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“Enough.”
Both her siblings immediately fell silent at the single word, spoken in the same imperious tone she had used when they were still children.
“I appreciate your concern—both of yours—but I need to speak for myself.” She addressed Reggie first. “I am not going to marry Tommy Pettigrew. I know that is disappointing to hear, but you must trust me to do what I think is best.”
“But Georgie—”
“No,” she said firmly. “If my reputation is ruined, then I’ll just have to bear it. But I will not marry again for anyone else’s benefit except my own.”
Reggie blanched at this. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come now, Reg,” Louisa huffed. “Did you think she married that horrible man because she was inlovewith him?”
Reggie, bewildered, looked between them. It was painfully clear that he had never thought about it at all. “I…I—”
Louisa cut him off. “Tell us the truth, Georgie. Iknowthere is more to it.”
Georgiana stared into her younger sister’s pleading eyes. For eight years she had carried this burden alone, and it had cost her even more than she had realized. But no more.
“Father came to me during my season,” she began. “Not long after you all came to visit. He had debts that were being unexpectedly called in after an investment did not work out as planned. He would have lost the house in Kent if he did not come up with the money quickly. And someone offered to help, but it came at a price.”
Louisa’s face fell. “Oh, don’t tell me.”
Her throat began to tighten at the sympathy in her sister’s voice. “I never thought of myself as the romantic type, but I suppose that was because I hadn’t ever been given the chance to decide. I had known from a young age that I would need to marry well. And I came to London to do just that. But then I…I…” She couldn’t make herself say the words. Just thinking them was painful enough.
“You met someone else,” Reggie supplied, as understanding dawned on his face. “Captain Harris.”
Georgiana had to turn away. She nodded. “When I learned of Father’s debts, I knew I couldn’t possibly accept him. Not without ruining things for the rest of you.”
“And Father simply agreed to this beastly proposition?” Reggie was more irate than she could ever remember seeing him.
“He didn’t have much of a choice. He needed to pay off the debts as fast as possible so as not to damage his reputation in financial circles. And it worked. He was able to pay back the viscount the next year.” But by then it was too late for Georgiana and Henry. “I have sometimes wondered if the viscount was the one who bought Father’s debts in the first place, so that I would be pressured into accepting him,” she added, voicing the theory she had been considering for many years now. “It was the same approach he used in his own business dealings.”
“My God,” Reggie murmured. “That’s diabolical.”
“And I certainly would never have married him under normal circumstances,” she continued, still piecing things together. “But he must have known how I felt about Captain Harris. And that he was running out of time…” Her brow furrowed as she thought back to those few hazy weeks. There was something she was missing. Something just out of reach.
“Georgie.” Her sister’s voice pulled her back to the present. She had asked a question.
“Hmm?”
“The captain. What will happen now?”
Georgiana attempted a casual shrug. “Nothing.”
“But you’ve both waited all this time.”
“And we have both changed a great deal since then,” she said gently. “Though we have developed a friendship of sorts.”
Georgiana couldn’t say more, and Henry’s secrets were certainly not hers to reveal.
She turned away from Louisa’s disappointed face and locked eyes with her brother. Reggie was giving her a skeptical look, but this time he kept his mouth shut.
Louisa had an errand to run in Piccadilly, so she was dropped off on the way to Pimlico. When the carriage finally reached Georgiana’s house, all she could think of was the long, lonely night that awaited her.
“You’re meeting with the solicitors tomorrow?” Reggie asked, breaking the heavy silence that had descended over the carriage since Louisa’s exit.
“Yes. But I’m thinking of canceling the expansion. Perhaps it isn’t the right time.”
