by Donna Alward
“I think I do.” She nodded. “Though not for a while. I might like to prolong this being-in-love thing for a bit.”
He pulled her close. “I’d like babies, too. But I kind of like your strategy. Maybe we can practice while you plan your next garden party. Say this fall? We can be sure to invite the minister.”
His tone was light but when he finished speaking the gravity of it sank in. It was a beautiful, wonderful thing.
“Are you saying…” She let the sentence hang while her breath caught in her chest. Could this really be happening?
He reached into his pocket and took out a small square box. “Marry me,” he said. “Just … marry me, Abby.”
He opened the box and revealed the most perfect ring she’d ever seen. “Oh, Tom.” She reached out and touched a tentative finger to the yellow gold band studded with diamonds. She could tell from the look of it that it was an antique, and an expensive one. “This is beautiful.”
“If you say yes, I’ll put it on your finger.”
Marriage. Love. Children. It seemed so incredibly impossible but incredibly right. She laughed a little, even as tears gathered in her eyes and she waggled her fingers at him. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
He let out such a huge breath that she suddenly realized how nervous he’d been. As he slipped the ring over her knuckle, she said, “Did you really think I’d say no?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t,” he admitted. “But I was scared to death you might.”
She stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around him. “I love you. And together we’re going to bring happiness back to this house.”
She wiggled her finger, admiring the diamond setting. “Where did you ever get this? It’s really beautiful. It must be a hundred years old!”
“Closer to a hundred and fifty,” he said. “Remember the story about the pirate in our family?”
She nodded.
“The story goes that this ring was part of his treasure during the Civil War, and that he gave it to an abolitionist woman he fell in love with on his travels.” He grinned. “Apparently she reformed him from his wicked ways and he gave up privateering to become part of the Underground Railroad. All I absolutely know is that my great-grandfather gave it to my grandfather, who gave it to me. And now I’m giving it to you. Maybe I’m no pirate, but I feel like you saved me anyway.”
She looked up at him, wondering how on earth she ever got so lucky as to have him put his foot through her veranda.
EPILOGUE
Abby reluctantly gave one last turn in front of the mirror, admiring the ivory silk of the dress. It was time to take it off. The waist and bust needed alterations to fit properly but she was in no doubt. This dress, the one she’d first found in the trunk in the attic, was her wedding dress. And in three short months she’d walk down the aisle of the church and say I do to Tom. It seemed like an eternity away—and yet too short a time to plan everything that needed to be done.
After the wedding they would start their life together here and begin filling the house with the love and laughter it finally deserved. It was time to break the pattern of sadness and tragedy and make the lofty house on Blackberry Hill into a home.
She was admiring the dress spread over her duvet while buttoning up her jeans when she heard a car coming up the drive. A quick check at the window told her it was Ian Martin, her lawyer. She frowned. All the business with the house was supposed to be over and done with. She hoped there wasn’t any further problem.
Ian tapped the new brass knocker on the door as she was going down the stairs. She opened the door with a polite smile. “Ian. Did we have an appointment I forgot?”
He smiled. “Not at all. Just one last piece of business from your aunt’s estate.”
Curiosity mixed with anxiety. She stood back and opened the door all the way. “Come in. Coffee?”
He bent and picked up a banker’s box from the spot by his feet. “I can’t stay. I have an appointment in an hour. But thanks.”
She led the way to the kitchen where they’d have the biggest workspace. “What’s in the box?”
“Something your aunt gave me for safekeeping, with firm instructions as to when to give it to you.”
“How long have you had … whatever is in that box?”
“About eight years.”
Ian Martin was barely forty. He would have been a young lawyer in a new town when Marian hired him to look after her will and estate.
He took out a thick envelope first. “This is a letter from Marian. She asked me to deliver it to you, along with this box, once you had decided to stay permanently in Jewell Cove.”
“But how could she have known…”
“She didn’t. If you sold and left town, I was to burn it in the town incinerator and all her secrets with it.”
Abby sat down heavily and took the envelope from his hands. Just when she thought she had all the answers … Aunt Marian found a way to surprise her again.
The front door slammed again. “Abs? Honey, you in here?”
“In the kitchen,” she called out. She was still getting used to the easy, affectionate way they moved within each other’s lives. And wondered if the tingly, fluttery feeling would ever go away years from now when he was nearby or said her name. She hoped not.
Tom came through, looking delicious as always, this time wearing cargo shorts and a pair of flip-flops. “Hey, Ian,” he greeted, but went right to Abby and dropped a warm kiss on her lips. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Just when we thought we had all the answers,” she replied. “Marian is full of surprises.”
“My only instruction was to deliver it. Now that I’ve done that, I’ll leave you two alone.” Ian shook Tom’s hand and smiled at Abby. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks. And Ian—thanks for everything you’ve done with the estate.”
“You’re welcome.”
When he was gone Abby ripped open the sealed envelope. There was a handwritten letter on embossed stationery. That was all.
Tom pulled up a chair and sat across from her, putting his hands on her knees. “Are you okay to read it?”
She nodded, touching the old paper with her fingertips. “I think so.”
Tom’s hand tightened on her thigh. “Would you rather be alone?”
She looked up into his eyes. “No, I want you with me. We’re partners now. I don’t have any secrets.”
