Page 36 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

‘Miss.’

Susan looked up at the footman standing in the open doorway of her father’s library. She was not trying to paint today. She was reading, trying to lose herself in a fictional tale so she need not dwell on her own sorry story. It was proving unsuccessful. ‘Come in.’

She had turned sideways in her restless fidgeting and draped her legs across the arm of the chair. She sat up and turned around as the footman walked across the room, a slight amused smile on his lips. He held a letter.

Her fingers lifted and pushed her spectacles further up the bridge of her nose.

His smile implied she had become a topic of conversation among the servants. But then her returning alone had been an odd thing to do, and Dodds was still in town with her parents so there was no one to silence their gossip.

He held out the letter and bowed his head swiftly. ‘Miss, this arrived a moment ago. ’

‘Thank you.’ She took it, her heart leaping. But then she could see it was not Henry’s writing but Alethea’s.

When the footman left, Susan set down her book and opened the letter.

It is terrible news.

The words jumped out from the first line.

Had Henry told her he would not marry her?

Susan sat back in the chair as fear gripped in her stomach, and clasped at the breath in her lungs. What had Henry done?

Dearest Susan,

You will not believe what has happened, it is terrible news, poor William has passed away.

It was awfully quick, and I am unsure whether that was a blessing or not.

The family only had the news yesterday that he had a fever.

Henry and his mother went to the school to bring him home but he was too ill to be moved, and at eleven in the evening they sent for Uncle Robert.

William died a little after midnight. I am wiping away tears for him as I write.

I feel so for Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane. Of course they have gone into mourning.

Sarah wrote to us this morning. They are shutting up their town house and returning home immediately.

William is to be buried in Yorkshire. So of course out of respect Papa has said we shall leave town and come home too.

We should be with you in three perhaps four days.

Mama said, you must tell the household to expect us.

I cannot write more, we are all in shock.

Your beloved sister,

Alethe a

William had died…

Susan stared at the letter, her lips parted in shock.

He was just a boy.

Her heart drained of all emotions, all the pain of the last few days falling silent. An acute sense of loneliness struck at her. She wished for someone to hold, and to hold her. Henry… Poor Henry. Poor Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane… How must they feel?

Yesterday she had sulked and moped about the ruins pitying herself and what she had lost. While Henry must have been at William’s bedside watching his brother die.

She had not once thought about Alethea’s letter saying that Henry had gone to his brother.

She should have spent the hours praying for William, not lamenting over her selfish longing.

William had no more life to live… The words sliced her in two. All the pain now filling her heart and soul was for Uncle Robert, Aunt Jane, Henry, Sarah, Christine and the others.

Nausea twisted through Henry’s stomach as he watched William. But it was not William, it was William’s lifeless body. The laughing, energetic boy whom Henry had spent half his life impatient with was no longer here. Pain threatened to overwhelm him.

His father arrived too late to say goodbye.

He had looked tortured when Henry told him the news.

He had walked into the room, dropped to his knees beside the bed and held William’s body, kissed his cheek and pressed his forehead against William’s.

It had been minutes before he let go, even though Henry’s mother had come about the bed and held his father as he held William.

Henry had watched, with his hands clasped behind his back, and said nothing, because no words would bring William back, and nothing would take away the pain.

When his father rose from his knees, Henry’s mother had wrapped her arms about his waist, and his arms had settled on her shoulders as she’d sobbed against his lapel. His father had not arrived in time to say his goodbye to William, but he had, at least, arrived in time to comfort Henry’s mother.

His father had not cried, though, his eyes had been dry, but full of torture, of an agony Henry probably only felt one tenth of.

Henry had left the room, then.

Now he focused on William’s face. He was glad he had stayed – glad he was the only one who had seen this. As soon as his parents had left he had dressed William in his school uniform, while William’s colour darkened and his muscles stiffened. He had become a green-grey.

