Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 (5 page)

And besides, between keeping a watch to be sure the boys didn't run under the wheels of any carriages or farm wagons, and telling me all about the gown she planned on wearing to the ball we're to have at Twelfth Night, Kitty didn't even ask me why I wanted to make the call.

When we arrived, she looked at the tiny cottage with its neatly swept front step and white curtains in the windows. Everything clean and spare and not in the least fussy, but very neat. Kitty said, "Oh good heavens, the boys will be like bulls in a china shop in there. Why don't we wait outside for you? There's a field over there." She gestured across the lane. "Thomas and Jack can play at running races until you've finished your call."

It was very nice of her--and so I told her, and asked if she was sure she didn't mind. To which Kitty made a face and said, "Mind? I can tell just by looking at the place that I'd as soon find a horse in the middle of the ocean as anyone worth talking to in there." By which of course, she meant any young men. She waved her hand at me to go. "You go on and enjoy your stuffy visit, I'll be much happier out here."

So it turned out that I was alone when I knocked at Miss Granger's front door.

Miss Granger's--Ruth, she insists I call her now that I'm no longer her pupil--health has improved very much in the last few years. She still grows tired on a long walk and can't lift anything terribly heavy. But she's well enough that she can take in a few day-pupils from the town for French and music lessons--not that she needs the income, but she says she likes the diversion teaching provides. And she doesn't look an invalid anymore at all.

She was frowning a little when she opened the door, but the look cleared when she saw me. "Why, Georgiana! What a nice surprise! I thought you might be old Mrs. Prouty from up the road, come to tell me my dog had been digging in her flower beds again." The dog she'd spoken of--a big, shaggy-coated sheep dog she calls Pilot--was behind her, pressing against her skirts and whining trying to see who was at the door. "But this is much nicer. Come in, please."

Ruth's cottage has only the two rooms downstairs: a kind of kitchen/dining room at the back, and the sitting room/parlour at the front. And everything inside is the same as out--simple and clean and as unadorned as a place can be without feeling stark or barren. The only incongruous note is Pilot, who sprawls untidily on the hearth and sheds hair on the furniture. Though I know Ruth doesn't mind; she loves all dogs. I am sure she would keep more, if her cottage weren't so small.

She offered me tea, but I only shook my head, knowing that I was staring at her, and yet not being quite able to help myself. I was thinking how you can know someone for years--and yet suddenly discover that obviously you haven't really known them at all.

Ruth is tall and slender, with curly, russet-red hair and grey eyes. She's quite lovely, really--though she looks a good deal like her cottage: very plain and sensible and unadorned. Today, for example, she was wearing a gown of dark-brown muslin with a high collar and long, straight sleeves, and her only jewellery was a small silver locket at her throat.

She asked after Elizabeth, and I told her the news--or rather, lack of it--that the baby hadn't come yet, but was expected any day. And then I reached into the lining of my muff, where I'd put the folded-up letter. "I have to confess that this isn't entirely a social call. I came to return something of yours. Something we found this morning in the nursery. And I thought ... I thought you might like to have it back."

Ruth's eyebrows lifted in surprise. But then she caught sight of the letter in my hand--and just like that, the colour drained from her face, leaving her almost chalk-white to the lips.

I started to get up, afraid I'd brought on an attack of illness--and Pilot, as though sensing something was wrong, came and thrust his nose under her hand, whining anxiously high in his throat. Ruth swallowed visibly, then gave Pilot's shaggy head a mechanical pat and shook her head. "No, it's all right. There now, hush Pilot, you big, silly oaf." She swallowed again. "It's all right, Georgiana, I'm not going to faint. I'm just--" She took the letter from me. Gingerly, as though she were afraid to touch it. "I'm just ... surprised to see this again."

She glanced down at the scrawl of words across the page, then quickly back up at me again, as though she didn't want to recall what the letter said--or maybe remembered it all too well. She closed her eyes a moment, leaning against the back of the chair. And then she said, a small, fractured twist of a smile touching the corners of her mouth, "You're probably wondering who wrote this to me. Or do you already know?"

