but her equally loud swain, Mr Hudson, has swept them off to Somerset, where the whole neighbourhood may hear their business from a mile away. Next there is Georgette, twenty-one, who is the principal subject of this tale. She has particularly large eyes, and has now become Miss Fortune in her turn, being the eldest unwed sister. Mary, twenty, her romantic and wilful sister, ran off with a Mr Fredericks, a music master, and they made their poor home in Bath. If Mr Fredericks hoped that marriage to the daughter of a Castle might increase his wealth, he was disabused of this notion after he met his father-in-law, Baron Fortune. Susan, eighteen, the plainest of the girls (which is to say not plain at all), married sober Mr Steeplethorpe, and seemed quietly content at her bargain.

So, our reception line now has only the unmarried Fortune ladies. Georgette now lives with the shame (her neighbours said) of having two younger siblings marry before her. Next is the sprite Jocasta, at seventeen not too like a fairy of the tales in behaviour, but who nevertheless entranced London this season with her wispy gaiety. The final four girls are not out yet and have seen little beyond the castle grounds and their few friends in the district. Red-haired Katerina, at sixteen, still thinks boys are boorish and stupid, an opinion no doubt suggested by her closest male acquaintance, her brother George (at twenty-five the only male sibling and proud heir to his father’s dignities and debt). Portia, at 15, was rather more romantic, with hair a shade between the blond of Jocasta’s and the brunette of Georgette’s. She is taller than her sisters. The little twins, at 14, were probably the prettiest of the bunch (which is to say very pretty indeed), with still-white blond curls and big blue eyes. They would arrest the eye together in a ballroom in another three or four years.

Georgette, the median age of all her married sisters, was now on the shelf, doomed to haunt the shades of Fortune Castle till her death, unless her brother George were to eject her on the day of his inheritance. If George remembered the days of her childhood when Georgette had still seen the point of poking a bully in the eyes, perhaps he would do so, and swiftly, too. But most probably, he would let her stay to keep up the numbers of people he could ignore, insult and command.

Chapter 1

She was invisible, Georgette discovered. Quite invisible. She had suspected as much in the glazed-over glances the other guests to this house party had cast over her during the introductions, but this longed-for but entirely unexpected meeting with the Marquis of Onslow had completely underscored the matter. He had even reached past her to shake her father’s hand and had touched her arm in passing, raising her heartbeat until it seemed the organ would leave her chest, without any seeming awareness of having done so.

One could blame Papa perhaps, but with ten daughters and one son (heaven be praised) to provide for, and no wife living to aid Lord Fortune with understanding the subtleties of female feelings, she did not really think that she could. She had quite understood that she, the third daughter of the impoverished baron, had to surrender her place in the London season to allow her younger sisters their turn at society. Their eldest sister, twenty-three-year-old Violetta (named for their dead mother) was already wed to her Scottish gentleman before Georgette had come out. Georgette had enjoyed two seasons already, one with elder sister Cassie, who had married the eligible, if very loud, Mr Hudson. This slight defect that Georgette had discerned in his otherwise excellent, convivial character was shared by Cassie herself, who talked as though addressing a congregation even at breakfast, and who had been used to clattering downstairs in satin slippers as though the blacksmith had shod her. After Cassie’s baby was born last year, Georgette had visited her home in distant Somerset and had informed her father afterwards that the child’s lungs seemed to have double the capacity of each parent, making him audible ten miles hence. Her father had remarked that he would write to his daughter, kindly understanding that such a journey as the three days it would take to reach Castle Fortune should on no account be undertaken with an infant, and that they could henceforth meet during the London season for his beloved daughter’s convenience. How thoughtful.

Georgette’s second season had been with her younger sister Mary, who married (much to her father’s wrath) a mere Mr Fredericks, who had been employed to teach them the pianoforte. Both sisters could play, but not exceptionally, and their father had conceived the notion that it was young ladies of musical talent who snared the richest, that is the most eligible, of gentlemen — an opinion he came to rue. Mrs Fredericks now lived in genteel poverty with her swain in Bath and seemed happy enough, thought Georgette, but where they might dispose of future children in two rooms was beyond her. Perhaps they might be suspended in tiny hammocks on the ceiling, she’d considered as she’d regarded the linen slung on the washing pulley in their tiny kitchen, but what to do with them on laundry day exceeded her imagination.

Susan, 18, had wed a quiet country gentleman much in her own style. This had occurred in the previous season, when Georgette remained at home to make way for Jocasta Fortune, her pretty blond seventeen-year-old sister, who had already shown herself popular in town, so she had heard.

With three of her sisters wed already after Georgette’s second season, her father’s looks toward her had suggested that she had rather let him down. The cost of each season was a prodigious run on the estate every year, and some decent settlements from an eligible parti might have eased a situation which, with six daughters still to provide for, seemed never-ending. After her last season, two years ago now, when they had returned to the crumbling Castle Fortune, he had looked at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. ‘You are not bad looking,’ he barked, as though contemplating inwardly, ‘even if your bosom suggests you might run to fat at a later date.’ Georgette had swallowed with difficulty. ‘But young men don’t think of that. You don’t have much conversation of course, but your birth is good and you have a small portion from your mama, which makes you at least respectable. All those gowns and bonnets,’ he lamented, ‘and no one could be persuaded to take you!’ He shook his head and tutted.

