Chapter 17
She was on her way out of the small library she had taken as her office, her arms full of estate books, when someone made use of the door knocker.
She knew she undoubtedly should have waited for one of the staff to answer it, but Chalmers was in the wine cellar arranging the shipment of claret she had just secured, and the footmen were most likely helping carry out debris from the renovations that were in progress.
She had just finished changing over what she fondly referred to as the Mud Parlor.
She and the girls had decided that it should be a sunny yellow with royal blue settees and a Tintoretto of Venice over the fireplace.
Now that they had repaired the roof, it even smelled better.
She couldn’t wait for Grey to see it all.
It was why she was driving everyone so hard.
She wanted it done when he came home, all the once-peeling, moldy, grimly dark rooms rehabilitated and welcoming.
In the meantime, though, the visitor made another foray with the knocker.
Georgie stopped in the middle of the hall and looked around, but there was no help.
She should be able to answer her own door, really.
She was a marchioness. Couldn’t a marchioness open her own door if she wanted? What could go wrong?
She knew the minute she swung the door wide. She heard the echoing thud of the books dropping onto the marble floor. She thought she heard a moan and wondered where it had come from.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
For there on her stoop stood three uniformed officers. One dark and fierce, one golden blond, one with hair the color of fall leaves. Three Archangels in the flesh.
Just standing there, as if waiting for a command to stand down.
Georgie wasn’t sure if it was the door or the thudding books he heard, but suddenly Chalmers was standing behind her. She could hear him catch his breath.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again of the three on her doorstep.
Even before they answered, she felt a great hole tear open in her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t bear for them to answer.
But they did.
“We need to talk to you,” Michael the Warrior said, his grey eyes grave, his posture in his Guardsman red rigid.
They even looked like their namesakes, she thought absurdly. Michael the Warrior, dark and fierce. Gabriel the Messenger, golden blond. And Rafael the healer, with hair the color of blood. Her family.
Still, she couldn’t seem to move. “Chalmers?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level so she didn’t begin shrieking like a madwoman.
Grey. Oh, Grey.
“Where are the little girls?” she asked without turning.
“In the park, my lady,” the gentle voice answered behind her. “With Miss Breck.”
She nodded. “Please send someone to advise her to keep the girls there for a bit. Until I call for them. I imagine I will also need to assemble the staff in about an hour.”
“Yes, milady.”
“And Chalmers.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Send for Madame Marie. I believe we will be needing black.”
Without a word she turned to led the way up the stairs, not so much as motioning her brother and cousins to follow.
She knew they would. They had news to deliver.
It was the only reason they could be here.
In England together. At her new house. The house of the Marchioness of Coleford.
She knew there was something else the Marchioness was supposed to do at a time like this, but her brain suddenly felt as frozen as her heart. As useless.
Grey.
Incongruously she led them into the Yellow Salon, as if bad news could be eased by bright walls.
She motioned for them to sit. She took the newly upholstered royal blue settee to one side of the Adams fireplace.
The Archangels shared the settee opposite, easing down in perfect unison, two Guardsmen in sharp red against that blue, and Rafael, who had never felt the desire for the flashy garb of the Guards, in his flat olive Rifleman green.
Hands on knees, backs barracks-straight.
“Tell me.”
She was trembling. She couldn’t tremble.
She had no place to fall apart. She had no right.
Evidently, she didn’t have enough force of will to win.
But she could keep the Archangels from seeing it.
Hearing it in her voice. Recognizing it in her eyes, where she thought the devastation should have been painfully obvious.
Tears clogged her throat, but she had enough will to force them down.
Tears would do no good. Tears could wait, just like always.
“I’m sorry, Georgie,” her brother Michael said, his severe face even harsher. “Our superior dispatched all three of us to be with you.”
She nodded. She did nod, didn’t she? She wasn’t quite sure. Everything suddenly felt encased in ice. Even her trembling heart.
“How? The battles are over.”
“He was freeing one of our people from a prison. There was…an...explosion.”
