12. Chapter 12

Nemity bowed her head, forcing a breath through the impossibly large lump in her throat. Attempting with all her might to hold the tears at bay.

She didn't want to do this. Didn't want to face another person dying in front of her. The tortured breaths. Wheezed words.

She'd been in here for three hours now, and knew that Susannah had been hanging on until Nemity had appeared. And now that she had, Susannah could give up the ghost.

Another piece of Nemity's heart being ripped out and set to flames.

She forced a smile onto her face, squeezing Susannah's limp hand in between her palms as she lifted her look to her dearest friend. The one she'd played knight and damsel with at Springfell in the gardens. The one that she couldn't wait to report her first kiss to. The one that had suffered with her through all the dancing lessons by old Miss Fewnhall, who'd slapped their heads with a riding crop each time they stepped out of turn.

Their friendship was forged in youth, bonding them for life by the hours spent laughing at the absurdity of the world they lived in.

Susannah had found her match during their first season together, and had loved her husband more than anything. Then he died a year ago in a carriage accident.

Since then, the doctor had said Susannah was suffering from consumption. Nemity knew it was a broken heart that was tearing her friend away to the grave.

"You can still live through this." A plea from Nemity's lips, even if she knew it was futile.

"Hush." Susannah's gravelly voice croaked out with a breath that came from her throat, not her lungs. "Promise me…" Six labored breaths, a rattle coming with each one, made her sallow cheeks press in and out. Such beauty reduced to this. Skin and bones and lungs that didn't work. "You didn't promise me."

"But their Aunt Agnes will never allow it."

"Promise me." The sudden barked shout from Susannah made Nemity jump. With more strength than should have been possible, Susannah's voice came harsh. "Lady Agnes is a vicious hag—you know it. Promise me you will find a way."

Nemity nodded. "I will. I will find a way. I swear it."

Susannah nodded, her head bobbing up and down on the pillow. "Thank you."

The last word drifted off, and her eyes closed.

She got the promise she needed from Nemity, and she was done.

Gone from this earth.

Nemity sat there in the room, still holding her friend's hand for long minutes, letting the tears come silently. Come in a torrent of grief.

For what was to come, it would be the only moments of heartbreak she would be allowed to feel, so she sank into the purgatory of it, letting it swallow her from head to toe.

Every year, her life seemed to get lonelier and lonelier.

Perhaps that was the price of living as she did. No compromises meant loneliness.

She wasn't sure in that moment if it was all worth it. Or maybe it was, for she would leave no one behind that would grieve her. And truly, that would be a gift in itself.

Her tears finally ceased and she took several more minutes to dry her face. She could do nothing about the soaked collar of her dress, but it was dark so didn't show wetness and would dry on its own time.

Her limbs and her mind numb, she peeled her fingers away from Susannah's hand.

Now was the hardest part.

Each step vibrating a shockwave through her chest, she made it down the stairs of Susannah's London townhouse.

There.

Voices. Not hushed like every word the servants said in this home.

She moved to the drawing room, pausing at the entrance.

Callum had brought her here, insisting he would stay until she was ready to go.

He had to be exhausted.

Days it had taken to get to London. Time and again, she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder or against his chest when he'd curled his arm around her. Every time she'd woken up, he was awake, alert, ever ready to deflect danger coming her way. Even though in the mail coach there had only been two old widows that were sisters and an older gentleman that looked like a mill worker, for how mangled his hands were with chips of stone embedded under the skin. None of them a threat to her or Callum, even if he did doze off.

She'd hoped he would take this time to nap. There wasn't any danger here in Susannah's house.

But no.

He was sitting on the floor, chatting with Susannah's two young children, two and four years old.

Nemity watched them from her angle at the doorway where she could see the children but Callum couldn't see her.

Even though he had to be dead tired, he was the epitome of patience with them, his attention full on them every time one of them was talking. Animated in his responses and questions, never mind that the younger one, Jacob, talked in two-word sentences at most.

As Jacob hung off Callum's shoulder, Georgette, the four-year-old, was showing Callum a drawing she had made, pointing out all the animals she'd seen at the menagerie. The drawing full of squiggles and lines and curves with very little likeness to them, but every time she would point to a blob of lines and name an animal, Callum would exclaim with much enthusiasm, "Yes, I can see it quite clearly. That is a fine drawing."

Nemity wondered who had taken them to the menagerie. Susannah had been churning through nannies monthly this past year, ever since her husband had died last summer and she had fallen ill.

Probably Miss Brooks, Susannah's housekeeper. A salty woman, she'd worked for Susannah's family for years.

Nemity stepped into the drawing room, setting a smile on her face. "I see you two sprites have found the big squishable bear I have brought you."

