Page 140 of Lessons for Marquesses
On the drive, Georgiana heaved her trunk into the cart with her belongings. She helped Rupert lift the crate and withdrew a book from the top. One of her commonplace books on the horses.
“You missed ’em,” Rupert said. “I saw ’em on your desk.”
They were not her horses, she painfully reminded herself. But the pain was easing. That is, she told herself it was because there was nothing else to do about it. She lay in bed each night waiting for her heartache to end, knowing it would go on. Maybe it would never stop. And like entering the king’s presence room, every morning when she stepped right, her left followed. And soon she was doing what was required.
Nicholas hadn’t written her. She wasn’t surprised. Still, she rushed out anytime the postboy arrived. The good news was Nicholas had been exonerated. In this, Georgiana found solace.Her decision to stand in front of those people and destroy her chance for love had been the right one.
He was free now. He knew. The world knew.
Was Nicholas in Newmarket in his cottage upon the hill? Was he thankful he had avoided a lifelong association with her?
Georgiana averted her face from Rupert, wiping a tear away on her sleeve. She retrieved the rest of the commonplace books and carried them upstairs to the master’s chamber. She placed them on the desk, and there she knew what had to be done. What she did not want to do.
She opened the empty desk drawer.
Her throat tightened. Nicholas had takenThe Odyssey.When would he come for the Margate Ruby? When he had found another woman to be his wife, to love, to spend his life with, to have his children?
The night Nicholas and she had loved, they had decided on at least four, if God so willed it.
She pressed her hand to the bottom of the drawer. It was in love, this hand. It had held Nicholas, caressed him, hit him, and marveled at the feel of him.
She threaded the ruby ring from her finger. This would be the end. There would be no reason for him to ever see her again. She held on. She shouldn’t hold on.
She closed her eyes.
And let it go.
With a keening sob of no sound, only substance, she shoved the drawer shut before she could change her mind and fled the room.
Charlotte called to her from the Yellow Room, but she could not stop. She had to make distance from the ring. Rushing outside, she escaped to the only place promising relief.
In the stable block, a groom watered the horses. Everything looked exactly the same. Clean, swept stone. Polished steel locks.And it smelled the same. Sweet hay and warm musk. She went to Minion and looped her arms about her mare. Her Minny felt the same, muscled horse flesh and sleek hair for summer.
Everything was the same. Except Georgiana.
“I’ll be back for you, Minny. Soon. Be nice to the marquess.”
“Miss?” Rupert shuffled behind her.
Georgiana squeezed her eyes dry. “What is it?”
“The pirate’s back. Loiterin’ under the beech.”
Georgiana turned to her old butler. “The pirate?”
“Aye. You want me to scare him off?”
First, Rupert couldn’t scare anyone off unless crotchety glares were weapons. Second, what was a pirate doing under a beech tree in Huntingdonshire?
“I’ll tend to it,” she said at length.
Rupert drew up, now only slightly stooped. “You wantin’ me to come with?”
“No, I am certain I can manage the pirate.”
He harrumphed and followed her anyway as she left the yard, which meant she had to slow her steps for courtesy’s sake. This in turn made Rupert walk even slower because he had been exerting himself to his limits prior.
“You got a weapon?” asked Rupert, his shoes scratching unevenly over the turf.
