Hadbeen.
She hoped they left soon. Suddenly she was afraid she would vomit all down the front of one of those uniforms.
“Thank you,” she said into the soft wool of Michael’s scarlet jacket. “For coming yourselves.”
He pulled back, still holding her by the arms and looking down at her as if assessing the risk of his leaving.
So, she smiled. “I am all right, Michael. Truly. Like I said. I only knew him a bit more than a week.”
A week that had opened her world in ways she would never reclaim. A week of his gentle smiles, wry humor, and clever hands. A week of planning and sharing and anticipation.
All gone. Disappeared to leave a world even smaller than the one she’d been trying to escape. A world suddenly painted in pain and loss. And little girls who had to be told.
The men were turning to leave when she did remember something. “Braxton,” she said suddenly. “Where is he? Was he involved?”
Michael turned back to her. “He suffered some burns, a few broken bones.”
She nodded. “Where is he?”
Michael’s eyebrows went up. “At his sister’s in Stepney.”
Georgie swallowed. “Can you have someone check up on him, please, and make sure he has everything he needs?”
She knew Michael thought she was mad. She truly didn’t care. “It’s the least we can do. Please tell him I will visit when I can.”
And with that, she sent the Archangels on their way. She gave her cousins their own hugs and then led them down the stairsand out. And for the longest time, she just stood there in the foyer with the sun streaming in through the window over the door and stared at nothing. It was where Chalmers found her.
“Go get the girls,” she said and turned away.
She should have knownher family wouldn’t stay away. She was curled up on the overstuffed royal blue settee in the yellow parlor, an arm around each little girl as they huddled against her like puppies caught out in a storm, Bark curled up at their feet. It had been hard. It had been harder than anything she had ever done, and it would get harder. They were suffering the first shock now, but when that wore off, the girls would have to once again face an unsafe world. And all Georgie could do was hold them. Because suddenly she understood that.
She had known him for a week. A single week, and he had upended her life. And then gone. He had begun to change the shape of her future, change the focus of her life. Change completely her relationship with her own body, which ached now as if she had been physically attacked. Sharp pain seemed to live in each breath she took, which like a tide, kept rising until it choked her. Until it deafened her and stole her voice. Until it left her too useless to do anything but hold two little girls who hurt even more than she did.
He was gone, and he had taken something with him. Something vital and dear, something she knew she would never find again.
He was gone and she was left alone again to do what she always did. Tidy up, correct, reclaim.
“Will we have to leave again?” a tiny voice suddenly piped up from her lap.
Would they?
“I don’t know, my love,” she said, squeezing a little tighter. “We must see what the new Marquess has to say. But never fear. If we cannot stay here, we can live at the Packham house with the other children. But whatever we decide, we stay together. Because what did Uncle Grey call us?”
Sophie sighed. “Family.”
“That’s right. Wherever we go, families go together.”
Or they could go to Painswick Park. She couldn’t even think that far yet.
She had talked to Mr. Deevers. No one had any idea who the heir was. They had never had to look. So, she and the girls were once again suspended over a chasm without a familiar way forward.
At least they knew where to put up the headstone. But she would think about that later.
“Milady,” Chalmers murmured from the door.
But before he could finish, there was a whoosh and suddenly her mother was standing before her. Georgie wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Her mother was a lovely, serene person, but not much of a hugger. Bark struggled to his feet as her mother gently nudged him out of the way. It said everything about her mother that Bark let her near his girls.
“What do you meandon’t bother my mother?” she asked without preamble, which told Georgie all she needed to know about how upset her mother was. Amelia and Sophie sat up and scrubbed damp faces with the backs of their hands.