I'd been wondering, of course, all along the walk to Ruth's cottage, who G. T. could have been. The 'young charge' the letter spoke of must have been me. But the letter wasn't dated; it could have been sent to her at any time while she was with us at Pemberley. And childhood memory is so strange. I can remember certain things so clearly: the pictures in my nursery story books. The day my favourite doll was broken, and Fitzwilliam mended her for me. Feeding lumps of sugar or carrots I'd begged from our cook to the horses in the stables. Trips to London, or to visit my aunt. And of course my father's death when I was ten.

But so much of the rest is all blurred at the edges. And besides that, I suppose like most children, I wasn't terribly interested in 'grown-up' things. I don't think it ever occurred to me to wonder what Miss Granger did with herself after I'd gone to bed, or when I had a lesson with the dancing master in the afternoon.

I shook my head. "No, I haven't the least idea, I promise." A little of the colour had come back into Ruth's face, but she still looked terribly pale. "And you needn't tell me. Truly, I only came because once I'd seen the letter, it seemed only right that it should be returned to you. But perhaps I shouldn't have after all. I didn't mean to upset you."

Ruth was staring into the small fire burning in the grate, one hand still moving mechanically back and forth over Pilot's head. She shook her head slightly, though it didn't seem a gesture of denial--more as though she were trying to shake off a memory before it could take hold. And then she looked up at me, her grey eyes bright and very clear, and said, "It was Giles Tomalin. He visited Pemberley when you were eleven. Do you remember?"

Giles Tomalin. Slowly, I shook my head again. "No. I'm sorry," I added.

It seemed as though I
ought
to remember anyone who'd been so important to her.

Ruth smiled slightly. "It's all right. There's no reason that you should. He was part of a shooting party your father invited for the autumn sport. I think you only spoke to him once or maybe twice the whole time he was at Pemberley. He came ... he accompanied us on a walk through the Pemberley woods, once. You hardly ever talked to strangers, you were so shy--grown-up men, especially. But you liked him, because he told you that if you caught a falling leaf before it touched the ground, you could make a wish."

"Oh!" I did remember, then, just a little. Not the man's face, not exactly. The best I could conjure up was a vague memory of someone tall, with broad shoulders and--I thought--very dark hair. But I could recall the day she spoke of, a little--because she and I were usually all alone on our daily walks, and it was an occasion to have someone else along. "I walked between you, holding your hands, and the two of you made a game of lifting me up on the count of three. Is that the time you mean?"

Ruth smiled just a little again, and nodded. "Yes, that's right. That was him. He was--" She stopped, her eyes fixing unblinkingly on the fire as though she were staring back across the years. She was silent so long I wasn't sure whether she meant to continue or not. But then at last she said, "I met him the day he arrived at Pemberley--before he'd arrived. It was on the road to Lambton. I'd had to do an errand in town, and I was walking back to the house. And then I heard something--a dog barking, yelping, obviously frightened and in pain. And a man shouting. Cursing, rather. And when I rounded the curve, I saw him--it was Rakes, the farm manager the Herrons used to have on their estate back then. He had a dog--some poor, starved-looking stray--down on the ground, and he was beating it, savagely, with some kind of club."

Ruth paused again. "I was just going to shout at him, tell him to stop, when another man rode up on a big black horse, swung himself down from the saddle, caught Rakes' club in one hand and jerked it away from him. Rakes was sullen--he said the dog was suspected of stealing chickens. But the other man just clenched his jaw and said that unless Rakes wanted to get a feel for his club on the receiving end, he'd better get the hell away from there. I think Rakes would have argued more. But he could probably see the man was one of the gentry, and he'd only get into trouble. And besides, the stranger raised the club and looked as though he were fully capable of making good on his threat. So Rakes ran."

