“Her parents will be heartbroken.” Glorianna knew only too well how they would feel, having lost her son too.
“At least they’ll have the infant to console them, once you tell them—if they’re willing to accept her,” the doctor said kindly. It was clear to him now that the baby was illegitimate, and the countess said nothing to correct him. It didn’t matter what he thought, only that the press didn’t get hold of the story before she could tell the king and queen face-to-face about the baby, and that Charlotte and Henry had been married. Other than the vicar, she was the only one who knew now. And the vicar knew nothing of Charlotte’s true identity. Only Glorianna did. To everyone else, she was Charlotte White. The doctor had guessed that the baby’s father was the countess’s son, and now the baby was an orphan, with both its parents dead.
“I want to wait until I see Charlotte’s parents, to explain the entire matter to them. For now, all they need to know is that they’ve lost their daughter. They don’t need to know the true reason why immediately. It won’t change anything.” She spoke with the authority of her rank, trying to make the best of a terrible situation.
“Of course, your ladyship, whatever you think best.” He had a death certificate in his medical bag, and filled it out listing pneumonia with complications from asthma as the cause of death, as she had suggested. He promised to register it at the county record office, and called the funeral home for her. He wanted to do all he could to help.
Looking dignified and grief-stricken, the countess told Lucy, the housekeeper, and the maids of Charlotte’s death. Lucy looked shocked as tears filled her eyes, and the maids burst into tears and went back to the kitchen, and Lucy joined them. None of them had expected Charlotte to die. She was so young and healthy, despite her size.
The funeral parlor came to get Charlotte an hour later, and Glorianna kissed Charlotte before they took her away. Lucy stood in the hall crying with the maids, as they carried Charlotte out on a stretcher, covered with a black cloth. The countess stood in the library alone afterward and poured herself a glass of brandy with shaking hands, before she dialed the number she had for emergencies at Buckingham Palace, and asked for the queen’s secretary. A man came on the line after she said her name. She hadn’t thought to call Charles Williams, whom she had met when he’d brought Charlotte to them. It seemed more appropriate to call the queen’s secretary in this instance, than the king’s. She had corresponded with Charlotte’s mother but never her father. She explained that it had all happened very quickly. Charlotte had caught a bad cold, which set off her asthma. It had turned to pneumonia within a day, she had been seen by the doctor, and before they had a chance to call the palace, she had a massive asthma attack and succumbed. The countess sounded distraught herself, and offered her deep condolences to the king and queen, and Charlotte’s sisters. She offered to bury her in their small cemetery on the estate for the time being, until the royal family had a chance to bring her home for burial, most likely after the war.
The secretary thanked her, and promised to call her after he discussed it with the family, and would inform her of their wishes. Charlotte had died just weeks before her eighteenth birthday. No one had expected this. Other than her asthma, she was a vital, healthy young woman. And Glorianna had fully expected her to withstand the rigors of childbirth, not bleed to death.
She mentioned to the queen’s secretary as a detail at the end of the conversation that they would pack all her belongings to return to the palace, and were willing to stable her horse until they came for him with everything else. The secretary thanked her and they hung up. He had a grim task to face, breaking the news to the royal family that Princess Charlotte was dead.
The only consolation for Glorianna was that she knew that Charlotte’s reputation, and Henry’s, were safe. There would be no scandal about the baby, a rushed marriage, two young people who had been in love and foolish. She would tell Charlotte’s parents the whole story when she saw them, but it wasn’t a story she wished to tell them in a letter or on the phone. Once they knew it all, she would show them the baby, and respect whatever they wished to do about her, let them take her or care for her herself. But for now, the baby was safe in Yorkshire, with her, until the royal family was ready to acknowledge her existence and welcome her.
The countess went to see her a few minutes later in the makeshift nursery. She sat holding her as she slept peacefully. A wet nurse had already been arranged from one of the farms. The housekeeper had taken care of it. As she held her, the countess mourned the infant’s mother, who had brought sunshine to their lives for a year, and had loved her son. And thanks to Charlotte, part of Henry would remain. She was grateful for that. She couldn’t believe that Charlotte was gone now too, and she knew that, like Henry, Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte would live on forever in this child, who was her flesh and blood too. The countess felt a powerful bond with the helpless infant, Princess Anne Louise, named by her mother before she died. Glorianna hoped that fate would be kinder to her in the future than it had been so far, with no parents now to love her. She had come into the world in sorrow, not in joy.