by Erica Taylor
“Aye, but who is to care for us?” he asked softly, resting his forehead against hers. “Sarah, if Anna is truly gone, I want—” he started to say, but she cut him off.
“Don’t,” she warned, pulling away from him. “None of today’s events immediately changes anything between us.” She took a few steps away, giving herself distance from his shattered expression. “Go hold your son. He may not be of your blood, but he is your son and heir.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he replied with a sigh.
“You can,” she told him. “And you will.”
“Sarah, stay here, with me, with us,” he pleaded. “We can—”
Sarah shook her head, cutting him off. “Don’t, Will. Please don’t say it. Not now, not when your wife is barely dead an hour. Not when so much has changed in such a short amount of time. If you say it now, I cannot trust it.”
“If ever it was in doubt, I would forsake my own happiness to ensure yours, without question, without second thought,” William said, and she nodded, watching him through tired, tear filled eyes. “So I will hold my peace. For now, Sarah, you should go home.” His voice was hard and harsh with unshed emotion. “You’ve done more than anyone could have asked of you. You are dead on your feet. Allow your brother to take you home.”
“Will, tell me you will be okay,” she pleaded. “With all of this. I will go, but not until I know you are all right.”
“I am all right. Right now I just need . . .” He sighed and looked away. “In the span of a few days, I’ve gained a father, brothers and sisters and a son, but I’ve lost a wife and a friend. I just need a moment to process everything. Having you near is just too . . . complicated.”
“I understand,” she replied. “I will take my leave.” Sarah blinked back her tears
“Sarah,” he said, stopping her as she passed. “I will come for you. Once you’ve rested and I’ve gotten this sorted out. We can . . . we will need to talk.”
“You’ve said that to me before,” she replied.
“I will come for you.”
“I know you did not like her, Will,” Sarah said. “But you need time to properly mourn your wife. Society dictates—”
“I don’t particularly care what the rules are about mourning a person you despised,” he told her. “Promise me we will talk.”
“Fine,” she agreed, and fled the room before she could change her mind.
But two days later when he sent a note to Bradstone house, he received no reply. When he called, he was told she was out. Each day he called, for a week before Bradstone had the heart to inform him that Sarah had left, and did not want to be bothered.
By William, by her family.
She was quite effectively, gone.
December 25th, 1814
Kent, England
The heat from within Bradstone Park was a welcome change from the glacial cold of the carriage. The year that had begun frozen had never really recovered from such an uncharacteristic temperature change and the entire year had been moderate, leading into another unnecessarily cold winter.
“Happy Christmas, Howards,” Sarah said to the elderly butler, shrugging off her cloak, handing pelisse, muff, and knit hat over to a footman.
Howards’s eyes were damp as he gazed upon her, though Sarah couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t been seen in ten months.
“To you too, my lady,” Howards said with a little bow. “May I speak for the entire household when I say, welcome home.”
“It’s wonderful to be here,” Sarah said, turning to take in the front entryway. Exactly as she remembered. She’d been gone from society, from her family, for just less than a year, but it felt like a lifetime.
“Is everyone in the front parlor?” Sarah asked.
Howards nodded. “Allow me to escort you.”
“Not necessary,” she said with a little wink. “I think I remember the way.”
So much had changed for her over the past months, she hoped her relationships with them would be the same. Or maybe not exactly the same. It was difficult not to fall back into bad habits when thrust into past relationships.
Standing inside the doorway of the parlor, she watched the scene before anyone had noticed her.
Things had indeed changed, and for the better.
Clara sat on the settee with a baby wrapped in a darling white gown on her knee, its twin on the floor beside Andrew. The infants were Lord Arthur, the Earl of Hadleigh and his twin sister, Lady Arabella, if Sarah remembered from a letter from May. The twins had dramatically arrived on Andrew’s thirtieth birthday, coincidentally during the Macalister Birthday Ball.
Norah sat across from her own twin, working out some sort of card counting Nick had picked up at Oxford. At least he was making the most of his education.
“Auntie Sarah is here!” cried Mary-Claire from the pianoforte. Jumping from her seat beside Mara, Mary-Claire ran barreling into Sarah’s arms, who knelt down to receive her, delighted to feel her chubby arms wrapping tightly around Sarah’s neck.
“Hello, my darling,” Sarah said, smoothing her hair.
“Mother didn’t know if you would come, but she hoped you would,” Mary-Claire said to her, before dropping her voice to a whisper and leaning in to her aunt. “But I just knew you wouldn’t miss Christmas.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Sarah whispered back.
Sarah looked up to the faces in the hushed parlor. Mara had stopped playing music and everyone seemed to be watching her with surprise.
“Happy Christmas,” Sarah offered with a bright smile, but she wasn’t surprised by their reaction. When she’d left Bradstone House in February, she’d quite successfully fallen off the face of the earth. She’d corresponded with her siblings sporadically over the past months, but it was distance she’d needed, and they’d respected her wishes.
Clara was first to recover. “Welcome home, Sarah.” She moved to her, bussing her firmly on the cheek with a tight squeeze on the arm. “You’ve been missed.”
