Page 82 of Ladies in Hating
“Mama,” Georgiana murmured. The name felt strange on her lips—she had not said it since childhood. None of them had.
There had been no authority for her mother to appeal to. The laws had been on Alistair Cleeve’s side. Georgiana could still recallthe way she’d listened at the door when her mother had spoken, tearfully, to the rector, the day after Alistair had nearly broken her wrist.
The rector had told Edith to stop sinning if she did not wish to feel the rod.
“I told myself that I was doing the right thing by remaining there,” Edith went on. “By letting the three of you grow up with every advantage. Withsecurity.But in truth I think—I think that I was afraid. Of how difficult it would be. That you would come to despise me, if I took you all away. Oh, Georgie. I was afraid of everything then.” Edith ran her thumb lightly across Georgiana’s knuckles. “But you have always been so much braver than I.”
Georgiana drew back from her mother’s words. “Me?”
“I have never been so proud of anything as I was when I saw you stand up to your father in the library,” Edith said quietly. “For all the times you told me that you meant to live independently, I don’t think I truly believed it was possible until that moment.” She breathed out, the barest hint of a laugh. “And I was proud of—myself, too, I think. That you should be mine, and that some part of your courage must have come from me.”
“I was so afraid,” Georgiana whispered. “That day.”Every day.
“I know.” Edith stroked the top of Georgiana’s knee. “You had meant to publish five more books first. You had it all worked out. I remember.”
“Not—that. Not the money.” Though she’d feared that too, of course. They both had. “I was afraid that you would come to regret it.”
Edith turned more sharply toward her. “Regret what?”
“Leaving Woodcote. Choosing to stay with me.”
The words felt strung tight, vibrating like a wire in the air.For how long had she kept that notion in her chest, curled and protected in some shadowed corner she did not like to look at?
Years. Years and years of speechless guilt and regret.
But somehow, it was not beyond her power to speak. Not now. Not like this, with her mother’s hand on her knee, and her eyes pinned to Bacon, and her heart too raw for anything but truth.
This was the core of her fear: that she would lead the people she loved into a disaster of their own choosing. That the people who cared for her would be too loyal and foolhardy to disentangle themselves from the hurt that Georgiana had caused.
That she would love too much, too ferociously—and that her love would bring nothing but pain.
To her mother. To Percy.
To Cat.
“My darling,” Edith said, “I have never regretted it. Not for one single moment.”
The words landed like a feather. Like a knife. She realized she was crying again, a sharp burn in her eyes and nose. “Not even when—when we could only afford tallow candles?”
Edith laughed, very softly, at the memory. “And I did not know how to use them? And I spilled wax all over my dress, and I smelled like a charnel house for weeks?”
“And the”—her own voice was a trifle hysterical—“and the room kept filling up with smoke and we could not sort out how to open the windows?”
Edith laughed again, softly, lightly, and then her eyes came to rest on Georgiana’s face, and she sobered. “Not even then. Oh, my darling, not even then. I had only fortitude to offer you, and so I gave it. But you were like a torch—so brilliant and ardent in your vision of the future that everyone who knew you believed in it too.”
Her mother’s face was so familiar, like looking into a glass.
But her words did not feel familiar. They felt astonishing—like some great new physics that Georgiana could not get her mind around.
“You saw the future you wanted,” her mother went on, “and you brought it into being. Despite your fear. Despite the risk. I only followed your light.”
Edith’s words felt both true and not true. Georgianahadwrested herself free of the path laid out by society. By her father. She had dragged herself through sheer stubborn force of will into independence.
But had she not, by the same set of decisions, resigned herself to a life without love?
You saw the future you wanted, and you brought it into being. Despite your fear.
It sounded impossible. Her fears drove her onward; her fears were what ruled her life.
