107. Soft, Sweet & Gentle Read online

  “Does not like women?” her aunt questioned her, her voice rising as she spoke. “Of course he likes women, but he likes them to be women and not pseudo-men as you have been!”

  “What you are saying is that he wants someone without brains and idiotic enough to do exactly what he says without asking any questions.”

  “Now you are really talking nonsense!” her aunt exclaimed. “Of course that is what every man wants. But don’t forget that the woman has to look beautiful, her skin has to be as white as snow and her main job in life is to entrance and delight a man.”

  “For that composition,” Georgina retorted, “I will get no marks and doubtless have to wear a dunce’s cap.”

  “If that is true, then what they have said about you has been lies from beginning to end.”

  Georgina did not answer and she went on,

  “If you are half as clever as your father thought you to be then, of course, you could not only win the Battle of Waterloo as a man,” Lady Crawford insisted, “but as a woman you can captivate the heart of any man who looks at you especially one who is determined not to be deceived for the second time by a pretty face.”

  Georgina clapped her hands.

  “That is a splendid resumé of what I now have to attempt, Aunt Marjory, and I never knew that you were so clever or, if it suited, you could speak like a man.”

  “Now you are deliberately turning the tables on me for your own ends. I know exactly what you are thinking, but quite seriously you have to help us.”

  She sounded more worried as she continued,

  “We are terribly afraid that Alister, because he has been abroad for so long, has no idea of his situation in England or how important he has now become because he is an Earl.”

  “I would expect he will learn that quickly enough,” Georgina replied. “Then he will doubtless show me the front door.”

  “Well, I can offer you a bed in a very small room,” her aunt suggested. “My house is not nearly as large as The Castle, but unless you are very stupid, which I find hard to believe after all I have heard about your brilliance, you will make Alister open the London house which your father closed up. It has stood in Grosvenor Square looking very sad and unused for years.”

  “I had actually forgotten all about it!” Georgina exclaimed. “Papa did mention it once or twice, but, as he had no wish to go to London and I was so happy with him here, we did not talk about it again.” “Well, you must do something about it now. It would suit the family and there are a great number of us who would like somewhere to stay when we visit London rather than having to go to an expensive hotel or beg a bed from one of our friends.”

  “So that is another thing I have to do,” Georgina answered. “I think it would be wise if you make a list of them.”

  “You will find them all out sooner or later.”

  Then, as she saw that Georgina had dressed herself in some of the underclothes and was now staring at the wardrobe, she said,

  “I suppose you know that your bodice is not nearly tight enough to be fashionable. Although I admit that you have a good figure, which must be due to all your riding.”

  “Although it kept my figure,” Georgina remarked, “I am afraid that my feet are rather heavy in my shoes and, of course, I am not used to walking in heels.”

  “Then the sooner you learn the better! Now put on this gown and see what you look like in it.”

  Lady Crawford took out of the wardrobe a very pretty gown of pale pink, which was ornamented with lace and drawn at the back into a large bustle.

  Georgina put it on and her aunt fastened it up.

  As she sat gazing at her reflection in the mirror, she thought that she was a complete stranger and someone she had never seen before.

  “Now that’s better,” her aunt was saying. “What a shame you had your hair cut short like a boy and, although it is naturally curly, it still looks rather scant, so I brought you a wig.”

  “A wig!”

  “I think you will find that it is almost the right colour and certainly more becoming than your hair is now. You will find the wig in a box by the fireplace.”

  When she opened the box, Georgina laughed and pulled the wig rather roughly onto her head.

  As she looked in the mirror again, she had to admit that she really was totally different.

  Because the gown was meant for the evening, it showed how white her skin was and the wig with its soft curls on either side of her face was most becoming.

  As if her aunt was thinking the same, she said,

  “I have to admit, and I hope that Alister agrees, that you are now a very pretty girl.”

  Georgina chuckled.

  “You may change my appearance, Aunt Marjory, but you cannot change my heart, which is undoubtedly that of a boy.”

  “Then you must never say so and you must stop thinking that way.”

  “I suppose the only thing I can do,” she murmured, glancing again at herself in the mirror, “is to believe that this is entirely a game or even a steeplechase with a special prize at the end of it and I shall have to win!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Now you must change into an afternoon dress,” Lady Crawford persisted.

  “Change again!” Georgina exclaimed, “but that will be a bore and I am now ready for dinner.”

  “You are nothing of the sort! I want you to try some of the other clothes to be quite certain they fit you.” Because she had to wish to antagonise her aunt, Georgina agreed even though she thought that it was all a lot of nonsense.

  She put on a pretty evening gown that her aunt said had only been worn twice by the previous owner.

  She then changed again into what her aunt said was the right gown for tea and it was even lovelier than the one she had just taken off and it accentuated the whiteness of her skin and the fairness of her hair.

  “Now you can keep that one on,” Lady Crawford told her. “And you must put on your wig.”

