Senator's Bride

by Jane Peart

  Suddenly a familiar voice spoke, and he spun around. Cara!

  He couldn't speak at first. It seemed so strange to see her—here in this place and because it had been so long. His first thought was how much she had changed. Even in the figure-concealing blue smock, he could tell she was thinner than he remembered. Her cheekbones were visible and as she came toward him, smiling, he saw there were lines around her mouth.

  "Kip, how wonderful to see you. Sorry to keep you waiting." She held out both hands.

  "And your Kip took her hands, squeezing them tightly. The first shock began to wear off. Thankfully he noticed that her smile was the same and her eyes were shining as if she were truly glad to see him.

  "I can hardly believe you're here," she said, lifting her face for his kiss. "Why didn't you let me know sooner that you planned to be in Paris?"

  "It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Couldn't we go somewhere so we can talk, try to catch up? May I take you out to lunch?"

  "I'd love to, but I can't. I'm on duty today. But I have half an hour until I have to report to the dining room. We can go out to the garden and talk until I have to go. It's sheltered and we can sit on the bench over there in that small patch of sunshine." She laughed, and Kip was pleased to hear the old lilt of gaiety in her voice.

  Kip made quick work of telling her about his trip to Versailles and of leaving Luc with his grandparents for a visit.

  "Oh, I'd love to see him. He's all recovered then?"

  "Yes, thank God. There seem to be no lingering effects. Thanks to Kitty's skill and her knowing what to do right away. It was she who suspected that it might be infantile paralysis even before the doctor could get there and make the diagnosis. I owe her a lot."

  "Yes, we all were so relieved and grateful that he came through. How lucky that Kitty was there when you needed her."

  "Dr. Madison said Kitty's a born nurse."

  "She certainly knew her vocation, didn't she? Even when everyone tried to talk her out of it." Cara shook her head sighing, "Sometimes we don't even seem like twins. Kitty never seemed to make the kind of mistakes I did."

  "Mistakes? What mistakes?" Kip looked puzzled. "Surely you don't mean your marriage to Owen?"

  "Oh, no!" Her protest was emphatic. "That was the best thing I ever did." She paused, gave a rueful half-smile, "It may have been Owen's mistake, although he didn't live long enough to find out."

  "I doubt if he ever thought it was a mistake. He loved you very much. I'm sure you made him happy. You two were meant for each other. I think I knew that, even that summer at Cape Cod; I was just too angry to admit it."

  "What a long time ago that all seems."

  They were both quiet for a moment as if remembering. After a while Kip asked, "So what are your plans now, Cara? Are you going to stay here?" He gestured to the house surrounding them in the enclosed garden.

  "Not much longer. The staff is now almost all French, and they are doing a magnificent job. Those of us, English and American, who came at first are being replaced, and that's how it should be. Actually . . ." Here she hesitated as if undecided as to whether to tell him something. ". . . actually, I'm waiting for some red tape to clear, perhaps having to sign some more papers to . . ." She turned to him with shining eyes. "Kip, there's a little girl, Nicole, brought here when she was only a few months old. I've taken care of her from the very beginning. She was very tiny, very frail. No one even thought she would live, but little by little, she gained and began to struggle to live. It was as if she felt it might be worthwhile after all." Cara smiled. "Anyway, I became very fond of her, and she grew very attached to me." She paused, then announced, "The fact is, I'm trying to adopt her."

  Kip looked startled. "You are?"

  "Yes. Owen and I wanted to have a houseful of children. Some of our own and adopt more; we talked about it . . . a lot. . . ." Cara's voice trailed off reminiscently but not sadly, "So now that I'm alone and I've found Nicole. . . . Well that's it. I have to wait until everything clears."

  "So when is this going to happen?"

  "I'm not sure. It's going rather slowly. At first, the French government was desperate to have these little war waifs taken care of, taken off their hands actually, to be fed and housed. They allowed adoptions quite freely. But now I think they're beginning to worry about losing a whole other generation o r - " she smiled again, this time the dimple at the corner of her mouth showed, "-maybe a few potential Pasteurs and Molières and Renoirs, perhaps even Sara Bernhardts! . . . might grow up in America, or Heaven forbid, England or Australia for them to claim."

  They laughed heartily, recalling the strong Gallic competitive spirit. Even being Allies during the war had not eliminated old hostilities between the ancient rivals.

  "Would you like to meet Nicole?" Cara asked.

  "Yes, of course."

  "Oh good!" Cara jumped up. "Wait here and I'll run up to the nursery and bring her down."

  "And I'll take a picture to show your family when I go home." He tapped the camera on the strap slung over his shoulder.

  "Wonderful. I'll be back in a jiffy!" she said as she hurried off.

  Left alone, Kip tried to put this new bit of information about Cara into perspective.

