Page 151 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
H arriette stared at the door of Ivy Cottage and the black wreath that hung upon it.
There was no mistaking what it meant. Smaller wreaths of black ribbons hung in the tall windows flanking the painted door. Death had visited the Demant household.
She hesitated with her hand raised to knock.
Who had passed? Mr. Demant? The missus? Mrs. Demant had been her mother’s chief protector and champion.
Would Mr. Demant let Harriette’s mother stay in his household without his wife?
Who was attending her mother in her illness?
It was fortunate that Harriette was here.
“Rhette,” Ren said softly. He stood beside her on the stoop, leaning on his cane.
“It must be recent,” she whispered to him.
“Mrs. Demant made no mention of other illness when she sent the express about my mother. I hope it was not one of the children.” How ironic that her mother, who pretended to be ailing to garner attention and solicitude, should malinger, while the healthy and businesslike Mr. Demant, his brisk and terrifyingly capable wife, or one of their spoiled, headstrong children should be suddenly whisked from their mortal coil.
“Rhette,” he said again, “I think you n-need to c-c-consider…”
He trailed off as he did when emotion choked his tongue, but this time she didn’t wait to let him gather his thought. She raised the knocker and let it fall.
Mrs. Demant answered the door. Her face was gaunt and drawn, her expression defeated. Her black crepe dress and veil indicated deepest mourning. Despite the evidence of woe, her face burned with bitterness as she glared at Harriette.
“You’re too late,” she spat. “I suppose it’s to be expected. She never could count on you to show her even the most basic regard, could she?”
Harriette’s arms turned into lead weights. Her lips went numb as the thought she’d been pushing away rose to the front of her mind, insistent. “Then?—”
“Your mother is dead,” Mrs. Demant said.
She used none of the euphemistic phrases one usually did—departed, returned to her Maker, stuck her spoon in the wall.
“Thursday. And she died knowing her own daughter, for whom she had sacrificed her life, could not even be bothered to come hold her hand and receive a final blessing as she passed.”
Harriette sagged. “I—I am sorry.”
She hadn’t left London until Friday. There was no way she could have made it to her mother’s bedside even if she’d left immediately upon receiving the note about her latest illness.
Even if her final moments had been one last sigh of disappointment rather than passing a blessing to her only daughter, as Mrs. Demant romantically imagined, Harriette could never have made it in time.
She’d never been a loving daughter, an obedient daughter, and now she had failed in the most basic filial duty, that of helping her parent pass from this world to the next. Harriette’s shoulders bowed under the weight.
Something warm and firm pressed at her back. Ren. Harriette drew strength from his nearness, groping for the breath to speak around the tightness in her chest.
“Was it—has she—the funeral?”
“One doesn’t stand on the doorstep discussing such things,” Mrs. Demant said in disapproval. “You might as well come in.”
The mirror in the small entryway was draped with cloth so as not to trap the departing spirit, and the large clock had been stopped at her mother’s passing.
Such things were done, Harriette knew, so any clocks in the house didn’t become confused and start counting down time toward another death.
Mrs. Demant led them through the dark paneled hall into the front formal parlor, also dark, where vaguely Oriental designs chased each other up and down the olive-green paper on the walls.
Heavy brocade drapes were drawn against the light, and candles lined the heavy mantelpiece above the fireplace.
A long table stood in the center of the room, flanked by chairs. Upon the table lay the elm coffin, and within it lay Harriette’s mother, nestled like a bird amid a profusion of bright white silks, linen, and delicate lace.
Harriette’s booted feet sank into the thick patterned rug as she stepped close.
Her mother’s dark hair held streaks of silver at the temples, her brow was carved with three deep lines, and her strong nose—which would in time be Harriette’s nose—jutted from sunken cheeks.
Harriette was struck by the hollowing sense that she had both known and not known this person in life.
Her mother looked as bitter at rest as she had waking.
Straight lines radiated from lips often pursed with the bitter draught of her lot.
