“Did I do something wrong?” she asked tearfully. “Is that why ...?”
“No, Charlotte, no. I’m sure that little boy lived longer than he would have had you not cared for him so.”
“For all the good it did him.”
“Of course it did. How much better to leave this world loved and cared for.” He opened the door to her new bedchamber. She had gotten her private room at last. “Now, off to bed. You’ll have your own little one soon, and you need your rest.”
Charlotte was unaware she had sat in the garden so long and that it was evening already. “Very well. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She went inside and sat down on her bed. She was vaguely aware of him closing her door and the sound of his footsteps fading away, but Charlotte’s tear-streaked eyes were filled with another scene, another death. She wrapped her shawled arms tightly around herself and remembered.
“She’s gone,” young Mr. Taylor had said, looking at her over her mother’s still form.
Charlotte gasped. She felt her insides collapse, like a cocoon flattened by a careless boot.
Mr. Taylor stepped forward, as if he might take her in his arms, but at that moment Charles Harris swept into the room, his stride urgent, his handsome face nearly fierce in its grimness.
“Oh, Mr. Harris!” Charlotte cried and turned on her heel, stepping into his arms. He pulled her close against him.
“Dear, Charlotte. Dear, dear, Charlotte ...” He murmured against her hair. “I am so sorry.”
She sobbed against him and felt him stroke her back as he whispered words she knew were meant to comfort her, but no words could diminish the flaming, burning pain inside of her. She was vaguely aware of Mr. Taylor letting himself from the room but was too devastated to care.
Daniel Taylor did not venture to the club as often as he once had. He went not to drink and play cards, as did the other men, but to further his reputation and, he hoped, his private practice. But tonight, he had no thoughts of business in his weary mind, only a few minutes relaxation before taking himself home.
A group of regulars, gathered tightly around a table, were jesting with two well-dressed newcomers. Daniel looked over and recognized both men immediately, although he knew them from another time and another place.
“So the great Charles Harris is finally married,” silver-haired Mr. Milton said, raising his tumbler in salute to the older and darker of the two newcomers.
“Well, yes, for more than half a year now.”
“Many are the lasses still crying over it, I can tell you,” a second gentleman with a wax-curled moustache agreed cheerfully.
“Miss Lamb is among them, I assure you,” a younger voice said.
The young man—perhaps now twenty years old—was another person Daniel had last seen in Kent. William Bentley was sitting beside Mr. Harris—his uncle, if Daniel remembered correctly.
Harris stared at his nephew, clearly astonished. “Miss Lamb?”
“I believe she was brought especially low by your marriage.”
“No. I am sure you are mistaken.”
“Come, Uncle. You cannot tell me you did not know it.”
“Well, then,” the mustachioed man interjected wistfully. “This Miss Lamb was not alone in her hopes of catching the most eligible bachelor in Kent. My own Nellie spoke very highly of you.”
William ignored the man, keeping his half-lidded gaze on his uncle. “Miss Lamb has had her sights set on you for years,” he insisted.
“I do not think so. I have merely been a friend to the family.”
William snorted. “Miss Beatrice was hoping for more than friendship, I can tell you.”
“Beatrice?”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, young man,” Mr. Milton interrupted. “Your uncle here has always been like an older brother to the Lamb girls and feels most protective of them. Do not risk his ire by speaking ill of either of them. Especially now he’s married a cousin of theirs.”
