‘Max. Max! Where are you hiding yourself? A boy in the courtyard said I was to follow the sound of hammering and I’d find you, but it’s stopped and it can’t have been you.’
‘Georgia! What are you doing here?’ He dropped his hammer as if it was red hot and jumped up to greet her with such joy in his heart he had best not examine it too deeply.
‘It was you knocking in nails like a peasant just now then. Whatever have they done to you, my dear?’ she said and smiled like a vision from his wildest dreams.
She wasn’t strictly beautiful, he supposed numbly, but that didn’t matter. She had redefined beauty for him long ago and nobody else had her unique combination of russet-gold curls and eyes of a clear lavender-blue set in a heart-shaped face.
Best stop there, Chilton.
He didn’t want to linger over a temptingly full top lip or the lithe feminine figure shown off by her very fashionable gown. He had tried so hard to think of her as just a friend for so long now that he could just about manage it when she didn’t surprise him.
‘But nowadays I knock them in like an artisan,’ he replied as lightly as he could manage, ‘and that’s a step up from a peasant, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, no, Max, thinking is so wearisome and it would give me lines.’
‘You might fool the rest of the ton you don’t have two thoughts to rub together in your lovely head, but there’s no point in trying to convince me as well. I grew up with you so I know what a devious little devil you are.’
‘And you were such a horrid brat you tried to leave me behind for all your best adventures.’
Max thought they were almost too good at this game of Let’s pretend we have nothing serious to say to one another.
‘Only because you used to squeak like a baby bird and give us away,’ he obliged her anyway.
‘I was excited,’ she said with a dignified look that should have made him ashamed of his boyhood self, but he was too busy worrying about his grown-up one to bother.
She had never felt the same yearning for him as he had for her from the first moment he had seen her with her wild curls tamed and put up like a proper society lady and her skirts so demure she looked nothing like her usual harum-scarum self. She was being led into dinner by the most important young gentleman in the area at the time.
That was the day he learned how to be jealous of his own brother, since Zach was Viscount Elderwood by then and the young nobleman chosen to take the newly fledged daughter of the house in to dinner. Luckily Zach was unmoved by Georgia’s sudden transformation into a young lady so it didn’t last long. Max wondered about his brother’s eyesight, but had been delighted when Zach disappointed Mrs Welland’s finest ambition for her daughter in the local area. He reminded himself that was a very long time ago now.
Georgia was looking around the empty, but newly sound room as if she had never seen the like before and she probably hadn’t. Riverdale Manor was immaculately maintained and he was sure not an inch of Mynham dared be shabby with Ness keeping a close eye on it.
‘Are you planning to repair this entire castle on your own, Max?’ she asked lightly. She turned to stare out of the window at his parkland as if she was only here to inspect his progress and he knew that bit wasn’t very impressive.
‘It would take half a dozen lifetimes if I was fool enough to try, but I like doing some of it myself when I have the time.’
‘I doubt you have much to spare.’ She turned to look at him again with the real smile he recalled from childhood lighting her face to true beauty. He reminded himself not to fall in love with her all over again. ‘I have never thanked you for being a good friend when I needed one, Max. I always did trust you with my darkest secrets, didn’t I?’
‘You know they are all safe with me.’
‘Thank you.’
She went back to watching his not very fascinating parkland and she was still a little too good at hiding her feelings behind a serene expression nowadays. Not that he wanted her to tell him about any more of them when last time had hurt so much. In that godforsaken copse at Mynham five years ago he had hated Jascombe so fiercely he didn’t feel cold all the way back here for the fire and futility of it all burning inside him. The brute had treated her so badly it killed any hope he had Georgia might come to love him back one day.
Not that it mattered now because Max was done with loving her. He hadn’t dreamt of her lovely eyes hazy with love and desire for him for months now. Of course, he was eager to find his kind and sensible Mrs Chilton instead of indulging in old fantasies of her as deep in love with him as he had been with her. He would get on with his new life as soon as Becky was settled and her grief less raw and he had forgotten Lady Edgar Jascombe again. He was so good at it now it shouldn’t take nearly as long as it did last time.
‘Come and see what a fine job my gardener and stable boys have made of the old pleasance, Georgia.’ He had to get her out of a too intimate-feeling room, even if it didn’t have a bed in it yet. ‘That way the tabbies can’t shake their heads at us being alone in here if they find out you have been visiting without a chaperon.’
