A Daring Liaison(68)

Georgiana noted his reddened eyes and his flushed cheeks. Whatever Caroline had written him had affected him deeply.

Charles saw his state, too, and interceded. “We really must be going, Carlington. Much to do tomorrow, you know.”

“Oh, of course. Well, thank you for coming.” He led them toward the door. “Lovely visit. And I was quite pleased to read Caroline’s letter after all these years. Still the most beautiful script. She had a very fine hand, did she not, Georgiana?”

“Yes. I think she was a bit vain about it.”

He laughed. “I recall. I used to peek over her shoulder when she’d write in her little journals. She’d shoo me away and say that her scribblings were not meant for men. Did she keep them up, my dear? Those little diaries?”

“Every day, though I wondered what she could possibly have to say when our lives were so quiet.”

Carlington cleared his throat as a footman opened the door for them. “If there is nothing too personal, I’d like to read them. I would be interested in what her days were like. And her nights.”

Georgiana blinked back her tears. She had not thought of her aunt’s journals since she’d died. In fact, she could not remember her aunt writing in them at all after their last return to Kent. Perhaps there were some in the attic at the town house. She would have to read them first, of course, to make certain there was nothing that would compromise Caroline’s dignity.

“I will look for them, Lord Carlington. If I should find one or two fit for male eyes, I will be glad to share them.”

He took her hand and squeezed it in gratitude. “I shall look forward to it.”





Chapter Fifteen




Once Georgiana had finished bathing, Clara dressed her hair into a Grecian knot from which curls were left to dangle down her back, and made shooing motions with her hands. “Go on with you, now! You will only get in my way. Mind you, do not muss yourself. This is your wedding day. Just sit somewhere and look pretty.”

Georgiana slipped a modest gown over her head and left her room, noting the whirlwind of activity everywhere in the house. Charles’s servants had arrived and were busily crating the belongings she would take with her. And, in a matter of hours, she would be married again.

Fear was growing in her and she was near panic. The closer the wedding, the closer Charles could be to death. How could she go through with it? How could she marry him without telling him the truth of her birth?

One of Charles’s servants passed her in the foyer with a muffled apology and she knew she would have to find someplace quiet to think. She turned and went back upstairs to the attic. The windows were still uncovered and it didn’t look as though anything had been disturbed since the last time she’d been up here just before Charles evicted Hathaway.

One of the opened trunks was a small one she thought might contain her aunt’s—no, her mother’s, journals. She had never looked in that trunk, respecting Caroline’s privacy, but Hathaway had had no such qualms. She fingered the latch and noted that the lock had been forced. What could he have been looking for?

She sat on the bare floor, lifted the little trunk into her lap and began removing the journals to take stock. Each one bore dates on the inside covers but they were out of order. She found one that began when Caroline was away at school with Lady Aston. By matching the date of the last entry of one journal to the date on the insider cover of another, she put them in order and found that only a few were missing. Perhaps they were back in Kent, perhaps never written. Surely Hathaway had not taken them. What use would he have for such things? She searched for the dates she knew by heart. The year that she was born was missing, but she found the one from three years later when Lady Caroline had brought her home from Cornwall.

Oh, she was full of “duty” and “obligation,” but there was no mention made of love. She was reported to have been “an amiable child, not overly fussy or demanding.” She had “cheered the servants after the bleakness following father’s death.” None of them “suspected the truth.” Reference was made to Caroline’s having been sent away to Devon for her pregnancy, so the servants or neighbors would not suspect. They’d been told she had gone to a private nursing hospital to convalesce from her injuries as a result of the accident.

And never—not once—was there mention of her father. Was he living or dead? Was he a secret affair? Or could he have been Lord Carlington?