Page 2 of Liaison with the Champagne Count
‘We go back to Mrs Parnaby’s. She has clothes and rooms for us.’ Emma could manage to think that far but no farther. Her mind kept running up against one inescapable fact: Garrett was dead. The life they’d built together was gone. The truth was, she didn’tknowwhat came next and for the moment, she could not rouse herself to care.
Four days later, she was still numb to the realisation. ‘We’re widows now. Widows before the age of thirty,’ Fleur ground out as she paced before Mrs Parnaby’s fireplace, anger fuelling her steps and her words as Emma did the math: they’d been widows for ninety-six hours, or five thousand, seven hundred and sixty minutes. Numbers gave her comfort the way anger kept Fleur upright. Fleur had gone out each day to assist in the recovery effort, working until dark, coming home exhausted. Emma had asked her not to go out today, citing that they needed to make plans for departure. The roads were passable now, the rains and the river subsided enough to make travel decent. Her plea had been a bit of subterfuge. Theydidneed to talk, but more than that, Emma was worried about Fleur. She was driving herself too hard, not taking time for her grief, but burying it.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Antonia said softly from her chair by the window. ‘I always knew Keir would go before me. With the difference in ages, it was bound to happen. But I thought it would be old age, not like this, not so sudden with no chance to say goodbye.’
Emma nodded, unable to form the words to respond. The three men had been lifelong friends, long before they’d met their wives, navigating London together as newcomers in their twenties and later as established, savvy businessmen: Garrett the canny investor, Adam the intrepid newspaperman, and Keir the emporium magnate. Adam and Keir had already been married when she and Garret wed. She had liked Garrett’s friends immediately and she’d liked their wives, women her age, even better. What a group they’d all made—three men in their fifties with their young brides. Now that life was gone. Quite literally washed away. Emma had replayed her final moments with Garrett ceaselessly in her mind—the kiss on his cheek, the whispered ‘I love you’ as he’d said good-night.
‘This isexactlywhat Adam feared would happen,’ Fleur exclaimed abruptly from the fireplace. ‘It’s why Garrett brought him along, to ferret out the truth about the reservoir’s engineering.’ Emma nodded. Garrett had told her there’d been rumours the reservoir was damaged. Disaster wasn’t an issue of if, but when. But nothing was certain and of course the engineers and those responsible weren’t likely to confess to construction shortcuts without some manoeuvring. Garrett had not been keen about a joint venture on the mill without knowing for sure what the environmental circumstances were like. His instincts had been unfortunately right.
Emma split her gaze between Antonia and Fleur. ‘I think it’s time to go. There’s nothing more we can do here.’ Amid the numbness there was growing awareness of all that demanded her attention in the wake of Garrett’s passing. There would be paperwork to settle, numbers that would need tallying. Already, her mind was hungering for the peace of the familiar columns. There was Garrett’s business affairs to oversee, and there would be his family to deal with. She’d managed to send a note to his sons regarding their father’s demise but there was a will to be read, and there would be...upheaval. Dealing with his family would be distasteful but it had to be done. The sooner the better. She had no illusions his sons would be kind to her or offer her any more than whatever Garrett had set aside for her. Just the chateau. That was all she wanted, in truth. If they would just let her have that, she would be content. She began to calculate the odds.
Antonia exhaled a long, shaky breath. ‘I need to go home as well and see how things stand. Keir was in the midst of restoring an old building in London. He had plans to turn it into a department store, like the ones in France.’ Antonia drew another shaky breath. ‘I think I will finish it for him. I think it’s what I must do, although I’m not sure how. I’ll figure it out as I go.’ She looked to Fleur. ‘Shall we all travel together as far as London? It’s a long train ride from West Yorkshire when one is on their own.’
Fleur didn’t meet their eyes for a moment and Emma felt her stomach drop. She knew before Fleur spoke she’d refuse. ‘No. I think I’ll stay and finish the investigation Adam began. There are people to help and justice to serve. People deserve to know if this tragedy was a natural disaster or a manmade one.’
Emma chose her words carefully. ‘Do you think that’s wise, Fleur? If it is manmade, there will be people who won’t appreciate prying, particularly if it’s a woman doing it. You should think twice before putting yourself in danger.’ Especially if her friend might need to be thinking for two.
‘I don’t care,’ Fleur snapped. ‘If Adam died because of carelessness, someonewillpay for that. I will see to it, and I will see to it that such recklessness isn’t allowed to happen again.’
‘And Adam’s child?’ Emma decided to brazen it out. ‘Would you be reckless with his child?’ She was admittedly a bit jealous that Fleur might have one last piece of Adam while she had nothing of Garrett’s. After the will was read and his family had their say, she might have even less. Garrett had been her buffer.
Fleur shook her head, her voice softer when she spoke, the earlier anger absent. ‘I do not know if there is a child. It is too soon.’ But not too soon to hope, Emma thought privately. Fleur must suspect there was a chance.
‘Just be careful, dear friend. I do not want anything to happen to you.’ Emma rose and went to her. Antonia joined her and they encircled each other with their arms, their heads bent together.
‘We’re widows now.’Emma echoed Fleur’s words softly.
Ninety-six hours and counting.
There would be enormous change for each of them over the next few months, the loss of their husbands was just the beginning. Widows lost more than husbands. Society did not make life pleasant for those without husbands even in this new, brave world where women were demanding their due. But amid the chaos of change she could depend on two things: the friendship of the women who stood with her now, and the realisation that from here on out nothing in her life would ever be the same again.