Ruth came to a full stop this time. And then she said, "The stranger was Giles, of course. That was the first time I saw him. He went to kneel by the dog Rakes had been beating, and I went up and offered to help. The poor thing was so badly hurt, it was half frantic with pain, ready to snap at anything that came near. But between the two of us, we managed to get it wrapped up in my cloak and Giles' coat, tightly enough that it couldn't bite us or thrash and do itself another injury. Giles was swearing by the time we'd done, calling Rakes names under his breath. But then he recollected himself and looked up at me and said he must beg my pardon for bad language." Ruth's lips curved in another small smile. "And I laughed, I remember, and said that I should thank him for saving me the trouble of saying the words myself. Then Giles said he thought he could carry the dog on horseback, if I could take the horse's reins--because he was a stranger in this part of the world, and his mount didn't know the roads any better than he did. So I asked where he was going, and he said Pemberley. And I told him I was governess there."

Ruth fell silent again, her grey eyes distant. And then she shook her head and looked back at me. "And that was how Giles and I met. I told him our gamekeeper at Pemberley could help with treating the dog's hurts, so we brought the poor thing there together. And then after that ... after that Giles would make some excuse to get away from the rest of the house party at night, after dinner--that he had letters to write, or wanted to get an early start in the morning. And I would slip out and meet him, and we'd go for walks by moonlight."

"Why didn't you--" I stopped myself before I could finish the sentence. Though it didn't matter, because Ruth finished it for me.

"Why didn't we marry?" Her lips twisted again. "Because Giles wasn't just Giles Tomalin. He was
Lord
Giles Tomalin--the younger son of the Duke of Clarion."

I didn't say anything, but something of what I felt must have showed on my face, because Ruth shook her head. "I know what you're thinking--orphan, penniless governess seduced and abandoned by a scion of the upper classes. But it wasn't like that. Giles wasn't like that. He did ask me to marry him. I turned him down."

"You turned him down? But why?" I couldn't keep the astonishment from my voice. Ruth had been in love with Lord Giles--it had shown in every word she'd spoken. And I couldn't believe that the man who had written the letter in her hand had not been in love with her, too.

As though she'd picked up my thought, Ruth looked down at the folded paper and then let one hand rise and fall. "Because he
was
Lord Giles Tomalin. The younger son of a duke, whose family surely wished him to make a better match than a penniless, orphaned governess whose father had been an equally penniless clergyman. You know as well as I do what a scandal it would have made if he had married me. He would have lost all standing in society."

"Maybe he wouldn't have cared," I ventured.

"Maybe." Ruth pressed her eyes shut a moment, then opened them again. "That was what he said--that he didn't care. But how did he know that, really? His whole life, his family, friends, everything he'd been brought up to--all gone, for me. Maybe he'd not have minded at first, but in five years' time? In ten?" She shook her head. "And I wasn't going to let him tie himself for the rest of his life to a wife that everyone would despise him for." She looked up at me again with a small smile. "I know what you're thinking now, too--that I didn't want to
be
the wife that everyone of his acquaintance despised. But it wasn't that. Truly. I wouldn't have minded what other people said. It was the thought that in five or ten or even fifteen years' time, Giles
would
wake up one morning and discover that he resented me. That I was a burden to him. I couldn't"--for the first time, Ruth's voice wavered just slightly--"I couldn't have borne that."

She swallowed and shook her head again. "Besides, we only knew each other for two weeks--that was all the time he was visiting here. What did we each really know of the other's character? A marriage between us was ... impractical. Completely against all reason and common sense."

She spoke with sudden vigour, and I could just imagine her trying to scrub and snip out her feelings for Giles as neatly and efficiently as she did all the housework of her cottage. Except that there was a note in her voice that said she hadn't even yet been entirely successful.

I hesitated, then ventured, "Haven't you ever ... haven't you ever wondered what happened to him? Where he might be now?"

"Of course I have." Abruptly, Ruth got to her feet, crossed to the fireplace, and threw the folded up letter down onto the flames. "I've thought that he's probably bald, fat, and married with seven children by now--and that in all likelihood he doesn't even remember my name."

The dry paper caught fire at once. In an instant Giles Tomalin's letter was smouldering at the edges, the next it was blazing and crumbling into ash. Ruth blinked hard, staring down at it. Or at least I thought she did. Her voice was at any rate softer when she turned back around to me. "Thank you for bringing the letter back to me, Georgiana. I'm ... I'm glad you were the one to find it, if it had to come to light again after all these years."