The Lyon and the Lyoness (The Lyon’s Den)

CHAPTER ONE

“Mother, please don’t leave me,” Miss Phoebe Windham cried, holding her mother’s frail, cold hand. Sitting on a hard chair beside her mother’s bed, her head resting on the edge, tears leaked from her eyes and she knew her world was ending.

Her father was packing to flee the country to avoid his creditors.

Her mother suffered from a lung ailment and had no time at all to live, if her blue pallor and ice-cold body were any indication.

Not to mention the rattle coming from her lungs with every breath.

Which were getting farther and farther apart.

When the outside door to the home they rented slammed shut with a loud bang, Phoebe’s entire body collapsed in on itself.

He really left her? Left his wife on her deathbed?

How could he do that to them? Her father had never been a particularly loving man, but she didn’t think he was selfish and cruel enough to leave her to face her mother’s death alone.

Had he not loved his wife enough to stay until she passed?

It was a moment which came not long after the door slammed shut.

Phoebe’s once-beautiful mother cried out and gasped her last breath, leaving Phoebe alone in the rickety house.

Their landlord had already begun eviction proceedings, so it was only a matter of days before she would be homeless.

However, her mother had made her promise to reach out to her father’s eldest brother, the Earl of Greenwich.

A letter she dreaded writing but needed to.

With tears streaming down her cheeks, she pulled the coverlet over her mother’s face, then went to her small room and sat at her dressing table, which wobbled on the uneven floors, and penned a letter to her uncle on cheap foolscap.

Dear Lord Greenwich,

I’m writing to you to request your help. My father, your brother, William, has left England, and my mother has just died. I don’t know what to do or where to go. Could you please advise?

Your niece,

Miss Phoebe Windham

Fortunately, her neighbor, Mr. Brown, was a kindly old man, if a little eccentric. He employed several servants. She donned a cloak and took the sealed missive with her. She left the house and knocked on Mr. Brown’s door across the street.

The butler answered. “Miss Windham,” he said with a frown, “how may I help you?”

She handed him the note. “My mother passed, and I need this delivered to my uncle immediately. Could you please send a footman to deliver it on my behalf?

He looked at it. “Please accept my condolences. I will have someone deliver this right away.”

“Thank you.”

She trudged across the street when there was a lull in the carriages, making it safely. Her legs were as heavy as her heart. She tried not to remember the better times when she was young, when her mother was healthy and her father hadn’t gambled his fortune away. She refused to wallow in self-pity.

When she entered the house, it was eerily quiet and still. It was as if everything inside had died along with her mother. The clock in the entryway no longer ticked. She didn’t even hear the mice scurrying inside the walls. She was truly and completely alone.

After she packed her meager belongings into two portmanteaus, not knowing when she would be leaving, she went and sat at her mother’s bedside, trying to ignore the smell of death.

Two hours, maybe three, went by when the loud banging on the door startled her, and she hurried down the stairs and opened it to find two men in somber black clothing standing on the stoop.

“Yes?” she questioned.

“We are undertakers, and we’ve come at the request of Lord Greenwich. We’re here to prepare your mother for visitors to pay their respects and then the burial at St Martin-in-the-Fields, two days hence. May we come in?”

“Yes. Please.”

Oh dear, it’s happening so fast. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her mother.

She opened the door wide and stepped aside, trying not to break down and sob in front of these strangers.

“Come in. I’ll show you to the room.” When they entered the room, Phoebe went to the old, scarred wardrobe and took out her mother’s best dress, chemise and placed them on the bench at the end of her mother’s bed.

Her eyes drifted to her mother, covered from head to toe beneath her counterpane.

Heartbreak settled deeper inside her bones, making her wonder if she’d ever feel herself again or if she would always have a heaviness inside her chest for her loss.

“Where would you like to have the showing of the deceased?” one of the men asked.

“The parlor downstairs.” Phoebe didn’t truly expect anyone to come.

She left the men to do their job as she hid in the tiny kitchen beside the parlor and tried not to listen to the noises.

