When Leah put a tray of sliced beef, cheddar, sliced bread, and a peeled orange before Ethan, she kissed Nick’s cheek—even her scent helped Nick breathe—then took her leave.
Nick started on the sad, predictable questions. “When?”
“Late last night,” Ethan said, making no move to eat. “He just slipped away, Nick. He was breathing one minute, and then he did not breathe again. Nita and I were there, and he was asleep.”
“You rode here from Belle Maison,” Nick observed, stupidly. Of course Ethan had ridden from Belle Maison.
Ethan’s arm circled Nick’s shoulders. “I’ll go back there with you. I promised you I would.”
“I’ll need to send word to the others,” Nick said, lowering his forehead to his folded arms. “The funeral can’t wait.”
The practicalities, Nick thought vaguely. Leah had foreseen a need to deal with the practicalities.
“We can have a memorial service next month if we can’t all be at the funeral,” Ethan suggested.
With a sigh, Nick nodded and pushed to his feet. “Eat, or Leah will know the reason why. Your horse can stay here, and you’ll travel with us in the coach.”
“If you wish,” Ethan said, regarding Nick.
“Leah did say she’d come with me?” Nick ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed to have to ask but needing the reassurance. Needing his wife.
“She did. You told her it was what you wanted.”
“I do want that,” Nick said. “Give me an hour to jot off some notes and confer with Leah and…” His voice trailed off, and Ethan waited. Eventually, Nick figured out something to say to his brother. “Thank you for bringing me this news, Ethan. I would not have wanted to hear it from anyone else.”
“Not that you wanted to hear it at all, and not that I wanted to bring it. I’ll meet you in an hour.”
What Nick wanted was to find his wife, bury his face against her neck, and let his sorrow overtake him. Instead, he went to the library and penned notes to his solicitors, to his siblings, and, after an attempt at deliberation that ended up being a spate of staring at a blank page, to Leonie.
***
Leah’s husband was being stubborn, in what she suspected was tradition for the earls of Bellefonte.
“Leah, I do not want to put you through this.”
What he clearly did not want was to burden his wife with further evidence of his grief.
“Nonsense.” Leah kept her voice down, though the corridor outside the small parlor housing the old earl’s remains was deserted. “I’ve seen bodies before, Nicholas, and I’ve also not seen bodies.”
He looked haunted, glancing up and down the carpeted hallway. “What does that mean?”
“My Charles wasn’t buried until I’d had a chance to hold him one last time,” Leah said, “though Aaron was taken back to his father’s house after the duel. I was not permitted to see him before they buried him. Both are equally dead, and I felt equal sorrow to lose them.”
Nick grimaced and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I have unpleasant associations with this sort of thing. When Ethan’s mother died, and my stepmother, and…”
He was not only stubborn and grieving, Leah suspected he was also… intimidated by the role he expected himself to fulfill. The idea that Nicholas, the most singularly self-possessed man she’d ever met, should face such a moment alone was untenable.
“What lies in the parlor is not your father, Nicholas. It’s a body that houses no life. You need not go in there.”
He searched her gaze, probably looking for tacit judgments. He would find none, not about this. He shoved away from the wall. “I’m his son. His heir.”
She took his hand, as he’d so often taken hers, and willed him all the reassurance and support within her. When Nick escorted her through the door, she saw that the parlor was rife with lilies, though thank God somebody had also opened the windows.
Nick’s grip on her hand was tight, probably tighter than he knew.
“He’s… dead,” Nick observed softly after a few silent moments. “There is no mistaking that pallor and that stillness.”
“He’s at peace,” Leah countered. “His body is dead.”
Nick’s grip eased, but she did not allow him to drop her hand.
While Nick made his final farewells to his father, Leah stood beside him and took courage from sharing the moment with him. For all their problems, they were man and wife. If Nick allowed her to remain by his side now, perhaps it boded well for their future.