Georgia gasped with shock at his changes to her plan for a marriage in name only and shook her head in frantic denial. ‘No!’ she exclaimed with horror and backed away from the vigorous masculine fact of him in a haze of panic.
‘No,’ she repeated and wondered where her wits had gone to stand here and listen to him with her mouth open like a stock fish and her gaze fixed on his sternly handsome face as he blasted her hopes to powder. ‘I can’t do that thing ever again. Not with any man, not even you,’ she whispered and put her hand to her mouth to stop it trembling at the very thought of enduring the marital bed again, even with the only man she could trust not to hurt her.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to be my true wife at the outset, Georgia,’ he told her more gently and raised his hand as if he wanted to take hers and comfort her, but dropped it back to his side when she backed away again.
‘I’m not a brute. I won’t demand what you can’t freely give me. You would have to learn to trust me with your head and your heart before we were truly man and wife and I promise never to lay a finger on you in anger. I would rather cut my hand off than hurt you with it. I could drag that rat you married out of his grave and beat his corpse until it was sorry for what he did to you, but I’m not a violent man, I promise.’
‘I know you’re not,’ she said and it was true. But the act of so-called love made her flinch from the thought of coupling even with him one day, regardless of the stupid little jitters deep inside when she walked through the gardens with him a couple of weeks ago. They would never outshine the memory of how it felt to be taken whenever her husband felt like it.
How could she promise to love, honour and obey Max for the rest of her natural life when Edgar made her the same promises and broke every single one? She wasn’t the pristine and loving young wife Max should marry and enjoy a joyous wedding night with.
‘In your head you know it,’ he argued as if he understood her better than she did herself. ‘Deep down, where Jascombe hurt and humiliated you the most I don’t think you don’t trust anyone. Because of him you have no idea how it feels to truly make love, Georgia, and if you don’t even want to yearn for me as your lover and match me kiss for kiss one day, then don’t marry me.
‘I can only wed you on the hope lovemaking will eventually bind us for life and leave no room for the ifs and buts and maybes I can see forming in your busy mind. I can’t marry you for any less than a promise to at least try to mean our vows. I certainly won’t endure the devil’s bargain you have just insulted us both with, Georgiana.’
She wished he wouldn’t call her by the full version of her name when it sounded so stiff and formal on his lips. She knew he was trying to distance himself from her again. He obviously didn’t think she had enough courage to risk his version of marriage, but there was still a tiny little snag of something curious and forbidden at the heart of her whispering maybe. If they did marry on his terms she would have to strive for so much she hadn’t even wanted to think about. But he was Max. She couldn’t fear him, even if the very idea of such intimacy made her sick with nerves.
‘You would have to agree to take at least half of my fortune for your own use if we marry and try to keep those promises, Max. I can’t let you sacrifice everything you are for me and give nothing in return. I may never be able to make love with you, so there are many more risks on your side than there are on mine. Because of that I must be able to give you something back and you could do so much good with it here.’
‘I don’t want your money,’ he said as if the very idea revolted him and he had to pace again.
‘You may not, but your tenants and your castle certainly do. However hard you work, it will take decades to get the estate properly back to normal. Parts of your castle that you haven’t been able to rebuild yet should at least be repaired before they fall down if you won’t be sensible.’
‘Sensible? I can provide for my family, thank you very much,’ he said with so much pride she nearly smiled. He thought he was such a humble man it was almost funny.
‘Of course you can, but, speaking for myself, I prefer you alive instead of following your father to an early grave from hard work.’
He shrugged, but she could tell by his sudden stiffness her words had hit home. He had grown up without a father and would not want that for any child they might have and what a heart-racing, panicky idea that was. Maybe she could just think of her own daughters and Becky’s little girl instead for now.
‘I need to think a lot harder about this; we both do,’ he said as if her condition was almost as hard for him as his was for her.
‘True,’ she said. If they risked it, this would be a very different kind of marriage to the one she had come here to ask for and it did need a lot more thinking about.
‘I might as well return to Yorkshire with you so we can resolve it there instead of miles apart. We will need to relearn each other as adults if we are to even be friends again, Georgia, let alone lovers. And stop panicking; I will give you time.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. Planning a journey back to their respective childhood homes with such a huge decision hanging over their heads felt very odd somehow. ‘We had best get on with it, I suppose.’
‘We had best get there before dark so we don’t have to marry anyway to save your reputation,’ he agreed with a weary smile.
‘It’s not that far and there is supposed to be a moon tonight,’ she almost argued, but Becky might decide to poison her tea if she stayed here much longer and Max might think better of the whole idea and she really didn’t want him to do that.