Both Jacob and Georgette looked up from Callum to her. Squeals erupted from both of them as they scrambled off of Callum and rushed to her skirts.

She'd spent so much time with these two in the past year, she'd been more their mother than Susannah was able to be.

She bent down as their little feet thudded across the floor and they threw themselves into her arms. She tumbled over backward onto the floor as they laughed, landing on top of her.

Laughter shook her and her stomach muscles strained as she sat up with the weight of both of them on her chest.

She looked up to Callum who had stood. "Thank you for entertaining them. You may just be a soft one after all."

He bristled, but the slightest smile quirked the edges of his lips. "We've been through this. I have no soft side."

"I beg to differ."

Before he could argue more, she looked down at the children leaning into her.

She gave them each a big kiss and a tight squeeze. "It is so good to see you, my darlings. Tell me, are you well? You have been paying mind to Miss Brooks like I asked you to?"

Georgette nodded, her face suddenly serious. "Yes, we have. Jacob was being naughty, but I told him not to be."

Nemity gave her comment the solemnity it required. "That is very responsible of you. I am proud of you."

She set both of them off her lap and moved to her feet, but her legs stayed bent as she balanced on her heels so she was still close to eye level with them.

"Do you two remember what I told you about your mama?"

Georgette stilled for a moment, her brown eyes going huge, and then she nodded. Jacob just stared at Nemity, his eyes perplexed like he was supposed to be doing something but he didn't know what.

Nemity rubbed her palm along the side of Georgette's deep brown curls. "It is time to go see her." She stood and held her hands down to each of them. "Come with me?"

They both took a hand and she turned toward the doorway, walking out into the hallway.

She couldn't look at Callum. Not when merely seeing his face and the pity in his eyes would undo her. She couldn't afford to crumble in front of the children.

This next half hour had to happen.

The next days had to happen.

And she was the only one that could see it through.

Her legs numb, knowing on their own where she needed to go, she trudged up the stairs, clutching two tiny hands. Numb legs delivering her to more heartache.

It was painful, the whole of it.

Pain she wouldn't allow herself to feel. Instead, letting the numbness in her legs surge upward, filling her body until the whole of her was just going through the motions.

Jacob didn't want to go into the room. He stood by the door, turned away. Georgette moved in with Nemity at her side and leaned over the bed to her mama, touched her cheek, then rubbed it.

When Susannah didn't awaken, Georgette stepped back with a gasp and turned into Nemity's skirts, hiding her face deep in the folds.

It was enough that they knew. Enough that they saw Susannah one last time.

She stood with them in the room for some minutes, no one moving. Tears slipping down cheeks.

But what was the appropriate time to stand over the dead? To stand over someone that had a piece of your heart? To stand over one's mother that was no longer alive to mother? Five minutes? Five hours?

Jacob started twisting in place and Nemity guessed that was the clue she needed. If she could have remembered her own father dying when she was three, she would have experience to draw upon for how deeply a child would feel something like this. Experience with what she needed to do to help them.

As it was, she was walking through this blind.

She ushered the two of them out of Susannah's room and back down to the drawing room where Callum stood at the window, staring out into the street below. She sat and then pulled both of them onto her lap.

"I have a question for you two."

Two identical sets of brown eyes looked up at her, blinking, silent.

"Do you want to sleep in your beds tonight or do you want to come home to my house and sleep in my bed with me?"

"Can we come with you, Auntie Nemmy?" Georgette asked right away. Jacob glanced to his sister and then nodded his head, looking to Nemity.

"Of course, darling. You come with me and we will all snuggle under the covers together and be sad together. How does that sound?"

Georgette nodded, tears welling once more in her eyes.

Nemity's heart shattered all over again.

In reality, Georgette was young enough that she would likely never remember much of her mother. Days would pass. Then years. And she would know the fact that her mother died, but she wouldn't truly remember her.

Still, it hurt like a flaming arrow going straight through her chest to see both of these cherub faces looking up at her like their world had just collapsed.

Which it had.

She would do anything to take their pain away. And that meant not shedding one tear in front of them.

"Good." She hugged both of them. "Then you will come with me. That is how it will be."

She looked up to see Callum staring at her. His head angled ever so slightly to the side as he did when he was concentrating.

Wary curiosity palpitated in his silver-grey eyes.

"Will you please tell Miss Brooks to gather some of the children's things so they can come with me? I imagine she is below in the kitchens."

Callum's lips pursed for a second as though he was about to say something, but then he nodded and disappeared out of the room.

Thank the heavens.

Because with the way he was staring at her, she was in no mood to answer any of his questions.

Of which, she was sure there were plenty.