Vickery looked away from her again. “I read some of the entries.” He turned the hat over in his hands, once, twice, then put it down on the bench and locked his hands together.
Georgie looked at the tension in his hands, the tension in his shoulders. “You read about the months you were missing?”
He shook his head. “I read about before and afterwards. Mostly afterwards.”
Vickery was a man, six foot two of muscle, bone, and confidence, but he’d been a child once, small and helpless, lost, alone, afraid, abused. Georgie reached out and touched his clenched hands lightly. She didn’t say anything. What was there to say? It’s all right, Vic? A trite utterance, and patently untrue.
Everyone knew what had happened to him—snatched from his father’s Kent estate, sold to a chimney sweep, the months spent as a climbing boy, his miraculous rescue. Some people even called him Duke Chimney Sweep, but Georgie had never heard it said in a derogatory tone. People admired Vickery. Admired his strength, his resilience, and yes, even his push to change the child labor laws.
Vickery’s hands unclenched. He took hold of her hand. “I didn’t realize I’d forgotten so much. I mean, I still have the occasional nightmare, but . . . I didn’t speak for several months afterwards. Did you know that? I didn’t.”
“No,” Georgie said, gripping his hand tightly. “I didn’t know that.”
Vickery was silent for a moment, and then he said, “A week before my father died he wrote about me in his diary.”
Georgie nodded, unsurprised. The old duke had loved his son very much.
Vickery opened her hand, turned it over, kneaded her palm with his thumb, not a caress, but something more meditative, as if he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. She thought that he wasn’t thinking about her, but about his father.
Vickery took a deep breath, and then said, “Father was afraid I wasn’t his son, that he’d rescued the wrong boy.”
Shock held Georgie speechless for several seconds. “What? Nonsense! Your eyes, Vic! There can be no doubt! There was never any doubt!”
“I don’t look like either of my parents.” Vickery kneaded her palm again, not looking at her. “Or my grandparents or cousins. I’ve spent all morning looking at the portraits. I don’t look like anyone on either side of my family.”
“Not everyone looks like their parents,” Georgie said firmly. “Honestly, Vic, there can be no doubt. How many five-year-olds would there have been in England with eyes such as yours? Only one!”
Vickery turned his head and looked at her with those remarkable green-and-blue eyes and said, “What if there were two?”
Georgie shook her head.
“Would you . . . I mean, I wondered if . . .” He flushed. “Could you possibly try to dream where Father’s son is?”
Georgie’s lips parted in astonishment. She stared at him for several seconds, moistened her lips, and then said, “I beg your pardon?”
Vickery’s flush deepened. “I know it’s a stupid thing to ask, but . . . you were right twice before, and I thought . . . Please?”
On the heels of astonishment came mortification. Vic hadn’t come this morning to propose; he’d come to ask for her help.
Georgie looked away.
He doesn’t want to marry me. He sees me only as a friend.
Vickery released her hand. “Forget I asked. It’s foolishness, I know.”
“No,” Georgie managed to say. “I’ll try. Of course I’ll try.” She turned her head and looked at him and tried to smile cheerfully. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
Georgie kept the smile pasted on her lips. She would do this for him—pretend to dream—and tomorrow morning she’d tell him what everyone in England knew: he was the late duke’s son. She could tell him now, if she dared to explain about her Faerie godmother.
Where is the Duke of Vickery’s son who went missing twenty-five years ago? she asked herself silently, even though she already knew the answer.
Her gift gave her the answer: bones on a seabed.
Georgie’s breath caught in her throat. For a long moment she couldn’t breathe. She forced herself to ask the question again. This time she rephrased it, so there could be no mistake: Where is the son of the sixth Duke of Vickery who went missing when he was a child?
Her gift should have told her he was seated alongside her; instead, it gave her the same answer it had before: bones on a seabed.
Georgie’s mouth was suddenly very dry. Where did Alexander St. Clare die? she asked silently.
Her gift showed her a swift, deep creek on the Vickery estate in Kent.
“Are you all right?” Vickery asked, taking hold of her hand again. “You look quite pale.”
“I’m perfectly well,” Georgie managed to say. She looked at him and asked silently: Where was this man born?
Her gift told her that Vickery had been born in a farmhouse on the Cornish coast.
Georgie swallowed, and gripped Vickery’s hand tightly. Where are this man’s parents?
Her gift showed her a churchyard in Cornwall and a simple headstone with names inscribed on it.
“Are you certain?” Vickery asked, concern creasing his brow. “You really are very pale, you know.”
Determination stiffened Georgie’s spine. I will not be the vehicle to destroy Vic’s life. She lifted her chin and smiled and said brightly, “I’ve never been better!”
Vickery didn’t look convinced.
“Was that what you wished to talk to me about? The dreams?” Georgie kept the smile on her face, the brightness in her voice. “I promise I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you.”
Georgie released his hand and stood. “Will you come riding this afternoon?”
Vickery stood, too. “If you’d like me to.”
“Of course,” Georgie said cheerfully. “I enjoy our rides.”
She walked back to the house with Vickery, talking with determined buoyancy about her brother, Oliver, who was now managing the Dalrymple estate in Somerset, and his wife and the baby they were expecting, light, meaningless talk that allowed no time for silence between them. They parted on the terrace. Georgie watched Vickery stride out of sight. The boy she’d grown up with; the man she’d come to love.
Alexander Aubrey St. Clare, seventh Duke of Vickery.
Except that he wasn’t the Duke of Vickery.
Chapter Three
Georgiana’s parents were still in the library. They both looked up when she entered.
Georgie closed the door and stood with her back to it.
“Darling?” Lady Dalrymple said. “Where’s Alexander?”
“He’s gone.”
Lady Dalrymple’s eyebrows twitched down. “Gone?”
“May I ask your advice about something?”
“Of course,” her father said.
Georgie turned the key, locking the library door. Her father’s eyebrows lifted; her mother’s drew even further down.
Georgie crossed to the sofa, with its damask upholstery and lion-paw feet, and sat in the very middle of it. Her father came to sit beside her. Her mother stayed standing, hands on her hips, frowning.