Chapter 6

It had been a strange evening, Georgiana reflected much later, and it was no wonder that it left her unable to sleep, a dozen jumbled impressions whirling in her head as time dragged slowly by and still she was wakeful.

She climbed from her bed and crossed to the window, picking up her shawl as she went and wrapping herself in it. Drawing back the heavy velvet curtains, she looked out pensively on the scene revealed to her. The moon was waxing and stood low in the sky, with dark clouds scudding fast across it and obscuring its silver face, and then tearing away to reveal it once more. When it was exposed, it laid down a shining path across the gunmetal waves that bit at the beach. There were no other dwellings on the tall cliffs close to the Castle, and she could see no other part of the building from here, no lights or manmade structures, so all that she beheld was nature, but a much fiercer nature than she was accustomed to at home in Hampshire. There was nothing manicured or cultivated here. She was reminded of mountain vistas that she had seen while travelling abroad last year, in Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Not by any means comfortable or reassuring prospects, and many people found them unsettling, alarming, even sinister, as Louisa had said. But she had found that she loved them, and she loved this too – the fierce wildness of it spoke to her, somehow, and certainly echoed the turmoil that she felt inside her tonight.

The young ladies and their mamas had arranged an impromptu concert to show off their musical accomplishments. This was quite a usual way of passing an evening in polite society, of course, but it must take on a deeper significance now. Georgiana had been torn – she did not want to participate, did not at all wish to be included in the list of young ladies vying for the Duke's attention, but if she refused to take her part that also would draw attention to her, and perhaps give the impression that she thought herself above her company and wished to stand apart from it. She was the highest ranking of the young unmarried ladies here, and she could already tell that Mary Debenham and her crony Miss French saw her as serious competition, for that reason if for no other. She did not herself believe, though she could advance no solid reason for such a belief, that the Duke would give a fig for such distinctions. Nor did she think that he was in all honesty likely to choose one lady as his Duchess above another merely because she gave a superior performance upon the pianoforte or sang an Italian song in an affecting manner. This was not an audition for a role upon the stage, it was real life. But she would sing, if she must – she thought herself very cunning in manoeuvring matters so that she did so in a duet with Alice Templeton, rather than alone and exposed. She declined to perform again once their piece was done, and though she was sure that Miss Debenham sneered at her for it and whispered that she was an indifferent singer and knew it, she did not care. She had felt Northriding's eyes on her as she sang, and whether this was in common courtesy – she was singing, he was looking at her singing, just as anyone might – or some more disturbing reason, or even her own fevered imagination, it made her uncomfortable and she wanted no more of it.

They had had no private or public speech after the brief, snatched interlude before dinner, and Georgie was glad. He unsettled her beyond all measure, and her own recollections unsettled her more. She would do her utmost to avoid him for the rest of her stay, and certainly she would take Louisa's words to heart and be very sure never to be alone with him for as much as a second. She had better reason than her aunt could possibly suspect to know that Louisa had been entirely right when she warned of his dangerous charm. He was perfectly capable of mesmerising a young lady into behaving in a scandalous manner and casting all thought of propriety to the four winds. His beautiful voice alone could cause one to…

The silence of the bedroom was broken by a distinct and very curious noise: a sort of sharp creak, which seemed much more distinct than the usual sounds of an ancient building of wood and stone settling as it cooled. Georgie chided herself for falling prey to Gothic terrors in such a cliched setting – she had grown up in a castle and knew better – but all the same she could not prevent herself from turning, and scanning the panelled walls and moonlit four-poster bed with anxious eyes. Perhaps there were mice; she didn't like mice. Could there be rats, even? Surely not.

If there were rodents, they must be unusually clever ones. The moonlight fell full upon a long, straight, perpendicular crack in the linenfold panelling, and as she watched in frozen horror it grew wider, longer, as a gap opened, large enough at last to admit a person. A cloud obscured the moon for a second, or perhaps she blinked, and when the fitful light reappeared she saw that there was a figure standing in the room with her, a tall, familiar figure clad in a sumptuous silk dressing gown. The moonlight drew gleams of silver from his hair and struck sparks from his glinting eyes.

The Duke.