Chapter Thirty-Three
Philomena Gellis took her last breath just after sundown.
Arden felt the moment it happened, the silence that filled the room the worst sound he’d ever heard.
He swallowed a fresh wave of tears—she would have hated him to cry over her—and forced himself to release her hand.
Numb, he rose to his feet and rang for a servant, grateful when Mavis reached an arm around his waist, anchoring him to her side.
He wasn’t sure he could have stood on his own.
Hilda arrived seconds later, and Arden had the distinct feeling she’d been waiting outside the door for hours.
“She’s gone. Send for . . .” He didn’t know who to send for. His mind was a blur of grief and exhaustion.
“Mrs. Gellis left explicit instructions for her burial,” Hilda said softly. “I’ve already sent word to the funeral home, and they’ll send someone over first thing tomorrow.”
Though her words were for him, her eyes were still on Arden’s aunt’s body, eerily still now.
“She wants to be buried beside Mr. Gellis in the family crypt,” the housekeeper continued, her voice wavering. “She picked out her coffin and the flower arrangement for her funeral, as well as a guest list.”
Of course. His aunt planned for everything.
“She was very loved, Mr. Ryskamp,” Hilda said.
“She was that.” His voice sounded foreign to his ears, strangled and hoarse.
When Hilda was gone, he still couldn’t move, still couldn’t take his eyes off his aunt’s body. Not until Mavis gently nudged him toward the door.
“Come, Arden. Let her rest now.”
Arden almost protested—his aunt didn’t want to rest, she’d said so too many times to count, but then the truth struck him and nearly brought him to his knees: Now there was nothing left for her to do, nothing to argue, no orders to give or jokes to make. Now, at long last, she could rest.
Numbly, Arden let Mavis lead him out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him.
Arden felt like a walking ghost when he and Mavis made it to his room.
She left him for only a moment when she stepped behind the silk screen in one corner to change out of her ball gown, but her brief absence still left him hollow.
He sat on the edge of his bed, fingers numb as he undid the top buttons of his shirt—the sleeves ripped from his earlier tussle with Thaddeus—but even then, he felt like he was suffocating.
When Mavis stepped out from around the curtain again, copper curls now unbound around her shoulders and dressed in one of his nightshirts that left her long, pale legs bare, the sight of her pierced the haze of grief surrounding him, and the vise around his chest loosened infinitesimally.
He savored his first true breath since his aunt took her last one.
He’d survived losing her before—first as Arabella, then the morning after they’d made love at the hotel.
Both times, he’d thought it might kill him, but now that idea seemed laughable.
Neither time, he’d known what it meant to truly have her in the first place.
Now, though, raw with grief, Arden understood that he was on the precipice of something bigger, and that this time, if he let himself love her—let himself need her—and she left again, it would kill him.
Oh, he might go on breathing and his heart might still beat, but beneath skin and bone he would be a ruin of a man.
Mavis walked toward where he sat on the edge of the bed, coming to stand between his sprawled legs, and her bright-green eyes tracked his, reading him the way only she seemed able to. “I’m so sorry, Arden,” she said softly.
Though his mind cautioned him to hold back, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for her. When she wrapped her arms around him and burrowed into his chest, so warm and soft and undeniably real that he could feel her heart beating steadily against his own, Arden drew in a shaky breath.
“I can’t say goodbye to you again, Mavis.” His voice came out raw and serrated.
Mavis, who had been idly rubbing his back, stopped. “Arden—”
“I meant what I said before, truly—I love you, but I’ll let you go if you tell me it’s what you want. But I just . . . I can’t bear to let myself have you and then lose you again. Not this time. Tomorrow . . .”
He couldn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to. She understood.
Mavis took a long breath, and he felt the rise and fall of her chest beneath his cheek.
“Tomorrow, I’ll be here,” she told him. “And the day after. And the day after that, if you want me.”
Arden’s low laugh sawed out of his chest, mirthless and painful. “I always want you.”
