In some ways, Becky’s return felt like a good thing since Max joined them for breakfast now and again, if he knew Becky would be there. In others, Georgia felt even more unwanted and awkward with two Chiltons avoiding her. Apparently Becky’s little daughter found it impossible to settle in the evening unless her mother was there to soothe her to sleep and comfort her if she woke up, or so she said.
Leonora was trying not to become the buffer between Georgia and her sister-in-law when Becky decided it would be rude not to dine with her brother’s wife one more time. She began to wish Becky had gone somewhere else and, although it might make a public rift between them, at least then Georgia wouldn’t have to tiptoe around her new home feeling like an unwelcome guest.
She let matters drift for a while, but finally decided she had nothing to lose by confronting Becky. Catching her alone at the breakfast table one morning after Max had left on whatever business he planned to exhaust himself with that day, Georgia invited Becky into her private sitting room to explain why she was behaving as if Georgia carried a contagious disease. Becky looked so shocked by a direct challenge that she meekly followed her in and seemed to be searching for a bland excuse.
‘I know we have never been close,’ Georgia told her as soon as the door was safely closed behind them, ‘but we have to live under the same roof until it is less obvious you are leaving Holdfast because you hate me.’
‘It’s not that,’ Becky finally managed to say, but as she avoided Georgia’s gaze her denial didn’t sound very convincing.
‘What is it then? My girls are old enough now to notice you avoid me like the plague and I might not do it for myself, but I will always fight for their peace of mind.’
‘I don’t hate you. I just can’t stand watching you break Max’s heart all over again,’ Becky burst out as if she had been trying not to say it ever since she had heard he was going to marry Georgia in such haste that she had no chance to argue him out of it.
‘Why would I even want to be so cruel?’ Georgia asked blankly.
‘I don’t know—why were you last time?’
‘Who says I was?’ she countered and tried to gather enough sense to fight back. ‘And why would he confide in you instead of me, if what you say is true and I doubt it.’
‘Of course he didn’t confide in me, he’s a man, isn’t he? I knew you were his private obsession, though, and it was your marriage to Lord Edgar that drove him so far into himself I used to worry he would never truly come back. It took him owning this place and the hard work of getting it repaired and the estate back in profit to teach him to value himself as he should.
‘If you make him feel worthless again, he has nowhere to go now that you two are married. If you reject him now, how do you expect him to pick himself up and carry on with his life, Georgia? You are inside his castle now instead of in London so he can’t learn to forget you here, can he?’
‘If he didn’t confide in you, how do you know?’ Georgia argued numbly and had to cling to the idea Becky must be wrong.
‘I watched him make a cake of himself over you so often before you went off to London that I thought you must know how he felt and you had either ignored his feelings or turned him down. I admit I did hate you then, especially after his first year at Cambridge.
‘He came home for the summer so unlike himself we were all worried he would work himself into a brain fever. I sneaked into his bedroom to see why he was struggling so hard to translate some musty old classical text that usually came so easily to him that he barely had to think about it. I went through the notes on his desk to see why it was such hard work.’
‘What was it about, then?’ Georgia asked impatiently since his thoughts on a seven-year-old Greek or Latin puzzle didn’t seem very important right now.
‘You,’ Becky said starkly.
‘You mean he wrote something personal and left it lying about where anyone could read it?’ she challenged. Becky blushed and looked guilty.
‘Of course not, but he had spent so long scratching away at his papers in his room I picked the lock to see what he was writing so frantically when I peeped through the keyhole.’
Becky’s cool blue eyes went even cooler as she remembered how Max had shut himself away from the family he loved so much and made his little sister so anxious she had played peeping Tom.
‘Zach managed to persuade him to go out for a ride. I took the key from a room I knew would unlock Max’s door if I jiggled it the right way so I could see if there was anything we could do to help him.’
‘What was it, then?’ Georgia said.
‘A few words written over and over again as if his life depended on him learning them by heart. I will forget her...she’s married... I must forget her... I can forget her...why can’t I forget her? He had written it time after time in a great pile, with more pages torn up on the floor, and don’t you dare say it was about anyone else but you, because that will make me so angry.’
‘Why didn’t he tell me, then?’
Tears came perilously close when she thought of how miserable she and Max had both been in their separate spaces that summer. She had been recovering from the birth of her first child—loving her little girl, from the tips of Millie’s sparse baby curls to her tiny, perfect toes, and hating her baby’s father all the time she did so.
She dreaded returning to the marriage bed so Edgar could father a son next time and all that time Max was miserably in love with her, Lord Edgar Jascombe’s terrified wife. She had a hard time believing Max was deeply in love with her all those years ago, but Becky was right. Who else was there?
‘You must have known that he loved you,’ Becky accused her, ‘and I’m not sure you love him even now.’
‘I didn’t know, Becky, truly,’ she said, but she could see that Becky didn’t believe her.
‘You two ran wild together for so long—of course he fell in love with you as soon as he thought he was old enough to love you as a man,’ she said scornfully. ‘Even I knew he only had eyes for you and I was fifteen. You were three years older and happy to whistle him down the wind as if he had no real feelings and he had so many more for you than you ever deserved. I could have slapped you.’
‘Friendship isn’t love.’
‘It must have grown out of it for him, even if it didn’t for you.’
‘Maybe it did, but I can’t—no, I won’t discuss my relationship with my husband with anyone but him. I am his wife and I owe him my loyalty.’
‘Just not your love,’ Becky said flatly. ‘Well, I can’t simply stand by and watch you break his heart all over again. Don’t you dare shake your head at me as if you wouldn’t dream of hurting him, because I know how much you did so eight years ago. He wasn’t himself when he came back from your husband’s funeral, either.
