A New Georgy-Girl Ch. 02 - Georgy and Me

I think he thought I was trying to choke him, and he struggled to get away, but I hung on, I was much bigger than him, and I had no choice, this was it; if I failed we were all dead. With one final surge that felt like my head was exploding I wrapped my legs around him, pinning him against me, and twisted his head in a quick, snapping motion, just the way I'd been taught, crying out as the enormous bloom of pain in my head nearly blinded me. I felt something give, and he went limp, the effort leaving me wrung out like a wet dishrag with his dead weight motionless on me.

Pushing him off me and rolling to my knees took more effort than pushing a dump truck uphill, my vision blurred and doubled and danced, and the wave of nausea was so intense I vomited, retching again and again, but I somehow got to my feet, retching even more as the waves of nausea threatened to drive me to my knees again; Georgy, I had to get to Georgy, Max had her, and he was going to die.

Somehow, I managed to stagger into the corridor, the dim coolness helping my vision and nausea a little, but my balance was shot to hell. I could hear voices coming from the secret stair landing, Max cursing and swearing and ranting, so I held onto the wall, staggering as the floor swooped and danced and shifted under my feet. The corridor in my family home, the upright in the 'E' shape the house was built in, is ninety yards end to end, my ancestors believed in big and impressive, but it felt a million miles long as I inched along it. I didn't know what I was going to do when I caught Max; my first thought was I was going to crush his fat throat and watch him strangle, but I had to get to him first, and I didn't know if I could even make it that far, not when I wasn't even sure where the floor was.

Staggering along a million miles of corridor that swooped and tilted under my feet and spiralled away from me, fighting nausea and the deafening clamour in my head, I finally made it to the landing doorway. Max had left it open, which I thanked providence for, because I didn't know how I would find the hidden catch, let alone operate it, but when I lurched in the entrance, the look of terror on his face made it all worth it. He paused, frozen, he obviously thought I was too out of it to come after him, and that was all Georgy needed. Her face writhed in fury as she she shook his hand off and stepped up. Her foot lashed out, a hard, stamping kick, powered by all her hate and anger, right in the middle of his fat belly, knocking him over the low, slender balustrade. Georgy was an equestrian, and one of the benefits of riding her powerful horses every day was it toned and developed her thigh muscles and all that power and toning landed right in the middle of that disgusting fat fucker's bread-basket.

A brief cry, a loud thud, and silence. Georgy jumped to grab me before I fell, but I had to see, I had to know. Looking down, there was Max at the foot of the stairwell, he'd dropped right through the middle of the spiral staircase to land on his head on the bottom tread and he wasn't going anywhere; no one with their head bent in that direction was going to get up and walk away from anything. I think I grinned at Georgy, but then I had to sleep, I was bone-weary and nauseous, and the blackness was rising faster than I could hold it off.

Georgy tried to hold me up, but I was falling, falling into deep, warm, velvety blackness and sounds of voices soft and far away, funny, they all sounded like Georgy, but I couldn't make out what she was saying, and then silence.

*****

I woke in an unfamiliar white painted room, in a bed shrouded with a thing like a plastic tent with something taped to my top lip and bags of clear fluid on wire racks with tubes connected to my arm and chest. I panicked, I couldn't move, and then I realised I was restrained, there was something around my waist, and my forehead, and my wrists were also restrained. Where was I, why was I here, where was Georgy, and what had happened; had I been injured? How? Where was everyone?

A young-looking, pretty little Asian doctor dressed in scrubs, with a surgical mask hanging under her chin and a stethoscope around her neck came in and unzipped the plastic tent, and slipped a blood-pressure cuff around my upper arm.

"Excuse me, where am I? What happened?" I asked; tried to ask, I should say; all that came out was a collection of hoarse, scratchy sounds, and my lips felt cracked and dry.

"Don't try to talk, Tyler, just rest, your throat's too dry but you can't drink anything just yet, you're Nil by Mouth for now, maybe tomorrow we can take the IV drip out and you can sit up; if you can, you can have some water then. You're not really thirsty, you just think you are, your electrolytes and hydration are normal, so just bear with us a little longer. Now, there's someone to see you, she's been waiting three days now, just don't try and talk, and please, just take it easy, you're doing well, the operation went well but we just need to keep you immobilised a little longer, so don't panic, everything's fine, you're fine."

