He looked terrible. His face was drawn with fine lines, all pointing downward. His neckcloth drooped, and the gold buttons on his coat, waistcoat, and sleeves were dull. His breeches were creased from sitting, and with his hair drawnback in a simple queue, tied with a dark ribbon, he looked more vulnerable than Lucasta had ever seen him.
His eyes found hers as though there were no one else in the room. She was still furious with him, yet she wanted to draw him into her arms.
“Do you wish us gone, so your family may be alone together?” she asked quietly.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Alone, together, is the worst thing for us at this moment,” he said in a tired, gravelly voice. “I am glad you are here—that you are all here—for Bertie.”
He glanced at his cousin, whose expression turned miserable. “Should I—must I?” Bertie fretted, holding her dish of tea close, as if he meant to take it.
“No.” Jem shook his head. “It cannot be long now. He is afraid and suffering, and— It is best you stay here.”
As if lost for direction, he turned and left the room. Lucasta’s ire at him fell away. She had never seen Smart Jeremy so rumpled and at a loss.
“He forgot his tea,” Bertie whispered.
Lucasta rose. How could he have this power over her? He’d scorned her, taunted her, set out to humiliate her, and kissed her. Now he needed her, and she went.
“I shall take him a cup, and one for your mother, too, if you prepare it as she likes.”
Bertie gave her directions to the master’s rooms, and Lucasta balanced the tea tray carefully as she ascended the stairs and knocked. “What now?” Lady Payne called in an irritated voice as Jem opened the door.
The look of relief in his eyes assured her she had done right. Lucasta entered and set the tray on a small table, moving aside a clutter of parchment and broken quills. The marquess was working on his last will and testament, or rather, his secretary was.
The room smelled of illness, that thin, sour undertone that Lucasta knew from other rooms where doctors had bled and dosed a body past its endurance of pain. The Marquess of Arendale, a powerful peer of the realm, was a thin stick under a heavy quilt, his face starkly white, his breathing labored.
Others stood in the shadows, watching, waiting. Every eye was dry.
A man was leaving this life, and it was a business transaction, to be witnessed and formally documented. No one mourned.
“The entail,” the marquess rasped, his weak eyes searching out Jem. “Promise me. You’ll renew the entail. An heir of your body. It won’t go…” He struggled for breath. “No bastards.”
“You must leave the directive for my father.” Jem’s tone was as clipped as if he were shearing fabric. He might have been carved from wood. “All your holdings will fall to him.”
“Insolent whelp.” The marquess flailed his hands, clenched into weak fists. “Fancy boy…a draper’s daughter…leave me this at least.” His breath hissed. “Promise. Don’t let him destroy my legacy.”
“We will heed your wishes, sir.” Lady Payne glared at Jem. “I will see to it.”
“You.” The marquess turned his eye on her, beady beneath cragged white brows. “You’re not to take what you can get. Vulture.” The eye closed, the fingers curved around the bed quilt growing still. “Make…sure,” he breathed.
Lucasta’s stomach turned over. His last moments, and the man could not rein in his bile. It was a miracle that Jem had not been poisoned by this man, or his father. Somehow, she would guess due to the influence of his mother, he’d become a man of warmth and humor. And the tenderness he showed his siblings and cousin could not be denied.
She’d watched him arrange bolts of cloth across his shop window, filling a space with beauty. She’d seen him comestomping into the cottage in Little Chelsea with his hands reeking of fish and his half-siblings frisking about him like puppies. Jem would never become this bitter and broken, not even on his deathbed. He was a better man in every respect.
“What do you want?” Lady Payne asked sharply, seeing Lucasta stood near the table, fixing Jem’s tea.
Lucasta stirred in sugar with trembling hands. “I came to ask if I may offer anything.” She glanced at the impassive faces of the others in the room, the secretary scribbling at a desk, two men dressed as solicitors, and the last a doctor, lifting leeches from the Marquess’s arm.
Lady Payne’s face held stony. “What could you possibly offer?”
Jem stepped forward and slipped a hand around her arm. His grip was warm, firm, and yet she felt he drew strength from her. She gave it gladly.
Lucasta pressed her hands together, meeting Jem’s eyes. “I—My father often liked for me to sing to him, when…” When he was at his most frail, and dying. “It…soothed him.” She’d been a fool to come. She turned, ready to flee back to the parlor, but Jem’s hand stayed her.
“I do not think there is much else we can do,” he said, glancing at the still figure on the bed.
The thick hangings, woven with rampant dragons and swirling gold foliage, quite drowned the frail figure in the white linen bedgown and cap. The draperies at the window were drawn against the light, and the scent of a burnt pastille added an acrid odor to the room.
Lucasta swallowed hard, recalling too well those last days with her father. How precious every moment had been, and how terrifying the thought of losing him. She fought not to cry, for weeping would ruin her voice.
