Lord Hamlin looked serious as he pulled a chair up beside her. “I’m so happy you’re getting well.”
“Thank you. Frau Geruscha said you brought me back from my ill-fated walk.” Maybe if I pretend I don’t remember anything…“I am grateful to you.”
“I’m thankful to God that he led me to you.” His voice was low and thick. “I don’t believe you would have survived the night in the cold.”
Rose fidgeted with the edge of her blanket, rolling it between her fingers. Where is Frau Geruscha? Lord Rupert comes and she hovers. Lord Hamlin comes and she disappears.
A muscle in Lord Hamlin’s jaw jumped, and he looked away. He stood and walked to the window and stared out, rubbing his palms on his thighs. Then he came back and sat down beside her.
Why did he seem so agitated? Rose thought of her declaration and felt her cheeks flush again.
“I suppose you’ll be fully recovered in a few days.”
“Yes, if God wills it.”
“I should go. But I’m happy to see you’re better.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and put his cloak back on, nodding to her as he left.
He’d had so little to say, yet he’d been so anxious to see her. Such odd behavior, as if he was as nervous about seeing her again as she was about seeing him.
A week later, Frau Geruscha was summoned to Duke Nicolaus’s bedchamber. He was sick with fever and a bad cough. Rose was glad Frau Geruscha didn’t ask her to go. The duke could pierce a person through with one look from underneath his bushy black eyebrows, as she well knew. But Frau Geruscha had insisted more than once that he was a good man.
Frau Geruscha gave him herbs for his cough and fever, but by the next day he was worse. He was having chest pain and chills and couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Frau Geruscha came back from her visit to him with worry lines creasing her forehead.
Wilhelm prayed, attending the chapel prayers every three hours, but still his father worsened. He knelt before the altar as the howling winter wind rattled the windows. Winter was a cursed time of sickness and death. Every year at least one household servant, or someone who worked within the confines of the castle courtyard, died because of the unyielding breath of winter.
God, unless you give us a miracle, my father will die. Please save him. But perhaps he had no right to ask God to save his father too, after He had saved Rose.
He stood, bowed, and crossed himself, then left the chapel to visit his father.
When he reached the duke’s chamber, his mother was standing beside his bed crying. She looked up and said, “Run fetch the priest. Make haste.”
Wilhelm ran out into the hall. He found Georg and Christoff and sent them to get the priest. He sent a servant to summon Osanna and Rupert then waited with his mother. They watched helplessly as his father drew one weak, shuddering breath after another, obviously unconscious. The chapel priest arrived, with Osanna and Rupert on his heels. As soon as last rites were recited, his father breathed his last, one week after he had taken ill.
Wilhelm numbly put his arms around his mother and sister while they cried on his shoulders.
He was now the duke and ruling prince of Hagenheim.
Chapter 24
Rose stood beside Frau Geruscha and watched the coffin pass through the castle courtyard. The cart carrying Duke Nicolaus’s body was flanked by six knights as it made its way to the Hagenheim cathedral for the funeral. Following behind on foot came Duchess Katheryn, Lady Osanna, Lord Rupert, and Lord Hamlin, although he was no longer Lord Hamlin. Now she would have to call him “Your Grace.” If she ever had occasion to speak to him again.
A veil covered the duchess’s face, but Rose could still see her expression, stoic but drawn and sad.
Lady Osanna slipped her hand underneath her veil and wiped her eyes. Lord Rupert looked meek and quiet for once, his hands clasped in front of him. But Rose only had a glance for them. Her focus was on Lord Hamlin—or Duke Wilhelm, as he would now be known, the region’s new leader.
Her heart ached with compassion for him. He held his shoulders up and his head high, but Rose saw the weight of responsibility and grief in his eyes. She longed to throw her arms around him and comfort him. But she could never do that, especially now.
He looked up and caught her eye. Rose’s heart went out to him. She did her best to make her eyes convey that she was sorry, sorry for the burden of grief she knew he was carrying. He gave her a lopsided smile as he passed.
Frau Geruscha put her arm around her shoulders as she quietly wept. She was ashamed to realize that she wasn’t only weeping for Wilhelm, his father, or the rest of his family. She was a seventeen-year-old who didn’t belong anywhere, to anyone. In a few weeks she would lose the man she loved to another woman. And she was a failure at the only job she had ever tried to do.
“Rupert, I need to speak to you alone.” Wilhelm looked at him from beneath lowered eyelids, daring him to refuse.