Page 36 of The Vagabond Viscount
No corpse, no crime. Augusta folded the newspaper up and set it aside on the breakfast table. She wasn’t going to bother with cutting out the article. Flynn had been missing for over five months, so there seemed little point. From the way his father had behaved at the hearing, it was clear he had accepted his son’s death.
And moved on. The heartless blackguard.
Her gaze settled on the letter sitting on the table which had come with the morning’s mail. It was from her friend Serafina in Rome, marked with the stamp of her family’s shipping company, de Luca Shipping.
Serafina’s letter was a small bright point in Augusta’s otherwise dark existence. She picked up the missive and stared at it. Turning it over, she gently smiled at the pretty hand-drawn pictures of flowers on the back. Serafina was always one for decorating her correspondence.
“Is that a letter from Serafina?” asked the duchess from her seat at the head of the table.
Her mother no longer just ate breakfast with her children—she had also taken to sharing the supper table. Augusta’s concerns about the fate of Flynn had been recently surpassed by her worries over the state of her parent’s marriage. Of the long silence that continued to exist between the Duke and Duchess of Mowbray.
Having grown up with two passionate parents, who fought constantly, this change in their behavior was disconcerting. There were days when Augusta would gladly have endured the screaming and yelling that had been the hallmark of her upbringing. Anything other than the void which her mother and father appeared to have fallen into over the past months.
She picked up the letter from her friend, passed it to Victoria, who handed it to their mother. There was nothing particularly private in Serafina’s correspondence. Her carefully crafted words of English covered the usual topics of the weather and fashion. Along with the constant invitation for Augusta to come and visit her in Rome.
The duchess snapped open the wax seal of the missive but didn’t give it back to Augusta. She spent the next few minutes humming softly to herself while she read Serafina’s letter. When she was finished, she folded it back up and set it on the table.
“Serafina does write a lovely letter. And it was particularly nice of her to pen a quick hello to Gideon at the bottom of the third page. I am sure he will greatly appreciate her kind regards. I have a suspicion that he took a bit of a shining to Serafina during her time with us last year,” said Lady Anne.
Augusta and Victoria exchanged disappointed glances. They had failed in their attempts to play matchmaker with their brother and the beautiful Serafina de Luca during her visit to London the previous year. The marquis had never treated their houseguest any different to that of being just a friend. If Gideon had taken a shining to Serafina, he hadn’t acted upon it. He had stood alongside Augusta on the dockside as the ship which took her friend back to Italy had sailed away.
What a clod. Any other man would have snapped Serafina up and made her his wife.
It was slowly becoming clear to her that the Kembal siblings were somehow cursed when it came to finding love. Or when they did indeed find it, it was cruelly snatched away from them.
Grief was a heavy burden, especially when she had to keep much of it to herself. Victoria had been her one touchstone of support. There were still those surreal moments, when she was out walking the streets of London, that Augusta would suddenly stop, having thought she had caught a glimpse of Flynn out of the corner of her eye. Her heart would skip a beat, and her pulse would begin to race as desperate expectation took hold.
But every time she looked closer, she realized she was mistaken. Her broken heart was finding it hard to let go.
“And Serafina asked when you are coming to Rome,” noted the duchess.
Augusta picked up her toast and took a bite. It was cold, but at least the crunch of bread in her mouth let her know she was still alive. Mourning Flynn had taken her through various stages of pain and denial. This latest phase had her wallowing in the dark depths of depression. Of wondering if she would ever be happy again.
Time is meant to heal the heart, but I don’t think I shall ever be over the loss of him.
Serafina’s invitation to visit hadn’t ever been more than a postscript in her letters. Augusta had written much the same in her regular replies, asking her friend to return to London someday.
“Yes, she is generous with her offer,” she replied absentmindedly.
“We should go.”
It took a second or two for her mother’s words to filter through Augusta’s early morning haze. She snapped to attention, her gaze going straight to her mother. She mustn’t have heard Lady Anne correctly.
“What? I mean, I beg your pardon?” The note of confusion clear in her voice.
The duchess rose from her seat and came around to where Augusta sat. “We should go to Rome. You and me. We women are condemned to live such small lives. I think it’s high time we went to see the world. Well, Rome at least. Think of it as our own small version of the gentleman’s grand European tour.”
Most days simply getting out of bed was a struggle for Augusta, so the thought of getting on board a ship and sailing all the way to Italy was something she hadn’t ever seriously considered. It seemed an impossibility.
Lady Anne bent and took hold of her hand. “I am sure that soon you will find a lovely nobleman to marry. He will wish you to settle down and give him a family. I am just saying that you owe it to yourself to have lived a little before then. Let’s go and visit Serafina. Be brave, my dear girl.”
She lifted her head and met her mother’s gaze. Excitement danced in the duchess’s eyes.
I can’t believe she is serious about this.
The way her mother held her hand so tightly, it was clear that she was indeed earnest in her plea for them to leave England and travel to Rome.
“Well, truth be told, I have always wanted to see Palazzo Lazio. The way Serafina talked about it and how she described the magnificent artwork and sculptures was quite appealing,” replied Augusta.
