Page 66 of A Lesson in Forbidden Love

Madam,

I am told by Mrs Holland that you are at a village near Bath, at the house of your sisters and aunt, and I write therefore to that direction. I shall not press you with the matter of the announcement in the Morning Post of the twentieth, which has been corrected by a notice in the paper issued the next day, and which was not, was never, of my making or intent. I write to ask only that, when you next have occasion to be in London, you would do me the very great favour of receiving me, at whatever address you choose to name, and at whatever hour. I do not ask for an answer to this letter. I ask only that, if you are willing to see me, you would send word to me by any hand at any time, and I shall come.

I remain, madam, your obedient servant,

Greyscarp.

She read it twice.

She put it down on the counterpane beside her, and sat with her hands in her lap as she looked at the tops of the trees through the window. She thought, with the contained steadiness that she was learning, that the words ‘I shall come’ had been written by a man who had taught himself not to assume that every door would be opened to him.

She did not weep.

As she had not wept in all of the days since that conversation on the terrace in the rain, although she had come close at times, and she did not weep now; but she put her hand for a moment upon the folded sheet on the counterpane, in the same way that she had put it upon Lady Sophia’s letter when she had read the sentence which she could not, on the first reading, take in.

Some minutes passed, and then she folded the Marquess’ letter once along the line at which it had come folded, and put it inside the writing case on the chest, beneath Lady Sophia’s, where now the two of them lay together with the wafers uppermost. That tidiness was soothing, somehow.

She went downstairs.

“Georgiana,” she said, at the door of the back parlour.

Georgiana looked up. She had a child’s stocking on her lap and the darning egg in her hand, and the movement of her glance over Madeleine’s face was the movement of an elder sister who had once changed her petticoats and who had been changing, since the day of their father’s failure, a great many things rather more difficult than petticoats.

“I am going back to London,” Madeleine said.

Georgiana set the stocking down upon the egg.

“When?”

“On Wednesday’s coach, if there is a seat. On Thursday’s, if there is not.”

“Not as Governess.”

“No.”

“To him?”

“No,” said Madeleine, with the controlled accuracy that she had been finding the use of, “not to him either. We have an aunt in Bloomsbury — Father’s elder sister, Mrs Frampton. She has a house in Doughty Street, and she has more than once said that she would have me. I have written to her this morning. I shall write again by this afternoon’s post and tell her that I am coming. I shall stay with her while I look for a new place.”

“In London.”

“In London.”

Georgiana looked at her for a moment. Then she took up the stocking again, and threaded a fresh length of cotton with her teeth in an unceremonious way, and she spoke, without raising her eyes.,

“He has written to you.”

“Yes.”

“And the child.”

“Yes.”

“And you have not answered him.”

“I shall not answer him by letter.”

Georgiana nodded once, very slightly, and pulled the cotton through.