‘They would have to know about it first and your men don’t look as if they indulge in idle gossip,’ she said lightly, but led the way downstairs anyway. ‘You do good work, Max,’ she said as she peeped into the rooms he had already repaired for his sister in this Tudor dwelling house that had been built inside the old walls for some relative too important to consign to a draughty tower and forget about. ‘This will be a fine place for your sister and niece to make their home when it’s finished.’
‘I hope so. She needs to be able to come and go as she pleases so I want to get the Little House repaired as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, poor Becky, she must be devastated by her loss,’ Georgia said with a sad shake of her head at the true grief of a loving wife for a loving husband.
He was glad when they were outside again and he shrugged his battered old coat back on despite the sunshine and the light breeze. He knew what was due to a lady and that wasn’t a working man in shirtsleeves, dusty and maybe a little sweaty from his labours. For a while they walked in silence as he thought of love and grief and didn’t want to talk about her lack of either for her late husband.
‘Goodness, this entire area was covered in brambles and ivy and old man’s beard last time I was here,’ she said as he opened the garden door and the scent of the roses in bloom was sweet on the summer air.
‘That was four years ago,’ he said.
He recalled the exact time and day she had come and how preoccupied she was with her family, but he didn’t want her to know he remembered every second of her hasty visit. He wondered why she had bothered to come that day, but it was probably to let him know she was preoccupied with her children so he had no need to worry about her any more. He wasn’t sure if that had been a kindness or more unconscious cruelty when he had been struggling so hard to forget her again, but it hardly mattered when they were little more than polite strangers now.
‘True and, although you never come to London, my parents do, so I don’t need to come north very often in order to see them.’
‘I know,’ he said shortly. They crossed the walled gardens and went through the gate to the old pleasance, where long-dead DeMayne ladies had once escaped the stern reality of living in a stronghold to stroll and play games and dream a little.
He loved the view of the hills beyond and liked to think some of the ancient herbs and wildflowers were left over from the days when Holdfast was young and home to fighting DeMaynes and their dependents. He could picture the old place, busy and noisy with fighting men training and myriads of servants to look after a garrison and the old lords’ chosen retainers and family. This must have been a quiet sanctuary from all that busyness once upon a time and he liked to fancy one or two of those ladies still kept a silent watch over it.
Now he was trying to distract himself from Georgia’s presence by wondering about this place in its heyday and it was never going to work with her faint perfume teasing his senses. Her frothy summer gown clung to far too many of her feminine curves for his comfort as that playful breeze outlined her figure and she didn’t seem to realise it. Because of Jascombe’s cruelty she was oddly innocent about her own charms and unease ran under his reluctant admiration of them as that ignorance felt dangerous for her.
‘Edgar secretly hated all the history and tradition at Mynham, you know? I’m glad you treasure the past as well as the present,’ she said and looked as if she wished she hadn’t reminded herself she was once married to the rat.
‘I’m sorry you can’t forget him, Georgia’ Max said impulsively.
‘Don’t you dare be sorry for me,’ she snapped back fiercely and that was more like the Georgia he once knew.
‘That’s not what I said and I am sorry that you feel you can’t trust another man. There are plenty of good ones in the world and very few of us enjoy inflicting pain.’ She looked sceptical. ‘Refuse to live freely and joyfully and he wins, Georgia,’ he cautioned.
‘He can’t; he’s dead and I wouldn’t trust myself to know a good man from a bad one even if I wanted another husband and I don’t,’ she said, gazing at that view to avoid looking at him.
The fool he once was flinched at her denial of interest in any man, least of all him. ‘You were very young and Jascombe acted his part well,’ he said.
‘I thought all men were like you so I had nothing to fear from him, but I was so wrong. I could kick myself for being so easily taken in.’
‘Don’t make your marriage to a noble rat be my fault, Georgia!’
‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’
‘No, you never do.’
There was a tense pause and she looked as if she was getting ready to march away in a huff. He almost wished she would.
‘I don’t mean it was your fault I married him, idiot,’ she argued brusquely, ‘just that you have such a good heart, despite being a rough-and-tumble boy and sometimes treating me as a mere girl when we were young. You taught me to expect that all men would be like you, that’s all; I didn’t look past Edgar’s surface charm and realise he was your opposite in every way that counted.’
Max wanted to hit something, although he knew it wouldn’t solve anything, or help her say whatever she really came to say, so he held his fury at the idea her marriage was his fault in any way inside with a mighty effort. ‘And now you know how to spot a fake you will be able to choose better next time,’ he said as casually as he could manage.
