The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (26 page)

The marquess hurried from the room without a thought to his wife, who was lying awake in his bed.

His father had had a heart attack. There would be no recovery from this one. He was dying. That much was clear to his son the moment he hurried into his bedchamber. He lay on the bed, gasping for air. Every breath was labored. Brixton was flapping a large cloth in front of his face, trying to make more air available to him. The marquess chafed the duke’s hands in a futile attempt to do something though he knew himself to be utterly helpless.

Time passed without his being aware of it. Marianne was in the room, closely followed by Charles. Then Twynham was there too, and Will and Claudia and Charity. Finally the physician appeared and they all stood back at the edges of the room watching while he made his examination and straightened up to give them the inevitable message simply by looking at them and slightly shaking his head.

The Duke of Withingsby was dying.

“Fetch Lady Augusta,” the marquess said, looking at Mrs. Aylward, who was standing in the doorway.

“I will go,” Charity said quietly. “I will bring her.”

The duke was still breathing in audible gasps. But he was conscious. His eyes were open.

“It is time to say good-bye,” the marquess said, the fact registering on his mind that they were all—family, servants, physician—looking to him for guidance. The duke was dying. He was already the acting head of the family. “William? Claudia?”

They stepped up to the bed, Claudia chalk white, Will scarcely less so. And then Marianne and Twynham, and after them, Charles. The butler and housekeeper were nodded forward to say their farewells. Even through the numbness of his mind, the marquess realized that this was the leave-taking his father would want—something strictly formal and correct, his death like a well-orchestrated state occasion.

Charity had returned with a pale and clearly frightened Augusta. She clung to Charity’s hand and shrank against her and hid her face when Marianne would have taken her. And so it was Charity who led her to the side of the bed.

“You must say good-bye to your father,” Charity said gently. “He is looking at you, you see.”

“Good-bye, sir,” the child whispered.

But the marquess could see, and Charity could see, that his grace’s hand was pulling feebly at the bedcover.

“He would like you to kiss him,” Charity said. “He would like you to know that he loves you and that he leaves you in the safe care of Anthony.”

Augusta had to stand on her toes to lean far enough across the bed to kiss her father on the cheek. “I will be a good girl for Anthony, sir,” she said. “And I will work harder at my lessons.” She hid her face against Charity’s skirt.

“Father.” Charity had taken that feeble hand in her own. “You have been kind to me. I thank you for your kindness. I will always remember it and you.” And she bent over him, kissed his forehead, and smiled into his eyes. “With love,” she added.

And then she bent down, picked Augusta up in her arms, and moved with her out into the anteroom of the bedchamber.

The marquess stepped forward and stood, his hands clasped at his back, gazing down at his father.

“Clear the room.” The words were whispered and hoarse and breathless, but they were perfectly clear.

“Perhaps you would all wait outside for a few moments,” the marquess said without looking away from his father’s face.

They all left uncomplaining except for Marianne, who was muttering to Twynham that she was his grace’s daughter and was being treated like a servant by her own brother.

The Duke of Withingsby was not a person one touched uninvited, and the invitation was rarely given. But the Marquess of Staunton looked down at the pale, limp hand on the covers and took his hands from his back so that he could gather it up in both his own. It was cold despite all his efforts to warm it a few minutes before.

“Father,” he said, remembering even as he spoke the idea of a sentimental deathbed scene with which he had mocked his wife, “I have always loved you. Far too deeply for words. If I had not loved you, I could not have hated you. And I have hated you. I love you.” He raised the hand briefly to his lips.

His grace’s penetrating, haughty eyes, startlingly alive, regarded him out of the gray face and from beneath heavy lids. “You are my son,” he managed to say. “Always my favorite son, as you were hers. You will have children of your own, my son. Your duchess will be a good mother and a good wife. You have made a fortunate choice. There will be mutual love in your marriage. I envy you. You have not succeeded in annoying me.”

