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The door clicked shut.
Joshua leaned back against the wall and pressed the heels of his hands into his burning eyes and kept them there, even when he heard the shuffle and patter of footsteps. A hand squeezed his arm, briefly.
“She’s going to be all right.” The housekeeper.
He lowered his hands, looked at her caring, concerned face. A convoy of maids hovered behind her, bearing basins and linens and heavens knew what.
“This happens,” Mrs. Greenway added, sure and calm. Comforting him. He wasn’t the one who needed it. “More often than you know. But she’ll be fine.” She turned to the maids, grabbing a bundle of linens that she tucked under her arm and taking the basin of steaming water in both hands. “Wait here,” she said to the maids. “You too, Mr. DeWitt.”
“Tell her…”
She paused. He leaned across to open the door for her. Caught a glimpse of his wife’s skirts, his view of her face blocked by the body of her mother seated at her side. He looked away.
“Tell her I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Not you, she’d said.Just go, she’d said.Not you, she’d said.
“You’ll tell her. Promise me?”
“I’ll tell her. Let us look after her now.”
Chapter 32
Joshua had never known Sunne Park to be so still. Miss Lucy, Miss Emily, and Mr. Isaac had just now left to visit a neighbor, the butler informed him, so he told him to send clothes after them with a message to stay away. He paced through the empty house and the servants faded away from him like ghosts. Finally, a pair of footmen herded him into the main study, where a fire roared and food and drink were laid out, as were a deck of cards and some books. He understood what they wanted him to do, so he obeyed, mildly surprised by his own docility.
Not you. Just go. Not you.
He could not eat. He thought about drinking but he needed a clear head in case she needed him. It was too hot by the fire. Too cold away from it. His legs didn’t work properly but all the chairs felt wrong.
In his roaming, he spied familiar sheets of paper on the desk. The plans she’d shown him, that day she’d sent him away and he could not leave fast enough.
Well, they were good plans and he would consider them now. And according to these plans, as he recalled, this room was to be his study. There it was, right there—“Mr. DeWitt’s study.”
Except that it wasn’t. It had been altered. The ink was a slightly different color, slightly off the line. An extra “s” had been added.
“Mrs. DeWitt’s study.”
With one pen stroke, she had written him out of her life.
And here was a fresh page, with lists for Newell and herself, items to research, requests for shopping catalogues. A query for Miss Sampson, about educating orphans here.
She had been busy.
And he had been right. She had never needed him. She had sought to include him out of duty, because she always tried to do what was right. But after he abdicated, she finally claimed her position and her space and her own home. Her own life.
A life that did not require him.
He was proud of her. He wanted to weep. But she had put too much on their child and now she had lost that. She would grieve, as he would grieve. And one day, their grief would lessen and fade, as grief always did, and she would turn to him again. She would need him for one thing at least. If that was his only chance—if he had to start again as a stallion—he’d take it. He’d take any chance he could get.
He shuffled through the pages. To the bedrooms. She still claimed the mistress’s room, connected to the master bedroom for him. No: Not for him. “Mr. DeWitt’s chambers” had been crossed out, with two strong lines, the end of one tearing the paper. Now it said: “Empty.”
Empty. An empty space. Like the empty rooms in his house in Birmingham. Her empty womb. The place that belonged to her husband. Empty. Like that feeling in his gut when she told him to go.
Empty space.
But ah! Ha ha! Here was the thing about an empty space: An empty space needed to be filled.
He scrabbled about for pen and ink and cursed his bad handwriting. He crossed out “Empty” and rewrote his name. And the study: He looked about. It was a big room. Why shouldn’t they share it? “Mr. and Mrs. DeWitt’s study.” Or maybe not. Maybe she wouldn’t like to have him underfoot all day; he’d ask her. “Nursery for baby.” He changed that too: “babies.”
