Perhaps it was, after all, she thought, a letter from someone else in the house. From Mrs. Laycock, maybe. The thought set her stomach to churning and her fingers to tearing at the seal in a panic.
Her eyes went straight to the bottom of the page, to the signature. “Adam,” he had signed himself in heavy bold handwriting. She bit down on her lower lip and closed her eyes briefly. And sat down in her chair again.
“My dearest Fleur,” he had written, “I write to tell you of two bereavements in my family. My brother was killed in a fight in London a little more than a month ago. My wife died of accidental drowning the very day the news of his death reached Willoughby. I have buried them both, side by side, in the family burial ground.”
Fleur lowered the letter to her lap. She closed her eyes tightly and set one hand over her mouth. Adam. Oh, poor Adam.
“Tomorrow I am taking Pamela traveling on the Continent,” the letter continued. “She has been inconsolable. She adored Sybil. I shall stay away with her for the winter and perhaps for the full year of our mourning.
“When the year is over, I shall come into Wiltshire. I will say no more now. You will understand that the past month has been a distressing one. And I owe her a year of mourning, Fleur, and my brother, too, of course.
“I wanted you to know these things before I leave. And I will add that I meant every word of what I said to you when I was in Wiltshire.”
Fleur lowered the letter to her lap again, folded it neatly, and noticed almost dispassionately that her hands were trembling.
She was dead. His wife was dead. He had written that she had died by accident, but she had died on the day word of Lord Thomas’ death had come to them. And Lord Thomas was Lady Pamela’s father. She had taken her own life, then. She must have thrown herself into the lake.
Oh, poor Adam. Poor Adam. How he would blame himself!
But she was dead. He was free. After the year of his mourning was over, he was going to come into Wiltshire. In eleven months’ time. At the end of September.
No, she must not think it. She must not expect it. For eleven months seemed an endless eternity. Anything could happen in that time. One of them could die. He could have a change of heart. He could meet someone else on his travels. He could enjoy traveling so much that he would stay away for years. Lady Pamela could be unwilling for him to come to her.
Anything could happen. Eleven months ago she had not even met him. And yet it seemed that she had known him forever. That meant that she had longer than forever to wait, and then he might not come at the end of it.
She would not think of it, she decided, getting to her feet and propping the letter carefully against the vase again. She would not think of it. If he came at the end of the year, then she would hear what he had to say. If he did not come, then she would not be disappointed because she would not expect him.
And yet that night and for many nights to come she dreamed of him, strange, disturbing dreams in which he reached out to her across an expanse of water just wide enough that she could not see him clearly and called to her in words she could not quite hear. And each time she awoke, her arms were empty and the bed beside her cold.
She redoubled her efforts to be a good teacher and gave up many of her spare hours to the instruction of music. And she visited her neighbors—particularly the elderly ones, who depended upon visitors to relieve the tedium of the day—and accepted every invitation she received. Even when Cousin Caroline came home—Amelia was married and living in Lincolnshire—and she knew that they would be at the same entertainment, she went too.
And she clung to her friendship with Miriam as if to a lifeline.
She was right about one thing, she thought whenever she permitted herself to think consciously about the matter. Eleven months was longer than an eternity.
“WILL WE BE GOING home soon, Papa?” Lady Pamela Kent was sitting on the carriage seat opposite her father, stroking one finger up over the nose and over the top of the head of her dog, whose eyes were closing in ecstasy.
“Soon,” he said. “Will you be glad? We have seen many wonders together in the past year, haven’t we? Perhaps you will be dull at home.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said. “Why are we going to see Miss Hamilton, Papa? Is she going to be my governess again?”
“Would you like her to be?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said after thinking for a moment. “But I would be afraid she would go away again.” She looked up at him with suddenly anxious eyes. “You won’t go away, Papa, will you? When we are at home, you won’t go back to London and leave me alone?”
The old anxiety. For weeks after her mother’s death she had woken screaming almost nightly, terrified that she had been abandoned. The Duke of Ridgeway smiled comfortingly at her. Even before they had set off on their travels he had had to spend almost every moment of every day with her. For a long time he had had to bring her into his bed at night so that his voice and his arms would be there for her when she woke up.