She unfolded Marian’s letter.
Dear Abigail,
I’m sorry you and I never got to meet. By now you’ve had time to fall in love with the house. I hope you have, anyway. It’s a very special place. Not without its secrets, of course. But I’ve always thought the secrets were part of its charm.
You’re probably wondering how the family got separated. I wish I had more complete answers for you. I remember my mother only vaguely, but I remember the emptiness I felt when she was suddenly no longer with me. I don’t know what truly happened that night, and my father would never speak her name in this house. I remember Iris, too—just a tiny baby in my memory. I always thought maybe Father couldn’t bear to look at her and that was why he sent her away. He confessed right before he died that we had different fathers, but if there was ever any evidence of it, it’s long gone.
Abby paused. Looked up at Tom. “She didn’t know. About Kristian. About Edith’s death. All of it. She must have blocked it from her mind.” It also meant that Edith’s ghost hadn’t revealed herself to her own daughter. Why had she chosen Abby?
Tom squeezed her hand and she turned back to the letter.
I want you to have this house. It can never make up for the past, but if there is a scrap of Edith—my mother—in you, it is in good hands. By the time it falls to you, I’m afraid it will need some loving care. That is why I directed Ian Martin to deliver this to you after you’ve decided to stay in Jewell Cove. If you’re staying, I know you love this house and this town as much as I did. Treasure it. Be happy in it. It needs happiness.
If we had to be separated, at least she was with our family. I do wonder at times if her life didn’t end up being easier than mine. After Father died, I initiated contact between us. She’d been denied her family but so had I. Unfortunately, I think some wounds are just too deep. Iris was determined to leave this part of her life behind.
There has always been speculation about why I ran a home for unwed mothers. The truth is that I fell in love once, and with someone utterly unsuitable by Father’s standards. Father forced me to go away. The delivery was early, though, and the baby was stillborn. The complications left me unable to ever have more children. I made it my mission to help as many girls as I could—either finding good homes for their babies or helping them get started on their own. I never made a cent brokering adoptions, though I could have more than once. That’s not what it was about.
So now we come to the box. Inside you’ll find a few keepsakes I wanted to pass on especially. I’m leaving you my pearl earrings, which were the only jewels I have that were my mother’s. There are some pictures too, and knickknacks that have sentimental value—including a jewel box that someone very special made for me many years ago.
I wish you love, and happiness, and peace. It’s past time that this house had enough of all three.
All my love,
Your Aunt Marian
“She could have told me all this when I inherited the estate,” Abby said, folding up the letter and handing it to Tom. She was touched by the sincere words and emotion with which her aunt had written.
Tom skimmed the pages, holding her hand the whole while. “Wow,” he said, coming to the end. “Even Marian had her share of secrets.”
Abby smiled a little. “We might not have a pirate, but it seems there are lots of bones rattling in the Foster closet.”
“Why do you think she sent this to you now?”
Abby sighed and slid over into his lap. She leaned her head on his shoulder for a moment. “I suppose because I’d proven myself. Because I’m staying and I’m in it for the long haul.” She smiled and looked into his eyes. How she loved looking into the dark depths of them. It felt like she could see right into his soul, and he into hers.
“You definitely are,” he decreed, and he smiled, little crinkles forming at the creases of his eyes.
A movement caught her attention at the threshold of the kitchen. Edith, dressed in the same plain blue dress. But this time her lips held a secretive smile. Abby felt Tom stiffen beside her, and he swallowed thickly as Edith turned and walked away without looking back. It was, Abby realized, good-bye. And with a startling realization, Abby knew that she was going to miss her.
“That was her, wasn’t it?” Tom’s voice was low and awestruck.
She nodded. “She showed herself to you, too. She must trust you a lot, Tom. I think she was saying good-bye.”
“That was … that’s just…”
Abby laughed softly. “I’ve had longer to get used to it. Take your time.”
The banker’s box sat on the table while Abby got up to make a pot of tea and sandwiches for lunch. It wasn’t until the plates were cleared away and the teacups rinsed that she couldn’t hold back her curiosity. With Tom at her side, she carefully opened the lid and began to sort through the contents.
The hand on her shoulder stiffened as Tom reached past her with his opposite hand, taking out a photo that had caught his attention.
“Tom? What is it?” Abby put down the jewel box and leaned over to see what he held in his hand.
The picture was old—maybe twenty or thirty years by the fashions. She recognized Marian, smiling brightly behind a couple and a new baby. “That’s the Sullivans,” Tom said. “That baby must be Rick. But what was Marian doing there?”
He turned the photo over and his breath came out in a rush. Last clients of Foster House was written in blue ink on the back.
“Rick,” he said, and dropped the photo back into the box as if it were on fire.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A busy wife and mother of three (two daughters plus the family dog), Donna Alward believes hers is the best job in the world: a combination of stay-at-home mom and romance novelist. Donna loves being back on the East Coast of Canada after nearly twelve years in Alberta where her Harlequin career began, writing about cowboys and the west. To learn more, please visit her website at www.donnaalward.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE HOUSE ON BLACKBERRY HILL
Copyright © 2014 by Donna Alward.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
www.stmartins.com
eISBN: 9781466843646
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / May 2014
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.