‘What do you want to do next?’ Georgia said early the next morning. Max was waiting where they had always met up for their childhood adventures. She had asked him that question so often when they were young, but they weren’t children now and her entire future might depend on his reply.
‘Let’s walk,’ he said and waited for her to lead the way.
It felt so odd recalling how headlong and busy they were about their adventures once upon a time as they strolled along the edges of her father’s fish pond and out into Max’s brother’s parkland, on the path the villagers used as a short cut to get to work at Flaxonby. Once they knew every foot of both estates, but it felt so different now they were grown up and had lived away from here for so long, it felt like another lifetime.
‘I had to sneak out before Huggins came in and tried to chivvy me into something totally unsuitable for a proper walk in the country,’ she said, more for something to say than because she thought he was interested in fashion, or her lack of it this morning. ‘I was amazed to find this old gown still fits me.’
‘It suits you, it always did,’ he said distractedly.
‘And did you steal those fine clothes from your brother’s wardrobe?’ she teased him. ‘You certainly won’t be able to wear any of your old clothes now you have developed more muscles than a prize-fighter.’
‘And I wonder you are so slender after carrying two children. Joan is always complaining hers have ruined her girlish figure.’
‘Your elder sister has had four more of them than I have and I am thinner than I usually am at the moment.’
‘Because of the influenza that caused all this trouble in the first place?’ he asked and looked a little harder at her, as if he suspected she would fade away if he didn’t keep a close eye on her.
‘And the worry,’ she admitted with a shrug. ‘I’m usually as healthy as a horse, although I never thought that a very good comparison when some of them have such delicate constitutions and suffer all sorts of unfortunate ailments.’
Now she was making conversation as if they were nodding acquaintances. Maybe he thought so too, since he didn’t even make one of those humph? noises men used to ward off polite conversation. They both knew she was trying to avoid the more difficult one they must have as they walked on in silence. He was indulging her, she decided, and was slightly offended.
‘What do you want to do next, then?’ she repeated her first question since he hadn’t answered it.
‘Are you prepared to at least try to be my wife in every sense of the word one day, Georgia?’ he countered her question with his very serious one and she couldn’t read his thoughts at all to see how he wanted her to reply, the tricky wretch.
‘Yes,’ she said at last and hoped he knew just saying the word had used up all the bravery she had.
‘I would feel better if you did not look as if you have been condemned to the guillotine.’
‘I’m sorry, Max. I’m nervous and I promise you nobody will know we are not the perfect couple when we are together in public if you do decide to marry me.’
‘I’m sure they won’t,’ he said, all the acting she had to do while she was married to Edgar bleak in his gaze as he met hers.
It felt as if Edgar’s sly ghost was sitting in an oak tree nearby like a malicious spirit, wishing them all the bad luck in the world, so she met Max’s eyes as bravely as she could and refused to listen to it.
‘I won’t have to act confidence with you, Max, because you have always given it to me. I won’t need to pretend I am at ease with you since we were always easy together when we ran wild over this land and my father’s as children.’
‘You won’t feel at ease with me now we are full grown, though, will you? Not with the promises we are going to make to one another keeping you on edge and you expecting me to pounce on you like a hungry wolf at any moment,’ he said as if he doubted this was a good idea deep down.
Even if she shared those doubts and that fear she could not turn her back on this chance to be so much more to one another than they were now. She had to think about the happiness of her daughters in the here and now as well.
‘I know you too well to do that and I shall learn to be braver in time,’ she said and hoped it was true.
‘Love can’t be forced, Georgia. I won’t set limits on you tolerating me as your real husband and lover one day. You can take a year, or a decade, or say never if you truly can’t get Jascombe’s poison out of your system and dream of me instead. I just need to know you will fight for what we two could be together if we both try hard enough.’
‘What is it now, Max?’ she asked him the question she probably should not.
‘Respect to begin with. You must know you are a very beautiful woman and, as I am a healthy adult male, I admit I want you as a man should want his wife, but I am a patient man and will wait and hope that you will eventually want me, too.’
‘You should say your wedding vows to a real woman eager to be your wife from the start,’ she said.
‘Do you really think I could be happy with her, knowing you were stuck at Mynham for the next decade and a half and fighting for your daughters’ happiness every hour of the day?’ he said as lightly as if they were still easy together as they strolled along this familiar path, although they were nothing of the kind.
They were several correct feet apart and so careful not to touch one another she knew it was a kind lie and he had as many doubts about this marriage as she did.
‘And you are a real woman, so stop belittling yourself at Jascombe’s bidding,’ he added as if he found the idea repulsive.
‘I want to be one for you, but I’m still not sure I can be,’ she said with the almost painful honesty he seemed to have released in her after all those years of pretending. A very small part of her did long to be his eager lover, but the rest wasn’t sure she could fight her demons that hard and trust him to make their marriage as wonderful as hers to Edgar had been awful.
