For the next six weeks, their days were spent waiting for letters from him, which were brief and to the point. He said the training was arduous and he was exhausted every night, but he was well and hoped they were too. He wrote to Charlotte separately and told her how much he loved her, and how happy he was to be her husband. She put his letters in a drawer tied with a ribbon, and his parents shared the letters they’d had from him. They were proud to have a son serving the country. At the end of his training, he was allowed to come home for two days, before he shipped out. He still had no idea where he was going, and couldn’t have told them anyway.
Henry looked tall and handsome in his uniform when he came home on leave. His hair was short, and had been shaved at the beginning of his training, he had trimmed down, his shoulders looked broader, and every moment he spent with them was precious. He managed to share himself equally with his parents and his wife, and even spent a few minutes chatting with Lucy, and asked her to take care of Charlotte, which stung. Henry had no idea that Lucy still cherished romantic fantasies about him. She hid them well.
They shared an early Christmas with him, and his mother gave him a few things he could take with him. Then forty hours after he’d arrived, he was gone. Charlotte stood freezing on the platform in frigid weather, watching him go. His eyes never left hers as the train pulled out, and she watched him until he was only a tiny speck in uniform, and then she got in the car and went home with his parents. Charlotte was four months pregnant by then, and it was starting to show, but it didn’t really matter since no one knew who she was, and she hardly ever left Ainsleigh Hall. All they could do now was wait for his letters and pray that he was alive and well. Charlotte never mentioned the pregnancy to Lucy and the others, but they could see it now.
Christmas was quiet and dismal without him a few weeks after he left. Charlotte had three letters from him in January, and she guessed that he was somewhere in Italy or North Africa, but he couldn’t say, and there were several lines blacked out by the censors when he said too much. The days seemed interminable without him, and Charlotte was homesick for her family now too. Yorkshire suddenly seemed a long way from home. And as her pregnancy became more pronounced, she missed her mother and sisters, although they knew nothing of what was happening to her. Only Henry spoke of their baby in his letters, and then in the beginning of February, his letters stopped. His father suggested that his division was probably on the move from one location to another and reassured his wife and Charlotte that the letters would start again soon. They believed him for several weeks, and then the dreaded telegram came, informing them that Henry had died a hero’s death, in battle with the enemy. They regretted that it was impossible to bring his body home. He had died and his body had been lost at Peter Beach in the Battle of Anzio. The War Office extended their sincere sympathy to his parents. His father was inconsolable, and took to his bed immediately. Charlotte felt sick when she read the telegram again and again, and it sank in that her baby would have no father. She was bereft. She reported his death to her parents, and they wrote a personal letter of condolence to the earl and countess.
The earl’s health deteriorated from the moment Henry died. He’d had a bad cough for weeks, which rapidly turned into pneumonia, and three weeks after they learned of his son’s death, George Hemmings died too. They were all in shock, with one death on the heels of the other. It left the earl’s widow and Henry’s to console each other. Glorianna Hemmings had lost a husband and a son, and Charlotte her husband and the father of her unborn child. She was less than two months from her due date when her father-in-law died at the end of March, and a widow at seventeen when Henry died in February. Lucy heard her sobbing in her bed at night, and Charlotte looked ravaged. She wrote to her parents of the countess’s grief and how sad they all were, but it never occurred to them and she never said that she was grieving for Henry too, and that he had been her husband and the father of her unborn baby. It infuriated Lucy that the countess was aware of the baby and didn’t seem to mind. She was even pleased about it.
* * *
—
“You’ll be going home in a few months, after you have the baby, when you turn eighteen,” her mother-in-law said sadly one night. She couldn’t imagine life without Charlotte now. They sat together by the fire every evening, while she told her stories of Henry’s childhood. Glorianna had a distant look in her eye most of the time now, remembering the two men she had lost. Waiting for Henry’s child to be born was the only ray of sunshine in their lives. And alone in her room, Lucy cried for Henry too. It was a time of loss and sorrow for them all. The countess moved Charlotte to a bedroom close to her own as the due date approached.
