“What is it?” her father asked.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone else?”
“You have my word,” her father said.
“Mama?”
Her mother made a brisk, dismissive gesture with one hand. “Of course.”
Georgie organized her thoughts and then said, “Vic found his father’s diaries last night. Just before he died the old duke was worried that he’d rescued the wrong child and that Vic was someone else’s son.”
There was a moment of silence while her parents took this in, then Lady Dalrymple said, “What? Of all the nonsensical things I’ve ever heard! Leonard had a bee in his bonnet if he thought that.”
“Alexander’s concerned, is he?” her father said. “Would you like us to speak with him? Set his mind at rest?”
Georgie shook her head. “There’s more, Papa. Vic asked me to dream about it tonight, like I did with Hubert. And I said I would.”
This time the moment of silence went on for much longer.
“Well, that’s a little unexpected,” Lady Dalrymple said. “But I fail to see where the problem lies. You tell Alexander that he’s Leonard’s son, and that’s the end of this foolishness.”
Georgie took a deep breath. “The problem is that Alexander St. Clare is dead. He drowned in a creek on the Vickery estate in Kent. His body must have washed out to sea; his bones are on the seabed.”
Lady Dalrymple opened her mouth . . . and then closed it. “Oh, dear,” she said weakly and came to sit on Georgie’s other side.
“Gypsies stole the boy and drowned him?” There was shock in Lord Dalrymple’s voice, disbelief, revulsion.
Georgiana rearranged her father’s question in her head. Where are the men who drowned Alexander St. Clare? The answer wasn’t what she’d expected. She tried again. Where are the people who abducted Alexander St. Clare? And then a third time: Where are the gypsies who were in the woods on the Vickery estate in Kent on the day Alexander St. Clare drowned?
“No one drowned him,” she told her parents. “Or stole him. There weren’t any gypsies in the woods that day.”
“But . . .” her mother said, and then fell silent.
Georgie asked herself another question: Where were Alexander St. Clare’s nurserymaids when he drowned? She saw a grassy glade in her mind’s eye. It was nowhere near the creek. “I think the nurserymaids lost him. They weren’t with him when he drowned.”
Her parents considered this statement for a moment. “Did they know he’d drowned?” her mother asked.
Georgie rephrased this question. Where are the nurserymaids who knew that Alexander St. Clare had drowned? “No,” she said. “They didn’t know.”
“If you were a servant,” the viscount said quietly, “and the child you had charge of vanished, what would you do?”
Georgie didn’t know what she’d do, but she knew what Alexander St. Clare’s nurserymaids had done: they’d lied.
“Dear God,” her mother said. She pressed her hands to her face. “Poor Leonard. If he’d known . . .”
Georgie looked down at her lap. She pleated a fold of muslin between her fingers. “Vic is a farmer’s son. He was born in Cornwall and both his parents are dead. I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t want to ruin his life.”
Lady Dalrymple lowered her hands and looked at her husband. “Francis?”
Georgie’s father was silent for the best part of a minute. “Alexander has taken his seat in the House of Lords. At this point it doesn’t matter who his parents were. He’s the Duke of Vickery.”
“Even if he’s not the last duke’s son?” Georgie asked.
“Legal challenges have to be made before a man takes his seat in the House. It’s too late now.”
Some of the miserable tightness in her chest eased. “You’re certain?”
“Absolutely,” her father said. “The House of Lords can’t reverse peerage decisions. Alexander legally is the Duke of Vickery.”
“Then it’s clear what you should do,” her mother said. “Tell Alexander that he’s Leonard’s son. It will be easier if he doesn’t know the truth.”
Easy? To look Vickery in the eye and lie to him? No, it wouldn’t be easy at all; it would be quite unbearably painful.
“So everything’s all right, then,” her mother said. “Thank God for that.”
No, Georgie thought sadly. Everything’s not all right.
Her mother’s smile faded. “Darling? What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong was that she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with Vickery, and stupid enough to imagine that he’d fallen in love with her. “Nothing,” Georgie said.
Her mother gave an unladylike snort. “Pish pash.”
“What is it, sweetheart?” her father said. “You can tell us.”
The urge to cry ambushed her suddenly, triggered by her father’s tone of voice, the gentle concern on his face. For a dreadful moment Georgie thought she was going to burst into tears. She clenched her jaw. I am not a watering pot.
“What is it?” the viscount said again, laying his hand on hers.
That was all it took: her father’s hand on hers. Despite her earnest desire not to, Georgie found herself crying.
Her father put an arm around her and gathered her close.
Georgie leaned against him and sobbed into his shoulder, choking on a painful mix of emotions: grief, loss, loneliness. Some of the emotions were because of Hubert. Hubert who had loved her and asked her to marry him, and had been dead these past five years. The rest were because of Vickery, who hadn’t asked her to marry him, and whom she loved quite as deeply as she’d ever loved Hubert.
Finally the storm of tears quietened. Her father handed her his handkerchief. Georgie mopped her eyes and blew her nose.
“Darling,” her mother said. “Please tell us what’s wrong.”
Georgie inhaled a shaky breath. Her breath hitched in her throat. “It’s just that I want to marry Vic,” she whispered. “And I don’t think he wants to marry me.”
“You want to marry him, do you?” her father asked. “Even knowing what you do about his parentage?”
Georgie nodded miserably against his shoulder.
“Then it’s just as well we gave him our permission, isn’t it, Miranda?”
Georgie lifted her head. “What?”
“He spoke to us yesterday about it, asked for leave to pay his addresses. Most proper of him.”
“Vic did that? He truly did?”
“He truly did,” her mother said.
The library suddenly seemed much brighter, as if it were flooded with sunshine. “Oh,” Georgie said. She almost burst into tears again. And then a dreadful thought struck her. “You won’t change your minds, will you? Now that you know about his birth?” And then she remembered that she was twenty-four years old and she didn’t need her parents’ permission to marry.
Her mother pursed her lips thoughtfully and then gave a little shrug. “He’s wealthy, that’s all I care about.”