But at least such departures rested on the promise of a return.
Others, however . . .
The summer of Lottie’s twenty-second birthday, Anne and Freddie caught a severe chill from a negligent nurse.
Freddie, miraculously, survived.
Anne . . . did not.
Lottie held Margaret as her sister sobbed over her daughter’s lifeless body. Only Lottie’s gentle but firm voice persuaded Margaret to relinquish Anne for burial.
The shock of Anne’s death rippled through the family.
Margaret sank into a deep melancholy of spirits.
Lord Frank was at turns inconsolable and then, just as quickly, spry and falsely bright.
Papa retreated into hunting and tromping over the estate grounds.
Even Grandmère walked the parterre garden with red-rimmed eyes.
For her part, Lottie had scarcely begun facing the day without tears when news arrived from Rome—
Gabriel had become drunk and taken a dare to row a skiff across the Tiber from Castel Sant’Angelo.
He never arrived on the opposite bank.
His body was retrieved days later and miles downstream.
The loss of Cousin Gabriel scraped Lottie raw.
The feeling crested when Papa died not four months later—the twin grief of losing Anne and then Gabriel had been too much for his body to bear.
“Papa literally died of a broken heart.” Margaret dabbed away her endless tears.
The wordbrokenhummed in Lottie’s brain. Was that what they all were now?
Lottie feared grief had ruptured the palette of her world, turning the vibrant colors of life to ashy grays and blacks.
After Papa’s funeral in April, Frank disappeared to London, staying with his father, the autocratic Duke of Ferndown.
Margaret tried to appear resigned to her husband’s absence, but Lottie saw the tenseness of her eyes and heard the snip in her voice when addressing the servants.
What would become of them all now?
An answer to her question arrived a month later when Frank returned, a group of stern-faced solicitors and his father, the Duke of Ferndown, accompanying them.
They gathered as a family in the drawing room to listen as a stern solicitor read Papa’s final will and testament.
Despite the grimness of the situation, Lottie couldn’t help but feel a thread of joy that they were together once more.
After all, they were still family, were they not?
The solicitor droned on. The dense language of the legal documents caught in the gears of her mind, forcing Lottie to dissect it.
Her father was dead.
His heir, Gabriel, was dead.
