“I must say, that is most terribly romantic,” Georgette said, wondering if she would ever experience such a love in her life.
Of course, the whole thing was really rather unlikely now. She was a governess, a servant, and the chances of finding a young man such as that to be interested in her were really rather slim.
“Oh, it really was. Dear Josephine seemed almost afloat everywhere she went, so in love was she.”
“But her brother would not relent?”
“No, he would not. He would not even talk to her about the man. He had simply told her that a woman of her status could not possibly marry a man so low-born.”
“But was Carwyn Thomas really so very low-born?”
“He had spent his entire life in North Wales surrounded by the most wonderful scenery imaginable. And the house they lived in was rather large and set in some small, but very pretty, grounds. They were certainly not poor, and I believe their household stretched to a housekeeper and a cook if my memory serves me correctly. But of course, as beautiful as the place was, the house would have been worth very little in comparison to something similar here in England. Quite why that matters, I do not know. But my nephew could not see around it. He had quite decided that his sister would be married into wealth and comfort, and he could not seem to shake the notion from his head that she would be suffering in some way.”
“Perhaps it was more the idea that she might suffer than the idea that Carwyn Thomas was not good enough?” Georgette said somewhat hopefully. In truth, she was finding that she wished to see the best in the Duke, not the worst.
“Truthfully, I could not really say. I think there was so much that was fighting for control of him that he could not even have picked through it himself. He could see that his sister would be living so very far away from him, somewhere in the Welsh hills. And I think he quite imagined her living much as one of the servants in his own house, and he could not bear it. Whatever she told him to the contrary, he simply would not listen. I think it was then that he became firmly entrenched in his position, unable to move from it either left or right. He had decided that Carwyn Thomas was just not good enough for her. She was the sister of a Duke, as he had been for almost a year at that point, and he would not see her married away to a man with neither great wealth nor even a title.”
“Poor Josephine, she must have been so terribly torn between the man she loved and the brother she loved,” Georgette said sadly.
“That poor girl was forced to make a most terrible decision. The decision that should never have presented itself in the first place. If only her brother could have understood that her love for Carwyn Thomas was not merely the romantic fancy of a young woman. It was the very deepest love; I could see it myself. And I knew when he forbade her to see him anymore, that there was no way that Josephine could have abided by it. There would never have been another man on this earth that she would have loved as she loved Carwyn Thomas. They really were a match made in heaven, and no lack of title or wealth could ever have disrupted it. God knows I tried to get my nephew to see the sense of it, the truth of it, but he would not. And he was furious for my intervention, sending me away from Draycott Hall more than once.” Georgette could see that the retelling of that period in their lives clearly gave Lady Lyndon great pain.
“And so, Josephine left?” Georgette said gently.
“The poor girl had no option. Her brother was making it harder and harder for her to find ways of meeting Carwyn in secret. In the end, she wrote to Carwyn and begged that he take her away. And I know it broke her heart to have to elope and run to Wales to be married in a church full of strangers, without her beloved brother there to give her away.”
“Oh My Lady, how very, very sad.”
At that moment, the conversation was interrupted by the sound of the harp.
Both women looked up in time to see Ffion, her face glowing pink, and her smile so broad and happy, reaching out with chubby hands to pluck the strings.
“Oh,” Georgette said, making ready to rise.
“No, Miss Darrington. Keep your seat; everything is well,” Lady Lyndon said with a laugh. “Ffion does love the harp so, and I never stop her.”
“I see,” Georgette said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Unfortunately for us, Eleri rather likes to accompany her on the piano. Without any musical training at all, I rather fear that our conversation is likely to have come to an end.” Lady Lyndon laughed.
Before Georgette had a chance to respond, her attention was greatly drawn by the awful noise of Eleri Thomas banging loudly on the keys of the piano.