The Proposal (32 page)

But Amy knew she had gone too far to stop now.

‘Will said that something happened when you were a girl. Something that has driven your family apart.’

Georgia looked away.

‘And I thought better of Will, too.’

‘Is that the reason you’ve never been to New York?’

Georgia flashed her a look of anger.

‘Perhaps you’d have better luck as a psychic than a choreographer.’

‘Come on, Georgia. Whatever it is, you shouldn’t hold it inside you. You told me that yourself. It’s not too late to change things.’

Georgia shook her head and sat down on the edge of a sofa. She looked suddenly very tired. As she sat there, Amy could see that the old woman’s eyes had welled with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice thick with emotion. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s just . . .’ She trailed off, and Amy jumped up to pass her a box of tissues.

Georgia nodded, her head bowed, her whole body defeated. Amy could see her pale, veined hands trembling on her knees, twisting the tissue around her fingers.

‘Should I make the tea?’ she asked.

‘You better had,’ said Georgia. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m not in a rush,’ said Amy quietly.

‘Make the tea and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you about the night that changed my life.’

September 1958

Peter Hamilton pressed his nose against the glass of the car window and whistled.

‘Now that’s what I call a house,’ he said. Their taxi was slowly approaching Stapleford, caught in a queue of grand cars snaking around in a loop, each stopping before the steps to the front door, where uniformed staff were helping the passengers out.

‘Peter, stop leering out of the window like that,’ scolded Sybil, pulling her husband back. ‘People will see and think you’ve never seen a house before.’

Georgia was fairly sure
she
never had. Not like this, anyway. Oh, she had been to the Palace, of course, and she had strolled around Kensington Gardens – and obviously, many of the balls and parties during the Season had been held in amazing buildings with painted ceilings and minstrels’ galleries and fountains in the courtyard. But this? Stapleford was on another scale entirely, with wings that seemed to stretch off into the night either side of the blazing entrance. There had to be two hundred windows that Georgia could see, every one of them spilling warm yellow light out into the grounds. She had expected the Carlyle family to push the boat out for Christopher’s twenty-first birthday party, but clearly at Stapleford, pushing the boat out was more like launching a transatlantic steamer.

‘Isn’t it marvellous? The house, I mean,’ said Clarissa, her eyes wide. ‘Edward said it was big, but . . . Gosh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to live here?’

‘You never know, Georgia might be lady of this particular manor one day,’ said Peter with pride.

‘I think that might be a little previous,’ said Sybil, adjusting her stole around her shoulders. ‘They’ve only been friends two minutes.’

‘Well, it was jolly nice of him to invite us all here today,’ said Clarissa as the car pulled to a stop.

‘Very generous,’ whispered Estella as the footman opened the door and they were ushered up the stone steps and into the house.

Once inside, Georgia thought that Uncle Peter’s initial response to Stapleford was only natural: the entrance hall was exactly the sort of place that should make you gape. It was huge, as tall as the building itself, and seemed to have been carved from a single block of white marble. Directly in front of them a wide staircase that split into two and curved around the hall. There were oil paintings and sculptures and Oriental ceramics; everything inside the hall seemed expensive and exotic and delicate. Georgia could no more imagine herself living somewhere like this than she could imagine going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

They followed the flow of partygoers to the left of the staircase.

‘There are supposed to be eight hundred guests here tonight,’ whispered Clarissa. ‘Can you imagine knowing that many people?’

Georgia thought there must have been two hundred in the ballroom alone, all standing in groups, talking and laughing, as a chamber orchestra played pretty music from a stage at one end. They walked the length of the room, nodding and waving to family friends and acquaintances from the Season, then out through tall French windows into the grounds, where the wide ornamental gardens were full of people. It was like Hyde Park on a warm summer evening: groups strolling along the paths, others standing next to the large white marquees or listening to the jazz band set up on a stage next to the lake at the rear, polite laughter and conversation filling the fragrant air.

‘This has to be the party of the year,’ said Sybil, looking over at Georgia appreciatively.
Well done
, she might as well have added,
you’ve finally got us into high society
. Although within the Hamilton family Aunt Sybil was considered top drawer – and an inheritance had paid for their house in Pimlico – she was far from the sort of status and wealth that the Carlyle family possessed. Far from it.

‘Do you mind if I go and speak to my friends over there?’ said Georgia.

‘Not at all, darling,’ said Estella. ‘You girls must mingle. Go and have a wonderful time.’

Georgia watched as Clarissa joined a group of older girls, who immediately began giggling. She moved in the opposite direction. It had been a tiny white lie to her mother: she had seen a group of fellow debs, but she had no intention of talking to them. If she had to discuss how dreamy James Kirkpatrick looked in white tie one more time, she thought she might scream. Besides, the Season was drawing to a close. A few Highland balls in Scotland and Ireland for the more intrepid, but the coveted Deb of the Year award had been announced – a Home Counties beauty named Sally Croker Poole had nabbed the title – which meant that Christopher’s party would be the last big social event for those lucky enough to swing an invitation.

Georgia walked back inside the house, keeping to the edge of the ballroom and skirting around any groups of debs she spotted. Her plan – such as it was – was to avoid contact with anyone while she tried to track down the only person she wanted to see at this party: Edward.

