Lord Sebastian's Secret (The Duke's Sons #3)(58)

*

At Stane Castle, Georgina had dismissed her maid and climbed into bed when she heard “Psst.” She looked around, startled, in time to see her youngest sister emerging from behind the closed draperies.

“I thought Mary would never go,” Hilda said.

“Aren’t you still confined to your room?” Georgina asked. Not that unpalatable orders would ever stop her youngest sister.

“I put a bolster in my bed to make it look as if I’m asleep,” she replied. “Mama thinks I’m sulking.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not anymore.” Hilda plopped down on the featherbed beside her. “I heard what happened.”

The whole household had no doubt heard by now, Georgina thought. Joanna was good friends with the housekeeper. Papa complained to Fergus sometimes. Servants overheard all sorts of things in the course of their work.

“Do you ever think that Papa is demented?” Hilda asked.

The thought had flitted through Georgina’s mind now and then, but she decided it was best not to tell Hilda. And of course he was not.

“We have to do something!” Her youngest sister bounced on the bed. “You’re going to have to elope after all. So you see, I will have been right. It wasn’t a lie, but a…prediction.”

“You will have been right?” The phrase struck Georgina as thoroughly characteristic of Hilda.

There was a soft knock on her bedchamber door. Emma looked around the edge. “There you are, Hilda. I looked for you in your room.”

“I can’t mope about there when we are in the midst of a crisis!”

“You’ll get in trouble,” Emma warned.

“How could I be in any more trouble?”

The two older Stane sisters had to acknowledge the truth of this. Emma came in and sat on the other side of the bed.

“And I have to apologize to Georgina,” Hilda added solemnly.

“You did that,” said Emma.

“Not properly.” Hilda put one hand over her heart and assumed a deeply sincere expression. “I’ve thought a great deal about what you said. About not wanting me in your new household after what I have done, I mean. But what you don’t understand, Georgina, is that I will be a…a pattern card of virtue once I am in London. And not so very bored.”

“You’ve never been such a thing in your life,” said Emma.

“Well, I’ve always been stuck in this…backwater. I think it must be the most tedious place on Earth.”

“You seemed quite happy here when you were small,” Georgina said. She remembered tiny Hilda tearing around the castle and the gardens, face alight, declaring that she was the captain of a pirate ship or queen of imaginary empires.

Hilda looked disgusted. “When I was a child.”

She was still so much one, Georgina thought. And yet she was growing up very fast, too, and capable of more complicated mischief. She’d always been the most curious and quick of them. It was too bad Joanna was distracted by their father’s studies. The governess might have kept Hilda interested in her studies otherwise.

“I won’t elope,” Georgina said. She’d been thinking, too, and discovered she had strong feelings on this subject. “I don’t want my wedding to be some hurried, furtive affair, far from everyone I know. I want to be married in my home, with my family and Sebastian’s around us, and everyone celebrating our happiness.”

Emma blinked back tears.

“Well, I hope you can be,” replied Hilda. “But just now I cannot place Papa in that affecting picture.”

“Sebastian is going to make a plan.” Georgina thought of the evening just past. She was still angry at her father, but as time passed she also wondered why Sebastian had balked over such a trivial thing. She’d responded instinctively to the emotion she’d seen in his face. He’d looked…really distressed. Even now, a fierce protective instinct rose in her. Papa had behaved abominably. But had this particular tussle really been necessary? Couldn’t Sebastian have given in? She was also a little worried about the way he’d rushed off without a word.

“Sebastian is very handsome,” said Hilda carefully. “And kind and charming, but he’s…he’s not a…deep thinker, is he?”

Georgina stiffened against her pillows. “He’s a trained military man, a cavalry major.” She started to tell them how splendidly he’d cared for her in the ravine, then decided not to. That conversation might lead to details she wasn’t prepared to share with her younger sisters.

“Well, if we want to run Papa through with a saber, that might be helpful,” her youngest sister replied.

“Hilda!” Emma exclaimed. Georgina choked back a horrified laugh.

“I only mean…” Hilda seemed to grope for words. “Papa is thinking all the time, isn’t he? All sorts of…complicated thoughts. We need a sly, devious plan to get ’round him. I don’t think Sebastian is very devious.”

Georgina agreed with that. He was delightfully straightforward.

“I am much more devious than any of you,” Hilda added.

“Even Papa?” Georgina had to ask, a bit amused.

“Yes.” Hilda nodded as if to emphasize the word. “Because he is head of the household and can give whatever orders he likes. I can’t. So I have to find more indirect ways to…to accomplish my goals. I’m forced to be devious, you see.”