That hit like a punch to the chest. She was suddenly terrified that every time she closed her eyes, she would see Grey disintegrate before her. She would hear his screams, whether he’d screamed or not. She couldn’t ask.
“Did he save the other man? The one he went to find?”
“He did.”
She nodded. “Can they...” She swallowed, cleared her throat. “Can they bring him home for burial?”
Michael didn’t even shake his head. She could see the devastation in his eyes as well. And Rafe’s. And Gabe’s.
“I should be comforting you,” she said, reverting to what she knew best. “You knew him far better than I.”
“You were married to him,” Gabe protested.
She managed a smile, although she suspected it looked like a rictus.
“For all of two days.” Then she laughed, as if the irony of the situation really did amuse her.
“In fact, we’ve been married so short a time I don’t even know which estate has the family plot.
At least we can put up a stone. Have a service.
” She realized she was rubbing at her temple and pulled her hand away.
She didn’t have time. She had no time. She had so much to do, and she hadn’t even told the girls.
Oh, sweet God, the girls.
“His man of business should know,” Michael said. “About the plot.”
She managed another grim smile. “I am his man of business. It was an added bonus to the marriage. Along with my money came my expertise. It is just that the expertise never extended to where to bury my husband.”
She could tell she was appalling Rafe. Rafe the healer. Rafe should have known though, how she would react. It was the only way she had ever been allowed to react to anything.
“Should we call for Mother?” Michael asked.
She shook her head. “She and Father will be at the military review in Hyde Park. And later a spectacle. All the heads of state are here.”
She sounded so matter of fact, as if she didn’t feel as if she were the one disintegrating, collapsing into that terrible void that had opened up inside where there was room for nothing but pain and tears.
Tears she didn’t have time for.
She must have been silent for too long. The boys were looking uncomfortable. But then, what did one do after delivering the kind of news that tore a person apart?
“Will you...” She had to swallow again. “Will you tell the family for me? Tell them to not come stampeding over, please. The girls won’t need all that fuss.”
“Is there anything else we can do?” Rafe asked, Rafe the Healer.
She blinked. Tried to think. Couldn’t come up with anything. She couldn’t even comprehend the idea of asking them for help. That was her job. It was always her job.
Just like now.
“Not right now,” she finally managed. “I need to tell the girls. And the staff. And I imagine Grey’s solicitor. There is an heir who needs to be found.”
They stood up. She stood up. Michael came up to her and wrapped his arms around her. She returned the gesture. After all, Grey had been Michael’s friend.
Had been.
Had been.
She hoped they left soon. Suddenly she was afraid she would vomit all down the front of one of those uniforms.
“Thank you,” she said into the soft wool of Michael’s scarlet jacket. “For coming yourselves.”
He pulled back, still holding her by the arms and looking down at her as if assessing the risk of his leaving.
So, she smiled. “I am all right, Michael. Truly. Like I said. I only knew him a bit more than a week.”
A week that had opened her world in ways she would never reclaim. A week of his gentle smiles, wry humor, and clever hands. A week of planning and sharing and anticipation.
All gone. Disappeared to leave a world even smaller than the one she’d been trying to escape. A world suddenly painted in pain and loss. And little girls who had to be told.
The men were turning to leave when she did remember something. “Braxton,” she said suddenly. “Where is he? Was he involved?”
Michael turned back to her. “He suffered some burns, a few broken bones.”
She nodded. “Where is he?”
Michael’s eyebrows went up. “At his sister’s in Stepney.”
Georgie swallowed. “Can you have someone check up on him, please, and make sure he has everything he needs?”
She knew Michael thought she was mad. She truly didn’t care. “It’s the least we can do. Please tell him I will visit when I can.”
And with that, she sent the Archangels on their way.
She gave her cousins their own hugs and then led them down the stairs and out.
And for the longest time, she just stood there in the foyer with the sun streaming in through the window over the door and stared at nothing. It was where Chalmers found her.
“Go get the girls,” she said and turned away.
She should have known her family wouldn’t stay away.
