no one could mistake her for a boy, even though she had buttoned her coat so that her clinging shirt no longer revealed the lines of the small breasts which had given her sex away to him. He considered carefully what he was about to say: principally, that it was dangerous for her to parade around the countryside dressed like a lad. Her father should have more sense than to allow it. Particularly someone as young as she appeared to be.
He was not yet to know that he had quite mistaken Georgina’s age, which he had guessed, wrongly, to be under twenty. Later, he was to think that it was her lack of artifice, her frank manner, and the lack also of any kind of fashionable face-paint which had combined to deceive him.
‘I am, as you have guessed, the new owner of Jesmond House. My name is Jesmond Fitzroy. Miss Jesmond was my great-aunt and this is my first inspection of my property. Now, whilst I am not angry that you and your brother and sister have trespassed on my land, I am a trifle worried that your mother and father should allow so young a woman to go abroad dressed like a boy.
‘It is, I would submit, highly dangerous for you to put yourself at the mercy of any rogue who wanders the countryside, of whom there are many these days, and I consider it to be one of my first duties, seeing that I am the owner of Jesmond House, to so inform them—if you will be so good as to tell me your name.’
The play of feeling on Georgie’s mobile face was revealing. She was smiling at him when he began to speak, but by the end of his well-meant—but unfortunate—words of advice her face turned black as thunder. She thinned her lips and said nothing, but she was thinking a lot.
Jess waited for her to reply but, seeing that she apparently had no such intention, he continued, a little less agreeably, ‘Your name please, Miss Georgina. If you would be so good.’
Georgie said, keeping her voice low, but plainly furious, ‘Has anyone ever told you how pompous you are, Mr Fitzroy—or do they expect it of you? In which case, everyone has ceased to remark upon it. Gus and Annie are not my brother and sister, and we shall certainly leave your land to you in future. I shall be careful not to sully it again either in skirts or breeches, so you may take your sermons elsewhere.’
Later, she was to regret the violence with which she had answered him, but he had touched a nerve by reproving her for wearing breeches. She had endured quite enough of that from Caro! Her anger was the greater precisely because for the first time she was beginning to think that Caro, foolish though she usually was, had some right on her side.
But, faced with this attractive stranger who was speaking to her as though she were a naughty child, her temper ran away with her. ‘For your information,’ she continued, her voice as cutting as she could make it, ‘my mother and father are both dead, and I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.’
She turned away from him before he could answer her, calling peremptorily, ‘Gus, Annie, please pull up the stump at once, and bring the bat and ball to me. We are leaving immediately.’
Jess said in his usual mild way, ‘One moment, if you please.’
‘No moments at all,’ she flung at him, incontinent, something which back at Pomfret Hall she was to recall with growing shame, ‘for we shall be gone in a moment.’
‘No,’ Jess said, stung at last into abandoning his normal equable manner. ‘You will tell me your name and where I may find you. Someone near to you may be pervious to sense and try to control you.’
‘Oh, indeed,’ she returned fiercely, thinking of Caro and her whining. ‘There certainly is someone, and you may find her—and the three of us—at Pomfret Hall. I bid you good day. I trust that you are sufficient of a gentleman not to try to detain me.’
He stepped back. She had breached his resolve always to conduct himself with quiet dignity, a resolve which dated back to his earliest days with Ben Wolfe.
‘Oh, indeed,’ he informed her through gritted teeth. ‘I have not the slightest wish to detain such a termagant in breeches. I bid you good day—and may the future invest you with a little more common sense.’
All the way back to the Hall, Georgie blushed with shame every time she thought of her recent encounter with Jesmond House’s new owner. What on earth could have possessed her to make her behave so badly, so completely outside the bounds of a young gentlewoman’s normal conduct?
She could find no useful answer to her own self-questioning, for what she did not wish to admit was that at first sight she had been bowled over by Miss Jesmond’s heir, only to have him treat her like a foolish child who needed advising and reprimanding! Her pride and her vanity were alike hurt. The second did not matter, but the first did.
And the worst thing of all was that, although he had been right to warn her, it was his refusal to see her as anything but a silly chit which hurt the most.
Chapter Two
‘You’re quiet tonight, Georgina. Is anything wrong?’
Caro, after a great deal of complaining, had played cards with Gus, Annie and Georgie before an early supper. After it she had retired to her favourite position on the sofa in order to read, but The Forest Lovers did not interest her, even though it was by her favourite author, who had written Sophia.
Georgina was repairing Annie’s doll’s dress, which had been torn by Caro’s pug Cassius in an unusual fit of temper. He was usually as sleepy as his mistress.
She said nothing in reply until Caro came out with, ‘Really, Georgina, you might be civil enough to answer a reasonable question.’
‘Forgive me, I’m somewhat distraite tonight,’ Georgie said with a sigh after removing some pins from her mouth. She had been wondering a little wildly how best to answer her sister-in-law since she really ought to have informed her earlier of her meeting with Jesmond Fitzroy. In the normal course of events, she would have done so immediately on returning home.
Gus and Annie, who had heard nothing of her final encounter with him, had babbled to their mother about meeting a strange man in the paddock, but Caro had been too full of her own affairs at the time to take much notice of them.
Something of Georgie’s disquiet must have affected Caro; she said anxiously, ‘I do hope you’re not sickening for a chill. It would be most inconvenient, for I should not like to catch it. Dr Meadows has often said that in my delicate state I ought to avoid having anything to do with anyone affected by any form of ill health.’
‘No, I’m not sickening for anything—at least, I don’t think I am. It’s just that this afternoon we met Miss Jesmond’s heir when we were playing cricket in her paddock, and I must confess that I think that you were right to advise us not to take advantage of him by trespassing on his grounds.’
Caro sat up sharply, her face a picture. ‘And you said nothing of this until now! Really, Georgina, it’s most inconsiderate of you. So little happens in Netherton, and when it does you invariably keep it to yourself.’
‘Don’t do it too brown, Caro,’ retorted Georgie, a little stung. ‘It’s not three hours since I met him, and until now we’ve not had an opportunity for a private conversation.’
Since she had no answer to make to that Caro said, somewhat stiffly, ‘I take it that he was the gentleman who came to the paddock this afternoon about whom Gus and Annie were prattling.’
‘Indeed. His name
