Mistress for a Night

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE drawing room at Lytham was overheated. Besides the central heating, Mrs Moody had provided them with a hearthful of blazing coals. Jason, sitting on the window seat, divorcing himself from the proceedings because whatever Georgia decided to do with her legacy was entirely down to her, ran a finger round the inside of the neck of his light sweater.

He had already disposed of his jacket, and still he felt stifled. He looked at Baines with a twinge of sympathy. The gardener was sitting close to the fire, and obviously wished he wasn’t, but felt too out of his element to attempt to move. His face was red, his forehead beaded with sweat, and his thick fingers were plucking at the cloth cap he held on his heavy-corduroy-clad knees.

Mrs Moody stood just inside the door, looking as if she was wearing a steel corset, upright, stiff, her expression as dour as ever.

Only Georgia looked at ease, her graceful body bent over the papers the solicitor had asked her to sign, reading carefully, finally nodding and adding her signature.

‘Thank you.’ The solicitor slipped the signed papers back in his document case and named the generous sum that would be paid out each month—enough to keep Mrs Moody in more than comfortable retirement and to make an adequate buffer for Baines, should the new owners of Lytham—whoever—not re

quire his services.

Jason saw Baines go even redder with astonished pleasure, and caught the look of gratitude and relief Mrs Moody threw in Georgia’s direction. For a moment or two he was swamped with self-loathing as he recalled the way he’d reacted to the new Georgia who had walked in here the day before Harold’s funeral.

How he’d coldly informed her that as Harold hadn’t remembered his loyal staff in his will she should put that right. She hadn’t needed reminding; her generosity of spirit hadn’t changed.

He had let past misunderstandings and bleak bitterness blind him to what she really was: his loving, generous darling.

Never, never again, he vowed vehemently. He would never, in all the years that lay ahead of them, cease to show her how much she was loved. She had had so very little of it up until now; he would make it up to her in spades.

‘All that’s left, at this time, is to hand you this letter.’ The solicitor put a large white envelope on the table. ‘The instructions are written in the late Mr Harcourt’s hand.’

‘I came across it in his shirt drawer,’ Mrs Moody told Georgia, her tone more animated than Jason had ever heard it. Had she been worried about her future, where she would live when she got too old to work, how she would manage on the state pension?

‘He was always so particular about his shirts. There was this drawer of new ones, still in Cellophane wrappers. I was gathering them up to send to a charity shop when I found it. I thought it might be important. Now, Miss Georgia, shall I bring in some tea?’

‘Not for me, thank you,’ the solicitor said, fastening the document case with fussy precision. ‘I have another appointment waiting. I’m already late.’

And Baines, twisting his cap between his hands, mumbled his thanks to Georgia and followed the solicitor out, anxious to hurry back to his wife and tell her the good news.

Georgia said, ‘I’d love some, Mrs Moody. We both would.’

As the housekeeper left the room Georgia picked up the envelope, her eyes puzzled. ‘I wonder what this is?’

‘Open it and see.’ Jason hoped he didn’t sound as edgy as he felt. Whatever private last messages that letter contained, he wasn’t going to sit in judgement. He remembered her tears at Harold’s funeral, her obvious sorrow, and wondered what they had meant to each other. He didn’t want to know.

‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ She gave him a radiant smile and held out a hand to him. ‘Let’s read it together.’

Jason went, because when she called he always would, but crazily, considering the hot-house temperature of this room, he felt a trickle of ice run down his spine. A foreboding of what?

He stood at her side while she slit open the envelope but he made no attempt to read what was written on the two separate sheets of closely covered paper. He found he was holding his breath.

When she whispered his name, brushed her hair away from her face and looked up at him, he saw her cheeks were pale, wet with tears, and he gathered her to him, holding her. Because if she needed comfort—whatever the reason—he was here to give it her.

‘You were—very fond of him.’ He got the words out with difficulty. ‘I saw how you wept at his funeral.’ He ached for her to deny it, and knew she couldn’t. Whatever Harold had said, in those last private words to her, it had left her weeping in his arms.

She said, ‘Fond of Harold? In a way, I suppose.’

‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ he told her, almost brusquely.

She lifted her head and shook it, biting down on her lower lip, grabbing her control back. ‘I’m not lying. I did get to like him better after he came out to New York to tell me the news that Vivienne was dead and already buried.’ She pulled a hankie out of her trouser pocket and blew her nose ferociously. ‘He was so full of guilt—he couldn’t stop apologising because he thought he’d ruined my life with those lies he’d told. I never did have the heart to tell him about the baby, and you wanting to marry me until you believed his lies. He was so full of remorse over putting the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with my mother that I couldn’t heap anything more on him.’

‘So you forgave him?’ Jason tugged her back into his arms. He knew how different Harold had become after his wife’s death: thoughtful, remorseful, shrinking in on himself.

‘There didn’t seem much point in harbouring old grudges,’ she told him, her voice muffled by his sweater. ‘He used to write, and sometimes I’d reply. Just odd snippets of news—he seemed lonely, and unhappy, and I felt more sorry for him than actually fond of him. I wasn’t crying for him that day. The night before I’d dreamed of our baby—the first time in ages.’

‘It still hurts you?’ He could have punched his fist through a wall in frustration, but he held her gently, close to him. He wanted to fight every damn thing that hurt her, but was powerless, in this case, to do so.