  “I don’t want to, it tickles the side of my face and would feel heavy as if I am wearing a hat.”

  “From now on,” her aunt said firmly, “you are a very attractive woman. Women always look their best at teatime when they change into something clean and light. And what is more, you never know who will come in and see you.”

  “I imagine that they would be surprised to see me,” Georgina laughed, “if I was wearing this dress and had my hair parted at the side and smoothed back as I wore it when I was a boy.”

  “You have never been a boy and so it’s no use pretending that you were one,” Lady Crawford retorted severely. “Your father had the absurd notion that he could turn you into a boy and now I am utterly and completely determined that I will make you what you were when you were born – a girl.”

  Georgina smiled

  “It’s going to be a struggle and will take a long time. What will happen if the new Earl arrives while I am changing?”

  “If you make him horrified at what he finds, then he will go abroad again and I am quite certain his money will go with him.”

  Georgina realised that her aunt had the best of the argument and it was no use going on with it.

  “Very well, I will try very hard for all your sakes, but, if he does run off, then you must all help me as I will have nowhere to go and apparently no money.”

  “If you let the estate go to ruin and The Castle fall down,” her aunt warned, “I think when you are older you would never be able to forgive yourself.”

  “Do you really think that could happen?”

  “I am certain of it. Who else, but a man who was really badly stricken, would disappear for so long and live in countries where there were not hard-faced, hard-tongued women pretending they were men?”

  Because she spoke so sternly, Georgina laughed.

  “Now you are really attacking me, Aunt Marjory,” she protested, “and I have promised you I will do my best.”

  “I know you have, but you know we are all frantic in case Alister takes
just one look at you and then leaves immediately for the Far East again.”

  “Do I really look as bad as all that?” she asked.

  “You did when I arrived and you looked like a boy, except of course you do have a very pretty face.”

  “Now you are flattering me,” Georgina said, “by making me think I will be a pretty girl. I am quite certain from the way I lived with Papa that I will always think like a boy and act like one. Although I will try not to show it, it will always be there just beneath the surface.”

  Although her aunt did not answer, she was thinking almost despairingly that matters were even worse than the rest of the family thought.

  She walked across the room and stood looking out of the window and there was silence for a long time.

  Then Georgina asked,

  “Are you very angry with me?”

  “I am not angry only rather apprehensive,” her aunt replied. “I was remembering how proud and delighted we were when your father inherited the Earldom. We believed that this castle was something out of a dream.”

  “Which it is. I have often felt it myself.”

  “Then how can you bear to let it fall into rack and ruin and the people on the estate will starve if they cannot find other employment.”

  Georgina knew without her aunt explaining it how this was likely to happen.

  The Earl of Langfield owned the land all round The Castle and she had very often thought it extraordinary how many people were employed by her father and how many families had lived on the estate for generations.

  Suddenly she thought that she was being absurd in not doing exactly what her aunt wanted and frightening her by saying how incompetent she was.

  She jumped up from the stool and joined her at the window.

  “I am sorry, Aunt Marjory,” she apologised. “I am just being tiresome and, of course, I will try to help you and you must all pray I don’t make too many mistakes.”

  She now spoke in such a different voice that her aunt turned to look at her in surprise and remarked,

  “I think you mean that.”

  “I do mean it! It has been such a shock with Papa dying and you telling me I have to be someone different, then Alister arriving from the far end of the world. It all seems so unreal!”

  “Of course it does,” Lady Crawford sympathised. “I know now that you are really one of us and will not let us down.”

  “I will try not to,” Georgina promised.

  Wearing her wig and the pretty dress her aunt had chosen for her, they went downstairs.

  Dawson had already laid tea in the drawing room.

  Her aunt, who would have sat down on the sofa and then picked up the silver teapot, stopped herself.

  “You are the hostess, dearest,” she reminded her, “and you must make it clear to Alister as soon as he arrives that, as he has no wife, you are prepared to run the house for him until he either marries or finds someone else.”

  “Suppose he asks me to leave at once – ”

  “I think that would be extremely rude. From what I remember of Alister, which is very little,” Lady Crawford said, “I am sure that he will have the good manners to accept you in that position until he finds someone else.”

  Georgina only hoped that he would not do so too quickly.

  She merely poured out the tea and helped herself to a sandwich and as she did so she realised that her hands did not show the whiteness of a woman who stayed in a house. They many had freckles on them and gave the appearance of belonging to someone who was frequently out of doors riding, fishing or shooting.

  They certainly did not have the soft white skin of a woman.

  “I must put something on my hands,” she remarked. “I suppose they look rough because I don’t wear gloves.”

  “You must wear them in the future,” her aunt told her. “I will leave you some very good cream, which if you apply it every night will soon make your hands as white as the rest of your body.”

  She paused for a moment before she said, looking at her,

  “I was thinking how surprising it is that, although you have spent so much time out of doors, your skin is so white and not at all sunburnt. I am sure that the rest of the family expect you to look as if you are a gypsy rather than a young lady of fashion!”