“And I have missed you all,” Sarah said, taking in each of their faces. Andrew rose, a baby in his arms, and moved to stand beside Clara. Andrew bent to buss a soft kiss along Sarah’s temple, the most open affection she could expect from him, but it sufficed. Nick looked older, his face maturing since she last saw him, and Charlie was taller, leaner. Mara rose as well, coming to Sarah’s side for a hug. Mara was also taller, about the same height as Norah, half a head shorter than Sarah.
Susanna rose as well, and Sarah could see she was in the very last days of her pregnancy. Susanna had been her most ardent and faithful correspondent, writing of the family and keeping her appraised of everyone almost weekly, even when Sarah was not as diligent to respond.
“I am so very pleased you have come home,” Susanna said, leaning in for a hug, her pregnant belly making it difficult.
Sarah held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “Susanna, you are quite pregnant!”
Susanna laughed. “It’s all Ian’s fault, you know. I’m past my due date but this babe does not want to be born until his father arrives. Quite stubborn this one. He gets it from his father.”
“Obviously,” Sarah replied with a chuckle.
“But Sarah, what have you done to your hair?” Susanna asked, brushing at the short wisps of curls framing her face.
“Oh, its nothing,” Sarah said, waving her hand away.
“It’s not nothing,” Susanna replied. “Well, it almost is. Take it down Sarah, I must see what you’ve done.”
“Susanna I’m not unpinning my hair in the middle of the parlor,” Sarah answered. “That is most—”
“Improper?” Susanna asked with a smirk. “I don’t care. Take it down. You’ve hardly any pins in there anyway.”
Sarah glanced to her siblings for help, but he shrugged.
“Best do what she says,” Andrew whispered. “Pregnant women are not to be trifled with.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, I know,” Sarah said, pulling the few pins from her coiffure. “Especially this late into the pregnancy. Really, Susanna, you should sit down.”
“Not until I’ve seen what you’ve done.”
“All this fuss over something as silly as hair,” Sarah muttered and pulled the last few pins. Truthfully it took all of ten pins to keep her hair in place these days, a testament to its much shorter length.
She smoothed the chin length tresses as they fell around her face. “Are you satisfied?”
“Oh Sarah,” Susanna said softly, a hand resting on her belly.
“I know,” Sarah replied with a nod. “It was necessary, I assure you. It’s much easier to manage at this length.”
“No, you’re hearing me wrong,” her sister said with a smile forming across her lips.
“Sarah, it’s gorgeous!” Norah supplied. “My goodness, this will be all the rage come March! I’m cutting mine as soon as we return to London.”
Sarah pulled the front pieces and pinned them away from her face, the remaining hair hanging in soft waves. It was easier to manage, especially during long births. It didn’t tangle or get in the way, and it was done up quicker for the times she had been awoken in the middle of the night to attend a delivery.
“Oh, you mustn’t all stare at me as if I’m Father Christmas,” Sarah chided. “Please, Mara, go back to playing. You and Mary-Claire were doing such a marvelous job, do not stop on my account.”
Mara reseated herself and her hands moved gracefully across the keys, the tinkling of chords resonating throughout the room, wrapping them in a comfortable happiness.
“Here, Andrew, I will take them up to Nanny,” Clara offered, and Andrew shifted the twin in his arms to Clara, who now had a baby on each hip. It suited her.
“I see you decided to forgo a tree this year?” Sarah said, glancing at the far wall. Andrew glanced at the space the tree had occupied the previous Christmas. The damages from the fire had been repaired leaving no physical trace of the incident.
“Ahh, no,” he replied. “After last year, we adopted a strict ‘no trees’ policy.”
“I’d imagine.”
“In fact, speaking of last year, I hope you don’t mind but—”
Andrew trailed off as a small creature tugged at her skirts and Sarah looked down in surprise.
A little boy, less than a year old, had toddled to her and opted to use her skirts for stability.
“Hank, careful,” called a familiar voice and Sarah looked up to the face of the boy’s father, a face she would know anywhere.
Sarah’s eyes met William’s in surprise, shock. Exultation. He was the real reason she had come home for Christmas, even though she could hardly admit it to herself. And here he was, as handsome as before, smiling down at her like not an hour had passed since he’d last seen her.
Glancing down at the young lord again, Sarah bent and scooped him into her arms.
“Hello there,” she said to him. His chubby baby face showed that he was pleased to have his wishes met and he gurgled, patting Sarah on the face. He had the softest skin, golden blond hair, and startling blue eyes.
“Will, he has your eyes,” Sarah said, looking again at William.
“He has my mother’s eyes,” William corrected. “Sarah, I’d like you to meet Hank.”
“Hank?”
“Lord Henry Alden Nathaniel Keller Hastings, Earl of Heathmont,” he replied. “Hank for short.”
“Hello, Hank.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Andrew said lightly. “It seemed only right to have William at Christmas this year. Clara has become attached to Hank, and the twins love to play with him.”
Sarah wasn’t convinced it was Clara’s attachment to baby Hank that lead to their invitation, but conceivably more of Andrew’s friendship with William. Or perhaps . . .
Andrew cleared his throat. “And we . . .”
