Page 73 of Suzanna's Surrender
“No, just time and elbow grease. We had plenty of the latter, but not nearly enough of the former. Over the last couple of months, we’ve gone through a lot of the old rooms, inch by inch, but it’s a slow process.”
“Then we might as well get started.”
They worked for two grueling and dirty hours. They found a tattered parasol, an amazing collection of nineteenth-century erotica, a trunk full of musty clothes from the twenties and a box of warped phonograph records. There was also a crate filled with toys, a miniature locomotive, a sad and faded rag doll, assorted yo-yos and tops. Among them was a set of lovely old fairy-tale prints that Suzanna set aside.
“For our nursery,” she told him. “Look.” She held up a yellow christening gown. “It might have been my grandfather’s.”
“You’d have thought this stuff would have been packed up with more care.”
“I don’t think Fergus ran a very tidy household after Bianca died. If any of this stuff belonged to his children, I’d wager the nanny bundled it away. He wouldn’t have cared enough.”
“No.” He pulled a cobweb out of her hair. “Listen, why don’t you take a break?”
“I’m fine.”
It was useless to remind her that she’d been working all day, so he used another tactic. “I could use a drink. You think Coco’s got anything cold in the refrigerator—maybe a sandwich to go with it?”
“Sure. I’ll go check.”
He knew that her aunt would insist on putting the quick meal together, and Suzanna would get that much time to sit and do nothing. “Two sandwiches,” he added, and kissed her.
“Right.” She rose, stretching her back. “It’s sad to think about those three children, lying in here at night knowing their mother wasn’t going to come and tuck them in again. Speaking of which, I’d better tuck in my own before I come back.”
“Take your time.” He was already headfirst in another crate.
She started out, thinking wistfully of Bianca’s babies. Little Sean, who’d barely have been toddling; Ethan, who would grow up to father her father; Colleen, who was even now downstairs surely finding fault with something Coco had done. How the woman had ever been a sweet little girl...
A little girl, Suzanna thought, stopping on the second-floor landing. The oldest girl who would have been five or six when her mother died. Suzanna detoured and knocked on her great-aunt’s door.
“Come in, damn it. I’m not getting up.”
“Aunt Colleen.” She stepped in, amused to see the old woman was engrossed in a romance novel. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“Why? No one else is.”
Suzanna bit the tip of her tongue. “I was just wondering, the summer... that last summer, were you still in the nursery with your brothers?”
“I wasn’t a baby, no need for a nursery.”
“So you had your own room,” Suzanna prompted, struggling to contain the excitement. “Near the nursery?”
“At the other end of the east wing. There was the nursery, then Nanny’s room, the children’s bath, and the three rooms kept for children of guests. I had the corner room at the top of the stairs.” She frowned down at her book. “The next summer, I moved into one of the guest rooms. I didn’t want to sleep in the room my mother had decorated for me, knowing she wouldn’t come back to it.”
“I’m sorry. When Bianca told you that you were going away, did she come to your room?”
“Yes. She let me pick out a few of my favorite dresses, then she packed them herself.”
“Then after—I suppose they were unpacked again.”
“I never wore those dresses again. I never wanted to. Shoved the trunk under my bed.”
“I see.” So there was hope. “Thank you.”
“Moth-eaten by now,” Colleen grumbled as Suzanna went out again. She thought of her favorite white muslin with its blue satin sash and with a sigh got up to walk to the terrace.
Dusk was coming early, she thought. Storm brewing. She could smell it in the wind, see it in the bad-tempered clouds already blocking the sun.
Suzanna raced up the stairs again. The sandwiches would have to wait. She pushed open the door of Colleen’s old room. It too had been consigned to storage, but being smaller than the nursery wasn’t as cramped. The wallpaper, perhaps the same that Bianca had picked for her daughter, was faded and spotted, but Suzanna could still see the delicate pattern of rosebuds and violets.