When Susan got married the next year, he could not look at Georgette for a week without audibly betraying his great disappointment. ‘Still here, miss? Eating my meat when even your younger sisters—’ he shook his giant head with the shaggy mane of hair and muttered into his soup, ‘Females! What use are females at all — especially unwed females? A leech for life, I suppose.’

There had been two people prepared to take her, who had indeed offered for her, had her papa but known, and others whose interest Georgette had, with difficulty, discouraged. The first offer was from a deliciously conceited, round-bodied clergyman, bound for a bishopric, he told her confidentially during only the first dance. It was in the family, it transpired, that all the second sons became bishops (though his grand-uncle had disappointed his family by rising no further than Dean). Georgette had accepted his offers to dance as was polite, but Cassie had been unable to understand why she allowed the fusty cleric to walk her to the supper room, or take her apart to sit and talk a dance away. The sad truth was that Georgette, though listening with a grave air to the Reverend Mr Fullerton’s conversation, had been inwardly bursting with delight. He was so utterly ridiculous that she found herself fuelling his climb to the precipice of bumptious absurdity. The dreadful propensity of hers to judge the ridiculous was understood by none in her family since the death of her mother. They looked upon Georgette’s placid exterior as her substance, never guessing the bubbling cauldron of devilry beneath. ‘I hold,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘that the exercise of dancing may become injurious to the health and , to the morals of the nation.’ Georgette was sipping a negus cup in the throng around the supper table, and she answered, as his bulging eyes looked at her expectantly, ‘Indeed sir, you think dancing dangerous to the body?’

‘I see you are surprised, my dear Miss Fortune! I do not wonder at it. It is so common to think of dancing these days as beneficial . Indeed, parents employ dancing popinjays to teach their daughters. Then those same young ladies are encouraged to dance every dance and quite wear their feet away.’

‘It is the feet, then, which you seek to protect?’ said Georgette, still sipping the negus.

‘Worse than the feet, I fear, are the temperate humours that keep the passions in check. These are vital to our health, yet let a man (or worse, a lady, I suggest) caper about a room for even an half-hour, and these have been so agitated that the very rules of civilisation may be ignored because such excitations have been allowed. Why, the English temperament becomes ever closer to the Latin. ’ Georgette’s eyes widened in faux shock over her cup. ‘We know how they conduct themselves. It is, in my idea, the product of the heat and being ill-bred.’

‘I expect you warn your parishioners of the dangers,’ remarked Georgette, enjoying herself shamefully, still sipping at her cup.

‘I do. It may be that the upper classes might just possess the discipline of spirit to control themselves in a ballroom, but all country dances for the working man are to be discouraged. A young gentleman, but ten years ago, was taken ill after much dancing and when the surgeons opened him up there was seen to be putrefaction of the organs. Ah! I have shocked you, I fear. I might have spared your delicate ears such sad truths. But a warning I must give to those I regard.’ Georgette gave a jolt to be included in this company, but stilled as he continued. ‘I myself have felt the ill effects. It is not natural for a man to jump and shake his innards so! It was not thus decreed by the Almighty. You have observed that persons beyond the age of thirty restrict such posturing. With age comes wisdom, perhaps.’

Or exhaustion , thought Georgette. ‘But I have met you at three balls already this season, Reverend Fullerton, and I do not believe you would seek to injure yourself.’

‘You are very wise, my dear Miss Fortune, very wise. I dance, it is true. But here is the secret, my dear.’ He bent forward, as though imparting one, but his voice was still booming. ‘I do not dance to excess, never to excess.’

‘It is true, Mr Fullerton,’ said Georgette as though much struck. ‘You danced perhaps three dances all evening, I have observed. When you did me the honour to dance with me this evening you did so with the most economy of movement. I remarked upon it. It was almost as though you were not dancing at all …’

Then came the moment that changed her life. For over the shoulder of the vicar, and over the shoulder of a gentleman with his back to him, Georgette met the humorous eye of a tall, blond gentleman who seemed to have been listening for some time, perhaps. In that look, which caused the lines around sky-blue eyes to deepen, she saw his shared joy of the absurdity, and his knowledge of her own role in encouraging the display. The six feet between them seemed to retract as the look held, and she felt as though his whole being was closer to her than any gentleman had ever been, excepting her father and brother. But it was a simple illusion, neither of them had moved. She dimpled and blushed — then his attention was taken once more by his male companion. It was the work of but two seconds.

The Reverend Mr Fullerton continued to praise her for her observation and she hardly heard him. She had turned her face towards him once more and saw the fleshly lips move and bulging eyes search her face, but was only vaguely aware.

Someone had seen her, really seen her — and she was shaken to the core.

She was so aware of the tall gentleman that her peripheral vision grew larger. He moved away with his friend in the direction of the ballroom and she was able to notice a thatch of blond hair whose curls disobeyed pomade, whose tall frame was elegantly covered in a black coat and buff knee breeches, and whose large form carried away with it her heart.

This was the Lord Onslow that now, two years later, had not even recognised her.