‘Then we’re already halfway there,’ he said.
‘You are more trusting than I am,’ she warned him with one last try to be honest and not put her interests before his.
‘I haven’t been taught not to trust by the rat that should have adored and valued you ahead of his own twisted and selfish needs, though, have I? You can trust me, I promise you.’
‘I know I can,’ she replied and shut down any more attempts to save her oldest friend from her need to make sure her children had happy futures. She might, too, if they were very lucky and she was going to marry him anyway and hope it turned out for the best for him as well as for her and her daughters.
‘Will you marry me, then, Georgia?’ he said. Bless the man, but he even sounded nervous as he gave her the proposal he thought she must want. He took her hand and she felt that stir of something strange deep inside her again and almost snatched it back as if he’d burnt her, but he would be so insulted she simply could not hurt him that deeply.
‘Yes, Max, I will,’ she answered and saw some strong feeling in his eyes before he bent his head and kissed the back of her hand like a gallant of old.
Now that stir was a sharp heat and promised so much she didn’t understand wanting that she flinched. He dropped her hand as if it had scalded him and she was hopeless at whatever their old friendship was turning into.
‘If you are sure,’ she added after fumbling this so badly.
‘I’m sure,’ he said so steadily she almost believed him.
‘On my wedding day, you told me you were never going to put yourself through all this, Max,’ Zach reminded him as they walked to Riverdale Church together so Georgia could be married from her old home this time.
The Duke had offered them Mynham’s private chapel when Max had ridden there to tell the man he was going to marry his former daughter-in-law and to request the transfer of guardianship for Georgia’s daughters that Ness had promised in that hasty letter. Max still couldn’t forgive him for his cruel and rude attempt to reorder Georgia’s life and her children’s. Or for Ness’s original scheme to wed his obnoxious spare son to an innocent in order to make sure his duchy survived.
Why Ness thought Georgia would want a reminder of her disastrous wedding to Jascombe in the same place eight years ago was beyond him and to him it spoke volumes for Ness’s insensitivity. Max’s fingers threatened to tighten into fists at the very thought of the pompous old fool and they had been doing it a lot lately.
He didn’t want to be furious on his wedding day, so he splayed them out and the tug of his fine and gentlemanly gloves reminded him exactly why he was tricked out like the finest dandy in Mayfair on a fine day when he could be busy elsewhere if he wasn’t getting married.
He wondered how Georgia was feeling on her second wedding morning. She would not be ecstatic and would not be marrying him at all if Ness hadn’t interfered in hers and her daughters’ lives, so maybe he had something to thank the old windbag for, although he wasn’t quite sure about that yet. Was she nervous, then? Oh, yes, definitely that and he had made her even more so by laying out his conditions for marriage.
He couldn’t regret doing it, even so, and he really couldn’t make her those solemn promises in the church where they had both been baptised and not mean to honour them. For an awful moment he wondered how he would feel if she turned tail at the last minute and decided she couldn’t marry him after all.
The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach said it would be a disaster, but he didn’t want to reason his way through the reason why just now. He had to pretend all was well when she had never loved him as passionately as he once loved her and she probably never would.
‘I was only twenty at the time and I was trying to distract you,’ he told his brother and wished he felt more like the eager, bedazzled bridegroom Zach had been on the day he married Martha when she was already carrying his child.
If Georgia had wed him eight years ago instead of now he could have been a very happy bridegroom two years before his big brother. He could hardly imagine being such a lovelorn youth today and he didn’t want to. It was hard enough to live in hope of a true marriage with Georgia’s maybe one day, but definitely not now promise all the hope they had.
If only their fates had aligned eight years ago he would have been the happiest young man in England and Georgia would not have had to endure Jascombe’s brutal tyranny. In the here and now she didn’t want to love him and he didn’t want to love her, so they were equal this time. It should feel like a firm basis for marriage, but instead it felt as if they were about to build their house on quicksand. He had to cling to a sliver of hope they could make this right one day. It was too late for either of them to back out.
‘You sounded very certain about it, but I suppose Georgia Welland was married to another man at the time. I should have realised you didn’t want to marry anyone else.’
‘You were too much in love to notice anything much on that day and I should have kept my mouth shut. There were plenty more fish in the sea.’
‘Funny how you never tried very hard to catch any of them, though, isn’t it?’
‘I have been busy rescuing the castle you didn’t want.’
‘And now I know why you threw yourself into restoring Holdfast as if you were desperate for something to distract yourself with.’
‘I am a younger son so I needed a purpose in life, but I wasn’t distracting myself from my long-lost love, if that’s what you think.’