  Georgina giggled.

  “Of course you are quite right. I have been out of doors with Papa day after day. I am only not sunburnt because I found it hurt me when my skin was exposed to the weather.”

  “Which it should not be because you have a very beautiful skin. You must take care of it and preserve it as every woman should do when she is given such a gift from Heaven.”

  “I did not think of it that way,” Georgina replied. “But I promise I will in future.”

  When they finished tea, they went round the house and needless to say Lady Crawford made suggestions as to how nearly every room could be improved.

  “I know that your father was so interested in being out of doors,” she said, “that he forgot the house deserves just as much attention as the fields and the garden.”

  “There never seemed to be time for everything – ”

  “Well then, you must make it your business now to ensure that The Castle is as beautiful as it was when your mother first married. I remember how she was entranced by it and kept saying it was a fairy castle and she had no idea that anything like this really existed.”

  “I am sure she looked fairylike in it,” Georgina replied, “which I will never do.”

  “Nonsense!” her aunt exclaimed. “You will look lovely once you think of yourself as being lovely and take trouble over it.”

  *

  When she went up to bed, she announced,

  “We are leaving early in the morning, as it is most important that I should not be here when Alister arrives. I have no idea when you can expect him. It may well be tomorrow or in two or three weeks.”

  “I do hope it’s not tomorrow! I must get used to looking as I do now and I must make sure all the people on and around the estate recognise me.”

  Her aunt gave a little cry.

  “I had not thought of that. Of course if they say, ‘I had no idea it was you, my Lady,’ then Alister will guess that you have changed from what you were and that would be a great mistake.”

  “I think I had better go round the main people on the estate,” Georgina declared, “and explain to them that now Papa is dead I am going back to being what I was born – a girl.”

  “I think that is very sensible,” her aunt agreed. “At the same time you don’t want to make it too obvious that you are setting yourself out to please the new Earl, but rather returning to what you always wanted to be and what, of course, you were, a very pretty girl.”

  “I can see a lot of problems and difficulties ahead,” Georgina murmured, “but I hope I will survive them.”

  “Of course you will. The one thing I have never disputed is that you have brains and brains are the one attribute in life that makes everything else possible.”

  Georgina laughed.

  “Somehow I never expected you to say that to me, Aunt Marjory.”

  “Well, I have said it! And now you just have to be a very good girl and take care of the family as your father would want you to do.”

  *

  The following morning when she kissed her niece goodbye Lady Crawford said quietly,

  “I will be praying for you. At the same time that you will be successful and make Alister happy just as you made my brother happy.”

  Because she spoke with such feeling in her voice, Georgina could not reply.

  She kissed her aunt again and her two cousins and then she waved until their carriage was out of sight.

  As she walked back into the house, she saw that Dawson was waiting for her in the hall.

  Because he had been at The Castle long before she was born, she knew that she could speak frankly to him.

  She asked him to come into the study and, when he had done so,
she asked him to close the door.

  As she sat down at her father’s desk, she began,

  “I expect, Dawson, you are very surprised to see me dressed as I am.”

  “I were only sayin’ to the Missus at breakfast this mornin’ that, although you made a fine young gentleman, you makes an even finer lady. It’s proud of you we all are but, of course, the housemaids have had a lot to say about you dressin’ up as a boy for so long.”

  “I thought that would have happened, but you have to help me, Dawson, because, as I expect you will know, my cousin Alister was very unhappy in his marriage.”

  “It’s not surprisin’ from what I hears at the time, my Lady. His wife was a real fire-raiser, so to speak, and they quarrelled from the time they got up in the mornin’ until they went to bed at night.”

  “I can understand why he went abroad, but it’s very important to us all now he has returned that he should stay here.”

  “Yes, of course, my Lady, I understands that right enough. We’ll all do our best to make him comfortable.”

  “I know you will. Equally Lady Crawford thinks it’s essential he should not realise that my father dressed me as a boy and taught me to behave like one.”

  She gave a sigh.

  “It’s going to be hard work becoming a girl after so many years.”

  “Of course it is, my Lady, and we’ll help you in every way we can. Now don’t you worry, things’ll work out for the best. I’ll warn them all in the house and in the stables not to be surprised at your new appearance.”

  “That is imperative,” Georgina emphasised. “I will not want his new Lordship to think we are deceiving him or even putting on an act for his benefit.”

  “You leave it all to me, my Lady, just as you told me when you was little to look after your pony.”

  “Did I ask you to do that, Dawson. I suppose that was when I went away with Papa to stay with friends.”

  “It didn’t happen often,” Dawson admitted, “but I always knew you trusted me then and I hopes you still trust me now.”

  “Of course I do,” Georgina replied. “It’s absolutely essential for the whole family that, when his Lordship does arrive, that he should feel relaxed and at home.”