Chapter Thirty-One
10 Walter Close, Oxford, England, November 22, 1811
The home of the late Sir Henry Godard and the former Miss Sabine Godard. The weather was exceptionally wet that day. It was impossible to escape the sound of water, dripping from eaves, falling from the sky, spattering onto windows and streets.
Exhaustion sank deep into Sabine’s bones as she stood in the center of her uncle’s study. Rain pelted the windows behind her. The cold that had once seemed so dearly familiar and often missed now chilled her to the bone. She wished she had a warmer cloak. She hadn’t and was fortunate to have the thin cloak she did wear. A warmer cloak was nowhere to be found anywhere in Walter Close. A fire in the fireplace would be a more practical wish, since there wasn’t one of those, either. That, at least, could be remedied.
No one would have faulted her if she had not recognized the room upon following the butler inside. But for the furniture, there was nothing left of Sir Henry Godard. She recognized the desk, but the surface was stripped clean of his papers, books, and personal belongings. His ebony inkstand was gone. So was the brass spyglass he’d kept on the corner of the desk. All his books and papers were gone. The very smell of the room was different.
“Miss Godard,” said the butler, Dawes. He dry-washed his hands. “This is quite extraordinary. We never dreamed…” He paused to clear his throat. “We were told you’d died, miss!”
“Oh, Dawes.” She took one of his hands between hers. “As you can see, I haven’t.”
Dawes had been the butler at 10 Walter Close for as long as she could remember. She had grown up with him and thought of him as eternally middle-aged. Now, for the first time in her life, she saw age in that beloved face; the wrinkles creasing his cheeks, the jowls and gray hair. But that poignant sight wasn’t what broke her heart. Walter Close had been stripped bare. Nothing was left but the furniture.
It seemed Nazim Pasha had succeeded in reaching across an ocean to extract his revenge. He hadn’t lied about his letter to the British authorities in Aleppo. His information had not been ignored. Someone from the consulate in Aleppo had troubled himself to send her uncle’s death notice, and hers, to the Times. Dawes, in fact, had brought it out for her, and it now lay on the bare desk, edges curling with age. A line toward the conclusion of the notice informed any reader who read that far that the philosopher’s niece, Miss Sabine Godard, had perished not long after Sir Henry.
She had been dead for months, as far as anyone in England knew.
She looked around for a chair and at last saw one tucked up against the far wall. Sabine walked there and sat pulling her cloak tight around her. Her skin prickled with cold. She hugged herself and rubbed her hands together for warmth. While she had been fleeing Kilis, her home had been sold out from under her.
“Is there anything left, Dawes?”
He extended his hands in a gesture of futility. “Only what you see with your eyes, miss.”
She’d been traveling for days since the Eos landed at Portsmouth, and she wanted nothing more than to go upstairs to her room and sleep. From Sicily onward, the weather had been rough. Several of the passengers, herself and her two cabinmates included, had suffered from a nearly constant mal de mer. And now, with her stomach convinced she was still on board the Eos, she must accept the stark reality that the home she’d held in her heart for so many weeks no longer existed.
She forced herself to concentrate on what Dawes was saying. “Was everything sold?”
“We’d given you up for lost, miss.” She gave him a look, taking in the black armband he wore, and relented. She did not doubt his sincerity. His astonishment when he’d answered the door to see her standing there in her Turkish garb, not a boy’s costume, but a Turkish woman’s traditional gown, two battered valises in hand, had been genuine. The man had flung his arms around her and hugged her hard. “Sold, miss. Or sent to the rubbish heap.”
“Given me up for lost.” She shook her head. Whatever had been done was not Dawes’s fault, she reminded herself. None of this was anyone’s fault. She had been reported dead, and Godard’s solicitor had acted accordingly.
“As you see, Dawes, I did not succumb to any illness.” She sagged against her. chair. The sea voyage had utterly depleted her. Her entire body ached, and with the slow, bone-jarring journey to Oxford across muddy roads, she was now beyond exhausted.
Dawes looked and sounded miserable. “The house is to be let, miss.”
“Not sold?”
“There is a distant relative. A cousin of a cousin or some such thing.” Dawes shrugged. “They’ve asked that the house be let.”
It occurred to Sabine that she had almost no money left. She’d spent a goodly portion of what Foye had given her on her cloak and in hiring a driver and equipage to get her to Oxford, and then inns along the way. She still had the emeralds Foye had given her, but she was reluctant to convert them to cash as yet, and in any event, was not entirely certain how one went about doing so.
Based upon what she’d found here, she did not expect there would be any ready cash on hand. London and Foye’s banker were much too far away to solve her pressing need for funds. She stood and immediately, her stomach revolted. She was perilously close to being ill. She reached back to clutch the top rail of her chair and willed her belly to settle.
“Miss?” Dawes took a step toward her. “Are you unwell?”
“Tired. Nothing more.” She took a deep breath through her nose. “I have been traveling for days since I arrived in England. Months, if you count the time since I left Iskenderun.”
“Shall I call a doctor?” He touched her arm and helped her to sit down again, and she was grateful for his assistance.
“No,” she said. She leaned against the back of her chair and patted his arm. “Thank you, Dawes, but that will not be necessary.”
What, after all, would a doctor tell her that she did not already suspect? When Foye arrived, at last, he would be so pleased to know.
“You’re white as chalk, miss.”
