Lord Sebastian's Secret (The Duke's Sons #3)(46)

Her father was flanked by Mr. Mitra and Joanna Byngham, as usual when there were no prominent female guests. That left Emma and Georgina facing each other in the middle of the table. With no necessity to talk to a dinner partner, Georgina was free to eavesdrop. The party was small enough that she could hear what was said at either end of the table.

“This is a delicious ragout,” said Randolph.

“Thank you,” said her mother.

“‘Good words are worth much, and cost little,’” he replied, his tone indicating it was a quote.

“That’s Shakespeare, isn’t it?” Sebastian asked. “My brother is very fond of poetry, ma’am. He has a deal of it by heart.”

“Not Shakespeare in this case,” Randolph said. “Though the bard very often has just the phrase you want. No, that was George Herbert, a favorite of mine. And a poet with far finer sensibilities, I believe.”

“You don’t often hear people say something like that,” Georgina’s mother responded. “Shakespeare is usually held up as a writer without peer.”

“Such people need to delve deeper into our English literary traditions,” said Randolph.

Georgina noticed that Sebastian was looking anxious. She wasn’t sure why.

“A delver, are you?” replied her mother.

Randolph noticed the sarcasm. Anybody would, Georgina thought. Fortunately he seemed more surprised than angry. She caught Sebastian’s eye and smiled at him reassuringly, trying to remind him that Mama spoke that way to everyone. She got quite enough “informative discourse” from Papa. Silent communications passed between them. They gazed at one another until Georgina was startled by her father’s offer of a slice of beef.

“I have found some interesting references in an unpublished memoir,” said Joanna Byngham. “An Irish gentleman who lived in India for twenty years during the last century.”

Georgina wondered if the governess had locked Hilda in her room. Probably not. Joanna wasn’t stupid enough to tempt her charge that way. She calculated the likelihood that Hilda was listening outside the door right now. And put it very high.

“Have you any interest in Hindu practices?” her father asked Randolph, speaking down the length of the table with a serene disregard for convention. “Being a man of the cloth yourself?”

Randolph nodded. “I appreciate learning about all sorts of philosophies.”

Georgina couldn’t tell if he was being polite, or was genuinely intrigued. She checked Sebastian’s expression. He looked hunted.

“We’ll have quite a lot to tell you then,” said her father with satisfaction. He turned to Mr. Mitra and resumed their discussion more quietly.

The remainder of the meal passed in the clink of forks and exchange of pleasantries. Georgina had begun to relax by the time her mother signaled and the ladies rose to leave the dining room. Randolph was not an ogre after all, she concluded. He seemed amiable and unthreatening. He was also clearly fond of word play, in contrast to Sebastian, who had shown over his visit that he had no inclination in that direction at all.

“This is the stupidest custom,” said Joanna Byngham when Georgina came up to her in the doorway. Not for the first time, or the twentieth. Joanna always longed to remain in the dining room for the ongoing discussion. “I do not understand why your father keeps it up.”

Because he wishes to, Georgina wanted to tell her. After her experience of other household arrangements in London, she’d lately realized that her father was a kind of artist of convention. He embraced the rules that aided his ends and discarded those that thwarted him with a very fine discrimination, until he had just the social landscape he preferred here in his castle.

People who thought he simply threw propriety to the winds were quite mistaken. Which made it easy for strangers to put a foot wrong with him. She wondered if her mother was aware of this selection process and concluded that of course she was. Didn’t she do the same herself? It was another thing her parents had in common, indeed a kind of conspiratorial collaboration. It went along with the fact that where their daughters were concerned, they made no concessions at all.

Georgina sighed as the dining room door closed behind them. Like Joanna, she would have liked to flout convention, but in quite another direction. She didn’t want to stay. She wanted to take Sebastian with her, and not to any stuffy drawing room, either. Her bedchamber would be her first choice, she thought, a little shocked at the blatancy of her longings. How delicious it would be if they could repeat all they’d done on a pile of bracken in her comfortable bed. And more. She knew there was more Sebastian could show her. Why, oh why, couldn’t it be now instead of days and days away?

“Georgina?”

She started, and became aware that she’d stopped in the middle of the hall. The others were well ahead. Tingling all over from the fantasy she’d conjured, she hurried after her mother.

*

“So you’re saying people come back after death?” Randolph asked as he filled his glass from the decanter of port.

Mr. Mitra nodded as he passed the bottle along without taking any wine.

“But it isn’t like Judgment Day, when all souls are said to arise at the last trump?”

“Not like that, no. We believe a being has to live many lives and have many experiences before becoming perfect and uniting with the Divine.”