A desire to clasp William firmly, shot through Henry. He did not want to let him go.

His mother had not wanted to leave, but when Henry had offered to stay with William to allow his parents to return to London and tell his sisters, his father had urged his mother to go.

It was not William who needed his parents now, it was the others.

Henry was glad his mother would not have this memory of William’s cold, lifeless body.

His parents had taken his other brothers, Stephen and Gerard, out of school and taken them home with them. They had been in shock, caught off guard by the speed of this. Christine and Sarah had been waiting for news in the town house.

In William’s last hour, Stephen and Gerard had been sent for and come to the room, and stood by William’s bed to say their farewell.

They had tried to hold back their tears, but failed.

Stephen told Henry only two days ago he was playing cricket with William.

Gerard had turned and wrapped his arms around Henry’s waist, seeking comfort that none of Henry’s siblings had sought from him before. Henry had held him in a tight embrace.

The boys had wanted his father, but his father had not been there and so they’d looked to their elder brother. To turn to their mother would have felt weak.

And besides, their mother had been crying quietly, she would have been unable to comfort them.

In the last few hours, Henry had discovered a strength he had not known was within him, and now he was clinging to it, his fists holding tight.

He was being strong for his brothers, for his mother, and stronger than his father because his father needed to focus on the others – and grieve.

‘The coffin is outside, it is ready, my lord. I am sorry, the stairway is too narrow to bring it up.’

Henry looked at the man who stood in the door.

The school staff had left him alone in the attic room, out of respect probably.

He hoped not out of lack of care. Yet he felt as though the world should be wailing with sadness – not enough fuss was being made.

This was his youngest brother – and he had become nothing but cold flesh and bone.

‘Shall I wrap the body in the sheet, sir?’

The body… William! My brother! ‘No. I will carry him down.’

Henry walked to the side of the bed, as the man held the door open. Henry’s heart pumped hard, pulsing blood into veins which felt dry.

William had grown much taller in the last year. He had grown from a boy to a youth.

He would not grow any more now.

Henry leaned down and slipped one arm beneath his brother’s knees, the other under his shoulders, then gripped his stiff body and lifted his weight, to hold him against his chest .

He was taking on his father’s task. But he was glad his father had not had to do this.

‘ When will you grow out of this reckless stage? When will you care what others think and feel? ’ Those were the words his father had yelled at him.

The answer was – now. He had known love for a woman and let her go and thought he had changed then.

But now – now he held his dead brother in his arms. Now he knew he had changed.

If William had not looked up to Henry’s reckless ways, perhaps he would not have tried to climb up to his master’s room.

If Henry had paid more attention to his younger brothers, certainly he would not need to feel this intense weight of guilt. Perhaps, if he had behaved differently, he could have prevented this… He would never know now.

He always believed they would be friends when his brothers were older, so he had made little effort to be their friend now. It never occurred to him any of his brothers might not reach maturity.

He wanted William to come back. He would trade anything for it.

William’s body was heavier than Henry had anticipated, but the weight – the burden – was what Henry deserved. He would carry it his whole life. He wished it were him instead of William.

William’s forehead rested against Henry’s cheek as he carried him towards the narrow door of the small room.

‘My lord.’ The school’s master followed Henry as he walked out and began his descent down the narrow staircase. His pace steady, Henry was careful not to catch William’s feet or bump his head. The narrow staircase ended and became the much smarter hallway which led to the grand area of the school.

The hallway and the stairs were wider here but still there was no one else around him bar the one master who followed him.

It was late and the daylight shining into the hall from a window behind him was fading, but the candles had already been lit; they cast pale shadows about Henry as he walked down the last set of stairs.

Henry had not left William alone for a moment since his parents left. He had a sense William might be afraid, which was stupid. William was beyond feeling afraid. But Henry still did not want to leave him.

When Henry stepped from the last stair into the school’s entrance hall, he expected to see other staff members.

