Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
If you ever find yourself attending a deathbed, as most of us will, I pray that it is not that of someone you love and treasure, lost too early.
Godric (sleeping in my bed) answered her, his voice a low rumble. My eyelids drooped again. Dawn light was creeping around the curtains, but it was too early to rise.
“What are you doing in my mistress’s bed?” Tess demanded in the other room.
“There was a rat in Evie’s chamber,” Godric replied.
My maid squealed. “Rats, ghosts, and a corpse. This abbey gets worse and worse.”
The words rattled around my head. A corpse? I sat up.
“Who is dead?” Godric inquired, his voice unruffled.
“The master! Evie’s husband! Lord Burnsby!”
(I dimly recognized that my gasp was worthy of a fictional heroine. Not the time to insist on the point, but life imitated fiction. Burnsby dead? It was too convenient to be true.)
Tess shoved open the door between our rooms. “Evie, wake up! Lord Burnsby is dead!”
“How could he be dead?”
(Not my finest moment, but I was dumbfounded.)
“Do you have any idea how his lordship died?” Godric asked, following her into the room.
“Crumpsall said it must have been his heart, because he’s blue around the lips and has spots in his eyes,” Tess reported. “Ainsworth summoned Crumpsall, and he informed the new Lord Burnsby and sent me to fetch you.”
“I needn’t feel grief?” My voice was uncertain. What kind of wife’s heart leaps on hearing of her husband’s passing?
“Grief would be ludicrous, after the way he treated you,” Godric said.
“You needn’t go into mourning, because you never married him,” Tess burst out. “They said last night that you never were his wife. Ainsworth’s maid says that her mistress married him years ago.”
Crumpsall must have deserted his listening post when Burnsby announced that he planned to dine in his room—which meant no one in the household knew that Sophonisba’s marriage had been a fraud.
“Burnsby’s marriage to Miss Ainsworth was invalid,” I told Tess. “He used it to convince her to return from Europe with him.”
Tess’s eyes widened. “My aunt was taken in by a tinker who stole all her money before he told her the ceremony was a fraud.”
“An unfortunately common deception,” Godric said.
“I don’t feel sorry for Ainsworth,” Tess said. “Mr. Crumpsall said that she urged the late master to fire him and Miss Wellington.”
“Sophonisba Ainsworth did not warn three successive women whom she believed to have been deceived into false marriages by her husband,” Godric pointed out. “In reality, all of them, including her, were being used by a greedy man with no moral compass.”
“He was evil,” Tess said, with conviction.
“Hopefully that evil man confessed to his false marriage rites last night,” Godric said dryly. “I shall be forced to give Ainsworth unhappy news, if not.”
Tess grabbed my hand and led me into my room. “This abbey is cursed. Thank God, the snow is melting and we can finally escape.”
“Actually, we can’t leave immediately,” Godric said. “Lance and Colette will need our help.”
“We can talk about that later,” I said numbly. As Burnsby’s widow, I had to visit his deathbed.
Tess curtsied in Godric’s direction. “If you’ll forgive me, my lord.” Then she dropped civility and said, “Don’t you be following us directly to Burnsby’s bedchamber, or people will draw the wrong conclusion.”
He disappeared, closing the door, and she yanked my nightgown over my head. “No need for a corset,” she muttered. “Thank goodness you have that black traveling gown.”
“I’m not certain that I will wear mourning for Burnsby,” I said.
“You’ll put on mourning to see his body,” Tess declared. “It wouldn’t be decent otherwise. You’re his wife. Ainsworth thinks she’s his wife, but you’re his real wife.”
“All right,” I said. But when I was dressed, and she gave me a black-edged handkerchief to carry, I placed it on the table. “I won’t find myself in tears, Tess.”
“Just for decency’s sake?” she coaxed.
“No.”
Giving up, Tess escorted me through the second garden to a pair of large doors at the far side: the abbot’s chamber, now my husband’s death chamber.
When we reached the door, she gave me a gentle push. “It wouldn’t be decent for me to go farther,” she hissed. “Crumpsall wouldn’t like it.”
Thankfully, Sophonisba was nowhere to be seen. Burnsby lay in a bed to one side, his hands crossed at his waist, a white nightcap covering his hair. I forced myself to walk over and say farewell.
He did have a purplish tinge around his lips and under his closed eyes, but his expression was tranquil. Hopefully he hadn’t experienced pain or fear. I disliked him, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Rather than a widow’s grief, a wash of relief came over me, one so profound that I felt momentarily dizzy.
Lance, Godric, and Crumpsall were standing on the far side of the chamber; they seemed to be discussing Sophonisba’s sham wedding. As I turned from the bed, Lance came toward me and took my hands. “I know this is a shock, Evie, no matter your differences with Lord Burnsby.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, and, being a virtuoso at lying, I almost sounded sincere.
Godric bowed before me. “My condolences.”
(In case you’re wondering, he didn’t sound sincere at all.)
Crumpsall advanced with the stunned expression of a man who had believed until two minutes ago that I had been deceived into a bigamous marriage. He bowed. “Lady Burnsby, I offer the household’s condolences.”
“Did Miss Ainsworth say whether he suffered?” I asked, still trying to summon up appropriate feelings.
“She was distressed and not entirely coherent,” Crumpsall replied.
(Did I feel empathy for Sophonisba’s distress? No, I did not.)
“We shall place my father in the mausoleum next to my grandparents,” Lance said.