She patted my hand, took the BP cuff off me, made some notes on the chart in the holder next to the bed, and moved the squiggly monitor thing with the big yellow flickering numbers out of the way. She pulled the door open and beckoned whoever was outside.

"No more than thirty minutes, okay? He's still very disoriented, and he may fall asleep while you're talking, if he does don't worry, that's normal, he's been through a lot. He's still Nil by Mouth, so please don't try to give him anything to drink, he might aspirate and choke, but you can wet his lips if you do it sparingly, there's a water-bottle and sterile gauze pads in the night-stand. Stop at the station on your way out, I need to go over some things with you."

She stepped aside and there was Georgy, my Georgy-Girl, looking impossibly beautiful, tears in her big, beautiful grey eyes and her smile huge and radiant.

"Oh Willie, it's so good to see you awake, I was so scared, but they said the operation was a success, another few days and you can come home!"

I tried to speak, to ask her what happened, but she put her finger on my lips, and looked around to check the door was closed.

"Shush, Willie, your surgeon, Doctor Canête, said no talking, so be quiet!" she murmured, "About the other thing, don't worry about it, it's all sorted; the police came and left, they're satisfied Max and his accomplice died through their own incompetence, so they've closed the case, and they're going to recommend their deaths are recorded as 'Death by Misadventure' by the coroner. As far as the police are concerned, those two argued over who got what in the robbery, Max murdered his partner and fell down the back stairs in his rush to escape, because you couldn't possibly have done anything while incapacitated with such a serious head injury, and they know I couldn't have snapped that man's neck, not while Max was restraining me, I still have the bruises on both arms, plus Aunt Kay's own injuries meant she was also incapacitated, so we're okay, I think they know what really happened, but they're not taking it any further; we're in the clear."

I managed to breathe 'what injury, what did they do to me?' and Georgy's mood immediately sobered up.

"Max hit you with that bronze statue on the mantelpiece; it caused a depressed skull fracture, and made your brain swell. Willie, they had to cut a piece out of your skull to save your life!"

She was crying now, huge tears racing down her cheeks. She picked up the chart and flicked through it.

"You had something called a, called a, here it is, a 'subdural haematoma', they said it was a blood clot on your brain and they had to take it out or you would die; I had to sign the consent forms, I was your only kin, and they took you away and they cut your head open! They shaved your head and took a big piece out of your skull, then they screwed it back in again, I was so scared, we had so many plans, and that nursery we were going to make for our babies, I was so scared I'd never need it, and seeing you lying there so pale, day after day, barely breathing, and I knew, I just knew I was losing you, I was so scared..."

Her fingers were twining with mine, the best I could do; I wanted to hug her, to tell her I felt fine, that I'd beaten it and I was coming home, and all I could do was make rusty, croaking noises. Georgy bowed her head down, resting her forehead on my hand as she cried, but I managed to squeeze her hand to let her know I was okay, that we were good, that it was over.

"Aunt Kay..." I managed to whisper, and Georgy smiled through the tears streaming down her face.

"She's going to be fine, bad concussion and a fractured cheekbone but no other damage, they kept her in for observations too, she's next door; I'll try and bring her in tomorrow if they'll let her out of bed."

I struggled weakly against my wrist restraints, and Georgy squeezed my hand, stopping me.

"I'm sorry about your hands, baby," she murmured, "they don't want you turning around or touching your head yet, not until your sutures heal; they had to screw the piece of skull back in and it hasn't healed yet, so just a little longer, I promise."

She twinkled at me, her eyes flashing with mischief.

"When they asked my relationship to you on the form, I wrote 'spouse', so you, mister Tyler Courtenay De Morgan Giffard Amboise-Wilmot, are now officially my husband, got a legal paper that says so and everything, right here, look, so note to self: I shall be expecting an appropriate ring in the very near future!"

I grinned at her; incapacitated as I currently was, and distressed as she obviously was, I could still appreciate her piquant beauty and sweet, pixie sense of humour; when I got out of this place we were going to have that conversation about babies again; life was too short to make long-term plans, and after what we'd been through I knew I had to grab the brass ring while it was still in my reach.

*****

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 Édie Amboise-Wilmot née Blaise De Montségur; 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 Édeline Woodville-Lassiter née Poitevant-Bérou.

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 Montségur 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.