She wanted to cover her ears and scream so she didn’t have to hear what they were doing.

The loud banging as they brought in the coffin.

Their footsteps on the creaky stairs as they brought her mother’s body down.

After what seemed like hours, one of the men approached her in the kitchen. “We have finished. We will return first thing in the morning on Thursday.”

“Thank you,” Phoebe said so softly she wasn’t sure he heard her. Except he nodded his head and left. The sound of the door closing tightly made her realize how alone she was in the world, and she broke down into sobs.

Her kind neighbor, Mr. Brown, came by that evening to pay his respects and brought her a basket of food that his cook had prepared for her.

“Thank you,” she told him. “Your kindness over the years was greatly appreciated by my mother and me. I will miss you when I’m gone.”

“Where will you go, child?”

“I’m hoping to go and stay with my uncle, the Earl of Greenwich. I’m waiting to hear from him.”

“I hope it works out for you. You deserve to be with family.” He bowed. “I wish you all the best.”

Some of Mr. Brown’s servants stopped by here and there, but for the most part, Phoebe sat on the threadbare settee and stared at her mother’s body for hours on end. She forced herself to nibble on the food Mr. Brown brought, but nothing tasted good.

The undertakers came by at nine in the morning on the second day and took away her mother in the now closed coffin.

Panic had Phoebe following them outside, begging to be taken along.

It was then she noticed a fine carriage pull up and a well-dressed gentleman exit.

He must be her uncle as he resembled her father.

“I’ve come to take you to St Martin-in-the-Fields, so you can see your mother’s final resting place. Unfortunately, there won’t be a service in the church.”

Phoebe hadn’t anticipated a service. In fact, she had expected her mother to be buried in the paupers’ field. So anything her uncle did was better than what she had thought. “Thank you.”

“Then I’m bringing you to Greenwich House. I can’t have my niece be homeless. What will people think of me?”

He waved to a footman. “Where are your things?”

Thank goodness she had already packed all her worldly possessions into two bags. One full of clothes, and the other books and other worthless mementos her father couldn’t pawn . . . because, well . . . they were worthless.

“I left two bags at the top of the stairs.”

“Come,” her uncle said, indicating the most beautiful carriage she’d ever seen, bearing the Earl of Greenwich’s crest. The driver and two footmen were dressed in the splendid livery. She tried not to feel jealous, but it was useless.

“Thank you,” she said as she left the rented house she had lived in for the past thirteen years. With the footman’s help, she entered the carriage and sank into the comfortable, cushioned bench.

Her uncle, who was an older, healthier version of her father, sat on the bench opposite her. As she studied him, she wondered if he gambled.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” her uncle said thoughtfully. “She deserved someone better than my wastrel brother, but there’s no accounting for love.”

“Thank you.” The ride to the St Martin-in-the-Fields cemetery beside the church was silent. When they arrived, Phoebe looked out the carriage window and saw that the undertakers were already there and lowering the coffin into the ground.

“I will wait here for you while you say goodbye,” her uncle said.

A footman opened the door and helped Phoebe down.

With her heart pounding and tears streaming down her face, she walked on unsteady legs over grass and around headstones to where her mother’s coffin lay six feet down.

Glancing around, she saw a large bouquet of flowers on a nearby grave.

She hurried over and plucked a yellow rose from the grouping and approached her mother’s grave, tossing it on top of the coffin.

“Goodbye, Mother,” she whispered. It was all she could manage with her throat clogged with tears.

She took a deep breath and continued. “I love you and will miss you every day. Don’t worry about me.

I’m going to be living at Greenwich House.

” She bent down, picked up a handful of dirt, and sprinkled it over the coffin.

Before she did something crazy, like jumping into the hole and lifting the lid of the coffin to look upon her mother’s face one last time, she turned, walked away, and with the footman’s help entered her uncle’s carriage.

“Now that that unpleasantness is over, I hope you find Greenwich House to your liking. My wife will see that you have everything you need.”