A Daring Liaison(87)

I’ve been watchin’ you yer whole life, Georgie gal. Ever since you was brought back to Kent. Finest thing I ever done. Think it was me, but coulda been Artie. An’ everything we done after was fer you.

When the contents of her glass were gone, she poured more and drew her knees up to rest her forehead on them, then circled them with her arms. She rocked as if she could comfort herself, but there was no comfort in who and what she was. A Gibbons. Her husband’s enemy.

A gal’s bound to do what her pa says. Now that yer ma’s gone, I’m yer boss. D’you understand?

After a time—she did not know how long—she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. She had survived the deaths of everyone she’d ever loved, and she would find a way to survive the loss of Charles for the second time. But how could she face him? Confess her heritage? Watch his dawning horror, loathing and disgust? Oh, Lord. Anything but that. The gallows first!

What a wretched coward she was! She could not tell him. Now or ever. She would have to find another way to give him his freedom.

* * *

Informed by Clara that Georgiana had arrived home and gone to the library with instructions that she not be disturbed, Charles knocked at the door. When there was no answer, he turned the latch. The room was in shadows but he could see Georgiana by the fireplace. She was sitting on the hearth, hugging her knees—the very picture of contemplation. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He did not want the servants overhearing the conversation they were going to have.

“Georgiana?”

She shuddered and turned to look at him. Her face was streaked with tears and her eyes were reddened.

A sudden and unfamiliar mix of anger and concern struck him in the chest. “Good Lord! What has happened? Did someone hurt you?”

She gulped, and he realized it was a sob. Whoever—whatever—had hurt her would pay for that.

He knelt beside her and recognized the whiskey in the bottom of her glass. And in the decanter beside it. What had sent her to the bottle? Whatever it was, it had torn her apart. He’d never seen her so distraught. He took the glass from her hand and put it on the hearth next to the decanter.

“Georgie, tell me what happened.”

She sniffed and he handed her his handkerchief. “I cannot talk about it, Charles. ’Tis still so...so fresh.”

“Then have another glass of whiskey, m’dear, because we are not leaving this room until I have the whole of it.”

Taking him at his word, she reached for the whiskey.

He smiled and took it from her and set it back on the hearth. If he was any judge, she had yet to feel the full effects of what she’d already consumed. Even without more, she’d be drunker in ten minutes than she was now. “Just tell me, Georgiana. Whatever it is cannot be all that bad.”

She laughed and the sound bordered on hysteria. “You would think not, wouldn’t you? But I cannot imagine worse.”

“Say it, Georgiana. Whatever it is, we will sort it out.”

“It cannot be undone, Charles. It is far too late for that.”

“I warn you. I will not rest until I know.”

She sighed and rested her forehead on her knees. When she spoke at last, her voice was so soft he barely heard her. “I am not what you think I am.”

Ah, so she knew. The question was, when had she learned the truth. “I do know what you are.”

“You couldn’t. Caroline Betman was...was my mother, and—”

“I know.”

She looked up at him and blinked. “How?”

“I sent an investigator to Cornwall. I had Carlington make inquiries in the Royal Navy. There were no Carsons who had a baby girl. But you were born nine months after Lady Caroline’s departure from London. And she came back for you once her father was gone.”

“I see.”

“And you look a bit like her, Georgiana.” But he had to know the rest. Had she deceived him? “When did you find out?”

“The day I went to see Lady Aston. My...mother set the facts out quite plainly to her, with instructions to tell me only after she was gone.”

“That was the day before we married, was it not?”

She nodded and looked down at her knees again.

The first stirring of anger twitched in his stomach. “Did you not think this was a fact I should know concerning the woman I was about to marry?”

She frowned as if she was trying to remember something. “I did not have time. When Sarah and I arrived at the chapel, you were all waiting. I started to say something...but you shook your head.”