An uneasy feeling washed over Louisa as she stared at her very grown-up-looking sisters in their long white nightrails, their long curls caressing their shoulders. Lillian held her hands behind her back and swung back and forth, fidgeting as was her habit when she was upset about something. Gwen played with the ends of the ribbon that held her gown together, and she sniffed and twitched her nose nervously.
“All right,” Louisa said, feeling the need to rise, too, but she forced herself to remain seated and calm. Something had disturbed them, but what? Was it about Saint, the visit to the duke’s house, or something else? “What do you want to talk about?”
“Is it true you are going to marry the duke and leave us with Mrs. Colthrust?” The words tumbled so quickly from Lillian’s mouth that Louisa wasn’t sure she’d heard her correctly.
“What?” Louisa jumped up.
“You weren’t supposed to just blurt it out like that,” Gwen said, chastising Lillian.
“Well, I want to know if she’s leaving us,” Lillian demanded.
“I do, too,” Gwen argued with her. “But next time, you’d better stick to our plan or I’ll be mad with you.”
“Stop this nonsense,” Louisa said, looking at her bickering sisters. “The answer is no. No, of course that’s not true. Where did you get such an idea as this?”
“When you were reading to Bonnie and Sybil and getting them ready for bed, Mrs. Colthrust came into our room to make sure the dog wasn’t in our room.”
“And she told us,” Lillian said, piping up to finish for Gwen.
“How dare that woman!” Louisa said, wanting to stomp up to Mrs. Colthrust’s bedchamber immediately and take her to task for telling the girls that and scaring them. How dare she meddle in something that was none of her business?
“Tell me everything she said,” Louisa prompted.
“She said she didn’t want Saint sleeping in our room, because her room is right next to ours. She was afraid she’d hear him whimpering and howling during the night.”
“He doesn’t howl.” Louisa seethed with anger as her hands curled into fists. “She will not dictate where Saint sleeps or anything else. I will speak to her about this tomorrow morning, so consider that settled. Now, what did she have to say about me leaving you?”
Gwen and Lillian looked at each other before Gwen said, “She said that before Nathan died that night of the accident, he made the Duke of Drakestone promise he’d marry you, and that you needed to go ahead and marry him so it would be one less girl for her and Lord Wayebury to take care of.”
“Oh, I can’t believe she said that to you,” Louisa said, her fury rising. “And it’s not as if she is taking care of me or any of you.”
“So it’s not true,” Gwen said.
“No,” Louisa said softly, and then quickly added, “Well, I mean yes. No, only part of it is true.”
“So you are leaving us!” Lillian cried out in distress as tears sprang to her eyes.
“No, I’m not leaving you.” Louisa wrapped her arms around Lillian and hugged her close. Her thin body shook with sobs. Louisa’s heart broke for her sister. First thing tomorrow morning, she and Mrs. Colthrust were going to have a reckoning. Louisa looked over Lillian’s head to Gwen. Thankfully, she didn’t look so upset as her sister. “Hush now. It’s true what Nathan asked of the duke, but I’m not going to marry him.”
“Why won’t you, if that’s what Nathan wanted you to do?” Lillian asked between sobs.
“Yes, Nathan must have had a good reason to do it,” Gwen added.
Louisa could see that both the girls were hurting, and she wanted to take their pain away. Sometimes the whole truth was difficult to explain, but she had to try. She understood their fear. They had lost their mother shortly after Bonnie was born. Their father died less than three years later, and then their brother just over two years ago. It was only natural for them to be upset at the thought of losing her, too.
“Raise your head and look at me, Lillian. Stop crying so you can understand what I’m going to say.”
Lillian sniffled and raised her head. She raked the back of her hand across her damp cheeks, and Louisa brushed tangled curls away from her face.
“First, I would never leave any of you.” Louisa looked at both girls. “You will each marry one day. Gwen, you might even marry this year and leave me, but I will always be here. So that is settled, right?”
They nodded.
“Now, I don’t know everything, as I wasn’t there the night Nathan died, but I’ll tell you what I know.”
The girls sat on one of the settees, but Louisa remained standing. She started at the beginning when she first received the letter from the Duke of Drakestone telling her that he had been with her brother when he was killed in a carriage accident. She left out the duke’s insensitive words saying that Nathan had asked him to marry her, and if after a year of mourning, she thought it might be something she’d want to consider, she should feel free to get in touch with him.
“The duke wrote few words of comfort in his correspondence,” she replied honestly. “They were terse. He said when it was clear Nathan couldn’t recover from his injuries, he had asked that the duke marry me.”
