Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [25]
“George?” Now she was undeniably frightened. She put out her hand and touched him.
He did not move. There was not even a flutter of the eyelids.
“George!” She was shouting, which was ridiculous. He must be able to hear her; she was shaking him roughly enough to waken anyone.
But he was motionless. Even his chest did not seem to rise and fall.
Appalled, her mind already guessing at the impossible and terrified of it, she ran to the door, wanting to cry out for someone—but whom?
Aunt Vespasia! Of course. Aunt Vespasia was the only one she could trust, the only one who cared for her. She flew down the stairs and across the hall, almost pitching into a startled housemaid, and threw open the morning room door. Vespasia was writing letters.
“Aunt Vespasia!” Her voice was shaking, and was far louder than she had intended. “Aunt Vespasia, George is ill! I can’t wake him! I think—” She took a choking breath. She could not form the words that would make it real.
Vespasia turned from the rosewood desk where her paper and envelopes were spread, her face grave.
“Perhaps we had better go and see,” she said quietly, laying the pen down and rising from the chair. “Come, my dear.”
Heart pounding, scarcely able to swallow for dread of what she would find this time, Emily followed her back up the stairs to the landing with its peony-patterned curtains and bamboo jardinière full of ferns. Vespasia tapped smartly on the dressing room door and, without waiting, opened it and walked over to the bed.
George was exactly as Emily had left him, except that now she saw the white stiffness of his face more clearly and wondered how she could ever have deceived herself into imagining he was alive.
Vespasia touched his neck gently with the backs of her fingers. After a moment she turned to Emily, her face weary, her eyes brimming with sorrow.
“There is nothing we can do, my dear. I think, from my very little knowledge, it was his heart. I daresay he felt little beyond a moment. You had better go to my room, and I will send my maid to help you while Millicent gets you a stiff brandy. I must go and tell the household.”
Emily said nothing. She knew George was dead, and yet she could not grasp it—it was too big. She had experienced death before; her own sister had been murdered by the Cater Street Hangman.2 Everyone was used to loss: smallpox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, all were commonplace, and too frequently bringers of death—as was childbirth. But it was always someone else. There had been no warning of this—George had been so alive!
“Come.” Vespasia put her arm round Emily’s shoulder and without Emily’s realizing it she was walking along the landing again past the ferns and into Vespasia’s room, where her lady’s maid was making the bed.
“Lord Ashworth is dead,” Vespasia said frankly. “He appears to have had a heart attack. Will you stay with Lady Ashworth, please, Digby. I will send someone up with a stiff brandy, and inform the household.”
The maid was an elderly North Country woman, bright of face, broad of hip. In a lifetime of service she had seen many bereavements and suffered a few of her own. She made only the briefest of replies before taking Emily gently by the arm, sitting her on the chaise longue with her feet up, and patting her hand in a fashion which at any other time would have annoyed her profoundly. Now it was human contact and absurdly reassuring, a memory of safety more real than the sunlight in the room, the elaborate Japanese silk screen with its cherry blossom, the lacquer table.
Vespasia left the room and went downstairs slowly. She was filled with grief—most of all for Emily, of whom she was deeply fond, but also for herself. She had known George since he was born. She had watched him through childhood and youth, and she knew