Two months after their first kiss, and even the very thought of him made her shiver with excitement. They had had a wonderful summer together; although Edward had started working at the bank and she was still doing shifts at the Swiss Chalet, they had spent every possible moment in each other’s company. There had been nights out at Soho jazz clubs, picnics in the park, and drives to the coast, where they would park the Aston Martin and take long walks along the cliff paths, kissing and holding hands, sharing their secrets and dreams. Sometimes she would lie in bed at night and worry that it would all come crashing down around her ears, that Edward Carlyle would one day wake up and realise that she was actually nothing special, and when he had taken her out for lunch one day and said he had something to discuss, she had wondered if the axe was about to fall. Instead he had invited her and her family to Christopher’s twenty-first.

She looked around the party, wondering where he was, then realised that, this being a formal party, the elder son would be a social focus. She imagined him having to nod and look interested as his many relatives told him at length how things had been better before the war.

‘Georgia!’

She turned, thinking she had been ambushed by a debutante but she was confronted by Christopher’s cheerful face. He was wearing full white tie and a pink face, which suggested he was suffering underneath that stiff collar.

‘Happy birthday,’ grinned Georgia. ‘I’m surprised to see you unaccompanied.’

‘Rare moment,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Mummy has been forcing a parade of dull girls in front of me all night. Managed to slip away for a quick nip.’ He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a silver flask. ‘Fancy a belt?’

Georgia shook her head.

‘No thank you. It’s hard enough keeping tabs on my mother when completely sober.’

‘Know what you mean,’ nodded Christopher. ‘I have to go the other way – I can’t get through it otherwise. You know I’d much rather celebrate my twenty-first with a night on the town with the fellows from the bank. At least they don’t expect you to waltz with some distant cousin with a face like rice pudding.’

Georgia giggled.

‘There must be a few nice girls here?’

Christopher raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t you start . . .’

Just as she was turning away, Georgia felt someone grab her hand. She snapped it away, then turned to face her assailant.

‘It’s you!’

‘Who did you think it would be?’ said a grinning Edward.

‘That randy butler everyone keeps talking about.’

‘I’d better whisk you away then. I don’t want your head to be turned.’

‘Shouldn’t you be socialising?’

‘I’ve done my bit,’ he said, grabbing her hand again and leading her away from the party, first down a corridor, then into another passageway and up a flight of stairs.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she whispered, laughing despite herself.

‘You’ll see,’ he said, glancing back as he opened a door on to a landing. ‘Only a few more steps. Keep up!’

By the time they had reached the top of a winding set of stairs and pushed through a door into a small bedroom, Georgia was out of breath.

‘Right. Next bit’s a little tricky.’

He jumped up on to the narrow bed and yanked at the window, sliding it up and getting one foot up on to the sill.

‘Here,’ he said, extending a hand towards Georgia.

‘You want me to climb up there?’

‘Yes. Just don’t look down.’

‘Very well,’ said Georgia, gathering up her long skirt and hoisting herself up after him. ‘But if I split a seam, you can buy me a new dress.’

Edward caught her around the waist.

‘Georgia Hamilton, I will buy you all the dresses in Selfridges if that’s what you want. Now come on.’

He lifted her on to a small platform, and as Georgia straightened, she could see where they were.

‘We’re on the roof,’ she gasped.

‘The only place for the queen of all she surveys,’ grinned Edward. He disappeared back into the room and came back with a bottle of champagne and a blanket, which he spread out on the sloping tiles. Nervously Georgia sat down next to him in the little nest he had created; they could see most of the garden, with all the people milling around, yet they were hidden from view, even if anyone had thought to crane their necks upwards.

‘As you can see, I have come completely prepared,’ said Edward, pulling two champagne glasses from his jacket pockets and pouring them each a drink. He chinked his glass against hers.

‘To adventure,’ he said.

‘To us,’ she replied, smiling.

They sat in silence, sipping the wine and enjoying the simple pleasure of being somewhere they shouldn’t, peeking down on the party unobserved.

‘This is a really amazing place,’ she said, wishing she could stay up here for ever.

‘Best bit of the house,’ he grinned.

‘I’m sure this house has lots of great bits.’

He nodded.

‘And as kids, Christopher and I probably found every single one. You know it’s got dozens of hidden passages and stairways, all put in so the servants could creep about without disturbing the lords and ladies. We’d use them to pretend to be explorers or ghost-hunters. This little hidey-hole was our lookout in case pirates decided to sail across the lake to steal Daddy’s silver.’

Georgia laughed, imagining the two boys playing their games, just as she had, building dens and climbing trees in Devon. The Carlyle boys both seemed so grown up and formal, but she supposed they had once wanted to play just like everyone else. The tragedy was that no one was allowed to carry on playing once they grew up.

‘I still don’t understand why you started work at the bank so soon after you left Oxford,’ she said, staring out into the darkness. ‘We should never stop having adventures. That was one of the things I liked about you when we first met. You’d done so many interesting things, and I don’t think we should stop just because people think that we should all become responsible once we graduate.’

‘Well, I was supposed to go to Borneo to see the jungle and the orang-utans, but something cropped up.’

‘What?’

‘You,’ he said simply.

She turned to look at him.

‘You never told me. We could have gone together.’

‘Plus there’re plans afoot for something I suggested a while ago. My father took it seriously and the wheels are in motion.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, hearing the hesitancy in his voice and feeling nervous.

‘My father wants to open a New York branch of the bank.’

‘Great, that was always the plan, wasn’t it?’ said Georgia with more enthusiasm than she felt.

‘They want me to go over there with my father’s number two and set it up.’

‘When?’ she asked with increasing panic.

‘Before Christmas.’

‘So you’re moving to New York in three months’ time,’ she said slowly.