Enticing An Earl

Part 16

William and George went back to being friends, no more stuttering and blushing was seen by anyone in the manor. The staff was relieved by this development as their master had been cranky and unbearable  during their estrangement. George kept him busy by playing cards, chess or by reading to him. They were frequently seen in the garden, with George pushing William around in an invalid's chair. 

Everything was peaceful and everyone forgot their troubles for a while. George was content with the efforts made by Maximilian, Brandon and William for the search of her mother. One day a letter came from Max's agents that shattered this tranquility. 

"Apparently the man that took Lady Malcolm was very well dressed and well spoken, nothing like a riff raff but we already knew that. He asked for his carriage so  that he could take his ill aunt home. Lady Malcolm was unconscious and the man had to carry her. She was drugged probably. Stable hand that prepared their carriage was in such haste that he didn't take a good look at their faces so he can't identify anyone. The carriage had no mark, it was a simple black one, like so many others out there. I am sorry dear, but we still have made no progress. We now know how your mother was taken but we have nothing that can point us in the direction of kidnappers." Max felt such remorse when he saw hope leave George's eyes. He wanted to be the bearer of good news but his luck ran out the day his good friend was murdered.

"What do we do then? How will we find her?" George asked with such desperation but no one had an answer.

"I'm sorry my dear, all we can do is wait for the kidnapper to contact us." Brandon answered quietly.

Lady Georgiana for the first time in her short life felt utterly devastated. Her mother always tried her patience but she loved her very much. Despite the fact that mother and daughter were absolute opposites, the bond shared between the two was of respect and friendship. George still wanted her mother to be there by her side, she wanted her mother's arms around herself, she wanted her mother to dress her in pink dresses from hell and worry about her staying out in the sun for too long. Like every other daughter Lady Georgiana felt incomplete without her nagging mother.

Lady Hamilton tried to comfort George. In their short acquaintance, she had come to love her as a daughter but George was inconsolable. She tried her perfect Jasmine tea but even her best heartbreak remedy failed. After she gave up, Emma tried to cheer her friend up with a good book, which failed rather miserably as the opening was about a mother and her relationship with her daughter. Brandon and Max took over when they found an overwhelmed Emma in the library crying as well. They opened the best bottle of whiskey they could find and made George drink as much of it as they could. By the time Lady Hamilton found out and dragged them from the study, George was already tipsy. For the first time ever, she was heard scolding the two grown man at the top of her lungs. Emma, not wishing to miss out on a single thing, followed them out, leaving behind only George and William.

"I lost my father when I was 13. He was ill for sometime before his death, but sickness doesn't prepare you for the worst. You don't ever imagine losing your parents, they are invincible beings."

George stared at William and tried to make sense of what he was saying. If he hadn't looked at George when he was speaking, she would have thought that he was talking to himself. He switched his stare to the opposite wall as if it held all the answers to the mysteries of life.

"When he first contracted the disease, I thought that he would be fine. He was a strong young man, he could easily fight off a cough. I wasn't so sure when he started coughing blood so I called the doctor, the best I could get. Doctor said that there was no cure for his disease, that all we could do was hope and that he caught it from someone else. I asked my father if he knew where he got the disease from, he didn't answer. He just said that some responsibilities are greater than our life. I didn't understand what he meant, I didn't want to. I asked his steward, who told me that my father visited several families in the village who were sick to see if the sickness came because of cold that permeated their homes."

George still didn't know what the story meant or how it was supposed to make her feel better but she was contend that William was confiding in her. For the first time he was telling her something so close to his heart. His eyes looked so sad that she wanted to take the sadness away from him and replace it with happiness.

"I was so angry at him for endangering himself and his family like that. I didn't want to understand how he could do something so stupid. It was childish but I didn't even try to talk to him after that. He wanted to talk to me but I refused and went back to school. One day my mother wrote to tell me that my father might die any day and that I had to come home. The fact that my larger than life father might die made me realize that I should have stayed, I should have talked to him. I wasted so much time hating him for his mistake that I forgot that we had little time left to spend together. When I saw him, he was a shadow of himself. He had aged ten years in such a short time. He kept on talking about Earldom, about how to be there for my people but I kept on ignoring him. My father was a clever man, he extracted promises out of me while my mother moaned of our family being ruined. I hated everything and everyone after he died but I performed my duties well like I promised him that I would. I was the leader that my people looked up to at funeral. I went back to finish my studies and left my estates in the care of my steward. When I finished school and came back, I saw that the roads were in bad condition, the wells were almost collapsing, the people of my land were sickly thin and overall, the castle looked haunted. When I asked my man what had happened, he made excuses that anyone would have accepted, even I would have  but my promise to my father made me look into my accounts. He was cheating me, stealing money from the state and farmers."

William took a deep breath as if cleansing himself from the inside. George felt her temper rise on William's behalf, even after so many years, such success, the past still haunts him, just because a man he trusted decided to betray him.

"He was my father's best friend, they were so close, almost brothers and when he betrayed my father's estate, his family and the people he cared about so much, he betrayed my father. I told him that I knew what he did and would have him arrested if he didn't return all the money he owed. It was the hardest thing I had to do but it had to be done. That man didn't care about anyone so why should I care about him? He escaped in the dead of the night, ran to the colonies to get away with theft. After that I never hired a man of business, did manual labor to remind myself that my farmers work hard and should be compensated accordingly, visited them to know their problems and took an interest in them as people. I finally understood what my father meant, I'm a single man making at least a thousand lives better."

William smiled at the end, a smile so sad that George felt hollow inside. William laughing in mirth was beautiful but his sadness held a poetic quality. 

"I did not tell you the whole story to fish for compliments, I just wanted to say that the kidnapper was well dressed. Maybe your father befriended a snake and he stands to gain something with your family's ruination or your father made a secret investment that only your parents knew and he doesn't want anyone else to find out about. We will go to London as soon as I'm well enough, which will be by next week hopefully and we will look for anyone or anything suspicious, just don't look so hopeless. We will figure everything out." William gave another one of his sad smiles that made George a bit breathless and made her stomach tickle for some reason. It was like falling from a tree limb. 

"Why can't we go now? We have Max and Brandon after all, they can start the search." George's naturally full lip pout became more enhanced in her drunken stubbornness. William stared at her cherry lips for such a prolonged time that even George noticed. She was absolutely drunk by now and was seeing two Williams. She felt her heartbeat at a full gallop and that tickling in her stomach suddenly felt like an elephant sized butterfly was dancing in her stomach.

"Because I don't like the fact that I'm handicapped for now and if something went wrong, I won't be able to protect you like I can when I'm healed."

William saw George's blink rapidly, he could see that the whiskey she drank was finally affecting her thinking process. When she started coming closer with hooded eyes, the lust so clearly visible for him to see. He knew that whatever she intended to do was drunken foolishness and would gain him nothing but he couldn't bring himself to do anything about it. 

As soon as George's soft full lips made contact with his, he lost all sense. He was on cloud nine when George pressed her lips to his and ready to make the kiss deeper when she suddenly backed away and William came back to earth with a bang. The kiss was nothing more then a peck. 

"I still don't get what the fuss is about, it's just like kissing on the cheek!" George huffed, annoyed. In that moment William understood that George had never been kissed. He started closing the distance to show her what a real one feels like when George started throwing up.