“We’ll need our own house, of course. In the country, I stay in a hunting lodge on the estate’s grounds, it will not be at all suitable. You shall wish to be mistress of something larger.”
“Shall I?” Georgiana asked. “I rather like your parents. I would not mind staying under their roof. Unless, of course, you would not like it?”
“I would not mind it,” Jasper said. “In the country, we might take over the west wing. But you do know my mother is a bit of a meddler?”
“As am I,” Georgiana said, laughing.
Jasper smiled. “Two meddlers under one roof might seem insurmountable. Until I remind myself that I have been far worse than a meddler. I have been an accuser of treason against an innocent lady, all from my own fevered imagination.”
Georgiana nodded, though she found she could not care less about his fevered imaginations at this moment. His feveredfeelings, of which she had been thoroughly convinced of while they’d been on the sofa, were all that mattered now.
Lady Mendleton came in with Lord Mendleton behind her.
“I am told there is an engagement?” the lord said. “Is it true? Or has my wife gone mad in her wishing for a daughter?”
“I hope you do not mind it, my lord,” Georgiana said.
“I certainly do not,” Lord Mendleton said. “I was rather terrified of finding Lady Annabelle under my roof—a lifetime of London air on hair complaints would have done me in.”
Georgiana would have very much liked to explain that it had been Lady Annabelle who had been the key to everything. If she had not been snooping into Marcus’s note, Jasper would be lying dead in the park just now. She could not, though. They could not reveal anything that would lead to more questions.
Instead, she said, “The lady has been unhappy and is not as you think her, but all that will come right when she returns home to see a certain gentleman. The banns will be read in no time, I think.”
“As will yours,” Lady Mendleton said. “I suppose you’ll rent a house somewhere, do not make it so very far away, Jasper. I did hope to have Georgiana under my wing for at least another season.”
“We rather thought of going nowhere for the time being,” Jasper said.
Lady Mendleton clutched the arm of a chair and sank down into it. “You will stay! With us? Well, I hadn’t thought…goodness, just imagine! Georgiana, we will shop and have tea and I shouldn’t wonder at all if your playing becomes very good with more practice. We might even have a musical evening some time in the future.”
Georgiana looked at Jasper ruefully, lest he get the idea that sweet music was even a remote possibility for his future. He looked away, suppressing his laughter.
“What a night this has been!” Lady Mendleton said. “My son has survived a scheming fraud and dangerous footpads, and dear Georgiana has saved him and is to be my daughter forever. And, while you did not witness it yourselves, I do not think I flatter myself when I say my speech to the guests was a triumph. Was it not a triumph, Husband?”
Lord Mendleton, the dear good-humored man, nodded and said, “Indeed. Lady Heathway appeared most unhappy at its happy reception, so it must have been a triumph.”
Georgiana could not know for certain what sort of triumph Lady Mendleton had managed, but she felt rather triumphant herself.
*
Baron Manley hadgiven his consent to Lord Langley with alacrity. He liked the fellow and thought his dear Georgiana could hardly do better. If the Stapleton household remained in the dark about what had really transpired between the couple, Baron Manley remained in the dark with a blindfold tied on for good measure. As far as he ever knew it, it had been a quite usual courtship.
Jasper, upon spending the night as Manley’s guest and having a look round the estate, could see how and why things had fallen into disrepair. There was a general rundown look to the place, and to the baron for that matter. After a ghastly dinner with Lady Manley, he guessed her husband was too tired to provide much energy to the estate. The lady was by turns flirtatious and petulant, proud and sulking—her moods changed as fast as the courses.
Jasper was determined to right the ship and he arranged to send his own assistant steward to whip the estate into shape, including the judicious selling of wood from the rather extensive woodlands that the baron had not done a thing with. It would put the estate on far firmer footing than it had been and allow Lady Manley to have the dresses made that she seemed to pine for. One could only hope it was enough to bring the baron some peace.
*
Georgiana had perhapshad some little trepidation over Jasper visiting her father’s estate, as one never did know what her mother might do or say. However, he returned all cheerfulness and only described her mother as aninteresting lady.
He had somehow convinced her father not only that they should marry, but that one of his own stewards should be instated at Manley Hall for the foreseeable future. Jasper had all the confidence in the world that the estate could be righted, and so did she.
Lady Mendleton had taken Georgiana’s trousseau in hand and a flurry of dressmakers had flown about the house, generally looking exceedingly harried. After the measurements were taken, Georgiana had little to do with it. Lady Mendleton, ormamaas she kept hinting she ought to be called, was a mother duck chasing her ducklings ahead of her. Georgiana was glad of it as she and Jasper had their own schedule to keep before the wedding. Breakfast in the library with the newspapers, rides through the park, the occasional visit to the queen, and seeking out a cozy corner wherever they could find one. The amount of hairpins Georgiana lost during these interludes was positively criminal.
The wedding breakfast came off smoothly, primarily because Lady Manley stayed home with a cold. Though a head cold was posited as the excuse, Georgiana received a letter from the lady explaining that she refused to be looked down upon by such persons as a duchess and a lady this and a lady that until she had a wardrobe suitable to hold up against it.
The barondidcome and he and Jasper’s father hit it off wonderfully. Georgiana fully expected to see her father at Lord Mendleton’s next shooting party.
Neither Jasper nor Georgiana wished for an extended wedding trip to the continent, as they both preferred to be on hand if the queen had need of them, but a fortnight’s trip to Ramsgate was taken.
