It had to be after this morning.
No matter how tempted she was to beg him to stay—she had been a ball and chain around a military man’s neck before and knew how toxic and destructive such resentment could be. Despite their best efforts to ignore it, it was already happening, and they were already both unhappy and failing to mask their mutual resentments. Already, it was all turning into one big, seething mess that was only destined to get worse. Especially as there was no compromise which suited them both. If she asked him not to sail away, he lost, and if she stayed with him and he didn’t, she did. Therefore, surely it was better to have loved and lost than to experience love die. And it would die a lingering death once the bloom was gone and resentment drove a wedge between them.
Why couldn’t he see that?
Or perhaps he did, and he’d lashed out in frustration because it was the one problem that even he, the Royal Navy’s eternal fixer, could not fix.
Georgie spent the morning flying kites on the beach with the children while Norbert and Cuthbert frolicked in the surf. As she was still technically their governess, Georgie tenuously linked the activity to some mathematics and tried to keep her smile despite the constant, dull ache in her chest.
“Come along, all of you!” Felix was making a meal out of packing up his kite, purposefully dragging his feet in the hope that he and Norbert would be left to follow behind because he was desperate for some freedom. As Harry hadn’t taken him to Plymouth with himtoday, Felix was also put out. She could hardly tell him why his uncle had left in a huff, so the poor lad was convinced he had been cast aside just as things on theBoadiceawere getting interesting. “If you are quick, I will buy you all a cake from the baker’s—so long as you keep it a secret from Ada, of course. You know how annoyed she gets if anyone dares eat anything to spoil their lunch.”
“Can I have a currant bun with icing on top?” The mention of cake was all it took to earn Felix’s compliance, so she nodded. While it was tantamount to the same out-and-out bribery she had chastised Harry for, Georgie was inclined to spoil them all a little before she had to leave.
“Only if you keep it a sworn secret from your uncle too when we meet him here later.”
For the first time, she was dreading Harry’s homecoming, as it seemed another fight was inevitable unless he had had a complete change of heart during the day.
Somehow, she knew that wasn’t likely because when Harry thought he had found the way to solve a problem, he was always relentless in the execution. The speed with which he was getting the bloodyBoadiceashipshape was proof of that. Anyone who got in his way was ruthlessly flattened into submission, and woe betide them if they weren’t. But she really didn’t want to have to keep fighting with him, and he, for whatever well-intentioned but misguided reason, did. What had happened this morning had been brewing for days and they had both been stupid to think that they could ignore it.
When you played with fire, you always got burned.
They were seated on the seawall outside the bakery, finishing off their clandestine cakes when the morning post coach arrived. It had barely stopped when Norbert began to sniff the air, then bolted to runexcited circles around the conveyance. Georgie dashed after him to stop him terrorizing the unsuspecting passengers with his exuberant brand of affection, and then stopped dead when a tall brunette alighted.
The woman was so similar to Harry around the eyes and in her coloring that she could only be his sister. The way Norbert threw himself at her and licked her beaming face confirmed it.
“My darlings!” Still swamped in giant dog, Lady Flora Pendleton opened her arms to the three dark-haired cannonballs rushing toward her, with happy tears running down her pretty face. “Oh, how I have missed you all!”
Behind her, a similarly beaming and distinguished gentleman caught Grace and tossed her in the air before he hugged her tight.
With a lump in her throat and feeling like a spare wheel, Georgie kept her distance from the emotional reconciliation until Lady Flora glanced her way, then tilted her head when she noticed her watching. “Hello?”
“My lady.” She bobbed a curtsy. “I am Miss Georgina Rowe. The temporary governess your brother hired to help him look after the children in your absence.” The wordtemporaryphysically hurt as she choked it out because it decisively stampedthe endon this chapter of her life.
“I must say, you are not at all what I expected.” Lady Flora’s smile was warm, friendly, and curious. “When I learned my stickler of a baby brother had hired a governess, I imagined a fierce, humorless old maid with slate-gray hair and beady little spectacles.” She chuckled in disbelief. “I never in a million years expected him to employ someone who looks as personable as you. Is he ill?”
“He was desperate,” said Georgie, smiling back, already liking Harry’s sister a great deal, “and beggars cannot be choosers.” Noticing that Lord Pendleton was trying to organize their baggage with the coachman and needing something to do to prevent the tears prickling her eyes from falling, she rushed to his aid. “Why don’t you leave me to sort all that out while you catch up with your offspring? I know they have a million things to tell you. We have all had quite the month.”
It was certainly one that Georgie would never forget.
ChapterTHIRTY-THREE
“How blasted hard is it to string a hammock?” Harry was at his wit’s end with all the incompetence on this bloody ship. “And what sort of useless sailors have the Admiralty saddled me with if they all struggle to tie a decent knot?” Out of the seven hundred hammocks that had been delivered to the main deck yesterday, only two hundred fifty were secured in situ below it. “We have less than a blasted week before we set sail for Calais and at this rate, we won’t be bloody well ready!”
Lieutenant Gregson was wearing his semipermanent startled expression again as he tried to stutter a response. “Nobody is slacking, Captain—but there are only so many men you can have working in such a confined space together.”
“I suppose that’s going to be your pathetic excuse for the lack of powder and fuses on the lower gun deck too?” When Harry had expressly asked for that all to be ready today too. “I thought you were an experienced officer, Gregson? This isn’t good enough!”
“Lieutenant—if you wouldn’t mind giving us a moment.” Likea mother hen, Simpkins came to Gregson’s rescue by marching to Harry’s cabin door and ushering the startled fellow out. As the door slammed shut, his right-hand man folded his arms and glared. “If you don’t want to be the first captain in naval history to have a mutiny before you’ve left the dock, then you might want to curb your bleedin’ temper!”
“I beg your—” Before his outraged bluster became words, Simpkins began to jab the air between them with his finger.
“You are being an unreasonable pain in the arse! So unreasonable, I’m this close to telling you to shove your job where the sun don’t shine and walking myself.” He held his finger and thumb an inch apart. “Therefore, I strongly suggest you either take the thorn out of your paw, accept it’s over, and start behaving like the sort of captain who deserves his crew’s respect, or you go to bloody London to try and sort things out with that woman of yours! Whichever it is, you need to stop torturing the rest of the world because she chose to leave you! Although frankly, with the way you are behaving lately, I don’t blame Georgie in the slightest!”
Simpkins slammed out and left Harry fuming that Georgie had even been mentioned when as far as he was concerned, her name was banned.
Forbidden!
Taboo!
