Until Anselm fell seriously ill. Leandra spent whole days at his bedside, trying to soothe his fever, but nothing helped.
As doctors came and went and Anselm grew weaker with every day, Leandra turned to folk remedies and rumours, anything that could possibly help. She was willing to try everything, but she had less support in her efforts than she would have expected.
"Bringing in a commoner? An adulteress, a criminal's daughter? Have you lost your mind?"
Leandra flinched from the poison in Ellara's voice. She was too exhausted to fight, to tell the other woman she had no real authority over the matters. "I heard she knows a healing recipe..." She said weakly. "People in the village..."
"So now we listen to the people in the village? Which kind, the stupid ignorant fools or the criminals and troublemakers?"
Leandra wanted to say she had first heard of Alysanne's soup from Adrian, Leandra's own husband, but before she could open her mouth Ellara continued:
"Nothing good has ever come from the common people and I won't allow one of them to touch my nephew. And especially not one of that family!"
After that, the young lady just turned and left. She didn't need Ellara's permission and there must be a way to sneak Alysanne into the manor without her interference.
But before she could send for her, her husband's condition worsened so much that she didn't dare leave his side even for a moment. When he died, she had not slept for at least three nights.
The strange cold in the room, just after Anselm drew his last breath could be just her exhaustion, but then Leandra thought she glimpsed a dark shape standing over Anselm's bed. It was hard to see through her tears, but still the dark figure with a scythe seemed too clear to be a hallucination. And even if it was a hallucination, she had nothing to lose. She fell on her knees before the apparition, trying to plead for her loved one's life and not finding the words that would fully express her heart.
She didn't really know what to expect, probably didn't expect anything, but when a voice spoke up inside her head telling her to gamble for Anselm's soul, she almost thought she must be dreaming after all. But if there was even a tiny chance that she wasn't...
With great effort she got up to her feet and forced herself to concentrate on the two bony hands presented before her. One of them would hold her husband's soul. Just find the right one and they can be happy again.
She bit her lip, muttered a quick prayer to the Watcher and pointed with trembling hand.
And then the chosen hand opened, revealing nothing but air between its bare bony fingers. Leandra sank back to her knees, just barely sensing that the Grim Reaper raised his scythe, not even caring if it meant to take her soul also.
That was how the servants found her much later, still collapsed on the floor next to her husband, blinded with tears and mumbling something incoherent about dark shapes, souls and the world beyond.
"If I can find his soul he can return, but it's gone now. I wonder what would give me a second try...?"
Leandra spent the next few days bedridden and mostly out of touch with reality. When Desmond, Ellara's only son and the only heir to the Lorimer estate, fell ill as well, she didn't even notice, completely lost in her own grief.
Only when Desmond finally died did she break out of her lethargy at to at least attend the double funeral, but she was still too deep into her own personal tragedy to fully realise the state of the family.
The lord was dead, without a living child, and there was no apparent heir to carry his legacy.
Around the same time, Anna was feeling ill as well, if for a completely different reason. She had been hiding the morning sickness, hoping against all hope she was not expecting yet another child. But when the sickness refused to go away, she was slowly forced to admit at least to herself that something was wrong.
It wasn't anything she could put her finger on. It was too early for her to feel the baby, she even kept telling herself maybe it wasn't a pregnancy at all, but still somehow she knew.
Just like she somehow knew that the baby was dead.
She had never wanted another child, she had not really planned or even wanted any of her previous two children either, but there was still something so final about losing it. Anna suddenly felt empty, almost dead inside, her whole world cold and grey.
Damien had no idea what was going on and Anna was sure he wouldn't understand if she told him. She didn't doubt that he loved her, but he was too carefree, too childlike to understand this kind of loneliness.
She spent the next few days after the miscarriage under black clouds, sleepwalking through her life without noticing much. But when she finally emerged from the worst darkness, there was a living child waiting for her and needing her care.
It was like her whole world had been turned on its head. She was still mourning the dead baby she never got to know, but little Elena's unconditional love was just as strong and just as unexpected as the sorrow, and it was leading Anna back into the light.
Not everyone was happy with this new-found relationship, though. Tristan, who had never been coddled by his parents and by then had completely stopped expecting it, didn't enjoy seeing his baby sister getting in generous quantities something he never had.
He mostly took out his frustration on Elena, hiding her toys - why did she need so many, anyway! - taunting her and pinching her when nobody was looking. Some part of him hoped that if he made her cry often enough, his mother would grow annoyed with the baby again. But even though that didn't happen, it made him feel better every time something didn't go exactly as he would have liked.
And there were many things that didn't go well at all.
Tristan had never enjoyed school, only tolerating it as a means to make friends. But now most of other kids mostly ignored him and even his relationship with lord Adrian didn't help any more. Tristan didn't really understand why he still bothered attending. His grades were slipping and he had no idea how to stop them, how to at least get them to a level that wouldn't make other kids laugh at him.
It was just so annoying, despite the fact that neither of his parents really cared about his learning.
Weeks turned into months, but lady Leandra still visited her husband's grave every day. There, alone in the cold winter graveyard she felt better and more at ease than back in the cold, almost empty mansion. At first she wanted to feel closer to where her was, buried in Anselm's coffin, but then it became much more. There were times when she was sure Anselm could hear her speaking to him, that he could see the baby that was growing inside her.
She imagined what the child would be like, eyes just like Anselm's, the same warm smile. With no friends of her own and living next to lady Ellara, bitter and always angry, this was the best comfort Leandra had, the thing that helped her get out of her bed every morning.
Ellara was feeling bitter for more reasons than the recent deaths in the family. She hated people fussing over poor, grieving, pregnant Leandra even more than she had hated her take charge of the manor. She hated seeing Leandra pregnant, especially when she knew her own days of bearing children were over. She hated the idea that the future of the family, all the power, should be out of her hands.
She was doing her best to hide her age, but that didn't stop her from feeling it every time she looked into a mirror. Every single grey hair was an unwelcome reminder until there was no black left on her head.
As the birth of the child grew closer, air at the manor grew both nervous and hopeful at the same time. Everyone was hoping for a son to continue the Lorimer line, but when the baby came, it was a girl.
Ellara was feeling vindicated. When her heir was dead, her rival had no right to bear one either. Leandra herself hardly noticed the general disappointment all around her. All she cared about was that the baby was healthy, a real person ready to receive all her love.
She was still heartbroken, but little Nadine brought her at least some hope for the future.
Meanwhile, little Elena was growing fast.
If Tristan hoped their mother would grow tired of the baby, he was disappointed. Elena continued to beam, quickly catching up on everything she had not learned earlier. Anna was glued to her daughter and seemed so happy that it was almost making Tristan sick.
Elena's birthday was a shining example. Anna baked a cake for the occasion, something she had never done before, with candles for Elena to blow out. Tristan felt completely ignored, put aside because of that stupid little girl who could only wail and hog everyone's attention. He wasn't surprised his father had skipped the celebration, only annoyed he had not taken him as well.
He tried to get Anna's attention, steal at least a few moments from the stupid baby, but it was like he was completely invisible.
"Did you make a wish? What did you ask for, a knight in shining armour? A castle? Everyone treats you like a princess anyway!"
Tristan tried to sound grown-up-mean, make his sister feel bad for the treatment she was receiving, but Elena just kept staring at her piece of cake. Ignoring him, just like everyone else.