She was curled up on the overstuffed royal blue settee in the yellow parlor, an arm around each little girl as they huddled against her like puppies caught out in a storm, Bark curled up at their feet.
It had been hard. It had been harder than anything she had ever done, and it would get harder.
They were suffering the first shock now, but when that wore off, the girls would have to once again face an unsafe world.
And all Georgie could do was hold them. Because suddenly she understood that.
She had known him for a week. A single week, and he had upended her life.
And then gone. He had begun to change the shape of her future, change the focus of her life.
Change completely her relationship with her own body, which ached now as if she had been physically attacked.
Sharp pain seemed to live in each breath she took, which like a tide, kept rising until it choked her.
Until it deafened her and stole her voice.
Until it left her too useless to do anything but hold two little girls who hurt even more than she did.
He was gone, and he had taken something with him. Something vital and dear, something she knew she would never find again.
He was gone and she was left alone again to do what she always did. Tidy up, correct, reclaim.
“Will we have to leave again?” a tiny voice suddenly piped up from her lap.
Would they?
“I don’t know, my love,” she said, squeezing a little tighter. “We must see what the new Marquess has to say. But never fear. If we cannot stay here, we can live at the Packham house with the other children. But whatever we decide, we stay together. Because what did Uncle Grey call us?”
Sophie sighed. “Family.”
“That’s right. Wherever we go, families go together.”
Or they could go to Painswick Park. She couldn’t even think that far yet.
She had talked to Mr. Deevers. No one had any idea who the heir was. They had never had to look. So, she and the girls were once again suspended over a chasm without a familiar way forward.
At least they knew where to put up the headstone. But she would think about that later.
“Milady,” Chalmers murmured from the door.
But before he could finish, there was a whoosh and suddenly her mother was standing before her.
Georgie wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Her mother was a lovely, serene person, but not much of a hugger.
Bark struggled to his feet as her mother gently nudged him out of the way.
It said everything about her mother that Bark let her near his girls.
“What do you mean don’t bother my mother?” she asked without preamble, which told Georgie all she needed to know about how upset her mother was. Amelia and Sophie sat up and scrubbed damp faces with the backs of their hands.
Georgie’s mama promptly crouched down and threw open her arms, and the girls tumbled straight into them.
Georgie admitted that she stared. Who was this person?
She wondered vaguely. She couldn’t remember her mother ever being so demonstrative, never mind wrinkling her dress so egregiously.
Slowly, feeling as if she had suddenly developed arthritis, she unwound herself from her place on the couch.
“I asked your cousins to wait a bit so I could see you first,” her mama said as she stroked little girls’ hair. “Your grandmama would not be put off, however. She is on her way.”
Of course she was. And here Georgie had thought she couldn’t feel more exhausted.
“Chalmers,” she said, her voice perfectly placid. “Did I hear Miss Breck was bringing a tea up to the girls to fortify them? With cinnamon buns?”
“You did, milady,” he allowed with a small bow.
She nodded. “Girls, may I speak to my mama alone for a bit? Miss Breck is waiting to give you treats.”
Both girls straightened. Sophie met Georgie’s eyes head-on. “You will not leave?”
She met her eye-to-eye. “I will not leave. When you have gorged your fill, you may come back to find me right here in our new yellow salon.”
“Is that all right, Grandmama Packham?” Sophie asked, so suddenly small and uncertain.
Her mama dropped a kiss on each forehead. “I will watch over Aunt Georgie while you are enjoying those cinnamon buns,” she promised.
“Good,” Amelia said. “We are sad today. Uncle Grey died, you know. You’re not going to die, are you?”
God bless her mama. She gave the girls another good squeeze. “Everyone dies sometime,” she said. “But today I will be waiting for you right here.”
The girls both nodded and dropped unsteady curtsies, and then Sophie took hold of her sister’s hand and led her and Bark out of the room, Chalmers closing the door behind them.
Sitting down without a word next to Georgie, her mother did something she never did.
She wrapped her arms around Georgie. And Georgie did what she had never in her life done before. She burst into tears.