She really should have dismissed Drummond on the spot. Instead, she’d allowed him to comfort her. She wasn’t acting anything like a duchess, was she? First going to the Foundling Hospital and then being embraced by a servant.
Perhaps she’d simply needed to be held. For those few minutes when he’d put his arms around her she’d allowed herself to weaken. In that short space of time she didn’t have to be the Duchess of Marsley. She didn’t have to be possessed of poise and reserve. She didn’t have to be strong.
Drummond hadn’t told her that she should get over her loss. He didn’t say that she needed to put her past behind her. Not once had he uttered those despicable words: Sometimes things happen. We need to get beyond them.
What was the recipe for getting beyond this? What, exactly, did she do? Did she burn a certain herb? Did she utter an incantation? Did she memorize a certain verse or a whole book from the Bible? Did she prostrate herself on the chapel floor? Did she summon a wise woman or a physician? Did she consult the most learned men in London?
She would’ve done all of those things eagerly, but nothing would have altered the reality of her life. Nothing would have ended the cavernous emptiness she felt.
Instead of entering her suite she hesitated at the door, unwilling to go inside and face Ella. The fact that she was hiding from her maid was yet another embarrassment. When would she cease being a person subject to the whims of others?
She walked to the end of the corridor where George’s rooms were located. Slowly, giving herself time to reconsider, she opened his sitting room door and slid inside.
The smell of beeswax permeated the room, an indication that the maid had been diligent. Although he’d been gone two years, his suite was dusted every day. Every morning the curtains were opened as if someone might wish to witness the view of the approach to Marsley House. Once a week the windows were polished, as were the mirrors. The cushions on the yellow-and-brown-striped sofa and chairs were fluffed. The pale yellow carpet with its brown frame was brushed once a month and twice a year taken outside to be beaten.
Yet no one would ever return to take up residence in this suite again.
She went to the small desk between the two floor-to-ceiling windows and extracted the key from the center drawer. It never used to be here, but she kept it in this place for safekeeping. Her life was not her own and any semblance of privacy was laughable with Ella going through her pockets, reticule, and anything else she wished on the premise that she was caring for Suzanne’s belongings.
The one thing Ella hadn’t yet done was prowl through the duke’s suite.
Suzanne pocketed the key, turned, and surveyed the room. She would have to commend Mrs. Thigpen for assigning a conscientious maid to the suite. Whoever had been in charge had done an admirable job. Even George couldn’t have faulted the girl. Even though he would have tried, unless she was pretty enough to seduce.
She opened the door to the duke’s suite slowly, looking down the hallway to ensure that Ella wasn’t coming or going. When she saw no one in the corridor, she slipped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her.
Although the servants’ stairs would have been closer to the room she sought, she took the main staircase to the third floor. The chances of encountering one of the maids were greater in the afternoon. They worked from seven until eleven and then again from one until dark, going through Marsley House from the first floor to the third, with the public rooms rotated on Mrs. Thigpen’s schedule.
No one, however, ever entered the room that was her destination. She’d given orders that it was to be considered sacrosanct. No one was to dust or rearrange anything. Everything was to be left exactly as it had been that day. That terrible day. The day that essentially ended her life.
She didn’t allow herself to come here often, because the temptation would be to remain in here, cloistered, with memories of happiness like bubbles surrounding her. She might have turned insane in this room from longing or grief.
She stood outside the door with her hand gripping the key as she willed her heart to slow its frantic beating and her lungs to fill with air. After the events of this morning, she needed to remind herself of things gone and over, but never forgotten.
Sadness felt sentient, reaching out with a clawlike grip and holding on to her soul.
Slowly she inserted the key in the lock and turned it, hearing the click as loud as a gunshot. Here, in this quiet corridor, every sound was magnified.
She turned the latch and stepped inside, then closed the door swiftly behind her. As it was most times, the room was shadowed and still. Because she knew the space so well, she didn’t need light to see her way to the windows. She opened one set of curtains and then another, turning and surveying the room in the bright sunlight.
She could feel the warmth of the sun on her shoulders. How strange that she felt so cold inside, as if she could never truly be warm again.
The wind sighed against the windows, promising the chill of winter soon to come. Winter was the dead season when everything, perhaps even life itself, went dormant.
There, in the corner, was the crib he was so proud to have outgrown. Next to it was the small bed with its pillow and bright blue coverlet. At three years old he had been his own person with his father’s arrogance and her humor.
The silence in the nursery still shocked her. It grated on her, reminding her at the same time it enshrouded her. There were no soft giggles. No remonstrances from the nurse. No excited, “Up, up,” demands from Georgie. Nothing but an eternal quiet that must mimic the grave.
Here, in this room, she remembered happiness and joy. Here, as in no other space on the earth, she remembered a small voice asking innumerable questions and demanding that the world slow and stop for him.
She walked toward the crib, reached out, and put her hand on the ornate carving of the spindles. The crib was an heirloom, like most of the furniture at Marsley House. George had used it, but there would never be another child to use the crib. Memories would have to be enough. Georgie bouncing up and down, impatient to be about the investigation of his day. Her raising him up in her arms as he grinned at her.
He had been just like Henry in his optimism and joy.
Henry had few chances in life, while Georgie had had the world spread out before him. Whatever he’d wanted to do, however he’d wanted to accomplish it, both his mother and father would have moved mountains to ensure he could have done it.
In their love for their child she and George were united. It was in everything else they were separate.
She sat on the end of Georgie’s bed, staring at the far wall where all his toys were arranged. His toy soldiers would never again fight imaginary battles. His stuffed rabbit would never be clutched to his chest as he fought sleep. A wooden horse on wheels sat next to a wagon filled with blocks, all waiting patiently for their owner to return and play with them.
For the first time in two years, her tears were manageable. She wasn’t assaulted by the strength of her grief. Because she had already wept in her majordomo’s arms? Or had she begun to realize, finally, inexorably, that she might wish it and will it and pray for it but she was never going to see her darling child again. He would forever be three years old and she would forever be his grieving mother.
Henry didn’t have a mother. She pushed that thought away but it surfaced again. None of those babies at the Foundling Hospital had a mother to care for them. They’d been made artificial orphans because of shame. Those poor children would always be known as foundlings. They’d go through life with that stigma, being branded as a child even their own mother hadn’t wanted.
Life was sometimes cruel; she knew that only too well. Was that why she’d tried to scale the railing and fall from the roof? She couldn’t honestly remember wanting to end her life. She couldn’t imagine doing that despite everything.
Had the wine dulled her wits? Or had it merely allowed her true wishes to come out?
She clasped her arms around her waist, feeling cold. She hadn’t known the pastor who’d officiated at her husband and son’s service. He’d been an acquaintance of George’s and had pontificated at length on her husband’s glorious military history. He’d offered a dozen platitudes in the guise of comfort, none of which had penetrated her gray haze. Something about God never making mistakes and reuniting under faith and other sayings that made absolutely no sense.
Nothing made sense in her life right now. Suddenly she was feeling a myriad of emotions—anger, curiosity, rebellion—added to the grief she almost always felt. Yet this sadness was different and it took her a moment to isolate why. She felt as if she were mourning not only her son, but the fate of Henry and those other babies.
Mrs. Armbruster had a great deal to answer for.