  His thoughts went whirling down through the years. Images of Cara, mischievous, adventurous, the instigator of so many of their childhood games, always teasing, challenging, irritating, frustrating, and irresistible. She had always been full of surprises, but this was something that he would never have imagined Cara's doing. Adopting a child? A French war orphan! Who would have thought it? It seemed out of character. And yet, somehow it was characteristic. She had always been impulsive, generous to a fault. But taking on this kind of responsibility? It didn't seem like the Cara he had known all his life, the one he thought he knew. . . .

  "Here we are, Kip."

  She was back, pulling him out of the past into the present.

  "This is Nicole." Cara's voice had taken on a whole new softness.

  Kip turned to see her standing at the entrance to the garden. She was holding the hand of a little girl about five or six with a halo of dark curls framing a rosy-cheeked, olive-skinned face. Large dark eyes gazed at Kip with a mixture of curiosity and shyness.

  "Say 'bon jour' to Kip, Nicole'" Cara urged.

  "Bon jour, Keep'" lisped the child.

  "Let's get a snapshot," he said, wanting to capture this enchanting picture immediately. "Stay right where you are. Perfect."

  He took two just to be sure. That was something he'd learned from Crystal, he thought with a touch of irony. Sometimes the quick, uncontrived shots could be the best.

  Nicole tugged at Cara's hand, pointing it to the fountain in the center of the garden. Cara released her, and Nicole ran over to it. As she leaned peering into the water, both hands on the edge of the pool, the white eyelet ruffle of her petticoat showed under the uniform pinafore.

  "Isn't she precious?" whispered Cara, sounding every bit the proud mother.

  "Yes, indeed," Kip agreed, amused to see the same look on her face that he was sure was on his when watching Luc at play.

  They heard a bell ring. Cara sighed and got to her feet.

  "We'll have to go in now, Kip."

  "So soon? We've hardly had a chance to talk." He was disappointed. "What about tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow I have an appointment at the office where my adoption petition is filed. I go to check on it every week, just in case they've misplaced it or something. I could meet you afterward."

  "All right. Where? What time?"

  "Let's see. Why not the Luxembourg Gardens. Say, noon?"

  "Great," he agreed.

  Cara called Nicole, took her by the hand, and they all walked to the front door to see Kip out.

  "Tomorrow, then," Kip said, all at once filled with an excited happiness.

  "Au revoir, Kip," Cara said, and as he turned to leave, he heard a small piping voice echo. "Au revoir, Keep."

  The next day as Kip
walked through the gates of the Luxembourg Gardens, he felt a sense of déjàvu. There was something very familiar about it, a faint smell of hyacinths in the air, the damp smell of earth in the rows of flowerbeds. Had he come here before with Etienette? He couldn't remember. In his old memories of Paris the sky had always been a cloudless blue. It could just as well have been the same overcast gris deperle it was today. Anyway, it wasn't important. What did matter was that he was looking forward very much to this day, of spending it with Cara.

  He saw her before she saw him. She was standing watching the children lined up to have a pony ride. He called her name. She turned around and waved, smiling, as he started toward her thinking how smart and rather French she looked in a blue knitted suit with a silk scarf at her throat and wearing a velvet tam at a rakish angle.

  "You look happy," he said.

  "I had a successful morning." She tapped her handbag. "Papers all completed. Just one more hurdle to clear and Nicole will be officially mine. I was just thinking while I was waiting for you how much fun Daddy would have had picking out a pony for her, teaching her to ride."

  Kip drew her hand through his arm and patted it sympathetically. They walked on for a few moments, not saying anything. They found a bench and sat down. She turned to him and smiled, "Doesn't it seem strange? You, me, here in Paris?"

  "Yes, in a way, but somehow natural, too."

  "Tell me about the Dedication," she prompted. "Did you see lots of old friends?"

  Kip raised an eyebrow. "Cara, flyers don't have many old friends."

  "Oh, I'm sorry, that was a thoughtless thing to say. I didn't think—"

  "Never mind." He shrugged. "It was such an unreal time. We were all so young, invincible; it always happened to the other guy. You know what I mean? Suddenly it dawned on you that those other guys were all gone . . . and that your number might come up next. After a while you stopped making close friends, made it easier when they went . . . " Kip gave himself a little shake, "Didn't mean to get morbid. It's just that being there at the Dedication brought back a lot of memories."

  They lapsed into silence for a few minutes. Kip stared beyond the formal flowerbeds out to some unknown horizon. Cara allowed him his silent tribute to his departed comrades. Then he glanced over at her, grabbed her hand, and stood up.

  "I'm cold, aren't you? That sun gives no warmth at all. Let's go somewhere, get some coffee or chocolate."

  They left the gardens and walked along the street, looking for a restaurant. At a flower stall at the corner he bought her a bunch of dewy violets, and she pinned them on her shoulder. They came upon a sidewalk cafe with none of its tables occupied, so they sat down, not seeming to think it strange that they were the only ones seated outside. A waiter finally came to take their order for café -au-lait, came back a few minutes later, then disappeared again.