“Here in the abbey, we don’t hold a vigil,” Crumpsall said, “but we do read a prayer for the dead over the body. Sir Godric has offered to do that service for his lordship, if you wish, Lady Burnsby.”
“Yes, thank you. I would like to inform Ophelia myself, but not until she wakes. Perhaps she would like to say goodbye to her father.”
The butler nodded. “If it is acceptable to you, my lady, the late Lord Burnsby’s valet will now prepare his lordship for burial and dress him in a winding sheet.”
“You have a coffin?” I asked. And, at Crumpsall’s nod, “Please drape a length of Burnsby tartan over the coffin. My late husband loved his mother’s design.” I turned to go, but my eyes caught on a white sheet hanging on the wall.
“We cover mirrors in the Highlands, to prevent the ghost from being misled as it tries to leave the house,” the butler explained.
(Ghost? Ghost! Seeing my husband’s ghost would be a touch overwrought, even for the novels I love.)
Godric walked me to the breakfast room. Halfway around the colonnade, he looked down at me. “We won’t talk about it now, Evie, but I shall be asking you to marry me in a day or two.”
I couldn’t help smiling, but I didn’t answer. Could it be this simple? My husband died, just when I fell in love with someone else, just when I needed to be free?
In the late morning, we gathered in the drawing room, with Crumpsall and Miss Wellington joining us as representatives of the household. Grooms carried in the coffin draped in tartan and placed it on chairs in the middle of the room.
Lance, Mima, Ophelia, and myself stared at it dry-eyed, whereas Sophonisba couldn’t stop sobbing. I was somewhat surprised, since according to Godric, Burnsby had indeed confessed to deceiving her about their marriage. Yet grief is complicated, and they were together for years.
“Who is in that coffin?” Mima inquired, though we had told her many times.
“Lord Burnsby,” I responded.
“The old one or the new one?”
“The last one,” Lance said with finality. “I shall use my French title, Count Marmont, and so shall my heir.”
“The last one,” Mima said, and laughed with what seemed to be genuine amusement.
Ophelia held my hand tightly as Godric read aloud a simple prayer expressing the hope that Burnsby would wake in heaven. I couldn’t focus on the “sting of death,” even as accustomed as I was to wishing that I felt the right emotions. This time, I didn’t. I felt no sting, and I didn’t care.
Following a moment of silence, Lance opened the drawing room door. The grooms reentered the room, picked up the coffin, and carried it away. Sophonisba followed, weeping into a black handkerchief.
Miss Wellington said to Colette, “With your permission, Lady Burnsby, we will now turn the chairs that supported the coffin upside down.”
Colette looked questioningly at me, but I’d never heard of the custom.
“So that his ghost can’t sit on them,” Miss Wellington added. “If we break the custom, I’m afraid that the maids will refuse to clean this room in the future.”
“You may do as you wish,” Colette said. “Perhaps we should retire to the library for luncheon. I can’t say that I feel like braving the dining room table.”
The day crawled by in hushed conversations. Lance and Godric went through Burnsby’s desk, finding a will locked in a drawer.
“I told you that the will is behind a portrait,” Mima said crossly.
We all looked at one another. The abbey walls were almost all swathed in woolen tapestries and therefore bare of portraits.
“Alice’s portrait is hanging in the dining room,” Ophelia said. She ran off but returned to report that the back was free of paper.
Lance shrugged. “Godric will act as my solicitor and read Burnsby’s will tomorrow.”
Throughout the afternoon Ophelia repeatedly dissolved into tears, insisting each time that she didn’t miss her father. “He wouldn’t cry if I had died,” she pointed out, with some justification. “I’m better off without him.”
But I could tell her heart didn’t believe it.
As she snuggled against me, her thin body shaking with sobs, I found myself thinking about my father.
Next time I saw Sir William, I would embarrass him by saying that I loved him.
Gentlewomen rarely express strong emotion, but I’ve learned that telling the truth means more than merely avoiding lies.
In the early evening, Colette returned to the library after speaking to Lance and the household staff. “We shall leave the day after tomorrow,” she said with evident relief. “The snow appears likely to hold off.”
“What about Mima?” I asked.
“Lance plans to ask her whether she would prefer to accompany you and Ophelia to London or stay here in the Highlands. While I’d love to wash my hands of the abbey, that poor soul may wish to live out her life here.”
“She will keep searching,” Ophelia said, her voice scratchy. “If we took Mima to London, she might wander off and try to find her baby in the streets.”
That was a daunting idea.
Back in my chamber, I found Tess wrapping my gowns in white cotton and placing them in a trunk.
“Shall I open the curtains?” I asked. “It’s very dim.”
“No,” Tess replied. “We’re not opening any curtains facing that cemetery. Just think if we were to catch sight of Burnsby walking through the wall of one of those tombs! Stomping across the courtyard with his cane, so transparent that you could see bricks right through his middle!”
I couldn’t help laughing.
Tess threw me a mischievous look. “I told the second housemaid that she’d likely see him in that awful kilt, carrying his exploded heart in that furry bag of his.”
“Tess!”
“She nearly fainted,” Tess said. “Just think, Evie. His body is out in that cemetery, helter-skelter, without a priest laying down a blessing to stay his ghost. People in the kitchen are saying that the only safe place is the library, because of his wives haunting the room and warding him off.”
“If Burnsby finds his way inside the abbey, Hecuba might have a few final words she’d like to say to him,” I agreed.
But would I? No.
I’d said everything I wanted to say to this novelist’s villain, dead or alive.