‘I shall never marry again,’ she insisted with a shudder.
Yet he could see she wasn’t happy and he still loved her enough to want her to be so. ‘Never is a long time,’ he said carefully, ‘and are you ever going to tell me why you really came out of your way to see me?’
‘Because I wanted to see you again, of course, and it was time I inspected your progress here. It is very impressive.’
He let his impatience show. He needed to know why she was looking so drawn and thin again. ‘Thank you,’ he said blandly, refusing to fill the silence with polite chatter.
‘Oh, very well,’ she said at last with a gusty sigh. ‘I contracted the influenza at the beginning of June. The Duke called on me on his way home from Brussels with news of the battle, since rumours were flying around that the Allies had been defeated and he knew I would be worried for my daughters’ safety. He caught me in the middle of a coughing fit and decided I was more ill than I would admit so he has carried my girls back to Mynham with him for weeks and weeks while I recover to his satisfaction.’
‘It is hot and airless in London at this time of year—I wonder any of you can breathe even when you are in rude health,’ he said despite the anxiety pricking at him because she had been so ill even Ness had noticed.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said sulkily.
He didn’t want to. He wanted her to storm off in a temper and never come back, but she was his old friend and must have a reason for coming out of her way to see him. He had to get her to tell him what was troubling her and hope it wasn’t too dreadful. ‘Explain it to me better, then,’ he said.
‘I can’t sleep for worrying about my girls living at Mynham without me,’ she admitted at last.
‘They are only visiting their grandparents,’ he argued, ‘and Ness is right for once. You do need to recover properly and it makes sense for them to stay there until you are truly well again.’
She shook her head and looked as if she wished she hadn’t bothered to come if that was all he had to say. ‘You don’t understand,’ she accused him again, but a lot more crossly this time. At least that was better than the wistful look in her eyes when she talked of her daughters being kept at Mynham by their toplofty grandfather.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘There must be more keeping you awake than worry about their routine being disrupted. Are you tempted to let some man into your life although you don’t think you want to, Georgia? Is that why you really came to see me after so long?’
He couldn’t think why else she had broken four years of near silence and this wasn’t jealousy ripping through him like a rusty saw. He wouldn’t let it be and she didn’t want to marry him today any more than she had done eight years ago.
If only he had found the courage, or the words, to tell her there was nothing he wanted more back then, they might both be very different people today, but that was just a pipe dream. He still had to find his perfect Mrs Chilton and she would have to be nothing like Lady Edgar Jascombe, society widow and leader of fashion, if she was going to be happy here year in and year out.
Georgia shuddered at the idea of another man with the right to do whatever he wanted to her whenever he wanted to. Did Max really think she had come here to ask for his advice on such an impossible subject? How could he when he knew the truth about her marriage to Edgar? It felt as if he was wishing her away, as if they were almost strangers, and that hurt.
‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘and four years isn’t so very long.’
‘True,’ he said indifferently.
How stupid to want him to have missed her when she was the one who had stayed away. ‘The finest wife is less than the worst husband in the eyes of the law, so why would I walk into that trap twice?’ she said and breathed in deeply and slowly to calm her jumping nerves.
His silence and averted gaze said he was fighting with his own strong feelings and he was a man so she supposed she had insulted him along with the rest. She held her breath, fearing their long friendship had finally been broken and it would be her fault.
‘Not all marriages are bleak as yours was, Georgia,’ he argued and she let out a quiet sigh of relief because at least he still cared enough to argue. ‘Ask my sister-in-law if she feels less because she is married to Zach. Seeing them together at the last ball you all attended should have shown you that you’re wrong if you did think it.’
Zachary’s spirited wife clearly adored her husband, but she was never likely to submit to husbandly authority and Zachary would not ask her to.
‘I do know that happy marriages exist,’ she conceded, ‘and your brother and sister-in-law clearly have one so there’s no need to frown at me as if I’m being irrational. Edgar showed me that wicked men can pretend to be good and kind, though, so it’s not sensible of me to risk myself and my daughters by trusting one again, so kindly stop reasoning with me in that infuriating way, Maxwell Chilton.’
‘Max,’ he argued with an old boyish impatience that almost made her cry for some strange reason. Her illness must have been more debilitating than she thought for her to still be so tearful weeks afterwards.
‘Your mother only called you Maxwell when she was taking you to task for our mischief when we were children, so I don’t wonder you dislike it,’ she said with a wry smile.
‘It was usually your mischief as well.’
‘True,’ she said and felt better about being born female.
