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Chapter 11
But in a surprising turn of events, Percy flicked his eyes towards her and curtly nodded, but then said, “Wait right here.” He rose from his chair, and Lydia watched him interrupt the conversation between Arthur and Georgiana. To her surprise, Georgiana did not seem that disappointed and came away from their interaction with ease. She followed her brother back to the area where he had been sitting with Lydia, and Georgiana came to sit beside Percy.
“Lydia Seymour,” Percy said when he sat back down, “allow me to introduce to you my younger sister, Georgiana.”
Lydia gave Georgiana a welcoming smile and responded, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you!”
Georgiana, however, did not seem as delighted to be meeting Lydia. “Only bad things, I assume, if my brother has been telling you about me,” Georgiana grumbled, not looking up at Lydia at all.
“Why on earth would you think that?” Lydia asked kindly. “He’s been telling me what a vivacious, interesting person you are.”
Georgiana finally glanced up at Lydia, to check and see if she was being serious, which she was. Then, she looked to her brother. “So, you rave about me to everyone else, but you still treat me like a child?” Georgiana asked petulantly. “If you really thought I was all of those things, then why can’t you trust me to make my own decisions?”
Percy looked mirthfully at Lydia and then turned his attention back to his sister. “Because,” he began, leaning in towards her more, “sometimes your vivacity and natural inclination towards seeking out all of life’s most interesting experiences leaves me to clean up the mess you leave in your wake. And while I want you to experience all of the best things that life has to offer, I need you to take responsibility for your actions and understand the impact that they have on others.”
Both young women were silent for a few moments after that miniature speech from Percy. Lydia couldn’t be sure of how Georgiana felt, but Lydia knew that she was thoroughly impressed by the way in which Percy had maturely and seriously spoken to his sister. It was the perfect combination of understanding and chastising, and Lydia couldn’t have been more impressed by him.
When she looked at Georgiana out of the corner of her eye finally, she saw that the speech seemed to have had the same effect on her. Georgiana no longer looked like a fussy child; she now looked impressed by him.
“All right, brother, I suppose that I will allow you to speak to me in that way this time, but don’t think you’ll be so lucky the next time. By the way, I do believe that the Countess of Duvernay has spied you, and she is looking to speak with you. Otherwise, she appears to be trying to signal you with some sort of strange code,” Georgiana commented.
Both Percy and Lydia looked up at the same time and saw that the countess was indeed looking at him in a strange manner and flitting her hands this way and that. Percy looked back at Lydia, and she immediately knew that he was not excited about speaking with the countess. However, as it was his duty, he stood up, looked apologetically at Lydia and his sister, and said, “I shall return as soon as I can.”
Lydia watched him walk away very slowly, almost as though his desire to stay and speak with her and his sister was physically pulling him back. But then when he met up with the countess, his sense of social duty seemed to return, and he suddenly seemed completely unbothered to be speaking with the society lady.
“I don't envy his duty, and I do feel rather badly for him, but I must admit that I am rather happy to have the chance to speak with you alone,” Georgiana surprisingly commented to Lydia.
“You are?” Georgiana asked. “Why ever is that?”
Georgiana raised an eyebrow at her. “You act as if I haven’t taken notice of the attention that my brother has been paying you,” she said. “I have not seen Percy take anything more than a polite interest in a woman … ever. And now he’s suddenly seeking you out at every social gathering, and sneaking off to speak with you privately whenever he can get the chance.”
Lydia scoffed, but then remembered who it was she was talking to and stopped. “I can certainly understand why you would be inclined to believe such things about Percy and me,” Lydia replied, “but I can assure you that Percy and I are nothing more than friends. We’ve only really known each other for about a month, and so …”
“Onlyreallyknown each other?” Georgiana interrupted. Lydia’s heart skipped a beat when she realized the error that she’d made. “What do you meanreally?”
“Oh, I was ... I merely meant ... Uhm ...” Lydia heard herself stuttering as she madly tried to think of a lie to feed to Georgiana. She had only just met her, and she couldn’t possibly reveal her almost life-long crush she’d had on Georgiana’s brother.
But Georgiana was looking at her with such an expression of kindness that she immediately felt at ease around her. “Miss Seymour,” she said generously, “if there is anything that you are holding back with me about your relationship with my brother, I should tell you that you have nothing to fear. Not only am I the disappointment of the family, and so I am sure I have done much worse than what you are about to reveal to me, but I also happen to be a vault of secrets. Anything that you reveal to me will not be uttered aloud ever again, and especially not to Percy.”
Lydia couldn’t help chuckling at Georgiana calling herself a disappointment. “I know for a fact that you are not a disappointment in your brother’s eyes, Miss Georgiana if you don’t mind me calling you that.” Georgiana waved her hand at Lydia, letting her know that she did not mind being called Miss Georgiana one bit. “And I very much appreciate the reassurance that you would not mention anything I told you to anyone, but I’m afraid I cannot elaborate on what I said. I would be positively mortified to reveal that to anyone.”
This, however, seemed to be exactly what Georgiana had wanted to hear. She clapped excitedly and leaned in closer to Lydia. “Miss Seymour …”
“Please, feel free to call me Lydia,” she interrupted.
Georgiana gave her a pleased smile. “Lydia. I will have you know that I have done so many embarrassing things in my life that I have become better acquainted with the feeling than anyone else I know. Please, please let me know that I am not alone in my embarrassment and share yours with me?”
Georgiana clasped her hands together in a begging formation and contorted her face so severely that she looked like she would absolutely die if Lydia did not tell her her embarrassing secret. And so, after some more consideration, she decided that she could trust Georgia and launched into a light re-telling of how she had felt for Percy when she was younger.
When Lydia finished, Georgiana looked somewhat disappointed. “Oh,” she said quietly. “I thought you were going to tell me of some youthful dalliance that you and Percy had together, for that would have been much more exciting.”
Lydia laughed, surprised. “I’m terribly sorry for disappointing you,” she said jokingly. “I’m afraid that I’m a boringly well-behaved young woman.”
Georgiana flicked her head in Lydia’s direction, her eyes alight with mischief and her hands gripping both arms of the chair. “We could change that!” she said excitedly, and then both young women dissolved into laughter.
When they finally managed to collect themselves, Lydia looked over to see how Percy was doing. His polite societal exterior was beginning to falter, and he was looking increasingly bored by the second. Lydia desperately wanted to go over there and rescue him from his conversation, but she knew that she had no place interrupting a duke and a countess, just as she felt she had no place dreaming of a handsome duke courting her.
As if she was reading her thoughts, Georgiana suddenly piped up, “He doesn’t give two figs about class and all of that, you know.”