He could say no more. He closed his eyes. His son watched him for a while and then went down on his
knees and rested his face on the bed close to his father’s hand and wept. He felt foolish weeping for a man he had hated—and loved, but he was powerless to stop the painful sobs that tore at him. And then the hand lifted and came to rest on his head. It moved once, twice, and then lay still while the rasping breathing continued.

It felt like forgiveness, absolution, a blessing, a benediction, a healing touch. A father’s touch. It felt like love. The marquess despised the feelings at the same time as he allowed them to wash over him. His father had touched him with love.

The nature of the breathing changed. He got to his feet and crossed to the door. It was time to summon the family back into the room. It was their right to witness the end. And the end was no more than minutes away.

S
HE SAT ON A CHAIR IN THE ANTEROOM WITH
A
UGUSTA
curled up on her lap. The child was not sleeping, but Charity had not taken her with everyone else back into the duke’s room. It had been necessary for her to say good-bye to her father, to understand what was happening, but it was not necessary for her to witness the death. Charity smoothed her hand over the child’s head and occasionally kissed her forehead.

Her husband was the first to come back out of the room. He came to stand in front of the chair and his eyes met Charity’s. He looked pale, weary. He had been crying, she thought. She was glad he had cried. He came down on his haunches and set a hand on Augusta’s head.

“He is gone, dear,” he said in a voice of such gentleness that tears sprang to Charity’s eyes. “He was peaceful. He will be happy now. He will be—with Mother.”

Augusta opened her eyes, but she did not move or say anything.

“But you will still be safe,” he said. “I will be here with you—always—and Will and Claudia and the boys will be close by. We will be a family. I held you, you know, when you were a baby. I was the first to hold you after you were born. I did not know it was possible to love anyone as much as I loved you. I had to go away soon after and stay away for a long time. But I always
loved you. And now I am home again. We are brother and sister, but fortunately I am old enough to look after you and keep you safe almost like a father.”

She gazed mutely at him, but Charity could feel that there was less tension in her than there had been. In a few more minutes she would be sleeping.

“His grace knew he would have to leave you,” the marquess continued. “He called me home so that I could look after you for him. Because he loved you, Augusta, and because he loved me. Because we were his children. Everything will be all right, dear. You may go back to sleep now. I will carry you to your bed and Charity will come with us.” He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She understood the silent communication and nodded. “She will stay with you, and when you wake she will be there to bring you to me or to Will or Marianne or Charles. You are quite safe.”

But as he got to his feet, the butler came out of the bedchamber. He cleared his throat.

“Your grace—” he began.

Charity watched her husband flinch before turning his head.

“The physician wishes to consult with you, your grace,” the butler said.

“He will wait for five minutes,” the Duke of Withingsby said, “until I have carried Lady Augusta to the nursery.”

He lifted the half-sleeping child into his arms and waited while Charity got to her feet. This morning, she realized for the first time since the sound of her husband’s voice had woken her with a start from a deep sleep, they were supposed to be on their way back to London. Today was to have marked the end of the charade, the beginning of the secure and wonderful life with her own family that she had dreamed of ever since her own father’s death.

But today there was still a part to play—not even really a part. Augusta was going to need her today. There could be no more momentous event in a child’s life than the death of a parent. Augusta’s needs were going to have to take precedence over all else for today, and perhaps for longer than today. For some reason it seemed that the child was turning to her for comfort rather than to Marianne or Claudia.

And Anthony was going to need her today and perhaps for a few days beyond today. He had lost his father under difficult circumstances. She suspected—and hoped—that he might have realized his love for his father before it was too late. She hoped that his father had been able to show some sign of his own love. How foolish they had been, holding out until the very end and perhaps even beyond the end. But there was a look in his face, even apart from the evidence of tears, that told her father and son had understood each other before they were separated by eternity. They had been alone together for all of five minutes.