Chapter One
February 19th, 1852
Everything depended on the will. Emma literally sat on the edge of her chair in the drawing room of Oakwood, aware that this was her space no longer. She had minutes left as its mistress. She swallowed to dislodge the lump in her throat that formed at the thought. The comfortable room she’d carefully cultivated for herself and Garrett, where they’d spent relaxed evenings entertaining their friends, felt more like an enemy camp on this grey February afternoon than a familiar, comforting space. Her foes had already invaded. Garrett’s sons, Robert and Steven, sat alert and watchful on the blue-and-cream-striped upholstery of the matched chairs by the fire, their wives perched nearby on the settee, their avaricious eyes pricing the room and its contents, waiting to strip it bare. The two women reminded her of cats stalking a mouse, bodies wound tight waiting to spring.
There would be little she could do to stop them. She’d resigned herself to the carnage. The law required she stand by and watch them plunder her life. Robert was the oldest. He’d get the baronetcy and Oakwood. His wife, Estelle—the granddaughter of a viscount—had already made a comment about selling off the items and redecorating. Estelle had not even pretended to be discreet about it, the implication obvious that a gin heiress’s tastes were not up to par for a baronet.
The butler appeared at the doorway to the drawing room and cleared his throat. ‘Sir Robert.’ Robert looked up immediately. He’d taken well to the honorific that now marked his title, a title he’d done nothing to earn except to be born to a man who’d earned it for him. Now Robert would benefit from those efforts. Garrett had never thought of the title as his, but as the family’s, something he’d been able to add to the legacy he’d pass on. That was the difference between Garrett and his entitled sons. ‘Mr Lake is here. Shall I show him in?’
Robert gave a curt, almost pompous nod. Emma curled her fingers into the depths of the handkerchief she clutched in her lap. So it began. The next few minutes would determine what the shape of her future would look like. Would she live that life of a daughter dependent on her family, once more supported by her father’s gin fortune? As a woman of modest means required to live alone and quietly in order to maintain her independence? Or would she have the financial latitude to remake her life somewhere else? Her worry, which had kept her awake several nights in a row since her return from Holmfirth, surged anew, twisting her stomach, making her glad she’d not eaten lunch. Surely, Garrett would not leave her stranded. He’d loved her. One did not abandon those they loved, not even in death. Emma clung doggedly to that hope as assuredly as Aner Bailey had clung to his timber amid the raging waters of the River Holme.
Yet doubt flooded her. Garrett had never spoken to her of arrangements in case of his passing. He’d only been in his fifties and in robust good health. Perhaps he’d felt there was no need and she’d foolishly allowed it. Like Antonia, she’d known theoretically what the reality was in marrying a much older man. But that had been a decade or two away when they’d married. Twenty years had seemed like a lifetime to a twenty-one-year-old bride in the throes of new love. If she had never bargained on losing Garrett to anything other than very old age, perhaps he hadn’t either. Perhaps he’d thought he had time—time to say goodbye, time to plan for her.
Stop it, she scolded herself.You are strong. There is nothing Robert can say or do that can truly hurt you. He is a spoiled boy, pampered by his mother who has grown into a selfish adult.
Her eyes met Robert’s gaze evenly, firmly, as she squared her shoulders while introductions were made and condolences murmured. She’d prefer that Garrett had seen to her protection but she could protect herself. A gin heiress was no sheltered debutante. She’d grown up learning her father’s business and staring down women who thought she was less than they for being able to add ledgers and manage accounts, for navigating a man’s world.
You faced down a ballroom of catty debutantes when Amelia St James told anyone who would listen the Earl of Redmond was only dancing with you for a peek at your father’s fortune.
Whatever happened here, she would be fine on a functional level. Her heart was a different matter, but today was not for emotions, it was for practicalities. She had to survive this before she could start to put herself back together.
Mr Lake took a seat at the centre of the room with Robert on his left and she on his right. He was a spare man with a mop of messy grey hair that had probably started the morning combed back in preparation for the occasion but was already tousled. He wore the decent black suit of the country solicitor, and his eyes were tired as he put on his eyeglasses. Tired but kind perhaps? Sympathetic? Emma tried to read him as he glanced in her direction. She was usually a good judge of character. Her father had relied on that sense over several business dinners with new clients. The question was, what did Mr Lake already know? Had there been no provision for her? Was that why he looked at her with sympathy? The knot in her stomach tied itself tighter. Or perhaps it was empathy because she had to deal with the pompous asses that were Robert and Steven Luce?
Mr Lake efficiently got business under way, perhaps reading the room aright. This was the last task to complete the process of dying and Garrett’s sons were eager to get on with living. Their father had been buried yesterday in a ceremony far larger than what Garrett would have preferred but what his sons had demanded. Where Garrett had been a behind the scenes man, his sons were showmen with a flair for the dramatic, something else they’d inherited from their mother, and right now those sons were keen on the world knowing how bereft they were over the loss of their father.
The will was unmistakably Garrett’s, skirting the temptations of a flowery introduction and reflections of the lived life. Of course, he hadn’t known he was going to die. Still, she didn’t think it would have changed. She’d recognise that writing style anywhere; direct, straightforward like the man himself. Even his marriage proposal had been direct, honest if not romantic.