“I’ll be well enough in a moment. I stood too fast, nothing more. There’s no need to call a doctor.” She held out the clipping and smiled as he took it from her and folded it carefully into a pocket of his coat. “I must rest before I go out again.” She considered Godard’s study and sighed. “I suppose my room has been stripped bare as well?”
“Yes, miss, but I can start a fire and see to fresh linens, and you can rest there good as ever you did. When you wake up, I’ll have tea and a hot meal for you.”
“Thank you. That would be splendid, Dawes.” She walked upstairs with Dawes carrying her valises. Nothing had been spared. Even the paintings were gone. His library had been sold, too. Dawes hurried ahead of her to open the door to her room. As with the rest of the house, her room had been stripped of every sign of her having lived here. All her possessions, gone. Her own books, her artwork, her private notes and papers. Everything gone. She couldn’t help herself; she let out a sob, a sound between grief and outrage.
She was supposed to have come home. Home. Not to an empty shell, but to her home, with her familiar possessions. Her own clothes. Her shoes and hats, and books. And instead, all that made the house home was gone.
There, there, miss.” Dawes patted her on the shoulder. “It’ll all come right. You’ll see.”
Hearing Foye’s own words only made her sob the harder. Foye wouldn’t want to see her give in to weakness, but she didn’t seem able to stop herself. She sat on the bed and cried uncontrollably. Her misery mounted, deepening the hole inside her that she couldn’t reason away.
She’d been trying to deny it for weeks, and now, she simply gave up trying. She missed Foye. She missed her husband with a power that shook her to her core. If he were here, she’d hold him in her arms and never let him go. She searched through her pockets for a handkerchief.
The butler was bending over the hearth, starting the promised fire, but he stood and dug a large handkerchief from his pocket. He shook it out. “There, there, miss. There, there.” He handed her his handkerchief, and she took it gratefully. “You have a good rest, and when you wake up, why, you call for me, and I’ll bring you some nice hot tea and something from the kitchen. That will make everything better. You’ll see.”
She sniffled. “Thank you, Dawes. That’s so very kind of you.”
“You rest now, miss.”
Sabine slept until three and awoke with an empty stomach that propelled her out of bed and to the pull that would let Dawes know she was up. She dug through her valise until she found the comb she’d brought with her from Iskenderun. Between that last rushed visit to the Iskenderun bazaar and Foye’s emptying out his kit for her, she’d had nearly everything she needed for the voyage. She ran the comb through her hair and repinned it. The walnut color had faded completely so that when she looked in her dresser mirror she saw her familiar golden blond hair. Since leaving Turkey, her hair had grown out enough that she could pin it back and expect it would stay out of her face.
She straightened her gown, if that was the correct word for her Turkish garb, and headed for the stairs. Somehow, she would have to find something more suitable to wear. English fashions were quite different from the Turkish, after all.
When she came downstairs with her hair combed and her face freshly washed, Dawes was in the parlor, setting out the food. The simple fare made her wonder if he had raided his own larder. He must have. A house this empty would not have provisions for anyone but the staff left behind.
There was bread and butter, some cold ham, an apple, cored and neatly sliced, and the promised hot tea. Her stomach rumbled. Her appetite these days was inconsistent at best. For example, the thought of eating the ham made her ill. She buttered a thick slice of bread. Oh, divine, divine bread and butter. She poured the tea before it was properly brewed. Strong tea also tended to make her stomach roil.
“I’ll need to call at the bank, Dawes.” Godard’s banker would be able to tell her whether there was any money that could be disbursed to her, and his solicitor would tell her how to regain Godard’s estate. “Would it be possible to hire me a cab?”
“Yes, miss, of course.”
She finished her tea and stared at the leaves in the bottom of her cup. “There is something you should know, Dawes,” she said. She swirled the leaves and upended the cup on her saucer. Not because she believed she would read her future there but because it reminded her of Foye.
She righted her cup and looked at the leaves. What future was there for her? Would the tea leaves tell her how soon Foye would be here? She saw no horseshoes. Nor portents of love or good fortune.
“Yes, miss?”
She looked at Dawes, How strange that she had thought all this time that she would tell no one about Foye until he was here with her. Quite the contrary. She was eager to share her news. She sat, arrested by this sudden and unexpected result of her feelings for Foye.
“Yes, miss?” Dawes said.
She curled her hand around her teacup, threading a finger through the handle. “I was married before I left Iskenderun.”
“Married?”
“To the Marquess of Foye.” Dawes gaped at her, and she grinned at him. “It’s perfectly true. Foye should be here before much longer. There was business he needed to attend to before he could leave Turkey. I came on ahead. He’ll be here any day I’m sure.” If he’d gone aboard the Thunderous, he was two weeks behind her. “We agreed I’d wait for him here in Oxford.”
He bowed to her, smiling at her. “Felicitations, miss—my lady.”
“In the meantime, I must see Godard’s banker.”
The cab was summoned and money paid sufficient for transportation there and back. What she learned was not comforting. The process of reversing the legal disbursement of her uncle’s estate was not a simple one. Walter Close was let, the tenants to take possession within days. The banker took pity on her situation, though, which was a mercy since all the money she had in the world consisted of a handful of Turkish coins and two pounds sterling.
Her next step, it seemed, was for her to go to London and settle things with Foye’s solicitor. And then she would go to Cornwall and wait for her husband’s return.