She did not reply at once, choosing to continue staring at the street below her. When she spoke, her voice was raspy, as if it had been decades since she last spoke.
“I sometimes think this is all a bad dream,” she whispered. “I think that I shall wake up and I shall hear news of Father coming to join us in London like he promised.” She bit her bottom lip as tears rolled down her cheeks. “But he is not coming back. He is gone, and so many miles away from us, at that.”
Oliver reached out to her hand and she started when she felt the comforting touch. Her eyes trailed to meet his and realized that the death of her father had hit him just as hard.
Lord Rowley had been a father to him and Lady Suzanna, too.
“I am right here if you ever need me,” he told her quietly. “My sister and I—we are at your disposal.”
She turned back to the street. “Lady Suzanna must despise me.”
“She most assuredly does not.”
“I have behaved horrendously towards her when all she has shown me is kindness.” Claire shook her head bitterly. “I was a fool.”
Oliver smiled sadly. “No, you are young and my sister has seen more of this world than you have. She understands and she has never held it against you. You are more sister to her than you are a friend.”
“I just wish this would all go away. Everything is so muddled and I have all thesefeelingsI do not know what to do with!”
“Sometimes,” Oliver told her quietly. “Sometimes, it is best to cry and just let it all out.”
She looked up at him and remembered that he, too, had lost his parents at a young age. He, too, knew what it was like to mourn the passing of a loved one.
Like her, his parents had died in a tragic accident and he never got the chance to say goodbye.
“It is all right to mourn,” Oliver murmured. “But never forget that you are not alone, Claire. There are those who love you all around you.”
She nodded and for the first time since she received that letter that fateful afternoon, she allowed somebody else to sit with her and silently share in her pain.
No more words passed between them. Their grief spoke volumes and in a way, Oliver was right—it was best to cry and let it all out.
But she never knew that she could feel better just having him sit beside her without saying a word, as they stared out into the street and the carriages passing by.
* * *
Oliver stared sightlessly at the papers the littered the desk of his study. There were designs for new ships and many other concerns that demanded his attention.
However, his mind was still focused on the young lady who had taken to occupying the window seat that looked out into the street beyond the townhouse.
Sometimes, he would catch her with tears rolling down from her vivid brown eyes. Other times, she would just sit in stony silence, her body held rigidly stiff as if she were keeping all her misery inside her skin, afraid that it would break out and swallow her whole.
Sometimes, his sister would sit with her and she allowed Suzanna’s presence to distract her a little from her grief.
“What do I do, Smithson?” he asked the steward. “Sometimes, I fear she will waste away by the window, staring out into the distance. She has already become a shell of the person I had once known.”
He had expected her to cry and lash out as Trixie had done the first couple of days. The way Claire mourned had been…unnerving, to say the very least.
Over the past few days, her appetite had rapidly declined, although she would oblige him and Suzanna by eating a piece of bread or a bit of fruit, before she refused any more.
Sometimes, she would ask for water or tea.
“I fear that anything I take in will make me sick,” she confessed to him. “My body rejects the very notion of food.”
“Perhaps Lady Claire would enjoy a trip out of the house,” the steward suggested.
“She has refused to even venture out to Rotten Row.”
“A carriage ride might suffice, Your Grace,” Smithson replied. “I did recall that she wanted to see more of London. Perhaps now would be a suitable time for that.”
