CHAPTER ONE
London, 1818
“Mother, please don’t leave me,” Miss Phoebe Windham cried, holding her mother’s frail, cold hand. Sitting on a hard chair beside her mother’s bed, her head resting on the edge, tears leaked from her eyes and she knew her world was ending.
Her father was packing to flee the country to avoid his creditors. Her mother suffered from a lung ailment and had no time at all to live, if her blue pallor and ice-cold body were any indication. Not to mention the rattle coming from her lungs with every breath. Which were getting farther and farther apart.
When the outside door to the home they rented slammed shut with a loud bang, Phoebe’s entire body collapsed in on itself. He really left her? Left his wife on her deathbed? How could he do that to them? Her father had never been a particularly loving man, but she didn’t think he was selfish and cruel enough to leave her to face her mother’s death alone. Had he not loved his wife enough to stay until she passed?
It was a moment which came not long after the door slammed shut.
Phoebe’s once-beautiful mother cried out and gasped her last breath, leaving Phoebe alone in the rickety house. Their landlord had already begun eviction proceedings, so it was only a matter of days before she would be homeless. However, her mother had made her promise to reach out to her father’s eldest brother, the Earl of Greenwich. A letter she dreaded writing but needed to.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, she pulled the coverlet over her mother’s face, then went to her small room and sat at her dressing table, which wobbled on the uneven floors, and penned a letter to her uncle on cheap foolscap.
Dear Lord Greenwich,
I’m writing to you to request your help. My father, your brother, William, has left England, and my mother has just died. I don’t know what to do or where to go. Could you please advise?
Your niece,
Miss Phoebe Windham
Fortunately, her neighbor, Mr. Brown, was a kindly old man, if a little eccentric. He employed several servants. She donned a cloak and took the sealed missive with her. She left the house and knocked on Mr. Brown’s door across the street.
The butler answered. “Miss Windham,” he said with a frown, “how may I help you?”
She handed him the note. “My mother passed, and I need this delivered to my uncle immediately. Could you please send a footman to deliver it on my behalf?
He looked at it. “Please accept my condolences. I will have someone deliver this right away.”
“Thank you.”
She trudged across the street when there was a lull in the carriages, making it safely. Her legs were as heavy as her heart. She tried not to remember the better times when she was young, when her mother was healthy and her father hadn’t gambled his fortune away. She refused to wallow in self-pity.
When she entered the house, it was eerily quiet and still. It was as if everything inside had died along with her mother. The clock in the entryway no longer ticked. She didn’t even hear the mice scurrying inside the walls. She was truly and completely alone.
After she packed her meager belongings into two portmanteaus, not knowing when she would be leaving, shewent and sat at her mother’s bedside, trying to ignore the smell of death. Two hours, maybe three, went by when the loud banging on the door startled her, and she hurried down the stairs and opened it to find two men in somber black clothing standing on the stoop.
“Yes?” she questioned.
“We are undertakers, and we’ve come at the request of Lord Greenwich. We’re here to prepare your mother for visitors to pay their respects and then the burial at St Martin-in-the-Fields, two days hence. May we come in?”
“Yes. Please.”
Oh dear, it’s happening so fast. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her mother. She opened the door wide and stepped aside, trying not to break down and sob in front of these strangers. “Come in. I’ll show you to the room.” When they entered the room, Phoebe went to the old, scarred wardrobe and took out her mother’s best dress, chemise and placed them on the bench at the end of her mother’s bed. Her eyes drifted to her mother, covered from head to toe beneath her counterpane. Heartbreak settled deeper inside her bones, making her wonder if she’d ever feel herself again or if she would always have a heaviness inside her chest for her loss.
“Where would you like to have the showing of the deceased?” one of the men asked.
“The parlor downstairs.” Phoebe didn’t truly expect anyone to come. She left the men to do their job as she hid in the tiny kitchen beside the parlor and tried not to listen to the noises. She wanted to cover her ears and scream so she didn’t have to hear what they were doing. The loud banging as they brought in the coffin. Their footsteps on the creaky stairs as they brought her mother’s body down.
After what seemed like hours, one of the men approached her in the kitchen. “We have finished. We will return first thing in the morning on Thursday.”
“Thank you,” Phoebe said so softly she wasn’t sure he heard her. Except he nodded his head and left. The sound of the door closing tightly made her realize how alone she was in the world, and she broke down into sobs.
Her kind neighbor, Mr. Brown, came by that evening to pay his respects and brought her a basket of food that his cook had prepared for her.
“Thank you,” she told him. “Your kindness over the years was greatly appreciated by my mother and me. I will miss you when I’m gone.”
