Page 37 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

Susan looked out from her bedroom window at the sound of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves.

Her father’s carriage. The book she had been trying to read fell to the floor as she stood up hurriedly.

She ran from the room, lifting the skirt of her dress and petticoats and up to her knees so she might indecorously run along the hall. She longed to hold her mother.

When she reached the stairs, she rushed down. Her mother and Alethea walked through the front door into the hall as Susan reached it.

‘Susan!’ Alethea hurried forwards, as Susan ran from the bottom step. They embraced firmly. It was wonderful to have Alethea back.

‘I missed you,’ Alethea said.

‘I missed you too.’ Terribly . But Susan longed to hold her mother most. She turned to her.

Her mother’s arms wrapped about her and squeezed her tightly. Susan held her mother tightly too and breathed in the scent of her perfume.

‘Are you well, dear?’ Her mother stepped back as her palms pressed either side of Susan’s face, knocking her spectacles askew in the urgency of the movement. ‘You look as though you have not slept.’

‘I have been worried for Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane.’ And Henry and the others. ‘How are they? Have you seen them?’

‘Your father called on them the day we heard?—’

‘And they were as you would expect,’ her father continued. ‘Distraught. Robert was quiet and subdued and Jane in tears. None of the children came to the drawing room, but I believe they were all there. Uncle Robert brought the boys back from the school, and Percy came from Oxford.’

‘They should all be here at Farnborough now,’ her mother added.

‘I have not heard of their return.’

‘They would have kept it quiet,’ her father said. ‘They are in mourning, they will not want lots of visitors.’

Susan looked at Alethea and swallowed sharply before uttering the words, ‘How is Henry?’

‘We have not seen him. He stayed at the school and was to bring William’s body back to Farnborough.’

‘He should be there by now,’ her father stated.

Susan looked from one to the other. She knew what she wished to do, to go to Farnborough, she could do nothing to comfort and help them from here.

‘Your mother and I plan to call on Robert and Jane this afternoon. I shall write now to check we will be welcome. Shall I ask if they are happy for you to join us?’

‘Yes, please.’ Susan had to do something other than sit idly with hours to think and let the emotions of empathy overwhelm her. She needed to help them actively, in some regard.

‘Yes, I wish to see Henry,’ Alethea said.

Oh . Alethea’s words sliced through Susan. This was why she must leave her family; she could not live here when he would be spoken of as though he belonged to other people.

She did not want Alethea to speak to him, she wanted a private moment to hold him and ask how he was.

Susan’s mother looked at Dodds, who had also just arrived. ‘Will you have tea brought to the drawing room?’

He caught Susan’s eye and smiled, then bowed. He had guessed Susan’s return was due to some upset in town, then. He had probably worried over her. He would quell the gossip here.

‘Susan.’

She turned to her father and he caught hold of her hand.

‘Stay with me a moment. I wish to speak with you.’

She glanced at her mother, who smiled then turned Alethea to guide her towards the drawing room.

‘Come along.’

Susan was led by her father to the library. Once there, he let her go. ‘Do you mind if I write to Robert first? It will only take a moment.’

When she nodded, he turned away from her, sat down at the desk, then took out a sheet of paper from a drawer, before reaching for a quill and ink. He wrote only four lines, then blotted them, folding and sealing the letter. The scent of the melted wax hovered in the air as he stood.

Susan waited by one of the windows as he carried the letter to the door and leaned out into the hall. ‘Dodds! Have a groom deliver this to Farnborough immediately, please, and ask him to await a response! Thank you.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Her father shut the door, and frowned as he turned back, his lips twisting with a look of concern, making his waxed moustache slant at an odd angle. ‘Susan,’ he said on a sigh as he crossed the room then took hold of her hands. ‘What happened in town?’

This again. She was in no mood to manage his concerns. ‘Nothing for you to be worried over, I promise.’ Tears gathered in her eyes. She swallowed, trying to hold them back, but she was sure her eyes must be sparkling behind her spectacles.

‘You admit there was something then?’

The news of William’s death was too great a sorrow to allow her father any concern over her. ‘It does not matter. I was not harmed in any way, Papa.’

‘You promise.’

‘Yes.’

‘So I may focus my attention on Robert and Jane and need not fear for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have been lying awake worrying over you, Susan.’

‘You need not have been.’

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, his moustache tickling her like it used to when she was a child.

‘I hated leaving you,’ he said, quietly.