‘Heaven knows what you said or did to him then, because he drove himself as if twenty demons were on his shoulders when he came back to Holdfast after watching you mourn a man who wasn’t even fit to black Max’s boots.’
‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Georgia lied uneasily. ‘I only spoke to him alone for a few minutes at the time.’
‘Goodness knows how you managed even that much when you were supposed to be an inconsolable widow.’
Georgia couldn’t meet Becky’s eyes as she thought about why she had looked to Max for consolation on a bleak winter morning and felt ashamed of herself for asking for it now she knew he had loved her as a boy. Maybe he still did when he held and comforted her and she had no idea her dearest friend had ever wanted to be more than that to her.
‘I wasn’t,’ she said as if the words had escaped of their own accord.
‘You weren’t what?’
‘Inconsolable.’
Silence as Becky wrinkled her nose with revulsion, then seemed to think again and looked puzzled and then horrified. ‘Oh, my heavens—that’s it, isn’t it?’ she said as if she had been struck by a truly shocking notion.
‘That’s what?’ Georgia bluffed uneasily.
‘Your precious Lord Edgar treated you badly, didn’t he? That explains why Max was so furious and hurt and driven when he got back from your husband’s funeral.’
Georgia was too horrified by everything she had just learned to pretend Becky was imagining things.
‘Your first husband was a beast, wasn’t he?’ Becky prompted relentlessly.
‘Yes,’ she finally whispered and met Becky’s gaze as bravely as she could.
‘I’m so sorry, Georgia,’ Becky whispered back as if she had opened Pandora’s Box by accident and all the miseries of the world had poured out as she tried to slam the lid back down again.
Georgia winced to recall Max saying the same words to her five years ago when she told him what Edgar had done. ‘I have no idea why you are apologising to me,’ she said.
‘Because you were very nearly right—I have come very close to hating you. I still think you were an idiot to ignore Max and marry a noble brute, but now I pity you as well.’
‘I don’t want your pity,’ Georgia challenged her with a glare. ‘Pity makes me less, it makes me pitiable and I refuse to be so ever again.’
‘It strikes me you refused it when you were wed to a sly beast,’ Becky said with a wry smile that respected Georgia’s courage, if not her brains for marrying Edgar in the first place.
‘I couldn’t let my girls grow up hearing their father being called a brute and me his victim.’
‘Thank God my Jack was a true gentleman in every sense of the word, but I would do the same for Phoebe.’
‘But you married a hero and I married a beast.’
‘My hero is still dead,’ Becky said bleakly and Georgia could see the appalling grief behind her quiet declaration and wished she could hug her, but she was too afraid of being shrugged off and knew it was probably the last thing Becky wanted.
‘True—can I pity you and your daughter for such a tragic loss?’
‘Just this once if you really must, but only so I can pity you back once, too.’
‘I am so sorry your Captain Jack died a hero, then, Becky.’
‘I’m sorry Lord Edgar was a villain and not in the least bit sorry he’s dead.’
‘We are almost equal, then.’
‘I’m more sorry than you are. I should have known there was more to Max’s refusal to talk about you than I thought when he set about mending his precious castle as if it had to be done in double quick time five years ago.’
‘You must have been busy falling in love at the time so why would you think about me and my woes?’
‘I really didn’t like you at the time.’
‘You don’t like me much now.’
‘I could learn.’
‘If I make Max happy?’
‘Yes, but now I shall expect him to make you happy as well.’
‘That’s progress,’ Georgia replied with the glimmer of a smile.
‘And I like your daughters; you have made a good job of raising them so far.’
‘Was that a compliment?’
Becky shrugged.
‘I am almost overwhelmed,’ Georgia said. Who would have thought her prickly sister-in-law would approve of something she had done?
‘Don’t get used to it,’ Becky told her half seriously. ‘Until you make my brother truly happy you had better be thankful they filled in the moat last century.’
‘I will stay away from the battlements as well.’
‘Do,’ Becky said with a severe nod and they were both silent while they rearranged their opinions, or at least Georgia hoped so.
‘How does it feel to love a man to the edge of reason, Becky?’ she heard herself ask impulsively, but she really wanted to know.
‘It feels...’ Becky hesitated and her eyes went dreamy and then looked so hurt and sad Georgia wished she hadn’t asked.
‘That was clumsy. I’m sorry; I should not have asked such a personal question.’
‘No, don’t make me into a sad little widow. I loved Jack too much to be less than he would want me to be. It feels wondrous; I can’t find the right words to explain. It’s just so warm and close and delicious you feel as if you will never truly be apart again.’
‘You have explained it very well and you loved your Jack very much, didn’t you?’
‘I loved him enough to try to forget he was a soldier every day he was one, even when we were on the march and we could only snatch closeness in small packages. I loved him enough not to persuade him to sell out because he thought it was his duty to fight for his country, but I feared for him every day and I was quite right.’
‘He was brave, but maybe you were braver,’ Georgia said and Becky cried and she even allowed Georgia to hold her as she wept.
After Becky’s heartwrenching tale of Max ordering himself not to love her over and over again when she was already married to Edgar, she had a job not to cry, too. Then Becky scrubbed at her cheeks with her handkerchief as if she was furious at her own weakness and why was it considered one when she had such good reason to cry?
‘Love is always worth it, Georgia,’ she said earnestly. ‘I shall never regret loving Jack with all my heart even now he’s gone and I miss him so much.’
Georgia yearned to feel such wholehearted, unguarded love for Max. She almost felt it stirring and shifting deep in her heart, but she wasn’t a wholehearted and unguarded person any more. Yet he was right. All the time she was guarding herself from feeling anything much Edgar had still won. If Becky was right, love was worth taking risks for and it was time she stopped being such a coward.