Page 137 of The King's Man
‘Thank you, Nan,’ Jane said. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Peggy, see that Mistress Marsh gets some refreshment before she returns to London.’
The door closed. Jane stooped and lifted Thamsine’s face.
‘Dearest, I’m so sorry.’
Thamsine rose to her feet and, shaking off her sister’s hand, turned to look out at the garden, bright with summer flowers on a perfect, cloudless morning.
She looked down at the paper in her hand and laid it on the windowsill, smoothing out the creases, trying to get some sense of the man who had written her name. So much life, snuffed out like a candle, reduced to a cold corpse. Yet he had been alive when he had written this. Not even twenty-four hours had passed since she had last seen him.
She wondered where he was, what had they done with him. Had they buried him already? She frowned. Should she claim the body and return him to Eveleigh?
She ran down the stairs to the kitchen, where she found Nan just about to leave.
‘Where is he, Nan?’
The girl looked at her. ‘Jem asked where he were. Said you would want a proper burial for him but they said he were already … ’ The girl swallowed. ‘ … Already buried. There in the Tower. Do you want … ?’
Thamsine gasped and recoiled. Even the simple act of laying him to rest had been denied her?
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let him be for now.’
When she was stronger, when the shock had passed, then she would see Thurloe and claim him.
Nan sniffed. ‘They brought his things. They’re at the inn. I didn’t think to bring ’em with me.’
Thamsine looked away as she struggled to regain her composure. She didn’t have the strength to make any decisions.
‘Keep them for me. I will send for them shortly.’ She threw her arms around her friend. ‘Thank you, Nan, thank you for everything.’
After Nan had left, Thamsine returned to Jane’s room. She picked up the letter from the windowsill where she had left it and broke the seal.
‘Dearest Thamsine … ’she read aloud.
Her eyes filling with tears, she slid down to the floor and sat with her back against the wall, trying to decipher the terrible handwriting and make sense of Kit’s last words to her. With her forefinger, she traced every letter.
When she had finished, she pressed the paper to her lips and inhaled deeply, trying to see if some scent of him remained. At least she had this. At least she knew he loved her. It was more than many women had. She thought of those women who had lost the men they loved in the long years of war. What comfort did they have?
‘Thamsine?’ Jane, who had kept her silence as Thamsie read the letter, held out her hand.
Thamsine rose slowly and slid to the floor at her sister’s feet, laying her head against her knee. Jane stroked the hair away from her forehead as if she were a child again, just as she had done when Thamsine’s mother had died.
‘What will you do?’ Jane asked.
With a slight shake of her head, Thamsine replied. ‘I’ll stay with you, Jane. You and the girls are all I have left.’
‘Now is probably not the time to ask but I don’t have much time and I would like to go home, Thamsine, back to Hartley, where we were both happy. I want to die at Hartley, not here where there are so many difficult memories.’
Hartley. Thamsine had not even thought about her family home, and now she felt it calling to her. Jane was right; London held too many difficult memories. At Hartley she could heal.
Thamsine nodded. ‘I would like to do that for you,’ she said. ‘What about Roger?’
Jane’s lips tightened. ‘Roger’s opinion is of no interest to me. Can we leave tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Thamsine echoed. ‘Why not? If a coach can be arranged.’
She leaned against her sister’s knee, drained of life, incapable of moving, thinking, and making any more decisions. She just wanted to sleep, to sleep and forget that the man she loved was dead.
Chapter 48