‘I have been well enough, and happy on my own.’ She had spent hours crying, making such a fuss over a broken heart, which seemed so pathetic now.

‘And so this nonsense you wrote to me about seeking employment, is it in the past?’

No. She could not turn back on that. ‘No, Papa, I still wish for that. Alethea will marry, and what then? I am not the marrying sort. Being in London taught me that?—’

‘Susan. No one will see you destitute even if you do not marry. I will provide for you, despite the entail, and Alethea will not wish to lose the companionship of her sister.’

She would if she knew the truth .

‘I know, but I would rather do something more worthwhile than spend my life as Alethea’s companion.’

‘You are a much-loved daughter and sister, not simply a companion. You know we believed we were unable to have children, and then there was the miracle of Alethea, and we had no expectation the Lord would be so kind as to bless us again, and then came you…’

Tears gathered in Susan’s eyes. It had been the wrong time to speak of worth. Her mother and father had probably spent hours imagining themselves in Uncle Robert’s and Aunt Jane’s shoes. She blinked away the tears.

Her father drew her into a firm hug. ‘Enough of that nonsense. I will not allow you to leave us.’

When Susan, her parents and Alethea walked into the drawing room at Farnborough, after an introduction from Davis, they were greeted by a scene which Susan had never imagined she would see.

Henry’s family were dressed in black, and for a family who always smiled, no one in the room smiled at them as they entered. Uncle Robert did not even stand up. He had been staring out of the window, and merely turned his head dazedly to look at them.

The only thing that appeared normal in the room was the presence of Uncle Robert’s dogs, three of which sat about his chair, but the fourth –Samson – was of course beside Henry.

His tail thumped on the rug as Henry stood, then Samson stood too.

‘Uncle Casper.’ Henry walked across the room to greet Susan’s father, Samson in tow.

He held out his hand so her father might shake it.

When her father accepted it he also pulled Henry forward and wrapped his free arm about Henry’s shoulders, giving him a brief masculine embrace.

When Henry pulled away he gave her father a stiff, closed-lip smile. He had not appreciated the embrace – nor drawn any comfort from it.

Samson came to Susan to be petted.

‘Samson, away, lie down,’ Henry ordered. Then he looked at her mother. ‘Aunt Julie.’ She immediately lost all composure and sobbed. So, Henry embraced her, offering comfort, when he ought to be the one receiving it.

His skin was sallow, his body a little thinner, and he looked so very serious – so unlike Henry.

Susan’s father walked over to Uncle Robert, who finally stood, but he rose slowly as though he lacked energy. He had probably not slept for days. Certainly, there were dark crescents beneath his eyes.

‘Casper,’ Uncle Robert said, but he avoided the embrace her father would have given, pulling back as her father’s arms rose.

‘Julie.’ Aunt Jane stood. Tears shone in her eyes and ran onto her cheeks as Susan’s mother turned to her. The two women embraced and let their grief show with no restraint.

‘Henry…’ Alethea stepped forward. Her arms lifted and wrapped about his neck, offering comfort, but Henry’s body remained stiff and the muscles in his face tight and resolute as his arms loosely held her in return. ‘I am so sorry,’ Susan heard Alethea whisper before she let him go.

It was then, Henry looked at Susan, his eyes holding their secret.

Alethea turned to Sarah and Christine, who were dabbing handkerchiefs to their eyes. She held them both and cried.

Henry stepped towards Susan. His eyes said so much, all the emotions in his letter hovered there, and she could see the depth of the grief running through him. He needed her to hold him but she could not.

‘I am sorry.’ Her hands clasped behind her back. She would cry if she so much as touched him, and her tears would not all be for William.

‘I wish you had not gone,’ he said in a low voice.

No one was watching them, no one would notice them talking more privately. ‘I had to.’

‘I know. But I may still wish it were otherwise.’

She bit her lip. Now he was here in front of her again the pull towards him was overwhelming – magnetism and empathy; it called her a fool for running away. Yet that had become insignificant in the shadow of William’s passing. ‘Where are your brothers?’

He flinched as his father had done. The question had lanced him. There was one less of his brothers. The tears Susan fought stung the back of her eyes.

‘Percy took Stephen and Gerard out riding. They are not coping well. Boys do not weep out their grief as women do,’ he said stiffly. He had not wept then either.

Perhaps males ought to cry. Henry and his father appeared to be in agony.