George wished she could do the same. Alas, she was not built to sleep in a rattling, bouncing carriage. At every posting station she got out and stretched her legs while the postilion changed horses. Sometimes she purchased food or drink, and at others she had to convince Aunt Dottie that making a call of nature would not hold them up. Not that there was a choice.
***
“Where are we?” The voice startled her. Aunt Dottie was sitting up, yawning, but wide awake. She peered out of the window, rubbing the mist away with her glove.
“I’m not sure. I was miles away, not taking much notice of where we are, I’m afraid.”
Aunt Dottie nodded. She seemed calmer now. Perhaps because of the weeping storm and the sleep, or perhaps it was simply that they were on their way and there was nothing else to be done except wait to arrive.
George opened her mouth, then closed it. Would it upset Aunt Dottie to talk about Logan or not? She didn’t want to stir up her distress once more. Then again it might help pass the time if they talked.
Aunt Dottie took the decision from her. “I suppose you’re wondering. All this fuss for a butler.”
George nodded cautiously.
“You know, of course, that he’s not just a butler, that he’s much more to me than that, don’t you?”
George didn’t know what to say. She did think he was just a butler; he was clearly the kind of butler who was almost one of the family. “Like Martha was more to me than just a cook or housekeeper?”
Aunt Dottie gave a tremulous smile and shook her head. “Not quite the same.” She snuggled back into her corner seat, pulled the rug around her and settled down to tell her story. “I’ve known Logan since I was a young girl. He was one of my father’s grooms. I remember the day he firststarted work—I was almost fifteen. I’m talking about Ashendon Court—that was my home back then, of course.”
She gave a fluttery, reminiscent sigh. “So young and tall and handsome he was—he’s only three years older than I am, but three years seems an age when you’re not quite fifteen and he’s already turned eighteen.”
She smiled mistily. “Of course I fell in love with him. What girl wouldn’t? I wasn’t mad about horses back then—I rode, of course, but it wasn’t a passion with me, not like it is with you, dear. But once Logan started work, oh, my, yes, I positively haunted the stables. Papa was so pleased to think I was finally taking an interest in his horses. But of course my fascination was entirely with Logan.”
Fifteen?George gave her a troubled look. At that age, girls could be very vulnerable to the attentions of handsome older men. Especially gently raised girls, who were kept so ignorant of their own bodies and how easy it was to get carried away. And girls who were due to inherit fortunes were a temptation for men who worked with their hands.
Emm, she knew, had been ruined in her youth by a handsome scoundrel of a groom. She’d lost everything—or thought she had, for years. Until Cal offered her a convenient marriage.
And as a girl, George herself had developed a very painful attachment for a young man only a few years older. He wasn’t a groom; he was worse—a gentleman. So-called. He’d been neither gentle nor honorable...
“Fifteen is very young,” she began.
Aunt Dottie laughed. “I know. But in that I think Rose and I are alike. She says she knew Thomas was the man for her, even though she was only sixteen, and I knew Logan was the man for me.” She laughed again. “The problem was that Logan didn’t agree. He’s terribly straitlaced, you know. It was years before he would let me kiss him properly, and even then he refused to let it go any further. I had to have two whole seasons before we so much as kissed. Such a waste of time—though those London balls were lovely. Idid have a lot of fun in my seasons, and several very flattering offers, but of course I wasn’t interested. I’d already found my Logan.”
“But you didn’t marry him.”
“Oh, heavens no, we couldn’t let on that there was anything between us. Papa—your grandfather, dear—would have had poor Logan horsewhipped and thrown off the estate, or even bundled onto a ship and forced to emigrate. Or worse. And me married off by force to some horrid old duke—there were several who were interested.” She pulled a face. “Old goats.
“You didn’t know your grandfather, but he wasn’t a nice man. Very proud and autocratic and horridly strict—you cannot imagine. No interest in his daughters or what they wanted. Our only duty was to marry well and produce heirs for their husbands. You can see how that attitude shaped poor Aggie—she married well, but heirs?” She shook her head. “Still, you can see a little of my father in her, can’t you? The pride and arrogance and inflexibility, and she still thinks that’s all girls are for.”
George nodded. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive Aunt Agatha for the part—the several parts she’d played in arranging George’s own wedding. She might have accepted her betrothal now, but that didn’t justify Aunt Agatha’s deception.
Aunt Dottie continued, “My brother, Alfred, once he inherited the title, was even worse. He was such a high stickler that even your father—his heir—avoided him wherever possible. And by his standards, heindulgedHenry. Mind you, Henry was always lazy and selfish and irresponsible, even as a boy.”
George sat drinking this up. She knew so little about her family. She’d never met her father, Henry, who’d abandoned her and her mother shortly after their forced wedding. And she knew very little about her grandfather, Aunt Dottie and Aunt Agatha’s brother, Alfred, who was Cal and Rose and Lily’s father. And what she knew wasn’t very nice.
“When Alfred remarried, he allowed his second wife to more or less edge poor Cal out of the family—he was still just a boy, sixteen or so—but was never really welcome at Ashendon after that. The army became Cal’s home.”
And when Alfred’s second wife had died, George thought, he’d done much the same thing with Rose and Lily, taking his two recently bereaved daughters away from everything they knew and dumping them into an exclusive seminary for girls.
Aunt Dottie sighed. “Alfred was never a good father. He had the same attitude to girls as our father had. The way he treated poor Lily after he’d discovered her little problem.” She shook her head. “My brother only ever did two good things in his life, and one of them was to let me buy a little house in Bath and live there with a companion—once he’d been convinced I had an aversion to marriage.” She gave a mischievous half smile. “I did, but only to his kind of cold-blooded marriage. Not to men, and especially not to Logan.”
She stared out of the window for a long moment and her mouth quivered. “Oh, Logan. What if...? I couldn’t bear...” She wiped a tear away. “No, I must be brave. Hewillbe all right. Hewill.”
George waited for her to add,I have one of my feelings about it.Aunt Dottie’sfeelingswere famous. But she didn’t say it, which was a worry.
“What was the other good thing your brother did?” George prompted gently. The reminiscences seemed to be doing her good. And, besides, they were fascinating.
