Felicity put two frosted tea cakes, one pink and one blue, on his already full plate. “You needn’t worry about the succession, Andrew. Your nephews can inherit if all else fails. Would you like to meet them?”
Nephews. Never did a word bring a greater sense of relief. God bless all nephews, the more the better. “I would like very much to meet them, and I’m warning you both now, I will spoil them rotten every chance I get.”
And guard their lives with his own.
***
The clock ticked in the otherwise silent house.
And ticked.
And ticked.
And ticked.
Sitting in her front parlor, a cup of tea growing cold in her hands, Astrid Worthington Allen, newly widowed Viscountess Amery, considered getting up, crossing the room, and pitching the clock through the window.
She contemplated this maneuver with the small, detached part of her mind still capable of ratiocination. The clock was safe, of course. Smashing it would take action, and action took willpower, and Astrid had used up the available quotient of that precious commodity dressing and getting down to this sitting room. Most of her, however, was still upstairs in bed, unwilling to face another day.
In the privacy of one’s thoughts, one could be brutally honest: she was all but unable to face another day.
That bluff, genial Amery had died in his thirtieth year was unfair. Not fair to Amery, and most assuredly not fair to Astrid. She had loved her husband, truly she had. He had been—oh, how the pluperfect tense oppressed!—he’d been a pleasant, harmless young man. Not strikingly handsome, not particularly quick, not flashy in any sense. But she’d chosen him for that very solid, undramatic, pleasant quality… and now this.
Every corner of the house held memories of Herbert, every space had a deserted quality, where he should still be sitting, standing, laughing, lounging with a drink, or tracking mud. Herbert had tracked a deal of mud, never caring for the carpets when he’d come in from a hard ride or a morning’s shooting.
Astrid had hoped they could become friends, in time. But they weren’t to have time. No more time at all.
Out in the hallway, voices sounded. Astrid recognized not the words but the smooth, quiet cadence of Douglas Allen’s greeting and instructions to the footman. As the present Viscount Amery, Douglas could do that—order Astrid’s staff about, visit any time he chose, and generally intrude on her grief with the best of stated intentions.
Between one tick of the infernal clock and the next, energy suffused Astrid in mind and body.
Douglas could interrogate the staff all he wanted, but Astrid could not bear the prospect of him oozing cool sympathy while his chilly blue eyes gave away no grief of his own.
Not today.
Before Douglas could finish his interrogation—for Astrid had no doubt he was again questioning the staff about her daily habits—she slipped out the parlor’s side door and kept walking, toward the back of the domicile in which she’d been entombed.
She grabbed a black cloak and a heavily veiled black bonnet from the hooks in the back hallway, finding them appropriate, not to her grief, but to her anger.
Amery should not have died as he did.
He should not have left Astrid alone to bring a child into the world, not after last year’s miscarriage.
And he most assuredly should not have left Douglas with the authority and assets of the viscountcy.
Astrid fairly charged out into the mews and called for her coach while she tried to think of where she might go to be alone with her anger and with the endless, painful lump in her throat that would not turn into tears.
***
When she let herself into the kitchen of her girlhood home, Astrid saw that the Crabbles were taking very good care of the place, indeed. Not one corner sported a cobweb, not one surface a speck of dust, not one carpet was in need of a thorough beating. The whole house, in fact, lacked the hollow, empty feeling Astrid had expected as she made her way up to the attics.
The state of the house, the dearness of it, cheered her considerably.
Astrid found the appropriate trunk immediately. The latch was sticky, and when she opened the lid, camphor and lavender assailed her nose. Taking off her bonnet and gloves, she knelt before the trunk.
A lace-attired doll she remembered from her earliest childhood was the first thing she encountered, followed by very small dresses. Toward the bottom of the trunk, she found even smaller clothes, as well as a soft wool receiving blanket with mock orange boughs beautifully embroidered on the borders. The sight of it, something her own mother had made while carrying her, brought tears to Astrid’s eyes.
Mock orange symbolized memory, and of her late mother, she had none.
Finally tears, for a mother she’d never met, who had loved her before she’d even been born. The thought caused an upwelling of sorrow, a flood of misery that had Astrid crying noisily into the blanket. She didn’t know how long she remained kneeling on the floor, crying like a motherless child, but eventually she became aware she wasn’t alone.