The weather warmed slightly in late April, just before Charlotte’s due date in May. Buds began to appear in the countess’s garden. She and Lucy had worked hard to clear away the weeds, and plant some flowers, which were the first sign of spring. Charlotte put them in vases on the table when they had dinner, trying to cheer them all up. All she could think about now was Henry and their fatherless child. He had been much too young to die. It seemed so pointless. She read his letters to her every night.
The Germans had increased their air raids since January, and the bombing of London was severe again. Charlotte wondered if her parents would still let her come home even after her eighteenth birthday, since the bombing was worse again. For once, although she missed her parents, she was glad not to be in London, so her baby could be born in the peaceful Yorkshire countryside, without bombs falling every night among air raid sirens. And in their letters, her parents and sisters sounded busy and anxious about the war. They were relieved that she was safe. But at her end, Charlotte was sad not to be able to share the progress of her pregnancy with her mother and sisters, although her mother-in-law was very kind. She missed her own mother terribly and clung to Henry’s as the only mother at hand.
It was the second week of May when the pains finally began. She had written to her mother the night before, and wished she could tell her about the baby, but knew she couldn’t until she saw her, hopefully sometime in the next few months, and then she would tell her everything that had happened, about marrying Henry and how much she loved him. She was a widow now, and all she wanted was to see their baby and for it to arrive safely.
The countess sent for the doctor as soon as Charlotte told her that the contractions had started. He arrived quickly, and had been concerned for the past several weeks that the baby had grown too large for her tiny body. There was a hospital nearby, and he hoped she wouldn’t need a cesarean section, which was a complicated operation for both mother and child, and one or both frequently didn’t survive it. He had shared his fears with the countess, but said nothing to Charlotte, not wanting to frighten her. Her belly was huge in the final weeks of her confinement. She looked so uncomfortable that at the last Lucy wasn’t even jealous of her, to be having Henry’s child. Until then, it had irked her constantly.
The pains were already powerful when the doctor got there after labor began. Glorianna was sure she’d come through it. She was healthy and young. The doctor sat by Charlotte’s bedside from morning to nightfall, and her mother-in-law stayed with her. It was an arduous birth, and after sixteen hours of hard labor, there had been no progress. The baby appeared to be too large to come down the birth canal, and the countess and the doctor exchanged a worried look. It was midnight by then, and Charlotte was too far gone to move her to the hospital, even by ambulance. Glorianna applied damp cloths to her brow, while the doctor tried to maneuver the baby down. The maids and Lucy could hear Charlotte’s screams throughout the house, and the doctor looked at the countess in dismay twenty-four hours after labor began.
“Charlotte, you have to try harder,” her mother-in-law told her with a sense of urgency now. Charlotte was getting weaker and she couldn’t push anymore. “The baby is big, and you have to push it out. Think of Henry, and how much he loved you. You hav
e to do this for Henry. You have to push the baby out.” Charlotte renewed her efforts, and the physician attempted to turn the baby to ease its passage, which only made Charlotte scream louder. She was doing the best she could, but getting nowhere. Lucy had peered several times into the bedroom where Charlotte was laboring and disappeared just as quickly at the sounds of her agony. It seemed so much worse than she’d expected and it frightened her.
Charlotte renewed her efforts then, and used every ounce of her remaining strength to move the baby down, and slowly, it began to emerge, and the doctor gave a shout of victory when he saw the baby’s head, which made Charlotte try that much harder as she clenched her mother-in-law’s hand and they cheered her on. It took another two hours of agonizing pushing, while Charlotte hung between consciousness and oblivion and felt as though she was drowning, as her baby finally came into the world with the cord tangled tightly around her, which was what had been holding her back. The doctor cut the cord and freed her, and he held her up, cleared her airway with a suction bulb, and the baby gave a hearty cry. Charlotte smiled weakly when she saw her. It was a girl, a very big baby. It was difficult to imagine that a child that size had emerged from such a tiny person, and when they weighed her, she weighed just over nine pounds. Charlotte had slipped into merciful unconsciousness by then, just after the baby was born, and he had given her drops for the pain which allowed him to repair the tears the baby had caused before Charlotte woke up again. She was bleeding heavily, which he assured the countess was to be expected after such a difficult birth, with a baby that large, and he said the bleeding would soon stop.
