by Laura Martin
* * *
The journey to Cornwall was arduous even at the best of times, but in a hired carriage with hard seats and a faint musty smell about the fabric it was anything but comfortable. Even with changing the horses it took three days to get to Exeter, then the poor condition of the roads slowed everything even more. All in all the journey took over a week and Leo had been pressing for early starts to make the most of the travelling time.
* * *
It was mid-afternoon when he hopped down from the carriage, his legs stiff and his body in need of exercise. The last time he had visited the estate in Cornwall had been over a year earlier. Mr Thoday ran everything so well he didn’t need to visit any more regularly and, although it was in a beautiful part of the country, his schedule hadn’t allowed him time to just come and enjoy it.
‘Lord Abbingdon,’ Mr Thoday said, hurrying out of a side door of the main house. ‘Is something amiss? I didn’t expect to see you so soon after our meeting in London.’
‘My wife,’ Leo said, looking up at the windows and wondering if she was up there looking down at him.
‘Lady Abbingdon,’ Mr Thoday supplied helpfully.
‘Where is she?’ A look of puzzlement crossed Thoday’s face and Leo paused. ‘Lady Abbingdon is here, isn’t she?’
‘Please excuse my ignorance, my lord, but why would she be here?’
‘She hasn’t arrived to stay?’
‘No, my lord. I haven’t ever met your wife.’
Leo felt the ground shift underneath his feet and he reached out for the wall of the house to steady himself.
‘She’s not here?’
‘No.’
He’d come all this way, rushed off from Five Oaks, without even bothering to clarify this was where she was. For a moment he closed his eyes, thinking of all the properties he owned. She could be at any one of them, or she could have gone home to her mother in Eastbourne. Quickly he dismissed the idea. However bad things were, he didn’t think she would return to Lady Hummingford.
‘Will you be staying, my lord?’
Leo looked at the carriage. He’d already spent far too long inside it, he longed to stretch his legs, go for a bracing walk along the clifftop, to ride out on horseback, but he knew he wouldn’t.
‘No. I’m not staying.’ He would visit all his estates one by one if necessary until he found Annabelle and made things right between them.
‘Can I at least offer you a meal, Lord Abbingdon, while your man sees to the horses?’
Leo thought for a moment, then acquiesced. It would mean they wouldn’t have to stop for dinner and the horses could be fed and watered before starting on the return journey.
* * *
Annabelle sat in the sunshine with her eyes closed, not caring for once that the sun would colour her skin. It was too glorious a day to be hiding in the shade, cool, almost cold, but the sun was just warm enough to allow her to sit for a few minutes outside. She loved the month of October; she loved watching the leaves turn and fall from the trees and nature begin all its preparations for the hard winter ahead.
She placed a hand on her belly, knowing she was imagining the fluttering inside her. It was far too early for her baby to be anything more than the size of a walnut she knew, having read a book on the development of the foetus a few years earlier. She was two, perhaps three months pregnant, depending on when she had conceived, and as yet the only outward sign was her constant and debilitating nausea.
It had been six weeks since she had left Five Oaks. Six weeks of solitude, six weeks of reflecting on where she was in her life and what she wanted. Initially she had thought she might only stay a few days, keeping the carriage with her rather than sending it back to Five Oaks in case she wanted to return. After two weeks she had secretly hoped Leo might come after her, that he might make the trip an hour down the road to Willow House, but she couldn’t begrudge him staying put, she had asked him to in her letter. In those six weeks she had realised she needed to make peace with her lot. A few months ago she had been completely happy with the prospect of a loveless marriage. The opportunity to run her own household, to get away from her mother’s influence, had been enough to propel her into marrying a man she barely knew. Love was too much to ask for. Leo cared for her, even if he went about showing it in the wrong way as he had in London with the comment to Mrs Harrison about her scars.
Now there was also their unborn baby to take into consideration. She had decided she would allow herself to love Leo without asking for any love in return. In time she would learn how to wave him off without her heart feeling as though it were breaking each time. She would become the wife he wanted—affectionate, but not overbearing—and she would take pleasure in raising the child she never thought she would get to have.
Annabelle knew she had taken too long to reach this decision, to come to peace with her lot. She probably should have returned to Five Oaks weeks ago, but she felt better having had some time and space to consider her options.
The heat was making her doze off, so at first she didn’t register the sound of hooves on the driveway, it was only when they stopped and she heard Leo’s voice float into her consciousness that she realised he was here.
‘Annabelle,’ he said, as he rounded the corner of the house.
She stood, wondering if he was pleased to see her, wondering if he remembered the tense way they had parted in London all those weeks ago.
As she scrutinised him she realised he looked tired and dishevelled, his clothes were dusty from the road and he looked thinner than he had when she had left him.
He looked as though he were going to say something more, but then he just strode over to her and took her into his arms.
‘You don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘Looking for me?’
‘It’s a long story. Are you well?’ He pulled away slightly, his eyes roaming over her face, searching for some sign of how she had fared these weeks they had been apart.
‘Ye...yes,’ she said falteringly.
For a moment she forgot all her deliberations and decisions of the last few weeks as Leo kissed her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her until they were both gasping for breath.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that for such a long while.’ He frowned, then led her back over to the bench where she had been sitting. ‘Tell me, Annabelle, why did you leave? I’ve been racking my brain, but I cannot make myself understand.’
She looked down at her hands. Now he was here, happy to see her, his thumb caressing the back of her hand and his eyes searching hers, all her resolve to rise above everything, to float along loving him but not minding when he didn’t love her back, seemed impossible.
‘I needed time to think.’
‘What about, my love?’
She blinked. It was the first time he had called her my love. It sounded casual, but her heart began to race all the same.
‘In London,’ she said slowly, gathering her thoughts, ‘I was outside the window when Mrs Harrison came to call.’ She watched as he frowned as he tried to remember. ‘She came to invite me to one of her social soirées.’
‘Oh, yes.’ He was still looking puzzled and Annabelle knew she was going to have to decide to let this go or explain in detail why it had upset her.
‘I heard you say something to her that upset me very much. I heard you tell her to warn the other ladies about my scars, so they wouldn’t stare.’ She looked down at her hands for a moment before returning her eyes to his.
‘I just wanted to make it as painless as possible for you.’
‘I know. I know there was no malice in it...’ She paused as she tried to find the words to explain why it had hurt so much. ‘I suppose it just hurt that, despite telling me otherwise, you see my scars as so bad that people need warning about them.’
�
�Annabelle, no,’ Leo said, looking shocked. ‘That’s not true.’
She raised her fingers to touch the scars that had marred so much of her life. ‘I know they’re awful, but I think I had allowed myself to forget a little just how prominent they are. When you spoke to Mrs Harrison you reminded me.’
‘That was never my intention. I just wanted you to be able to go to a social event and enjoy yourself.’ He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Once people get to know you they hardly see your scars—they see you. Wonderful, interesting, beautiful you. But of course the first time they meet you they will look, it is human nature to look at things that are different, I just wanted you to be spared that.’ Leo leaned in and kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘I’m sorry. Is that why you left?’
‘It’s why I left London.’
‘I could tell you were upset about something, but I thought we would talk it through when I got back to Five Oaks. Then when I got home you were gone.’
Annabelle bit her lip. At the time she had just needed to get away, but since she had been at Willow House she had realised she’d just abandoned Leo. She’d thought solely about herself. She had been hurting, but she hadn’t considered how Leo would feel to return to Five Oaks and find her gone, with just the perfunctory note to tell him she was taking some time to think and not to follow her.
‘I’m sorry I just left,’ she said, realising that Leo, although a man who valued his independence above most other things, could have felt as though she had abandoned him without good explanation.
‘Why did you leave Five Oaks? Why come here?’
‘I saw something that upset me when I went into the attic to find that map you asked for.’
‘Oh?’
‘I saw a letter you had written to Emily and with it a charcoal drawing of her.’
‘Ah. Yes, I’d forgotten my letters to her were up there.’ He frowned again, ‘But I told you I was over her, that I loved her once, but had mourned and moved on.’
‘And I believe you—it wasn’t that. It isn’t that.’ She shook her head, wondering if she would be able to explain how inadequate, how inconsequential the letter had made her feel. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. It made her sound like a jealous woman, jealous of someone who was long dead. Feeling something settle inside her she took a deep breath before speaking again. ‘Leo, I love you.’ His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she gently placed a hand on his to stop him from saying anything. ‘I know love isn’t what we were thinking of when we married, it isn’t what we agreed on, but I can’t help it. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with you.’ She knew exactly when it had been: that night on their honeymoon when they had walked back through the woods in the dark together. Something had shifted then and her world hadn’t been the same since.
‘I read the letter you had written to Emily and there is so much love there in every word, you adored her, and the picture, I’m assuming you drew it?’ She waited for him to nod. ‘I can see how much she meant to you, how much you cared for her. She was beautiful, too.’
‘Annabelle...’
‘No, let me say this—please let me finish. I read that letter and I realised you would never love me like that.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You may never love me at all. It hurt, that realisation that I loved you, but it may never be reciprocated. With the picture and the letter I could see the sort of woman you could love and I am nothing like her. I needed some time to make my peace with that.’
Leo was looking at her as though she were a little crazy.
‘Do you know where I’ve been the last six weeks?’ he asked eventually.
‘At home?’
‘No. In fact, the only night I’ve spent at home since returning from London is last night. I’ve been travelling. To Cornwall. To find you.’
‘Cornwall?’
Leo smiled, but she could see the tiredness there around his eyes.