Mavis brushed her fingers over his cheeks, and it was only then he realized he was crying. He felt no shame over it, only relief that his aunt, who so hated tears, was no longer here to witness his.
“Then I will always be here,” Mavis whispered.
Arden believed her. He closed his eyes, dropping his forehead to rest against Mavis’s chest and reveling in the feel of her graceful fingers combing over his scalp.
Gods of Old, he was tired. He maneuvered them further onto the bed without letting go of her, toeing his shoes off as he went.
They made their way beneath the covers, her body nestled against his side, her head pillowed on his chest.
Arden let his fingers trail through her hair for a long while. “I don’t have a sola to my name,” he warned her.
“Good,” Mavis said, and he felt her smile against his skin. “I’d feel awful, taking your money a second time. But thanks to Oriana, I’ll have my freedom. And if I have you too, that will be enough.”
It wouldn’t be enough, Arden wanted to tell her—it would be everything. But he was asleep before the words left his lips.
The week after Arden’s aunt’s death passed in a haze.
There was so much for him to do—a funeral to arrange, a eulogy to pen, dozens of callers to receive each day, eager to pay their respects.
Through it all, Mavis didn’t leave his side, and Arden didn’t know how he would have gotten through those days without her.
It turned out that of all that happened the night of Aunt Phi’s death ball, Arden’s sudden attachment to the woman all of Garlin knew as Delphinia didn’t raise many eyebrows.
With the police arriving, Thaddeus’s drunken confessions, and the truth about Oriana’s Lack beau coming out, no one seemed to begrudge them their newfound romance, and if anyone thought it strange that Arden never called her Delphinia or Miss Lindcourt, they didn’t mention it.
Perhaps they believed Mavis was a middle name, or a nickname that only made sense to the two of them.
Arden didn’t care—all he knew was that he couldn’t stand to call her any other name ever again.
True to her word, Oriana wired twenty thousand solas to Arden’s account, but it hadn’t stayed there long.
Arden insisted they use it to break Mavis’s engagement to Thaddeus, despite Mavis’s protests.
He didn’t want to give Thaddeus a single sola either, but it was worth it not to see the betrothal mark staining her skin.
The last task Arden had to handle before he and Mavis returned to Strall was to meet with his aunt’s solicitor to go over the details of her estate.
He wasn’t certain who his aunt decided to bequeath her fortune to in the end, but though he would never regret giving up his claim to her fortune, he still intended to oversee the details and ensure that her last wishes were honored.
“She called for me to visit her bedside during that blasted ball,” Mr. Guthrie said once Arden took the leather-upholstered seat in front of his desk.
He was a portly Luster gentleman with a bushy handlebar mustache and small square spectacles perched on his nose.
“She insisted she needed to amend her will again, never mind that she’d done it three days prior.
I missed the entire spectacle with Mr. Mayles, though my wife told me all about it after. ”
Arden wasn’t surprised that his aunt amended her will after he told her he chose Mavis and relinquished all claim to it—that was his decision, and he never doubted she would hold him to the consequences of it.
Still, he couldn’t ignore the pang in the pit of his stomach at the thought of his aunt in that final hour of her life, and how he’d disappointed her.
Mr. Guthrie handed him a folded piece of parchment, marked with a red wax seal bearing his aunt’s initials. “There’s quite a lot of paperwork to sign, but she insisted I give this to you first.”
Arden barely heard the man as he broke the seal with the edge of his finger, ignoring the letter opener Mr. Guthrie offered.
His eyes scanned the single sentence scrawled over the parchment, and everything around him faded to a quiet hum.
Arden brushed his thumb over his aunt’s final written words, her penmanship shaky but unmistakably hers: I, Philomena Gellis, of sound mind and body, leave the entirety of my estate and belongings to Mr. Arden Ryskamp and Miss Mavis Hale, on the sole condition that they use it to build a legacy worthy of the Ryskamp name, whatever they decide that entails.