Reputation by Lex Croucher

Author:Lex Croucher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter Sixteen

W

hen Georgiana got back to the Burtons’ in the early hours of the morning, she found it quite a struggle to make it from Frances’s carriage to the front door. She was sure that the garden must have been rearranged somehow – the flowerpot she nearly lost her kneecaps to certainly hadn’t been there just a few hours before – and it also seemed much larger, her journey taking five minutes when it should have generously taken five seconds. Thankfully, it was no longer raining.

She heard muffled laughter from behind her, and muted cheering when she finally placed a hand on the door; she turned to give the carriage a salute, grinning wildly, and then squinted back at the door handle, which presented a new challenge.

After the rain had started at the Dugrays’, she and the other ladies had reunited with Frances, and despite a certain amount of stiffness on the latter’s part at first, they had all ended the night in good spirits. Very good spirits, in fact; Cecily had gone to her father’s drinks cabinet and returned with plundered treasures aplenty. Georgiana had held back from indulging for as long as Christopher was at her elbow, jostling her and attempting jokes as if they were on excellent terms; as soon as he’d left, blowing them all a kiss that Georgiana pretended not to see, she joined the drinking in earnest.

It had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but now she had forgotten the fundamentals of doors.

Once she had figured it out and navigated herself into the house, she stripped off her soaked gloves and bonnet and left them dripping in the hall; slightly stale bread was obtained from the depths of the kitchen, and then she took up a candle and wandered into the library, leaving a trail of crumbs in her wake.

Mrs Burton had clearly been writing her correspondence, as there was a pen, a pot of ink and a stack of paper neatly squared off at the corner of the desk. Georgiana found a letter in her aunt’s hand a few seconds later, on top of the pile of outgoing post. On closer inspection, Georgiana realised that it was addressed to her parents.

She immediately wanted to break the seal and peruse the contents, but managed to restrain herself at the very last moment – there was no way she would be able to keep the intrusion from Mrs Burton, even if she had been sober. In this state it seemed unlikely she’d even remember she had opened the letter at all, come morning.

Georgiana attempted to file this information away for the morrow, and then sat down at the desk. A very dangerous idea was beginning to form.

She picked up the pen.

Dear Mr Hawksley—

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