When I finally arrived home, in an ambulance, no less, because I wasn’t allowed to walk or drive in case I jarred my rebuilt skull, I found the house a hive of activity; word had gotten around, and many of my old troop mates, enlisted as well as officers, had shown up to lend a hand and keep an eye on Georgy and Aunt Kay for me; the way those bastards had brutally attacked a nearly 80 year-old woman made them sick and very angry; if they weren’t dead they would have sustained serious, maybe even fatal ‘accidental’ injuries. It brought a lump to my throat to think so many of our men, some of whom had known mum and been guests in this house, but also some I only vaguely remembered from my time in the sandbox, had thought so much of me that they’d come from far and wide to guard my home and family in my time of need. Those who weren’t on protection duty had turned their hands to helping Georgy realise her dream house, and what they couldn’t do they had mates who could, and the project house was galloping towards completion.
I couldn’t do much, not with a fractured skull, and I sweated at home, mostly confined to bed, while the injuries to my skull healed; the first time the consultant orthopaedic surgeon pressed on the bone flap site of the craniotomy and declared he couldn’t feel any grating (‘crepitus’ he called it) of bone against bone, which meant the bone had remodelled so the titanium screws could finally come out made me both very pleased and slightly sick at the same time, because who wants to know their head is being held together with screws? Yuck, shades of Frankenstein…
While I was lying around watching TV and wondering how the house was coming along, Georgy had enough free time to plot and plan with Aunt Kay as to how we could officially tie the knot, but Ah-hah! I’d already worked it out; my father was James de Morgan Giffard Amboise-Wilmot (which is why I only used the ‘Wilmot tag, because damn, it was a bloody mouthful…), and my mother was Edie Amboise-Wilmot nee Blaise De Montsegur; mother was from an old French aristocratic family, although you would never have known it from her complete lack of a French accent. Dad had met and wooed her when he was in Paris on leave. Georgy’s father was Jerome Woodville-Lassiter, and her mother, according to her birth certificate, was Edeline Woodville-Lassiter nee Poitevant-Berou.
It all worked out because, handily, my mother had three perfectly legal names due to her historic French family connections, which gave her different family names in different parts of France, so when she’d married Georgy’s father, she’d dropped her original name she was married to my father with, her De Montsegur family name, out of respect for her marriage to him, and used one of her other family surnames instead, all perfectly legal; new marriage, new name…
It would take more than a simple search at the registry office to turn up any connection between Georgy and me; I would have laid serious money on that.
Just in case, though, we arranged to be married in the Guard’s Chapel in Wellington Barracks, London, which I was entitled to request, as an honourably discharged former officer of Guards just so no-one local would be there and maybe put two and two together, although the risk of that was low; Georgy didn’t know any of the people who leased the huge swathes of farmland on the estate, it was all major agro-industrial combines, not old-fashioned farmers and their wives who took on that all that land; they changed around every so often anyway; there was no-one currently working the estate who’d been there when I was a boy, so no-one there knew me from Adam.
Georgy got the white wedding she’d let slip she’d always wanted, my two former tank-crew were my Best Man and groomsman, and four of Georgy’s friends from university were her bridesmaids, while my former C. O. when I’d been deployed gave her away, with Aunt Kay standing proxy for mother. We couldn’t have the ‘Cavalry Arch of Steel’ sword guard because I was no longer a serving officer, even if my father, Georgy’s father (and my stepfather) and I had all served as field officers with the Household Cavalry, but I don’t think Georgy cared too much.
She got the ring I promised her, too, and not some long-dead ancestor’s ring either; I wanted to give her something entirely her own, perfect and first worn by her alone, and Asprey of London were happy to indulge me and my cheque-book in my quest for the perfect pair for the perfect girl. I gave her a platinum engagement ring set with a 2-carat Banquette-cut flawless diamond in a brilliant-cut white diamond cluster, and the matching wedding band set with 1. 5 carats alternating baguette and brilliant-cut diamonds, because I was only ever going to marry her once, and she deserved the very best.
We didn’t go away on honeymoon, though; it turns out we had to get a move on creating that perfect nursery Georgy wanted, because we were pregnant, and Georgy refused to go anywhere until her baby was safely born and in the big old house his or her ancestors had gone through so much down through the centuries to build, preserve, and protect.
Oh, and we sold the project house, for a surprisingly large sum, too, much, much more than we ever dreamed we would. The two bidders were both after the house for the same reason: its Georgian authenticity, but the eventual winner was a rabid Jane Austen nut, and, while he obviously couldn’t buy any of the properties historically known to have Jane Austen associations, he still wanted an authentic house of the period that truly looked the part, with a few modern touches to add some contemporary luxury, and he wasn’t too fussed about the cost, he just kept upping his bid.
He raved about how much the house looked like his mental image of Catherine Morland’s home in the ‘Northanger Abbey’ novel, so of course we played it up, about how we’d restored the house with our decisions informed and influenced by the descriptions in the book to suggest the period, blah, blah, waffle, waffle, bullshit, bullshit. We hadn’t, it was sheer bloody luck that it actually looked like we’d tried for that look, mainly thanks to Georgy’s perfect eye for period detail, because I don’t think I’d ever willingly have read ‘Northanger Abbey’ to crib from it; not enough pictures…
*****
Georgy is very reluctant to step away from the renovation game, even though she’s pregnant; she’s found something she’s extraordinarily good at and she wants to keep going, but she made a promise to us both; job sites are dangerous places, there’s all kinds of caustic, toxic chemicals and solvents lying around and getting spilled and haphazardly mopped up, and dangerous power tools, heavy machinery, and live cables all over the place.
She won’t risk our unborn baby in that environment, so she’s decided she’s going to be my eyes in the sky for now, and she’ll audit and correct the architectural drawings, order materials, and consult on finishes from home; she even had dad’s old workshop turned into a home office/drawing office so she can work from there in a professional environment instead of spreading drawings and project paperwork all over Aunt Kay’s dining tables.
She’s not coming within a country mile of any job site any time soon, this baby is too precious to risk in any way, but she’ll still get to choose the project houses we pick going forward, and I can live with that, because I definitely trust her practicality and judgement more than mine. I just fall hopelessly, starry-eyed in love with beautiful, faded old buildings as soon as I see them, while she actually looks into them and works out the problems they’ll cause, and decides if we can live with it, or if we should walk away.
She’s adamant about one thing though; future project houses were going to be more of the same, and I agreed with her; we’d gained a reputation as sympathetic, skilful restorers of period properties, due almost entirely to her instinctive feel for the elegance and proportions of Georgian houses, their scale and grandeur, and her eye for authentic period detail. Word of mouth got around quickly, and Georgy’s name was already starting to make ears prick up and pay attention; I think the next project we do is going to generate a lot of interest precisely because of that. That we’re a success at all is entirely down to her.
Just this morning a heap of auctioneer’s and estate-agents’ catalogues came tumbling through the letterbox, so I guess Georgy’s feeling in the mood to go and scout out some faded old ladies and see if we can’t make them grand dowager duchesses again; apparently, it’s what we do best…
And Georgy’s overcome her fear of thunder now; there’s something about fighting for our lives against murderous, scumbag criminals that makes thunder seem irrelevant. It still makes her jump, but then memories of sending Max to his maker intrude, and she accepts there are enough real monsters in the world without making them up in her head too. I think we’re going to be okay.