“It′s all right, Andrew, I don’t mind.” Sarah looked up to William. “I am happy to see his grace again.”
Andrew glanced from William to Sarah, his eyes seeing more than she wanted to admit.
“I’ll, uh, leave you two to . . . get reacquainted.”
Neither Sarah nor William really heard him or noticed his hasty departure.
“Your training went well?” William asked.
“Yes, it did,” Sarah replied. “I spent six months at British Lying-in Hospital and then retreated at the end of the summer to Exeter with Lydia.”
“You were in London until the end of the summer?”
“Till August, yes,” she answered. “Then I went to work in Exeter with the midwife there. A surprising number of babies were born this fall.”
Though maybe not so surprising because the weather nine months before that had been cold—to the point where people tended to stay indoors, getting up to all sorts of things to keep warm.
Sarah remembered how William had kept her warm at the inn, and again that night in the snow. And if the heat from his eyes was any indication, he remembered too.
William’s eyes dropped to Hank in Sarah’s arms, the baby warm and soft against her hip. “I had hoped to see you again. To be honest, it’s what prompted me to accept your brother’s invitation.”
“Oh?” she asked.
“I’d hoped we might have a chance to talk,” he admitted. “There is so much I’d like to say to you.”
“We can talk now,” she said. His eyes dropped again to his son and Sarah laughed. “Will, it’s not like he can understand what we are saying.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d rather not,” he said, lifting the child from her arms. He crossed the room in five long strides, depositing the child into the arms of his waiting nurse before returning to her. “Will you step into the hall with me?”
Sarah nodded demurely and followed him from the room, ignoring the stares that followed them.
Down the hall from the parlor, he stopped and turned towards her, crossing his arms across his chest. He wasn’t angry with her, she didn’t get that sense at all. He seemed . . . conflicted.
He turned to pace the length between the two walls of the hallway, marking the path four times before sighing. “I feel as though I should apologize to you,” he began but stopped, tilting his head to the side. “Are you staring at my hair as well?” she asked, tucking a strand behind her ear. “It’s short,” he said, lifting his hand and pulling a stand between his fingers, careful not to touch her. “I like it.”
“Are you apologizing for liking my hair?”
“No,” he said with a slight shake to his head. “I want to apologize for the last time we spoke. When I asked you to stay with me.”
“Will, you don’t have to—”
“I do,” he insisted. “I was reeling from being manipulated by Anna, Tobias, and most of all my father, but that’s no excuse for what I did. Asking for you then was wrong, even if I was too caught up in what had happened with Tobias and Anna to see what that might have sounded like to you. I don’t want you to think I was trying to manipulate you.”
“Will, I never thought you were trying to manipulate me into anything,” Sarah said, taking his hand, her fingers lacing through his. “And you didn’t drive me away, I left because I wanted to go. Because I needed to. You were about to offer everything I’d dreamed of on a silver platter, and if I’d heard you say it, I don’t think I would have been able to say no. I couldn’t just toss away the plans I’d made for myself. I needed to see what I was without you, without the trappings of all of this.” She waved her hand about, signifying the hall—what it represented. Her family, Bradstone Park, high society.
“I miss you Sarah,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Sarah’s smile was gentle. “And I miss you too. I miss what we had.”
“Please let me correct the greatest mistake I’ve made in my entire life.”
“What is that?”
“Not marryin
g you before we arrived in London last year,” he replied. “I wanted you then, and I want you now. You have a choice, Sarah. If you are happy in Exeter, I can accept that. If you have moved on from what we shared, found someone new, even, I can accept that if it brings you happiness. But,” he stepped closer to her, the mint from his balm swirling around her, pulling memories from the depths in which she’d buried them for their own safekeeping. “If there is some part of you that is willing to return to some of this, I would welcome your return.”
“Will,” she said softly. “I am content with the life I have built for myself away from all of this. I feel at peace and comfortable in my place. I do not need you to be happy or satisfied with my life. It has been—” She stopped at the sound of her name being called from further down the hall, stirring at first but more frantic the second and third time.
Sarah rushed down the hallway, and back into the parlor, pushing through the crowd of her siblings, to where Susanna stood, nearly doubled over in pain, knuckles white as she clutched the back of a chair.
“Susanna, I told you to sit down,” Sarah chided. Turning towards her, Susanna grasped the fabric of Sarah’s sleeves. “Ian is not here. And my water just broke.”
Sarah looked down to where a wet spot had formed under Susanna’s feet. “Are you certain? Sometimes it can feel like that when really it is just—”
“Sarah, I did not just wet myself in the middle of the parlor!” Susanna cried. “I was there when Clara’s water broke, and it looked like this, and it feels like it looks.”
“Didn’t your water break in the middle of the Macalister Birthday Ball last May?” Sarah asked, glancing at the duchess. Clara shrugged. “It happens. And I wasn’t at the ball, I was upstairs. And it did look like that.”
“Like she wet herself ?” Nick asked.
“I did not bloody wet myself !” Susanna cried, her face tightening again in pain.“Language, Susanna,” Sarah said to her sister. “Just breathe, this is natural. Is your accoucheur near?”