“She was terribly tired, my lord,” the woman said. “She would not drink her tea. She wanted only to lie down, and she dismissed me and fell asleep immediately.”
“Then why...” Lucas began.
“She sighed a bit funnily as I was leaving the room,” the maid said. “It went rattling on and on and then... stopped. And when I tiptoed back to the bed, she was lying there so still. She—”
Yes. She was dead. That was very clear to Lucas, though he did not approach the bed as Grandpapa had done in order to take Grandmama’s hand in both his own. She looked as though she were sleeping, but there was... an absence of something about her. A stillness beyond that of sleep. An emptiness. She had gone.
“Summon the physician from the village,” Lucas said to his grandfather’s valet. Nothing could be done, of course. But something needed to be made official. His head was buzzing, hisheartbeat pounding in his ears and against his temples. “Grandpapa, come...”
But come where?
Aunt Kitty had moved to stand beside him. “Oh, Mama,” she said. “Oh, Mama. Papa...?”
There was a murmur of voices behind them. Lucas could not distinguish individual voices or words.
“Grandpapa, come,” he said more firmly, taking a step forward. Someone needed to take charge. They must all go somewhere to wait. The full reality of this was going to hit them soon.
His Grace did not move away from the bed or turn his head.
“Go away, all of you,” he said. “Leave us.”
“Papa—” Aunt Kitty began.
“Go away,” he said. “And do not return, any of you, until I summon you.”
“Grandpapa—” That was Gerald from the doorway.
Someone—it might have been Charlotte or Beatrice—was weeping outside and trying to stifle the sounds.
“Leave us,” the duke said again, and Lucas took his aunt’s arm and drew her toward the door.
“My lord?” Her Grace’s maid was looking toward Lucas for direction. So was the duke’s valet, who had presumably sent someone else running to the village for the physician.
“Leave,” Lucas said. “His Grace needs to be alone for a while with Her Grace.”
And they all left the room. It was a measure of the strangeness of the situation that the butler, who was outside in the hallway with the housekeeper at his side, watched while Lucas shut the door of the bedchamber himself.
“He needs some privacy in which to say goodbye,” Lucas said,and felt that buzzing in his head again, as though he was about to faint. Someone took his hand, and he turned his head to see his wife beside him, her face pale, as were the faces of almost everyone else gathered there.
“Poor Grandpapa,” Philippa murmured.
“He must be left alone for a while,” Lucas said. He was about to suggest Her Grace’s sitting room as a gathering place, but it was too close. No other room up here was large enough.
“Let us all go down to the drawing room,” Philippa suggested, raising her voice somewhat to address everyone. “We all need to sit down while we await the arrival of the physician. Perhaps we can have a tea tray brought there.” She glanced at the housekeeper.
And so it was arranged. They all moved away, almost as though nothing momentous had happened, leaving behind them His Grace, who was saying goodbye to his duchess in her bedchamber.
Aunt Kitty, Lucas saw, was leaning heavily upon Gerald’s arm. Sylvester was carrying Jenny downstairs while her usual footman was taking her wheeled chair. Philippa was resting one cheek against his shoulder and holding his hand in a tight, warm clasp.
—
Well, May,” the Duke of Wilby said, holding his wife’s hand in both of his. “You have been granted your dearest wish. I have been able to hold on longer than you.”
She did not answer him. But, gazing down into her face, it seemed to him that there was a distant, almost youthful twinkle there.
“You will never know how hard it is to be the survivor,” he told her. “Or how glad I am that it is me, not you. Not for long, though, May. I am as weary as you were at dinner. Willpower has carriedme through a great deal in my life. I do not want to exert any more of it, however. I am tired. And there are Luc and that rascal of a Christopher. I have done my duty.”
She did not argue the point. She would not have done so even if she could. She would have agreed with him. And she would not expect him to live on after her through sheer effort of will. He wanted more than anything else to go with her, to be young again and spry and happy again, to shed the duties and responsibilities—and losses—that had weighed heavily upon him since he was sixteen, though he had borne them all without complaint. Well, without too much complaint.