‘You do know I would wish you so very happy on your wedding day if you looked as if you were going to be, don’t you, Max?’
‘Mind your own business, Zach. You wouldn’t have welcomed my interference if I had tried to tell you how you felt about Martha on your wedding day, so don’t try to do it to me on mine.’
‘But we are happy,’ Zach argued doggedly and with a concerned brotherly frown, ‘we love one another.’
‘It’s obvious you can’t keep your hands off her and even I recognise the signs Martha is increasing again. She was even paler than Georgia last night at that family dinner Mama would insist on throwing for us and I didn’t think that was even possible until Martha bolted out of the dining room to cast up her accounts and you raced out after her.’
‘Aye, she does suffer for the first two or three months, the poor love. She swears she is delighted to be expecting our next little demon in the New Year, despite the sickness and the prospect of being big with child so soon after the last two.
‘She wants our children to grow up together instead of being spaced out like we were for some reason known only to her and, before you ask, I have no idea why she thinks it was a bad idea. I long ago gave up trying to work out Martha’s reasoning and usually go along with her nowadays, especially when it suits me so well,’ Zach said, looking very smug about his wife’s latest project.
Max remembered the marriage of pure convenience his brother had set out to make with one Tolbourne sister and what a contrast that was to the very different sister he had ended up marrying. ‘Reason never did have much of a place between you two,’ he said.
‘True,’ Zach said happily.
His brother was so absorbed in thinking about his own marriage he forgot the very different one Max was about to make as they walked on through Riverdale village together. Max wondered what the harum-scarum boy and girl who once ran wild here would think of the stiffly fashionable people they were today.
‘Do you still love her, Max?’ Zach asked him abruptly. Why couldn’t he have carried on having a contented daydream about his wife instead of asking the question Max was trying so hard not to ask himself?
‘Who says that I ever did?’ he answered him warily.
‘I would have to be daft and short sighted not to know you were fathoms deep in love with Miss Welland before and after she married Jascombe.’
‘Maybe, but I was only eighteen and it was calf love.’
‘Then why are you going to marry her now that you are six and twenty?’
‘You ask too many questions,’ Max told his brother grumpily.
He wondered why the bride was supposed to be the one who suffered from bridal nerves when his felt stretched nearly to breaking point and he didn’t want to be in love with Georgia again. It had hurt too much the first time. And the second, he finally admitted privately as he looked back at the day they had met in that damned wood in the wintry dawn after Jascombe’s funeral and he knew he was still in love with her as she sobbed in his arms and told him she could never marry again.
‘You are very grumpy on your wedding day. I was ecstatic to be marrying Martha on mine,’ Zach said.
‘You were so nervous I thought I should have brought smelling salts ready to revive you when you had the vapours.’ Max gave a reluctant grin at the memory of his usually cool and composed brother so on fire to wed the love of his life that Max really had wondered if the groom would faint from nerves on his wedding morning.
‘You are not acting like I did, Max,’ Zach said as if the difference between the fond lover he was that day and the not very hopeful one Max was being today worried him.
Max’s reminiscent smile faded as he searched for the right words to lie to his brother that he was so preoccupied with dreams of his wedding night he was silenced by them, but they wouldn’t come. ‘I’m not, am I?’ he admitted at last and shrugged because he couldn’t pretend this was the happiest day of his life to his elder brother. It was only the hope of a happy ending for him and Georgia maybe years in the future, if all the faint chances they had worked out the right way and their stars finally aligned.
He wasn’t sure if Georgia would ever beat her fear of intimacy and he might be starting a life of bitter frustration rather than the loving and very passionate kind of marriage Zach and Martha enjoyed. Maybe he would need the mistress he didn’t want in the end, but it didn’t feel right for him to contemplate being unfaithful to his wife before he had even married her, so he wasn’t even going to consider it until he knew all hope for them was dead.
‘Despite the fact you were such a scrubby brat when we were young and plagued the life out of me, I do still love you, Max. Promise to come to me if you ever need to talk about whatever is troubling you and I promise to listen as if we are both sober adults. And even if you want to weep, come and find me anyway.
‘I would be insulted if you shared your misery with anyone else except your wife. I really wish I thought you two were marrying for love and she will be your first and best confidant from now on, but I can’t convince myself you are.’
‘We are such old and dear friends it’s a sort of love,’ Max argued feebly.
‘Just not the right sort to base a marriage on,’ Zach said coolly.
‘Not yet,’ Max said uncomfortably, very relieved they had finally reached the village church. The vicar was waiting to greet him fondly even after the pranks Master Maxwell Chilton and daredevil Miss Welland played on him in their youth, so it was too late for either of them to have second thoughts.