“No woman wants a husband she has had to nail to a cross before he will put a ring on her finger.”
Harry tickled Cuthbert’s ears while he pondered that. “Then you think I can fix it if I tell her I’d happily resign my commission for her?”
Flora shook her head. “I honestly think that you are approaching your quandary all wrong as, from where I am sitting, there are two things at play here.” At his confused expression, she steepled her fingers on the desk. “The first is how you are going to convince Georgie to marry you after your spectacularly awful doomed-to-fail first proposal.”
“And the second?”
“Is what you actually want to do about the navy. The emphasis is onyouthere, baby brother, as whatever that is has to come from you. It cannot be someone else’s decision. Someone else’s fault. It is your career and only you know if you are truly happy with the way it is going.” She reached across the table to pet Cuthbert. “Does it honestly fulfill you? Feel like an adventure still?”
“You and your blasted stupid adventures! Not everything needs to be an adventure, Flora!”
“It doesn’t—but not everything should feel like a chore either!” Oh, how he loathed when his reliably illogical sister spouted irrefutable logic! “Does the navy still excite you, baby brother? For that is the crux of this.”
“I’ve got a flagship and in a year or so I’ll be commodore.” Why did neither thing elicit any excitement whatsoever?
“Those are the current circumstances—not the answer.”
She was right. Devil take her. “The problem is, I have been so overworked at the Admiralty, I don’t seem to have the energy to be enthused by my promotion. My feelings for Georgie have only exacerbated that. And, I suppose, have muddied the waters.”
Flora, of course, wasn’t going to let him get away with that tired and convenient explanation. “Your dissatisfaction with the navy began long before Georgie came into your life. I’m not convinced you’ve been happy in it for at least three years, maybe longer. In fact, and please don’t bite my head off because I know you are convinced that the navy is your life, I think you fell out of love with it pretty quickly after the admiral passed. Maybe even before. Hardly a surprise, when it washisdream you were living.” Flora pulled a face, clearly expecting an explosion, and she almost got it.
Except…
“Elizabeth came to visit me on the ship today, and claimed…” He laughed to prepare his sister for how ridiculous it was. “That the old man forced her into abandoning our engagement. Even went as far into threatening to ruin her if she didn’t, and then claimed he promoted her idiot husband as a bribe to marry her instead.”
Flora’s eyes widened—but far too briefly to give him any comfort. “As much as I hate, loathe, and have always despised that two-faced, two-timing gorgon Elizabeth, I wouldn’t have put it past him. You were pretty set on leaving the navy then, as I recall, and hedidthreaten to have you thrown in the brig if you took the shore leave you were due to get married.” She frowned, thoughtful. “Then he punished you anyway by taking away your first ship.”
“No—somebody else did.” Harry scoffed at that. “He fought tooth and nail to get me that ship, so it makes no sense that he would threaten Elizabeth with ruination for ruining my naval career, then ruin it for me regardless.”
“Mama didn’t think so. She was convinced it was exactly the sort of lesson the controlling old curmudgeon would have taught you to keep you under his thumb, because he was cruel that way, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Because it made no sense! The admiral always championed my career. I wouldn’t have been offered a second ship the following year if he hadn’t pushed for it.”
“And thereby guaranteeing your indebtedness to him ever after.” Her lips flattened. “What better way to control you? He was one to rule with an iron fist and didn’t appreciate anyone daring to peek over the parapet to see the alternatives. Just look at how he treated our mother after she went against him to marry Papa. He withdrew her dowry and never wasted a single opportunity to remind her of hermistake, despite the fact that she and Papa were blissfully happy together.” Just as he had constantly reminded Harry of his foolish mistake with Elizabeth. “It never made any sense that a man with all the money he eventually left you would leave his only daughter and her family to struggle with crushing debt rather than put his hand in his deep pockets to alleviate some of it—yet we both know he did that. Worse, he then exploited you by using the family’s debts as a stick to beat you into submission with.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Didn’t he? You never showed an ounce of interest in either the sea or the navy when we were growing up. You preferred cricket andcreepy crawlies like Felix and had your heart set on academia like Papa, but once he had convinced you that you could earn enough to help pay the family’s mounting bills, you were a convert. He blackmailed you into the navy, Harry. Took advantage of your innate need to rescue and fix things, then did all he could to mold you into his image.” When he shook his head, it was her turn to scoff. “You began spouting all your plans to make admiral of the fleet at fifteen, and they weren’t the lofty, ill-thought-out plans of a boy, brother. They were solid and sensible plans that only someone with a solid and serious knowledge of the navy could have plotted so ruthlessly. He was living vicariously through you, because the admiral never had what it took to make admiral of the fleet.”
“Of course he did—and he would have been if he hadn’t stayed in Plymouth to fight the war against Napoleon.”
“Now I am going to call poppycock! He stayed in Plymouth because he had rubbed everyone else the wrong way during his short stint at the Admiralty and was asked to leave.”
“What proof do you have of that?”
“Beyond what Mama claimed, I don’t,” said his irritating sister before she prodded him with her finger. “Any more than I have any proof that he blackmailed Elizabeth into leaving you or took away your first ship to teach you a lesson. But it would be easy enough for you to find out with your rank, the connections, and the reputation of always finding all the answers nobody else can.” She sat back and positively glared. “And while you are on that quest for the truth, I suggest you take the woman you so clearly love out of the equation to take a long hard look at yourself to decide what it is that you really want out of life. As it occurs to me that it is long past time you stopped caring about what the admiral wanted and chose your next adventure based on your own dreams, for a change.”
ChapterTHIRTY-FOUR
Georgie had known the first of August was going to be hard, so had filled her day by relieving both Lottie and Miss P of most of their lessons. At least teaching this afternoon’s deportment class would take her mind off Harry and whatever trouble the navy was about to send him to. She knew that there was due to be a big fanfare on the Plymouth dockside when theBoadiceaset sail on its maiden voyage, because the details had made it into theLondon Tribune. Hardly a surprise when King George IV himself was going to be there to wave the new flagship off as it led out the fleet.
Lottie had been a brick during Georgie’s many hours of need this past month and, of course, so had Miss P. But she had spared her mentor all the most scandalous details of her short but eventful employment as the Pendleton children’s governess. Only Lottie knew that she had fallen head over heels with the children’s uncle and spent half a week in his bed. Miss P didn’t need to know that—but having her friend’s shoulder to cry on had meant the world.
As Lottie had never intended to go to heaven in a package markedUNOPENEDeither, she hadn’t judged Georgie for succumbingat all, but still understood why she had left. Out of solidarity, she only ever referred to Harry as “that blithering idiot” whenever Georgie’s cheery façade slipped, which it did every single evening after all the lessons were done and when it was just the pair of them alone in their bedchamber.
“If it was meant to be, he would have come and got you,” her friend had wisely said last night when the tears of resignation had flowed. “That he hasn’t means that it wasn’t and you were brave and courageous to call it first.”
Georgie did not feel particularly brave or courageous. She was too miserable and too heartbroken to feel particularly noble about her decision, and in her most desperate moments still wondered if she was actually the blithering idiot who should have asked him to stay.
