Chapter Thirteen #3
“She named the child Charlotte.” In silence, he scanned the remainder of the letter, which spanned at least a few weeks, where Hannah documented the growth and development of the babe.
She also referred to the feeling of heavy darkness creeping into her mind that her midwife said sometimes followed being delivered of a child.
I hope you will return to London soon. At the very least you could regale me with stories of your travels and adventures. I’ll wager the warmth of the sun on your face keeps the darkness at bay when you are lost in your own thoughts. The freedom you must have while you’re sailing…
There were pages more of breezy, conversational things where she told him about the death of her father, the marriage of her friend Lady Catherine and the subsequent birth of that woman’s first child, of her hopes for the future that held an innocent ring to them.
How the devil she’d explained the presence of a baby, he didn’t know, and Hannah didn’t mention that in her letter.
Perhaps her friend had a hand in hiding that.
Switching position, he sat on his arse with his back against the bureau. Carefully, he folded the letter then settled in to read the second.
Dated six months later than the first—in fact, tomorrow it would be nine years since she’d penned the words—the papers were spotted with watermarks, almost as if she’d cried while writing the missive. In fact, some of the ink had smeared in places.
Where he thought there would be more glowing updates about his daughter, what he read, instead, left him with a feeling of sickness in his belly and dread in his heart.
This is a horrible letter to write, but I was obliged to stop because doing so will make the truth of this so real, so stark, so permanent.
Little Charlotte has died, Evan. She has left this mortal coil and is now soaring with the angels in heaven.
At least I hope that she is; it is the only thought giving me comfort.
When I came into the room, I assumed she was merely sleeping, and so sweetly with the veriest of smiles curving her dear little mouth, but when I put a hand on her back, she was so cold, so pale, so lifeless, that I knew…
My world is crumbling around me. You are gone and I can’t reach you, and now our daughter has left me too. I am alone, and no one knows why, and I certainly can’t tell anyone… What am I going to do without her little presence?
As he shuffled through the remaining papers, there was nothing of import in that letter, just Hannah pouring out her grief in written form, detailing the fact Charlotte had been quietly laid to rest, all of it handled by the midwife.
She’d written about the day she walked through the churchyard to visit the simple grave marked with a wooden cross where she laid a few white roses.
And she had written of her vast loneliness following the death, at how empty and quiet the house was, at how she didn’t know how to go on with her life when her family had assumed she’d only been ill with severe melancholia.
How she no longer wished to remain in the world that was so cruel as to take her daughter away…
“Oh, God.” The papers fell from his fingers as he reeled with the knowledge that the daughter he hadn’t known that he had was dead.
Pain raked across his heart, leaving it shredded and aching.
There was no chance to meet his daughter, and what was more, he’d missed her birth and subsequent death.
Hell, he’d missed everything, and he didn’t know about any of it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked in a choked whisper as he gathered the papers.
“How dare you invade my private, personal rooms without permission!” The shock in Hannah’s voice as well as her silent entry into the room sent tension into his muscles. Her eyes were round with anger clouding the clear depths. “Get out. No man has ever been allowed in here.”
“These letters were addressed to me.” It was as if he moved through porridge for all the effort it took to scramble off the floor with the letters clutched in one hand.
“Still, you had no right to come in here.” Her gaze bounced from the letters to his face, and the stark emotions there left him gasping.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Anger crashed with acute grief in his chest that left behind a pain he hadn’t known in the whole of his life. “I deserved to know.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know where you were, then time went by, and everyone assumed you were dead anyway, and I didn’t want to destroy the work you were doing with the Navy in the event you were alive…”
“I would have come home if you had only told me. Hell, I would have never left if you revealed you were increasing!” He didn’t care that his voice rose with each statement; never had he been thrown into a vortex like this one.
“Which is exactly why I kept the secrets!” Hannah propped her hands on her hips as she glared at him.
“There was nothing here for you, but the Navy offered you, quite literally, the world. I didn’t want that ruined because of me, because of what we had done together, because of the resulting scandal. ”
“You had no right to make that decision, Hannah.” And now he needed so much more from her than hurt feelings and an argument.