Page 66 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
Sarah regarded him with a gimlet eye, and Georgie was struck by how much he had missed her. She dressed in her usual subdued, although modishly tailored, dove gray. Her hair was smoothed into a sleek, dark coil. At a few years under forty, she exuded the sort of nonchalant gentility that made nobody question her origins. There were times when Georgie thought she was an even greater fraud than Jack and himself. “If you mean to act the part, you have to look the part,” she said.
Which was more or less what Georgie had told Lawrence time and again. “What part?”
“To start with, the part of a man who doesn’t lay abed for three days.”
Three days! He had been herethree days? His shock must have registered on his face, because Sarah responded, “You needed it. But now it’s time to get up.”
He sat, feeling weak as a kitten. “Did, ah, anyone call on me?” Pathetic, pathetic.
But Sarah didn’t go in much for pity. “No,” she said simply. “Jack said that your Lord Radnor was staying at Lady Standish’s townhouse but that he isn’t there with her anymore.”
That explained how Lawrence had gotten to London; getting a hermit, a small child, and an enormous mongrel to London would be child’s play for a woman who built batteries and applied for patents in her spare time. She could likely masquerade as Wellington and command armies, if that struck her fancy.
And now they had returned to Penkellis, leaving Georgie in London, where he belonged.
Sarah stepped out when the bath arrived. Georgie soaked until the water cooled, then shaved and dressed in the new clothes Sarah had laid out. She had been right, of course, in the annoying way that older sisters often were. He did feel better now that he was clean and tidy. When he glanced in the looking glass, he saw his usual reflection: a neat and gentlemanly sort of person, perhaps slightly pale and with traces of purplish circles still under his eyes, but nothing jarringly different from what he always saw in the mirror.
Had he expected to somehow look less like a swindler? More like a man stupidly, uselessly in love?
Sarah knocked and entered the room, bearing a tray of muffins.
“What am I going to do?” He wasn’t sure if he was asking his sister, his reflection, or neither.
“First, you’re going to eat something.”
He slowly chewed a few bites of muffin, gathering that they were not going to have a conversation until he complied. “I’ve, ah, burnt a few bridges.”
“I’d say you have.” She pulled a length of ribbon and embroidery floss from her pocket. “Jack’ll give you work, though.”
True. But Georgie had never wanted to be beholden to Jack, nor to anyone else. “It’s utterly humiliating,” he said.
“What is?” She didn’t look up from her stitching, which made it easier for Georgie to be honest.
“I’ve spent years scheming and lying, and now I haven’t anything to show for it. No work, no skills, no friends.” He was totally alone. “Only a trail of people I’ve hurt.”
Sarah was quiet a moment. “I ran into Lily Perkins the other day. She looks about a hundred. Hardly any teeth. Her boy was born the year after you, remember?”
Of course Georgie remembered Jimmy Perkins but didn’t know why Sarah was bringing him up. “He took the king’s shilling, I think?” Was Sarah suggesting that Georgie ought to have joined the army?
“He died last year in Waterloo. His friend, the boy with the red hair—”
“Jonas Smith.”
“Right. He was arrested for petty larceny. Transported. Nobody expects him to survive the journey. He has a wife and two daughters—God only knows what will become of them.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Was he supposed to feel guilty for not having tried to earn an honest living, or ashamed that he wasn’t reaping the consequences for his misdeeds?
“You didn’t have too many options. There wasn’t anyone to set you up as an apprentice, or teach you a trade. God knows you’re no saint, but throwing your lot in with Mattie Brewster wasn’t the worst thing you could have done.”
“I could have tried to become a clerk. I’m very good at sorting papers and keeping records, it turns out.” It was pitiful that this was the only honest talent he could name.
Sarah laid her work in her lap and looked steadily at him. “Why do you think you were good at what you did?”
He heard the past tense there and didn’t argue. “Good at swindling? Because of my natural distaste for honesty, I suppose,” he quipped.
“No, that’s not it,” she said seriously. “You like helping people. You like making them happy.”
“And then stealing their money.”