“What are you going to call her?” her mother-in-law asked her with a gentle smile as she kissed Charlotte’s cheek when she awoke. She had been so brave. A nurse the doctor had brought with him was holding the baby, who had been cleaned and swaddled by then, and was staring at them with wide-open blue eyes, while Charlotte gazed at her with unbridled love, wishing Henry could see her. Seeing her baby now made all the agony worthwhile.
“Anne Louise, after my mother, and one of my great-great-aunts. One of my German relatives,” Charlotte said, in barely more than a whisper. The doctor was observing her closely, relieved that both mother and child had survived, which he had begun to doubt in the last few hours of the delivery. Charlotte was very weak now, and spoke in a whisper as she glanced at her daughter. “She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?” She drifted off to sleep again then from the drops the doctor had given her. He left an hour later, after checking her pulse several times. It was thready and weak, but it didn’t surprise him after all she’d been through. He told the countess to let her sleep, and said he would be back to check on her in a few hours, and the nurse would check on her from time to time. She took the baby to the room they had set up as a nursery, next to the bedroom Charlotte was occupying, down the hall from her mother-in-law. The countess went to her room to rest too. It had been a frightening night, and like the doctor, the countess had feared that neither Charlotte nor the baby would survive, but was grateful that they had.
The countess lay down on her bed without getting undressed, and fell asleep instantly. She woke up two hours later, and decided to check on Charlotte, to make sure that she was doing well, and not in pain. She opened the door to her room, careful not to waken her, wishing that Henry were alive to see his daughter, and as soon as she entered the room, she saw that Charlotte was ghostly pale, even more than she had been during the birth. Her lips were blue, she was peacefully asleep, but ghostly white, and as Glorianna approached her bed, she could see no sign of Charlotte’s breathing. She reached for her wrist to find a pulse and could find none and saw no sign of movement at all. She pulled back the bed covers instinctively, and saw that Charlotte was lying in a pool of blood. She had bled to death after the delivery, while the nurse was with the baby. Her skin was already cold to the touch. She was dead at seventeen, from a childbirth that her parents knew nothing about. Her mother-in-law’s heart was pounding as she looked at her. What was she going to tell them? Their precious child was dead. She had died giving birth to a baby they didn’t know existed. She called the doctor with trembling hands, and he returned immediately. She had told no one what had happened, and couldn’t believe it herself. First Henry, then her husband, and now this, poor Charlotte, and the poor little girl with no mother now, orphaned at birth.
The doctor confirmed that Charlotte had died of a severe hemorrhage from trauma during the delivery. It couldn’t have been predicted, although she’d still been bleeding when he left, which he said was to be expected. And he said hemorrhages like that happened very quickly. It had struck Charlotte even before the nurse could return to the room to check her again. All Glorianna could think of now was how to protect Charlotte’s memory, and Henry’s, and to spare her parents further grief, until they knew about the baby later.
She looked pointedly at the doctor with an idea. “Would it be possible to list the cause of death on the certificate as pneumonia or influenza, perhaps with the complication of asthma, which she suffered from before? Her parents don’t know about the baby,” she said in a whisper. “I will tell them about her later of course. But for now, this seems like the least painful course for them, without adding the shock of a child to the death of their daughter.” The doctor hesitated only for a moment and then nodded. What difference did it make now? The poor girl was dead, and he assumed the baby had been illegitimate if her own parents didn’t know about it. Perhaps it was why she had come to Yorkshire, to conceal an illegitimate birth. The countess wanted to protect them from the truth, and the girl’s reputation. And why cause her parents further grief to have lost their daughter to a child born out of wedlock? It never dawned on him that Charlotte might have been married, and the countess didn’t say it, since the marriage was a secret too because of who Charlotte was. And despite being a princess, she was just a child herself and now she was dead. Yet another tragedy after too many recently.
“Of course, your ladyship, whatever I can do to help in the circumstances. This is most unfortunate.” He looked deeply troubled about it too, and wished he hadn’t left, but she’d appeared to be doing well enough when he did. And she might have died even with a cesarean with such a large baby.
“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 C
harlotte 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.
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