He set Augusta down carefully on her bed, while both her nurse and her governess hovered in the doorway. The nurse was red-eyed from weeping—news traveled fast in a large house. Augusta was already sleeping. He covered her snugly with the blankets, and Charity was reminded of how he had covered
her
just a few hours before and held her while she slipped into an exhausted sleep. He straightened up and turned to her. The servants had disappeared.

“You will stay with her?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

She took an impulsive step forward and brushed back the upside-down question mark of hair from his forehead. It fell back almost immediately. She framed his face with her hands.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am so sorry, Anthony.” And she stood on her toes and kissed his lips.

He touched his hands to the backs of hers, held them against his face for a moment, and then removed them, squeezing them slightly as he did so.

“I am needed,” he said and left the room.

It was only after he had left and she sat in the quiet room, watching the sleeping child, that she began to be plagued by terrible feelings of guilt.

I
T WAS AN
incredibly busy and wearying day. He had lived his own independent life for eight years and was accustomed to responsibilities. But finding himself suddenly the Duke of Withingsby a mere three days after returning to Enfield, with seemingly dozens of people turning to him for direction, was stressful, to say the least. There were the funeral arrangements to be made, letters to be written, arrangements for the guests who would arrive from some distance away for the funeral to be set in motion, early visits of condolence to be received, ordinary, unavoidable matters of household and estate business to be dealt with, the Earl of Tillden and his family to assure that of course they were perfectly welcome to stay on—and endless other tasks.

There was the shock of grief to be dealt with—his own grief and that of his brothers and sisters. Charles was perhaps the most inconsolable. The duke found his brother during the afternoon sitting in the conservatory, sobbing into his hands. But there was not the obligation to expend emotional energy on comforting him. Lady Marie Lucas sat beside him, patting his back with one small hand while the other clutched a lace handkerchief and dabbed at the tears on her own cheeks.

Augusta, released from both the nursery and the schoolroom, stayed close to Charity all day, though she
came to sit on his lap during a brief spell of relaxation after a visit from the rector and his wife.

“Are you really going to stay with me?” she asked.

“Mmm.” He wrapped his arms about her.

“And are you really going to be like a papa?” she asked. “Like William is with Anthony and Harry?”

“Do you want a papa?” he asked her. “Or would you prefer a big brother?”

She did not hesitate. “I want a papa,” she said.

“Then I am he,” he said. His mind flashed back briefly to the life he had been living and the attitudes he had held with great firmness just the week before. But that life was dead. He accepted the fact. This was not something he could fight against. He was not even sure that he
wanted
to fight. Some realities were too stark to be denied.

“And will Charity be like my mama?” she asked.

He closed his eyes. Ah. How did one cocoon a child against what would seem like cruelty? How could she ever understand?

“Do you want her as a mama?” he asked.

“Jane and Louisa and Martin have Marianne,” she said, “and Anthony and Harry have Claudia. Now I have someone too. She is all my own.”

“She will keep you safe,” he said, kissing her forehead. “She loves you.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “She told me. His grace loved me too. He never said so, but Charity says that some people cannot say it or even show it, though that does not mean they do not feel it. He always looked after me and he brought you home to look after me and be like a papa to me after he was gone. I could see this morning that he loved me. He wanted me to kiss him. His face was cold.”

“He loved you, dear,” he said. “You were his own little girl. And now you are mine.”

He wondered how much time his father had spent with her, this child who had killed his wife. Not much, he guessed. She envied Will’s children because they had a papa. But she would not remember their father with bitterness. Charity had seen to that.

It was a brief encounter. There were people and details to occupy every moment of his time until well after dinner. He wondered vaguely during the meal how it was that everyone except Augusta and his wife had been able to lay hands on black clothes so easily. They were all in deep mourning. Charity wore one of her brown dresses and looked endearingly shabby and pretty. Claudia’s modiste, he heard as part of the dinner conversation, was busy making his wife a black dress to wear tomorrow.