‘You’d left, with no clue from your letter where you were. Mrs Barnes told me you’d announced you were leaving just as soon as you came down from the attic holding the map of the Cornwall estate. I panicked and set off without actually thinking things through.’
Annabelle pressed her lips together to try to stop herself from laughing.
‘Go on, laugh. It is laughable. If I’d just stopped and thought for a moment, I would have realised you wouldn’t have chosen to go somewhere you’d never been before, not when there was an empty property sitting fifteen miles down the road.’
‘You travelled all the way to Cornwall and back?’
‘Yes. Didn’t even spend the night there when I realised my error. I think if I ever have to sit in a hired carriage again I will not be responsible for the cursing that comes out of my mouth.’
‘You must be tired.’
‘Do you know why I did it? Why I travelled that distance as quickly as I possibly could?’
She shook her head.
‘I couldn’t bear to think of you alone and hurting. I didn’t know why you had gone, but I knew you weren’t happy and that made me want to find you, to gather you in my arms and do anything to make it right.’
Annabelle blinked. He’d done all that for her, the travelling, the putting aside any hurt he was feeling at her just leaving without an explanation. All of it was done to find her, to be with her.
‘I realised something a few weeks ago,’ he said quietly, looking into her eyes. ‘I love you, Annabelle. I never set out to love you, I never set out to be your husband in anything more than name, but you have completely bewitched me. I, a man who has never spent more than an hour or two happily in anyone else’s company, hate to be apart from you. I miss you even when you’re just in the next room. I want to share everything with you.’
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing and searched his face for the lie. There was nothing there she could doubt, nothing but honesty and love in his eyes.
‘You love me?’
‘I love you.’
‘Really, truly, honestly?’
‘Really, truly, honestly.’
Annabelle launched herself at Leo, wondering how she had ever thought she could live without his love. She kissed him, for a moment forgetting where they were, forgetting everything but the man before her.
‘I love you,’ she murmured as they pulled apart. ‘And I have something else to tell you.’ She bit her lip, remembering Leo’s declaration that he didn’t want children, that he was happy for his brother and future nephews to be his heirs. Surely things had changed since then. ‘I think I am pregnant.’ Annabelle held her breath after her announcement, searching her husband’s face for his initial reaction.
Leo smiled, the smile growing wider as he reached out tentatively and placed a hand on her belly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Not sure, no, but I feel absolutely terrible with sickness most of the day and I’ve missed at least one of my monthly courses.’
‘That is amazing.’
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes. I mean I never thought I’d have children, but then I never thought I would have you.’ He kissed her again and Annabelle sank into his arms, wondering how her life had changed so much in such a short time, all thanks to the man who once she had thought of as stiff and insufferable.
Epilogue
September 1822
Annabelle ran along the rail of the ship, shading her eyes with one hand and gripping her daughter’s pudgy little fingers with her other.
‘I can see them,’ she cried, turning to face Leo. He grinned, as excited as she, then leaned in to kiss her.
‘Urgh, Papa is kissing Mama again.’ Edward sighed dramatically, making his little sister burst into a fit of laughter.
It seemed to take an eternity for the ship to dock and for the wooden gangplank to be lowered to allow the passengers to step off on to the dock. Annabelle wa
s one of the first off, an excited Lucy skipping beside her, her long blonde hair flowing behind in the hot breeze.
‘Annabelle,’ Beth shouted so loudly a few people took a step away out of surprise.
Annabelle broke into a run and threw herself into her sister’s arms, not knowing if she was laughing or crying. Somewhere beside her she was vaguely aware of Leo’s reunion with his brother.
After a long embrace Annabelle broke away to take in the two little boys standing on either side of her sister. Her nephews, Robert and Joseph, now six and three, stood there shyly eyeing her and the rest of their family up.
‘This is Edward and Lucy.’ Annabelle placed a hand on each of her children’s shoulders and watched as Beth crouched to say hello. In turn she embraced her nephews, wondering how almost seven years had passed since she’d last set eyes upon Beth. She and Leo had planned to visit sooner, but first there had been Edward, their surprise baby, now six years old and already looking like a little version of his father. Once he had been old enough to travel they had started planning their trip to India, only to find that Annabelle was pregnant with Lucy. More delays, but now Lucy was three they had decided they could wait no longer.
Leo had spent the time in the interim well, training up Mr Thoday, his capable estate manager in Cornwall, to take on more and more responsibility. Now he was Leo’s second-in-command, entirely capable of looking after everything while Leo was away on an extended trip. It meant they would be able to stay longer than Annabelle would ever have imagined would be possible.
‘Let’s get you home,’ Josh said, embracing her. She marvelled at how well her sister and brother-in-law looked, their skin bronzed from the sun, their faces aglow with the joy of the reunion.
Josh led the way to two large carriages and organised their luggage to be loaded on to the back of both. Then he motioned for them to get in. Annabelle climbed in with Beth and the younger children, while Leo went with his brother and the two elder boys.