Page 23 of Scandal’s Daughter

Chapter 11

“Wherein a villain brings past and future scandals to darken our heroine’s life.”

Georgiana sat on the rock, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring into the distance. She’d come back to their meeting place every day for the past fortnight though she knew it was foolish. He was never coming back again.

Soon enough she would read the notice of his betrothal in the Gazette and even the faintest hope that her idiotic heart still clung to would be gone.

She scolded herself every morning that passed, telling herself severely that it wasn’t the least bit of good pining for something you knew you could never have and promising to put him out of her mind. And yet every afternoon she would call Conrad and retrace their footsteps to the exact same place. She just felt closer to him here than anywhere else, even though he was now miles away and perhaps already dallying with another pretty girl to chase the memory of her from his mind.

She swallowed hard as Conrad came bounding up to her and pushed his cold, wet nose under her arm, seeking attention.

“Yes, I think you miss him too, don’t you, love? He always made a fuss of you and was very obliging at throwing sticks.” She ruffled his chest with affection. “Yes, and I know he threw them a good deal farther than I did. I’m sorry for it, truly, but I do my best you know.” She prattled on in this fashion for a while until even Conrad grew bored and took himself off to dig out a rabbit hole.

With care she took out the necklace Beau had left her, letting the fine gold slide between her fingers as the little heart sat in her palm, glinting in the feeble sunlight of the afternoon. The weather was closing in, the trees almost bare now and all the autumn colour stripped from the countryside. She felt like every trace of her short-lived affair was being taken from her as the season died and the cold hand of winter passed over the landscape. For such a short time everything had been golden, but now it was dead and cold and lonely, and she didn’t know how she would endure it.

She tucked the heart back away and got to her feet, calling Conrad and walking back down towards the woods. She had the distance between here and the house to force a smile to her lips and drape the persona of Georgiana Bomford about her like a mantle, hiding the person she’d become since that fateful day in the cave. Because she wasn’t the same anymore. No matter that she tried to be.

Her world seemed small and confined and she chafed at the restrictions of her circumstances as she never had before. That was perhaps the worst of all, she thought. That he had made her so dissatisfied with her lot, when she knew she was most fortunate in every way.

With a sigh and a final scold, she turned the corner into the garden of her aunt and uncle’s house and paused as she noticed a fine carriage in the driveway. Her heart picked up speed. It was impossible surely? But her heart did not consider it impossible or unlikely and she burst through the front door at a run, straight into the anxious bosom of the grey-haired housekeeper, Mrs Gurney.

“Oh, thank goodness, child! Wherever have you been? I’ve been looking high and low, and the house is all at sixes and sevens. Now go on upstairs, Clara is waiting for you. She’s got out your best cambric, the pale rose, oh do hurry, Georgiana!”

“B-but who is here, Gurney?” she stammered, her heart thudding too hard to allow her fevered brain to make sense of it.

“Your uncle, Baron Dalton is here!” she hissed, flapping her hands to hurry Georgiana up the stairs.

For a moment the disappointment was so acute that she could do nothing but stare at Mrs Gurney and try to breathe through the pain in her chest.

“Well don’t just stand there like a gudgeon, love,” pleaded the older woman, flapping her apron at her in agitation. “You must go and make yourself presentable.”

“I have an uncle?” Georgiana said, as Gurney put a hand in the small of her back and physically pushed her up the stairs.

“That you do,” Gurney replied, sounding as though she’d found a weevil in the flour bin.

“Who is he and what’s he doing here?” Georgiana demanded, still too shaken to put enough effort into wondering why she hadn’t known she had another uncle.

Gurney hustled her through the door of her bedroom where Clara pounced on her and the two women wrestled her out of her walking dress between them.

“He’s your Aunt Jane’s elder brother, and my ma always told me if you can’t say no good about a body, best keep your tongue between your teeth.”

This rather bold statement from Gurney made it clear to Georgiana that not only did Mrs Gurney not like her new uncle, but neither did Aunt Jane and Uncle Joseph. Gurney would never have ventured such an opinion of one of her relations if she didn’t know full well that her mistress's sentiments were of like mind, and this was no doubt why he’d never been mentioned before. She assumed that this was one of the heartless relations who had cast off her Aunt Jane when she had chosen to marry for love.

So, once she was primped and tidied to Gurney’s satisfaction, it was with no small measure of trepidation she went to meet her new relation. Knowing what she did about how coldly her aunt’s family had treated her when she married Uncle Joseph it was with no expectation of liking the man, she found in the drawing room that she opened the door. It didn’t take her long to realise that she’d misjudged the situation.

Her uncle, the baron, was a tall, severe man, with an autocratic manner. His dress was obviously of the best quality and he bore himself like a duke, looking around the room with distaste and like there was a bad smell lingering somewhere close by. He had perhaps been a handsome man in his youth as he was well made with a fine straight nose and a strong jaw. But every line of a cruel and avaricious nature seemed to Georgiana to be etched clearly on a face she found devoid of the kinder human emotions.

Indeed, when her poor aunt, who was clearly in a state of great agitation, jumped to her feet as Georgiana entered the room and made to introduce them, the way he looked her over made her blood boil.

“As I feared,” he said with a sniff. “You are the image of your mother.”

Georgiana glanced at her aunt who had clearly been crying and was clutching a handkerchief in one clenched hand and her vinaigrette in the other.

“It’s true, you are,” Aunt Jane said smiling at her, before shooting a look of intense dislike at her brother. “She was such a beauty, you see.”

“A pity she was also a whore.”

Both Georgiana and Aunt Jane jumped in shock at the cruel vulgarity of his words.