It was this particular young woman’s habit to sing as she worked, in her clear-pitched Welsh lilt; there was seldom any pleasure to be had in domestic drudgery unless it was eased by musical accompaniment. She consoled herself as she ran a white dustcloth over the already irreproachably clean surface of a handsome chest of drawers by humming a soft tune, almost under her breath. But ah, her emotions were so swelled by the time she reached the familiar refrain that she could not help a little line from slipping out, trilling sweetly across the luxuriant expanse of space.
“Mae'i gwallt yn felyn aur –”
But a disgruntled sound, coming from the window seat just out of view, compelled her to cut her aria short. An angry noise, rather like a heavy book being dropped on the floor, followed it like an echo.
A ruddy flush rose to the chambermaid’s cheeks, and she quickly turned to the vanity table to busy herself with the array of objects scattered impatiently over it. But how odd: besides all the expensive powders, rouges and perfumes, lay three plain sheets of paper and a cast-iron inkwell. Her wary hand lifted the inkwell, examining the curiosity carefully.
“Leave that where it is,” clipped an imperious tongue. Lady Huntingdon had emerged from her reading seat, and held her golden head at a regal height as she approached the chambermaid. Her nose wrinkled in derision at the sight of the thin, dark girl who, if given the chance, seemed likely to cower in the nearest corner.
“I thought domestics were taught never to be seen nor heard.”
With a shaky hand, the maid set down the seemingly misplaced inkwell immediately. Georgiana watched as the chambermaid dusted the cluttered surface half-heartedly, before curtseying and hurrying away quickly.
The young lady of circumstance inflated a sigh. Evidently the witless girl could see no reason that a table which had the primary function of reassuring a lady’s vanity by stocking her every cosmetic need should bear the instruments of letter writing. It seemed the lack of a genuine writing desk in the room had slipped past her feeble mind completely.
It was not unheard of, even in these days, for a woman’s room to be lacking a writing desk, but it was almost universally deemed a notion most backward, a situation to be avoided if financial means made it at all possible.
But Georgiana had refused to take up the complaint with Henry. She stepped quickly into the void left by the maid’s hurried departure, seated herself on the linen-covered stool, and took up the pen. Hunched between the feminine paraphernalia which cluttered three edges of the vanity, she began to write.
She had tolerated a multitude of grievances from this dismally under-furnished house, but she would not, could not, tolerate the absence of a writing desk.
Her mouth became more resolutely set in its characteristic childish moue as her pen scratched the most eloquent complaint to Lord Torrington that she could devise, given her fourteen years of literacy. Her education had been modest, in that Sir Edmund could only afford a tutor of a rather humble reputation, but she had tried to express interest in all the ‘great’ literature of which Sir Edmund spoke with all the solid articulacy of an academic. As such, she had read many a great work without truly understanding it, or whatever meaning she did derive was only in relation to her own (deeply limited) experience. That Georgiana could only relate to poets who spoke of the pleasure that could be found in material possessions, and perhaps of the dignified splendour of the English countryside, was a flaw which was known to her tutors, though seldom remarked upon.
By the time Mrs Boyle had returned from the quick repast which Georgiana had refused, she was almost finished with her complaint. As the young lady set about ending the letter with the usual empty pleasantries, of how Bath was so diverting, and how there was always something to be said and done, Mrs Boyle ‘indulged’ her in details of the casual meal which she had missed.
“You truly ought to have joined us. Cook served the nicest cold luncheon in the world – cold beef and mustard, sandwiches and cake. It was all very excellent. I have always said I prefer such simple fare to the most elaborate of banquets.”
“I do not take luncheon,” declared Georgiana lightly, still bent over her letter. “We are not farmers that we should need to take sustenance between breakfast and dinner!”
Blithely, Mrs Boyle ignored her charge’s sour mood, shutting the door behind her and seating herself with little effort upon the low pouffe by the foot of the bed. Admittedly, the bed was rather narrower than she might have expected of a house at Queen Square, but Georgiana was not all that wide herself, and would have no difficulty with a narrow bed. And the poor girl’s snappishness was no doubt due to nerves; unfortunate enough to have been raised at the very edge of Dartmoor, she had never attended a gathering as large and grand as the assembly which had been scheduled for the evening.
Mrs Boyle knew, of course, that good society was a principle means of curing a young lady of self-centred pride, and to aid in the formation of manners which became such a lofty station in life. She hoped that the sheltered childhood which had marked such a (dare she conceive it?) conceited spirit in Georgiana would, in its absence, bring about a profound change in her conduct.
Consequentially, she was extremely glad that the Duke of Argyll was hosting the Assembly – and somehow had seen it fit that Lady Huntingdon should be invited. Mrs Boyle, who could only aspire to the company of country gentry, could not understand the obscure substratum workings of Bath’s more eminent, pedigreed society. She suspected, her uncomplicated mind grasping at these mysterious ways, that news of the Earl of Torrington’s niece’s first season at Bath had preceded their arrival.
Thus lost in all the usual concerns of a chaperone leading her charge to her debut, Mrs Boyle did not hear a knock and an impatient cough at the door until Georgiana spoke.
“Oh! If it is that ridiculous chambermaid, I shall send her away at once,” she announced impatiently.
“I’ll see who it is,” said the elder lady as Georgiana made to get up. The chaperone easily guessed the nature of the letter without making any inquiries, and she would not have such an imperative correspondence interrupted so easily – particularly as it was so near completion.
