Page 45 of Lessons for Marquesses
Her aunt laughed. “Perhaps you should keep it, dear. All this. For your children.”
“Georges don’t have children.”
“Georgianas do. Anas do.”
George, Georgiana, Ana. Mr. Wolf’s rebuke pricked at her skin like needles.
“One day, you might marry,” her aunt said.
Georgiana clicked her tongue. “One doesn’t have to be married to have children.” She kissed her aunt’s scandalized cheek. “Allow I know a goodly sum on breeding and the assumption it applies to humans as well as horses and goats and cows.”
“That is not polite talk.”
“Well. I shall bite my cheek and keep it to myself.”
She’d keep it all inside. Complaining was a weakness she could ill-afford for the energy it demanded when she required every ounce to simply get through each day.
In deference to Charlotte’s sentimentality, she agreed not to auction away the nursery. After a luncheon of cold chicken and asparagus, the post arrived. Oliver would be at Farendon by Friday. Caroline expressed a desire to visit Farendon and hold a ball.
To Caroline, Georgiana replied she would be away until the end of June, because she could not afford a ball nor stomach the idea of perfection gracing her home as it dwindled to nothing. And if Mr. Wolf arrived, which she doubted after their last meeting, he’d not care a fig for teaching her. He’d be too occupied with basking in Caroline’s beauty.
Next, she sent off a letter to Julian in the event Caroline pressed for a ball. Only Julian could stop his sister, Kitty had oft counseled. And without footmen, without the money to feed her guests or decorate the house, Georgiana’s dire situation would be known to everyone.
Mr. Wolf was five days overdue when Mr. James Christie of London arrived at Farendon with a cavalcade of carts to take away Georgiana’s furnishings. The auctioneer was all courtesy, the sort of man one felt they had been acquainted with their entire life.
“An outstanding home,” Mr. Christie said upon entering. “And the prospect is incomparable.”
Yes, Lord Eastwick thinks so, too.“Thank you, sir. Shall we begin?”
“Perhaps,” Charlotte offered, “Mr. Christie, you wish for tea first, after your journey?”
Georgiana tried to be courteous, but after opining on the weather she gave up and concentrated on not hating Mr. Christie. Items needed selling, and he was more a savior than kidnapper. And what manners he had. While Charlotte bore the conversation graciously, he looked askance not once at Georgiana’s manly dress.
Oliver appeared at the sitting room like a hungry bear. “I carved out two hours for this between my work.” He conferred with his watch and snapped it shut. “We are ten minutes late.”
Mr. Christie set down his tea. Oliver led the way, limping up the stairs, tapping the first door, and scowling at the tacked paper reading1-Red Room.
Charlotte listed off the contents to be kidnapped because Georgiana, having lost her voice over tea, had not regained it. The assistant turned each piece to view its back, announced the maker and year. He opened drawers to examine the fittings. Mr. Christie proclaimed each piece’s quality with the elocution and perfect pitch of an opera tenor.
Oliver squinted at every compliment.
With seven minutes left, they concluded their tour, meeting in the study where piles of Oliver’s parliamentary labors covered the mean table that substituted for the desk she had previously sold.
Mr. Christie’s gaze traced the outline on the carpet, the fibers still crushed where the desk had been.
“A desk,” Oliver grumbled. “Henry VIII sat at it during a progress.”
The auctioneer took a slip of paper from his assistant. “Lord Acomb, I intend to advertise your offerings extensively before the sale to ensure the highest possible attendance and will set the date for the twenty-eighth of June.”
Georgiana grit her teeth at the assumption they were Oliver’s offerings. “Is it possible to have the sale before then?”
Mr. Christie nodded. “Miss St. Clair, I understand your desire to have this matter completed.” He turned back to Oliver. “I will ensure that prospective buyers are aware of the Eastwick lineage, the history of the furnishings and portraiture. There are a quite a few pieces and portraits requiring further research on their origins, so we might attract those with the ability to pay the most.”
The auctioneer wrote a draft. Oliver, near the end of his patience, picked it from his hand.
“Two hundred and forty pounds,” Mr. Christie said. “Though, less our fee of eight percent, we expect the total to be between fifteen hundred and three thousand.”
The best she could hope for was ten percent of her debt. If she won the match race, if she hadn’t lost Mr. Wolf, she would still owe twenty thousand pounds.