The web of creases around the eyes too oft tightened against the harshness and lack they looked upon, rather than the ease and luxury she sought.
The body was dressed in a gown of rich black silk, and upon her breast was a brooch Harriette had never seen her wear, a heraldic symbol of wrought gold with tiny inset jewels.
She knew these were the coat of arms of the dukes of Lowenburg, though she had never seen them in her life.
Every surface of the room was crowded with flowers, and the smell smacked Harriette in the face, bringing tears to her eyes.
Mrs. Demant had done all of this, everything Harriette ought to have done: nursed her mother in her last illness, laid out her body in its finest dress, chosen the small items she would take to her grave.
Like any heedless child more caught up in her own concerns, Harriette had never truly considered that her mother’s latest illness might be the end, or that the bitterness of her life might choke her before she could reassume her rightful place.
Her mother, for all her frets and affectations, had been a sturdy given in Harriette’s life, ever in the background with her disapproving frown and heavy sighs.
Her mother had never been her confidant or model, neither a figure of admiration nor a very reliable guide, but she had been there .
And now she was not. Harriette’s mind trembled before that great, gaping rent in everything she knew.
Harriette was motherless. All she had left was her great-aunt Calenberg.
And Franz Karl.
“I know this is not nearly the state of splendor she would lie in were she returned to her home country.” Mrs. Demant joined Harriette at the coffin. “I am in no position to give proper due to the Duchess of Lowenburg. But I am doing my best.”
“Thank you,” Harriette whispered. She struggled to breathe.
The one solace in learning she was of a line of Silesian dukes had been knowing that her marriage would return Harriette’s mother to her rightful station.
This woman had sacrificed everything to bring Harriette to safety, and Harriette would repay that debt by seeing her installed as the Duchess of Lowenburg, with whatever rights and privileges still belonged to that title.
Harriette had wrestled herself to submission on the subject of her forthcoming marriage only because it was a promise her mother and grandfather had made, and whatever other duties Harriette had neglected toward her parent, she would repay by keeping this contract.
Now her grandfather was gone, and her mother was not here to see that promise fulfilled. The only one who would benefit from this arrangement was a landless cousin she had never met who was counting on marriage to Harriette to secure his fortune.
Mrs. Demant withdrew a white handkerchief edged with black to dab at her eyes, and the sight stirred Harriette from the horror of her barren future. “When are the funeral services to be held?”
“Tonight.” Mrs. Demant sniffled. “The cards have been sent and the biscuits have been made.”
She indicated the salver on a nearby table, heaped with the biscuits that the English gave out to mourners and funeral guests.
The white paper wrapping was printed with a doleful memorial passage along with her mother’s name and closed with black wax into which had been pressed the grinning image of a death’s head.
Harriette shuddered, feeling a pang that might have been hunger, or something else.
“I don’t suppose you have suitable mourning,” Mrs. Demant remarked, and the tight sensation in Harriette’s chest turned to full-blown alarm.
She didn’t have mourning attire, not a scrap of it.
She wore her riding habit and had a plain bodice and petticoat in the valise she’d brought along.
Her few gowns, none of them black, lay neatly folded in her trunk in London.
She would need a bombazine gown, crepe hood and fan, the correct shoes, and gloves if she were to observe proper mourning.
Then there were the required funeral expenses: hiring mutes and mourners, the pall and feathers to cover the coffin on its way to its last resting place, cloaks and hatbands and gloves for the bearers and pages and others in the procession… Harriette swayed on her feet.
Ren’s great gift to her, the commission for his painting, would disappear into her mother’s grave. Leaving her, truly, with nothing. Harriette would go to her marriage motherless, penniless, and in deepest mourning.
This was not the time for her painter’s eye to recall that black washed out her complexion and made her olive skin tone look green.
By English custom she would wear deepest mourning for six months and half mourning for six more.
But she would be in Lowenburg then and would have to learn what the customs of the Silesian people were, as well as what their Prussian governors demanded.