Chapter 13

Down on the beach, Georgie's head whipped round and she gazed at her companion in astonishment. ‘How…?'

Jane smiled. ‘I saw the way you looked at him; I saw the way he looked at you. And last night, very shockingly, I heard voices.'

‘Oh, God help me,' said Georgie involuntarily. ‘Does Louisa know?'

‘She was asleep and heard nothing, and I haven't told her. I don't enjoy keeping secrets from her, and generally I do not do so, but if I tell her she will feel obliged to tell your brother. How could she not? He is "the head of the family" and your guardian. And I don't like to see myself as the sort of woman who informs another woman's brother or father of matters that they consider private. You're not a possession, though the law says you are.'

Georgie looked blindly out to sea. ‘Last year Cassandra found out I was thinking of running away with Captain Hart, and she did tell Hal. He didn't reveal to me that she had, but she confessed to me herself later, and asked for my forgiveness. And I was happy to give it, because what she did forced Hal and me to talk to each other, which we badly needed to do. I knew she was only acting out of concern for me; she feared from her own bitter experience that Adolphus was a fortune-hunter, and I was too na?ve to see it, and she was horribly right.'

‘So are you saying that you would be happy for me to tell your aunt what I have discovered? You want me to do so, perhaps, just as Lady Irlam did?'

‘No! No, I don't. This is different. Or if it's not different, this time it's too much. I've caused Hal and Louisa more than enough trouble in the past. What could he do – challenge the Duke to a duel? Try to force him to marry me? It would just make my poor brother unhappy and anxious about me again. Enough! I need to disentangle myself from this new mess that I have created, not drag others into it.'

‘That does seem the best plan,' said Jane. ‘But can I help? If you don't want me to tell Louisa, I won't, but I can listen.'

‘You'll be shocked,' Georgie warned. Jane looked at her expressionlessly for a moment, and then she said, ‘Very well, you won't be shocked. What happened was…'

Miss Spry listened in silence as Georgie recounted her story, and when she had finished said, ‘I see…'

‘I don't,' said her companion despairingly. ‘I don't understand why I keep doing these stupid, reckless things. I could blame the Duke – that would be convenient and easy – but it's not true. It was my fault, all of it.'

‘I'm sure that isn't quite correct. He must bear at least an equal share of the blame; he could have let you be, could he not? But have you considered,' said Jane with a slight grimace, ‘that the solution might lie before you?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I can't believe that I of all people am saying this, but if you have… this connection between you, then one option is to enter the fray, as it were. Might marriage to Northriding not solve all these problems for you? And I don't know why you would say that he would need to be forced to wed you, since apparently he must marry someone, and why not you? Although,' she added hastily, ‘if you do not choose to participate in this most degrading competition for his hand – for that is what it amounts to – I could certainly not blame you! Every shred of self-respect must revolt at the thought.'

‘I… I had not considered it at all. I was so shocked to see him here, to learn who he was… but I suppose in all honesty I should.' And then, abruptly, ‘Shall we walk on? I'm feeling chilled suddenly.'

‘Of course.'

They strode on in silence for a few minutes, and reached the far end of the cove, where the jagged rocks curved in a little and offered some small shelter from the wind. Miss Spry and Georgiana turned and looked back the way they had come, along the beach unmarred by any human footsteps save their own, and took in the full view of the Castle at last. It stood tall on its cliffs, its towers and battlements seeming to have grown out of living rock rather than by any work of the hands of man. There was not a touch of warmth or softness to be seen, not even a single tree. They could just see the cave opening from whence they had come as a darker cleft at the base of the cliff. It was undeniably impressive, but also stark, Gothic, intimidating, a place out of legend rather than real life.

‘It is all very well to talk of the sublime,' said Jane, ‘but I do not know if in truth I would care to live here. You must consider that too as you decide what to do. Louisa was right – it must be grim indeed in the depths of winter. And for all we said earlier, anyone trying to put a boat out would surely be dashed to pieces in an instant on those terrible jagged rocks.'

‘Are you being metaphorical?'

Miss Spry laughed. ‘I don't know. Perhaps. Forgive me – I should be the last person to suggest to any woman that marriage represents a solution to all her difficulties. Even if it might appear to do so, it surely raises so many other problems. It is merely that the state of matrimony is rather on my mind at the moment.'

Georgie looked at her curiously. What could she possibly mean?