Again there was no one. Perhaps the staff were busy keeping the other boys out of the way.

Or now his father had gone they felt they had scraped and commiserated enough, and did not need to repeat their bowing to his heir or the dead child.

Boys died in this school all the time, diseases spread, accidents happened.

Henry lost friends when he attended here.

He had still always thought himself invincible, though.

That belief had applied to his family too.

Never had he thought this might happen to one of them.

‘Reckless.’ He sighed out the word quietly on his breath. The word he was often accused of. Reckless! It barked at him in his head. He had carried the word like a badge of honour. He hated it now. It was a cursed word. It had killed his brother.

The master who had walked downstairs with Henry moved forward to open the front door.

The undertaker waited in the cobbled courtyard in the middle of the school’s ancient buildings illuminated by the eerie light of dusk.

This was sordid. It should not be happening.

The open polished ebony coffin rested on a low cart. From the outside it was worth every penny his father had paid, but inside… it was bare wood because it had been acquired in a hurry. It looked cold. Harsh. Austere .

He was meant to put William within it.

He wished he had let the man wrap a sheet about William, or that he had brought down William’s pillow from the bed, or a blanket.

The tears that had gathered as a lump in his throat for hours became pressure at the back of his eyes. He did not want to leave William in a cold wooden box, in the dark.

But the boy in his arms was not the William who would feel discomfort or terror. That boy no longer existed – Henry had to accept this.

He walked closer to the cart and leaned over to set William down inside the stark box. The weight and angle jarred Henry’s lower back. It was a pain he welcomed; he deserved to feel pain. He should be the one in the coffin.

His gaze did not leave William’s face as he took off his coat rolled it up and tucked it beneath William’s head as a pillow.

He stepped back and two men who Henry had not previously noticed came forward. They moved the lid onto the coffin. Henry’s arms crossed over his chest and he rubbed his arms, but not from the cold.

He sighed, choking on the breath for a moment.

The men began hammering nails into the wood, and the strikes jolted through Henry. What would his family do without William in the world? What would the world be without William?

He sighed out another breath, then bit the inside of his cheek as tears threatened, while the men pulled a canvas over the coffin and secured it across the cart.

‘My lord.’ His father’s groom had come from somewhere too.

He lifted a hand, directing Henry to the waiting carriage he was to travel in on the journey home with William.

He did not wish to ride in the carriage, he would prefer to sit in the cart and keep a hand on William’s coffin. He could not walk away from it.

A raindrop fell on Henry’s head. He looked up.

The sky had become dark not only from night drawing nearer but due to a dark cloud.

Another raindrop fell and hit his shoulder, then the heavens opened.

He shut his eyes and let the rain wet his face and his clothing.

It helped ease the pain inside him a little.

‘My lord,’ three voices said to him at once, requesting he climb into the carriage, out of the rain, so they might be on their way.

He could not stand here forever. His shirt and his waistcoat were drenched.

‘My lord,’ the groom encouraged again.

Henry looked at the groom and nodded, then walked to the carriage in a daze.

Behind him there was the sound of the backboard banging closed against the cart, and chains moving to secure it.

He and William had a long journey. His father had asked him to take William home, to Farnborough. Henry was to meet the rest of his family there.

Henry held the edge of the carriage by the door and climbed the step, dropped onto the leather seat and looked through the window. The groom shut the door and lit the oil lanterns on the corners outside the carriage. Henry had ordered they travel night and day.

The cart pulled away first, then the carriage moved forward, following it. Henry’s awareness was outside in the rain, on the cart with William.

When he could no longer see it, he tipped his head back and shut his eyes.

He wished to wake up in a brothel in Brighton and for this all to have been nothing more than a liquor-induced nightmare .

Overwhelming pain welled up inside him. The hours he had spent in agony from his shoulder had been nothing. This was torture.

He wished his brother were alive.

He needed Susan… He wanted her comfort. That too was impossible.