The Earl's Mistaken Bride - By Abby Gaines Page 0,73
he raised to Constance were filled with
anguish.
“Sometimes,” she said urgently, “it’s easier to feel a
pulse in the neck.” She reached across the bed, pressed
two fingers to the left side of the duchess’s throat, as
she had seen the doctor in Piper’s Mead do. Please,
Lord, let me find something. A flutter. Anything.
Nothing.
She adjusted her fingers, to no avail. Dallow
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proffered a small mirror, which Marcus held in front of
his mother’s mouth. No fog of breath blurred the
reflection of her lips, which Constance now saw bore a
blue tinge.
Hopeless, yet still hoping, she chafed the dowager’s
warm left hand. Marcus did the same to her right. They
were still pressing and rubbing when Mr. Young
hurried in.
He stopped short of the bed.
“I can see she is gone,” he said. “My lord, my lady, I
am sorry.”
“No!” Marcus rounded on him. “I want you to make
sure.”
“Naturally I will do that.” Mr. Young already had his
stethoscope out.
It took less than a minute to verify his initial
conclusion.
“Indeed, my lord, your mother has passed.”
“What happened?” Marcus demanded harshly.
“Did she hit her head when she fell?” Constance
asked. “She was on the floor when Powell found her.”
“I’m told her ladyship rang for a servant,” the doctor
said. “Probably she felt some chest pain, so summoned
assistance. I suspect her heart suffered a major spasm as
she got out of bed, causing her to fall. Quite possibly
she was already dead when she fell.”
Marcus groaned, with a wretchedness that made
Constance want to weep. He crossed the room to stand
at the window, his back to them, his shoulders shaking.
Discreetly, somberly, the physician packed away his
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stethoscope. He pulled the sheet up over the dowager’s
face. Constance made an instinctive move to check him,
but stopped herself.
“I will communicate with your butler,” he said to
Constance. “So he can begin arrangements.” Constance
nodded.
When the doctor left, she moved toward her husband.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, fighting tears.
“How?” he asked. “How did this happen?”
Had he been too distraught to listen?
“The doctor thinks your mama’s heart must have
failed as she got out of bed. He—”
“I had a bargain with God,” Marcus snapped.
Constance froze.
“I married you. He knew I married you for my
mother’s sake.”
Every word stabbed like a knife to her heart. She
couldn’t speak.
“We—you and I—were about to—” He pounded his
fist into his palm. “Confound it, I was doing the right
thing! I was willing to be the kind of husband you tell
me God requires me to be.”
Did that mean he was no longer willing? Constance
tried not to think of herself, to focus on the tragedy of
her mother-in-law’s death.
“And this is how He rewards me?” Marcus
demanded. “By taking the life of a good woman?”
“She was ill,” Constance said. “God didn’t make her
ill.”
“She’d been getting better. He could have saved her,”
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Marcus charged. “Or don’t you believe that?”
“Of course I believe that. I wish He had saved her.”
Marcus closed his eyes. “All this, to no avail.”
All what? Their marriage?
“Your mother was pleased we were wed,” Constance
said through frozen lips. “It made her happy. You said
yourself her improvement was near miraculous.” Even
she found little comfort in the words.
“I should never have trusted Him,” Marcus said. “Nor
that doctor of yours. What’s it worth now, that brief
happiness? If she cannot be here, if she’s not with the
ones she loves?”
“We’ll be reunited with her one day,” Constance said.
He snorted. “What use is ‘one day’?”
She gasped at the sacrilege.
Marcus pressed his hands to his face.
Beyond the window, the sky was starting to lighten.
Soon it would be dawn.
Marcus tracked her gaze. “I’m going to bed. I have
much to do today,” he said. Only the barest flicker in
his eyes acknowledged that the plan had been for him to
be in her bed.
“MY DEAR, I hate to leave you.” Margaret Somerton
kissed Constance’s cheek, then pulled her close. Behind
her, on the street, the horses shifted, rattling their
harness.
“I know.” Constance’s voice was muffled. “But Papa
is needed in Piper’s Mead and your place is with him.”
Isabel, Amanda and Charity were already in the
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carriage. Serena had left immediately after the funeral
yesterday with Mr. Granville and his sister.
“Besides,” Constance said, “Marcus needs some time
to mourn in private.”
Marcus wasn’t even here to say farewell to her
family.
In stark contrast with the festive mood of their arrival
her family now wore black armbands in tribute to the
dowager. Constance wore a black dress made especially
for her by Madame Louvier—the color drained her of
what little vibrancy she had left.
Marcus’s rejection had been total. Absolute.
It was hard to know whom he blamed most for his
mother’s death: God, or Constance. Either way, he felt
he had been cheated, just as