Her companion went on, ‘I have a decision to make, and it is a difficult one. By the very nature of it, I can share it with very few people. Well, since it seems we are trading confidences and telling each other shocking things… I want a child.' She looked about her at the deserted beach as if checking to see if they were overheard, then laughed as she realised what she was doing, stretching her arms wide and yelling at the top of her voice into the wind, ‘I want a child!'

Georgiana looked at her blankly. Aware that her mouth was open, she closed it, and said feebly, ‘A child?'

‘Yes. A child of my own. It has come to be almost an obsession with me in the past months. You may recollect that Louisa and I lived apart for a while last year, when she was with you in Brighton and I went travelling in the Lake Country alone. We had… not quarrelled, we did not do so, but we could not agree, and I went away to clear my mind, and give her space to think, too.'

‘I suppose adoption is a most serious step…'

‘That's not what I want. I know I should, but I do not. I want a child of my own,' Jane said again.

‘But how…?'

‘Marriage. One of our friends – a very dear friend, a widower with grown children – has offered to marry me. To make a child with me. Or at least to try.'

Georgie was silent, and Jane said, ‘Now it is your turn to be shocked.'

‘Oh, no,' she hastened to say. ‘No, of course not. I have no right to be shocked. I was merely surprised. That you would consider leaving Louisa…'

‘I will never leave her. I would stay with my husband for… as long as it took, or until it became clear that there would be no child, and then return to her, and take up our lives together, with or without a child. With, I hope.'

‘Have you decided, then? I thought you said you had not.'

‘I suppose in truth I have.'

‘And Louisa – how does she feel?'

‘She has come to realise that I will never be happy until I at least make this attempt. She supports me, and I will always be grateful to her for it, since she has no great longing for a child herself and so cannot truly enter into my feelings. But it is a great step to take, is it not? To disrupt our peaceful, ordered life together, that is one thing, and quite serious enough. But to put myself, even nominally, in the power of a man, to make myself his chattel in the eyes of the world, that is what I struggle with – not the rest of it, though you may find that hard to believe. I balk at that part, the legalities, the conventionalities, the involvement of the Church, even though he is a good man, and I trust him.'

‘Is there no other way?'

‘There you hit the bull's-eye. Obviously there is. I could conceive a child with him without marriage, and refuse to submit myself even to notional masculine authority. Others have done so, after all: my mother's friend Mrs Godwin was one, when she gave birth to her first daughter. And I applaud her courage. But it turns out, despite all my fine words, that I am not brave enough. That is what it comes to, though I can give excuses aplenty. Louisa urges me to think of the child, growing up in this society as a nameless bastard, made that way entirely by her mother's choice. And she is so far right in that I find I cannot do it.'

‘I suppose… No, I do understand. And I cannot criticise you. You know what you want – I wish I were so sure.'

‘You do not blame me, then, for contemplating taking a man I do not love to my bed with the set purpose of conceiving a child?'

Georgie laughed. It was exhilarating somehow to talk so honestly, and so very rare. ‘How can I blame you or judge you? I of all people can hardly be so hypocritical as to censure anyone else's behaviour, in the bedroom or out of it. I who let – no, who begged a stranger to give me pleasure. And it is quite the done thing in society, what you propose, is it not, though it is never talked of in such a way?' She gestured back towards the Castle. ‘Those women up there, is that not precisely what they hope to do? And not because they so badly want a child, either, but for much more worldly considerations, at least for many of them. And the Duke – have you not given an exact description of why he has summoned them all here? To marry one of them, a virtual stranger as she must be, without love, without even the trust and respect and honesty that you have with your friend, for the purposes of going to bed and getting an heir? And this is fully understood and sanctioned by society, is done every day, and nobody has the least issue with it.'

‘That's perfectly true, of course. It is all a matter of conventional morality. But where does that leave you? You already know, if I understand you correctly, that you and the Duke are… physically compatible. You are attracted to him, and he to you, that was quite plain to me, at least, before ever you told me your secret. You could marry him on that basis, on the basis of powerful mutual desire, and though it may not be much to build a life on, it is still more than many men and women can be sure of as they enter matrimony. Might that not be enough for you? And if not, why not?'

‘I cannot assume that he wants to marry me above all the others, Jane.'

‘Never mind what he wants. I am sure he will make it clear; he does not strike me as a diffident sort of a man. What do you want?'

‘I suppose that is the question, is it not?'