Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [10]
Grace saw him coming towards her and thought of running away, but then realised she lacked both the spirit and energy. Besides, she told herself, no one knew why she was at the cemetery or what she’d done; she’d paid her fare and had as much right to be there as all the other mourners.
‘Can I help? Are you injured?’ James spoke to her as gently as possible, thinking that she might take fright and bolt if he were too direct or too loud. She looked to be about thirteen, he thought, and was pale with a tragic and beautiful face. Her clothes, although deeply unfashionable, looked as if they’d once been of good quality, but he could see they were darned, patched and almost worn through in parts.
Grace sat down on a mossy bank, feeling as weak as a kitten. ‘It’s nothing, sir, I thank you. I merely tripped on that fork.’
‘But you’re hurt!’ James protested.
Grace shook her head, covering her ankle carefully. ‘The injury is slight. It was my own fault.’
‘I say it was the fault of the Brookwood gardeners!’ James said. ‘But show me your ankle.’
‘It hardly hurts at all,’ Grace protested, tucking her skirts so that they went right over her feet and hid her shabby shoes from him. ‘I . . . I just want to sit here a little while and recover myself.’
‘Then may I sit beside you?’ James asked. ‘For I’ve heard enough today about the vale of death, the wrath of God and the land of everlasting sleep, and ’twas not at all what my sister was about. Besides, I do not want to be there the moment when her coffin is lowered into the ground.’
‘No.’ Grace shook her head, for she’d not wanted to see those last moments either. ‘It’s your sister being buried today?’ she asked timidly.
James nodded and sat down beside her. ‘Susannah.’ He sighed. ‘She was a merry girl, always laughing – that’s how I want to remember her. But look at all this!’ He indicated the gloomy scene of black-cloaked mutes and top-hatted mourners before them. ‘All these plumes and pall-bearers, feathermen and coachmen! All the talk of hearses and horses and how long we should wear mourning clothes – that is not Susannah! My father seeks to build an Egyptian mausoleum over her body and have an eternal flame burning, but none of that will bring her back.’
They were both silent for a while, then James said, ‘But I do beg your pardon. Are you here for a funeral, too?’
Grace shook her head. ‘I merely came to tend my . . . my mother’s grave.’
‘That’s sad. But ’tis a beautiful place for her to be at rest. The statuary is very fine.’
Grace nodded in agreement, for already she’d seen tombs with wonderful marble angels and cherubs, stone anchors for old sailing men, a fine riderless horse for a dead jockey and even a grand piano on the tomb of a musician.
‘My father intends to have himself and my mother interred in the Egyptian tomb in due course, and then myself and my brothers.’ He paused. ‘But if it doesn’t grieve you too much to speak of it, tell me when your mother passed away.’
‘A long while back – near ten years,’ Grace said, speaking truthfully now.
‘But you still have a father to care for you?’
Grace shook her head. ‘Our father died some years before Mama,’ she said, for this was what she believed, although Lily still thought what Mama had always told them: that Papa had gone off to seek his fortune and would return one day.
‘So you are an orphan?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Grace felt rather shy speaking to him, for although she had conversed with young gentlemen before, it had only ever been to ask them to buy cresses from her. ‘I live with my sister and we survive quite well,’ she went on, not wanting him to think she was destitute.
‘But how did you manage after your mother died? You must have been scarce more than babes in arms.’
‘I was about five and my sister was six,’ Grace said. ‘We were taken into an orphanage which was run by a kindly woman and we were quite happy there.’
‘And then . . . ?’
‘Then when I was fourteen we were taken