Yet Max was so very grown up and male now she couldn’t lose herself in the safe past for very long. He had grown into such a strong man while her back was turned. How silly of her not to have waited for him to grow up when they were both eighteen instead of blithely marrying Edgar as if he was about to make all her dreams come true. She recalled how she and Max were back then and nearly laughed at the very idea he could have loved her if only they had tried hard enough.
Now he managed to look very dashing even in workman’s boots, frayed shirt and old leathers topped with a coat most gentlemen’s grooms would refuse to wear. Edgar had always dressed fashionably even when he was in the country, but somehow Max’s disreputable old clothes gave him a presence Edgar’s finery never managed to lend him. There was no need for a fine London tailor to pad his shoulders out when Max was so fit and muscular that the seams of the battered old coat he was wearing had snapped once or twice already and been mended so he could wear it when he was working.
Someone must patch it for the rough labour most gentlemen would never soil their hands with. She pictured some besotted seamstress bending over Max’s mending, wishing he would wear her next to his skin instead of his overworked shirts and disreputable coat. Did he have a mistress? She thought he must do and couldn’t understand why the very idea of one had set her teeth on edge.
She flinched away from being needed like that ever again, yet here she was wondering how Max’s woman felt when all his sensual attention was centred on her. Georgia knew he would never humiliate or hurt a woman to make himself feel stronger and better and Max’s bedazzled mistress probably longed for his quiet knock on her door to say never mind sleeping tonight.
A wondering shiver slid down her spine as she wished she knew how it felt to be needed by a good and strong man, but it turned icy at the thought of ever doing that again with any man. What had they been talking about before she let her thoughts stray into such an impossible place? Ah, yes, their childhood misdeeds and the punishments he took for them.
‘I feel bad about our mischief now I’m a mother myself,’ she said. ‘Your poor mama had to put up with it while she was doing her best to bring you and Becky up alone after your father died so young. Even your elder sister Joan wasn’t very old at the time and Zachary was a schoolboy and we caused them so much trouble.’
‘You should feel guilty, considering your father would never punish you even if he caught us red-handed,’ Max said. ‘He would just shake his head and say he was disappointed in you, but if you had been born a boy you would have had to go without your supper nearly as often as I did.’
‘True again,’ she replied with a reminiscent smile. The contrast between then and now felt so sharp it seemed to cut into her like knives. ‘Ah, Max, sometimes I feel so lost,’ she said impulsively, ‘as if I’m living inside a picture and nothing in my life is quite real.’
Oh, confound it! Why had she let her tongue run away with her? She had shown him the absolute loneliness that sometimes bit into her even in a crowded room and he was already trying to put some distance between them. For a long moment he stared down at her as if he wanted to say something passionate and significant, but then he looked away again. When he looked back there was only compassion in his dark eyes and he led her to a finely made bench she suspected was his handiwork.
They sat and gazed at the lovely view from the top of what she guessed was once a flowery mead in the high medieval style. Of course she had been ill and the influenza must have affected her nerves more than she had thought, because the side closest to him was tingling as if she was being seared by a primal force. They had sat like this so many times when they were young it seemed ridiculous not to be at ease with him now.
She shifted a little further away from him and stared at the fine view in the hope it could soothe her stupid nerves. And that was all it could be, wasn’t it? Just her upset nerves after all that worrying and sleepless nights. What else could it be?
‘Nobody is more real than you are, Georgia,’ he argued softly at last and she decided she felt better now. It must have been a goose walking over her grave, one of those inexplicable changes of mood everyone suffered from time to time. ‘Jascombe undermined you because he was a nonentity, but he’s dead now and you’re alive. It’s time you saw yourself as you really are before he ruins your life from beyond the grave,’ he added. She was so glad he hadn’t noticed the blush she could feel cooling on her cheeks and had no idea she had trouble taking in his meaning before she pulled herself together.
‘You really think he was a nonentity?’ she said incredulously when it did hit her. Edgar had loomed so large in her life she had never been able to see him in such a cool, clear light before, but Max was right: he did look insignificant from here.
‘Well, he did nothing with his life to prove he wasn’t, did he? Even his own father disliked him and, while his mother may have mistakenly adored him, Lord Edgar Jascombe was born unimportant and he died the same way.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ She felt as if her life had just fallen into a new pattern, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.
‘I still curse him to hell for trying to break you so he could feel better about himself, but at least he didn’t succeed.’
‘Didn’t he? Sometimes I feel as if he did,’ she admitted wearily.