Logically, Mrs Boyle expected that it was indeed the parlour maid at the door, or perhaps the Lyttleton sisters. Instead, when she pulled it open by a sliver, her soft grey eye was met by a deep brown one. And that deep brown eye blinked once.
“Ah. Pardon for the intrusion, Mrs Boyle,” spoke Mr Henry Lyttleton. “I was hoping to have a word with Lady Georgiana.”
“Mr Lyttleton!” cried the chaperone, struck briefly by the impropriety of a gentleman showing himself at the door of a young woman’s bedroom. “You should have just sent a servant up! But of course, at once. Come, my dear, Mr Lyttleton wants a word.”
***
“Are you fond of reading?” asked Mr Lyttleton as they progressed along the short gallery which connected the hall with the library.
Georgiana’s eyes, which had been previously fixed on the series of rather gaudy paintings of Venetian scenes which adorned the walls, did not alter their focus at Mr Lyttleton’s question. She merely raised the arch of her eyebrows by an added fraction, and fixed her attention more closely on the coarsely visible brushstrokes on the sky of one particular painting of a pair of silly young women draped over the edge of a gondola, accompanied by a gentleman who evidently thought that such conduct was not at all dangerous nor in the least out of the ordinary.
She pursed her lips, wishing with the most urgent sincerity that Henry was perceptive enough to observe such an obvious sign of displeasure. “I do read sometimes.” Though not, she refrained from adding, as much as your ridiculous sisters.
Henry appeared to have missed the indifference in her voice entirely, along with the threat of her expression, for his voice was bright, and his swarthy sailor’s countenance much relieved of its previous anxiety. “Would you like to take a turn in the library? I am most curious about your taste in books, as we have not read together since we were but children.”
Georgiana’s mind, numb with the most unpalatable imaginings of the outpouring of Henry’s affection and attachment to her, could think of no reasonable excuse for refusing. Retaining a careful air of diffidence, she nodded her reply.
For all the house’s shortcomings, the library was surprisingly well-stocked, with books covering almost all four sides of a modestly sized chamber. They ambled at a ludicrously slow pace along the first shelf, as Henry ran his eye across the length of available titles, as his companion chewed her lip and wished Mrs Boyle had not been so remiss in her duties and refused to accompany them. But since her chaperone was not able to provide them with diverting small talk at the present time, Georgiana realised that she would need to take on the unpleasant task herself.
“Were all these books part of the house?”
“Yes. The house in its entirety, library, furnishings, servants, belongs to Captain Grieve. The Captain, I hear, is considered by some an arbiter of taste, but he has run into some financial misfortunes in recent times which have compelled him to lease his residence in Bath: a Scottish bank in which he had invested the greater part of his income in was forced to close without a single shilling given to any of its investors.”
“Oh! That is too vulgar to be heard. As Lord Torrington will tell you, finances are irrelevant to genteel people.”
“Yes. Yes they are indeed,” Henry acquiesced, as an uncomfortable silence descended on them again. He continued to stare at the shelves as though with great interest, though his unwavering gaze indicated that his eyes did not see the books actively, while she studied the scuffed floor with a concentration that outshone his. At length, Henry impulsively pulled out a narrow volume, the title of which Georgiana noticed was written in French. But before she could attempt to make it out, her cousin had hurriedly replaced it on the shelf, his eyes wide with alarm. As he pulled her further along the row by the arm, she wondered what on earth could be in Captain Grieve’s library that could provoke such panic in a man of three-and-twenty, who had undoubtedly witnessed great horrors at sea.
Georgiana wished that she had applied herself better to her lessons in the modern languages. But, to her credit, there had always been such a colossal burden of things to learn that it was quite unreasonable to be accomplished at all of them, and tutors were a heavy expense on Sir Edmund’s threadbare pockets.
Henry paused by the window. Owing to the regrettable fact that her arm was still held captive by his, she had no means of distancing herself.
“Your Ladyship. Georgiana.”
Lady Huntington frowned, desperate in her hope that some unlikely means of escape might reveal itself.
“I believe it is appropriate in some cases to speak with candour about one’s feelings –”
“Only the simple need be candid, Mr Lyttleton. I myself see no necessity to speak anything plainly,” she interjected quickly. Her words were met by the perplexed blinks of Henry’s dark eyelashes. His gaze flickered towards the window, and the dull view of Queen Square below, his mouth forming an anxious line.
“I am afraid I must persist. I have not been entirely truthful about my intentions in Bath. And you must know...”
Georgiana looked up as Henry’s forthcoming confession faltered, and she was relieved to see that his eyes were turned towards the doorway. The cause for the well-timed interruption was the gradual progression of eager female voices along the gallery, and before long, they were close enough for the exact words of their animated conversation to be made out easily.
“...didn’t know you were reading Udolpho again! Oh isn’t Valancourt spectacular!”
“I simply read his entrance over and over! And how he places Emily’s injuries before his own...”
“How he must love her! Could you imagine, Harry, anybody feeling the same way!”
The giggling pair halted abruptly as they entered the library (as the sight of a solitary couple standing by a window might do to anyone – whether they be related or otherwise). Harriet barely stifled the gasp that threatened to slip past her facade of composure, while Louisa’s face turned an ashen hue, and she gripped her sister by the arm. “Well I can scarce believe it...”
Georgiana granted all three of her cousins poisonous, contemptuous glares, before turning herself out of the library forthwith. She set the quickest possible course for her bedroom, intending to announce to Mrs Boyle that it was high time that they were preparing for the Assembly. Indecorousness, at times, could prove itself a necessity.
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