Free Angel's Touch by Elizabeth Bailey Page B

and
plying it with energy. ‘I declare, I am so much overset, I scarce
know myself what I am saying. The thing is, when dear Emilia did
not come here, I missed her so dreadfully that I vowed I should not
set foot in the place the next year. Nor I did. But that was just
when it happened and so of course I heard not a word about it, for
by the following year it had been forgotten. As everything is, you
know, for old events must give place to new.’
    ‘ But what was it?’ Verity
demanded.
    ‘ I
am coming to that,’ said the widow, and her face crumpled into
sorrowful lines. ‘Such a tragedy! The poor marquis!’
    ‘ What, ma’am? What?’
    ‘ His wife , my
dear,’ uttered Mrs Polegate in accents as stricken as if she had
herself suffered the loss. ‘The marchioness. She was killed . A carriage accident, they say. So young, too.
Barely three and twenty years of age she was, it
seems.’
    ‘ How—how terrible, ’ Verity said faintly.
‘Those poor children!’
    ‘ Yes
indeed. The little girl was but a babe—a few months
old.’
    Verity was appalled. No wonder Peggy had only wailed for
‘Tittoo’, as she called her nurse. She had no mama. Had been
motherless almost from birth. And Braxted. Her heart ached for the
child. She knew what it was to lose one close to her, for her
sister Constance, but a year her senior, had been taken from them
at the age of twelve. It had been painful even when the infant
girls had died. How much more so must it have been for that lonely
boy, who had not even the comfort of siblings to assuage his grief.
For Peggy could not have offered the easing that her own sisters
had done in their shared loss. And from what she had been
privileged to observe it did not appear that his father was of much
help. Unless. . .?
    ‘ Mrs
Polegate, what of the marquis himself? Was he—?’
    ‘ Oh,
my dear, that is the worst aspect of the whole business,’ declared
the widow. ‘The poor man was so devastated that he shut himself up
in Braxted Place and has not been seen since.’
    ‘ He did what?’ Verity demanded in accents of
strong indignation. ‘How abominably selfish!’
    ‘ Oh,
no, dear Miss Lambourn, how can you say so? Such a romantic
devotion.’
    ‘ Romantic fiddlesticks! How should his
shutting himself up serve anyone at all? Pray did you find it necessary to
make such a ridiculous charade out of your
grief?’
    ‘ Oh, no, indeed no,’ said Mrs Polegate,
somewhat flustered by this severity. ‘But then, you know, dear
William had enjoyed many years of a very good life. And he was so ill at
the end that one could not but feel it a mercy when he did leave
us.’
    ‘ Yes, I dare say, ma’am,’ Verity said,
brushing this aside, ‘but my sisters enjoyed scarcely any life, and yet we
continued about our business. It—it was hard, it is true,’ she
conceded, tears standing in her eyes, ‘but I cannot think we could
have made it easier by moping in solitude. And what of those poor
little children? They are surrounded only by servants, and must
bend to the will of that heartless Mr Haverigg, who I suppose is
busy about the marquis’s affairs, while the great man indulges
himself in this foolish fashion in his ridiculous ivory
tower.’
    ***
     
    The
same conclusion had been reached by the marquis himself as he drove
back to Braxted Park. The dreadful truth had been laid out for him
by that slip of a girl who had shoved herself and her opinions into
his life. Her low— deservedly low, God help him!—opinion of his role as a
father had thrust on him the realisation that he was as bad as no
father at all. Buried in his own sorrow, his own guilt, he had
deprived his children of himself as well as of their dead
mother.
    Miss
Lambourn. . .what had she said her name was? Verity? Yes, Verity
for truth. How apt. Miss Verity Lambourn had begun by showing him
how much at fault he was in jumping to conclusions about Braxted’s
supposed prank. And scarcely had he stopped smarting from