Annie Burrows - The Debutante's Daring Proposal

Georgiana’s past was looking very different from the way he’d imagined it. He wouldn’t have believed that her father, a man who’d always laughed at her antics, had married a woman specifically to knock her into shape. Or worse, brought another girl into the house to show her how she ought to behave. She must have been devastated.

He frowned as he stalked down the path, Lion lumbering at his heels. Surely, she would have needed to write to him more than ever? But it had been from his mother that he’d learned of her widowed father’s remarriage. His mother, who, in spite of all her flaws, had written faithfully. Back then, it had been one more sin to lay at Georgie’s door. But now...

She must have been crushed. And since he had no longer been there, she would not have had anybody to turn to. Because, now he came to consider it, not only was she his only friend, but she spent so much time with him that she hadn’t had any other friends either.

So why hadn’t she?

And why hadn’t she run to him, on the few occasions he’d returned to Bartlesham, instead of flouncing out of the shop when he’d walked in, her purchases abandoned?

It had puzzled him from the moment he’d returned, still hurt by her decision not to write to him, but determined to make the best of things, and at least attempt to treat her with courtesy. But then, on his first Sunday in Bartlesham, she’d refused to return his greeting when he’d been magnanimous enough to accord her a nod across the aisle of St. Bartholomew’s. And stalked out with her nose in the air when the tedious service had at length ground to its conclusion.

And so he’d washed his hands of her. He’d really and truly left her behind when he’d gone up to university.

And then, as he was lifting a wheezing Lion into the carriage, he recalled her accusation, that out of sight meant out of mind, for him. As if she was the one who hadn’t received any letters.

Good Lord...could it be...if the stepmother had seen it as her duty to knock Georgie into shape—in other words, to turn her into the proper young lady she appeared to be nowadays—then she would not have approved of them corresponding. Single females were not, strictly speaking, supposed to write to single men to whom they were not related.

Yes, that would explain why he hadn’t received any letters from her, in spite of her promise to write.

But...he shook his head. It didn’t explain why she’d been so angry with him when he’d returned for a visit, briefly, before going up to Oxford.

Unless...

What must she have felt, when he’d given up writing to her? Had she felt as betrayed as he had, when he hadn’t heard at all?

She might have done.

It was certainly the first hypothesis to explain her behaviour over the past ten years that made any kind of sense.

He sat bolt upright as a frisson of insight flickered in the depths of his brain.

The stepmother.

Could she have been the one to fill Georgiana’s head with the kind of stories that resulted in her now regarding the act of conceiving children as nasty and brutish?

Who else could it possibly have been?

Georgiana definitely hadn’t known anything about that side of life when he’d left Bartlesham. And he couldn’t imagine her father describing marital relations to her in such a way that...actually, not in any way at all. It wasn’t within a father’s remit to educate his daughters about that sort of thing.

But...he blinked, taking in his surroundings for the first time since he’d left Six Chimneys and saw that he was almost halfway home.

‘Dear God, what a fool,’ he groaned. He’d been in such a hurry to get away from Georgiana’s repulsive cousin that he hadn’t ascertained where exactly, in London, she was staying. And there was no way he was going to turn back now and ask him.

* * *

‘But, Mama,’ said Sukey, holding a length of blue ribbon up to the side of her face, ‘don’t you think this would bring out the colour of my eyes?’

As if to emphasise her point, Sukey widened those cornflower-blue eyes in appeal. The pleading expression would have melted the hearts of any of the young men of Bartlesham—indeed, Georgiana had witnessed its devastating effectiveness on many occasions. Unfortunately for her, Stepmama not only had the same kind of blue eyes, but had also been the one to teach Sukey how to wield them.

‘The blue ribbon may be very flattering,’ said Stepmama distractedly, merely glancing up from her perusal of the latest box to arrive from the modistes, ‘but tonight you will be wearing white. All white. That’s what proper young ladies of the ton wear for their first Season, and as we are finally going to attend a ton event I won’t have either of you doing anything to set tongues wagging.’

She’d certainly worked hard enough to get them this far. For the past two weeks they’d toadied to people Stepmama said were essential to their chances of being accepted in society. They’d invited those same matrons to their rented house and plied them with tea and sandwiches, while Stepmama had extolled Sukey’s prettiness, and Georgie’s pedigree, in the hopes of getting invitations in return.

All to no avail.

Until she’d discovered that some girls who lived two streets over, and one across, who they kept on bumping into at the shops, or crossing the square, had a connection to a viscount. And then, all of a sudden, Stepmama declared they were Sukey’s best friends and would never go shopping without inviting them along. And since they were as keen as Sukey to shop, and pore over the fashion magazines, and all the other rigmarole to do with the snaring of husbands, they’d grown inexorably more intertwined.

Resulting in tonight’s invitation to Durant House. Home of said viscount.

Where Sukey was hoping to captivate a man with a title and lots of money.

Whereas she... Georgiana tugged at the bodice of the gown she was wearing with utter mortification. And plucked up the courage to voice a protest.

‘If we are not to set tongues wagging on our first appearance at a tonnish event, don’t you think I ought to wear something a bit more...modest?’

‘There is nothing immodest about your gown, Georgiana,’ said Stepmama. ‘I have told you before, ladies do reveal a little more of their shoulders and bosom in the evening than they would do by day. I have seen girls much younger than you showing a lot more of themselves than that,’ she said, indicating the upper curves of Georgiana’s bosom which were thrusting proudly from the closely clinging bodice.

‘Yes, but Sukey is dressed far more demurely...’ she began, plucking at her bodice again. Only to have Stepmama step up, slap her hands away and ruthlessly tug it back into place.

‘Sukey is pretty,’ she said. ‘Men already take notice of her.’

‘Oh, Mama!’ Sukey dropped her ribbon on to the dressing table. ‘Georgiana is pretty, too. In her own way. I mean, that is, there are sure to be some men who prefer larger girls, with thick black hair and brown eyes,’ she said staunchly, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

For not one of the youths of Bartlesham, or any of the nearest towns, had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in her. Even though Stepmama had taught her to behave like a lady, the manners and the clothes were all only a thin layer of top dressing. No matter how hard she tried, she was always going to look big and clumsy in comparison to her dainty little stepsister and rouse entirely different feelings from the males of the population.

Stepmama sighed. ‘Men who prefer larger girls will want to get a glimpse of her best assets, then, won’t they? I wouldn’t have thought I’d need to remind you, Sukey, that all women have to make the best of what God has given them, if we are to survive in this harsh world.’ She waved her hand at the wads of tissue paper, lidless boxes, gloves and shoes littering every flat surface of the dressing room the two girls shared.