  Unmindful of the wind that flapped the awnings above the windows, they began to talk. Words tumbled pell-mell, interrupting each other as one topic led to another and then another. They laughed and teased and reminisced about old times, hometown news, childhood remembrances, people they knew, events they had shared. Their conversation was intense, a mixture of the accumulation of nearly seven years of living an ocean apart, on different continents, in different worlds.

  All at once Kip thought of the time capsule they had placed in the hidden room at Montclair. While playing "Sardines" with the other children one rainy afternoon, he and Cara had found it by accident. On the wainscoting of the old nursery, somehow one of them had touched a concealed spring that slid back revealing a hidden room with a staircase that led down and out through the garden to the river at the end of Montrose property. They had been ten and eleven years old at the time and had told no one else about their discovery. Later they had found out that it had once been used as an escape route from Indian attack when that part of Virginia was still largely unsettled. Possibly it had been a secret "safe holding place" for slaves seeking freedom by the Underground Railroad. It had been Cara's idea to make up a time capsule and place it there to be opened when they were twenty-one.

  In all that happened in recent years Kip had forgotten about it. Remembering it now, Kip wondered if Cara did. When he reminded her of it, she declared, "Of course. We were to have opened it on New Year's 1913, weren't we?"

  "Amazing! Wouldn't it be fun to open it now and see what we thought were important documents in the year 1900?"

  Kip's eyes searched hers for some response. A wistful expression crossed her face. Softly he asked, "Don't you ever get homesick?"

  Suddenly Cara was assailed by a dozen mind pictures—the apple orchards, trees covered with pink blossoms, green fields dotted with the white sheep that pastured them in the spring, the lambs frisking on the hillside, the scent of autumn, and the exhilaration of racing on horseback along the paths in the Virginia woods . . .

  Kip laid his hand upon hers where it rested on the table.

  "Come home with me, Cara. That's where you belong. Where we both belong. Together."

  Cara's eyebrows drew into a frown above doubtful eyes. "Why do you think it would be any better for us now than it would have been ten years ago?"

  "Because we're different. Everything's different. We've both grown up; what we've been through, the good, the not-so-good, the terrible things that have happened to both of us, have all been meant for something."

  A slow smile touched Cara's mouth. One of Owen's favorite quotes. "All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called to His purpose." Was that Scripture verse saying something to her now?

  Cara was cautious. She did not want to be swept away by Kip's compelling charm, his ability to persuade. As she hesitated, Cara regarded him. Kip's smile was just as disarming as it had ever been. But there was more. There was character in the once-handsome, boyish contours of his face, tiny squint lines around his eyes and at the sides of his mouth that only pain and suffering could have etched. There were love and tenderness in eyes that had once demanded and mocked.

  Kip was suddenly filled with impatience, excitement. He wanted Cara to feel and know that was true as well. "Don't you see things have come full circle? We've proved that we can face problems, disappointments, losses and not only survive but grow from them. We're ready now to deal with the past, cope with the future. Don't you see how much better it would be together? You, me, Luc, Nicole. We'll be a family, a real family."

  He gently placed his hand alongside her cheek. "Darling Cara, please say yes. Come home with me. I've always loved you. It's been there all along. Something's been terribly missing in my life. You. Come home with me to Montclair."

  Cara felt a rising hope, the stirring of happiness. Maybe Kip was right. It seemed that they were back to the beginning of their relationship but with new insight, wisdom, faith. Something warm and sweet and infinitely comfortable spread all through her.

  "Oh, Kip, I'd almost forgotten how much a part of me you are." She leaned forward and kissed him. "Yes, let's go home."

  Collect the Entire Saga!

  The Brides of Montclair Series is one of the most dramatic and extensive family epics ever written, containing twelve volumes that tell the story of a single Virginia family from before the Revolutionary War to the decade of the 1920s. The series has garnered rave reviews, and individual tides have even been honored with awards. Don't wait. Get the complete set now.

  1. Valiant Bride

  2. Ransomed Bride

  3. Fortune's Bride

  4. Folly's Bride

  5. Yankee Bride/Rebel Bride: Montclair Divided

  6. Gallant Bride

  7. Shadow Bride

  8. Destiny's Bride

  9. Jubilee Bride

  10. Mirror Bride

  11. Hero's Bride

  12. Senator's Bride

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jane Peart, award-winning novelist and short story writer, grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and was educated in New England. Although she now lives
in northern California, her heart has remained in her native South—its people, its history, and its traditions. With more than twenty-five novels and dozens of short stories to her credit, Jane likes to emphasize in her writing the timeless and recurring themes of family, traditional values, and a sense of place.

  Ten years in the writing, the Brides of Montclair series is a historical family saga of enduring beauty. In each new book, another generation comes into its own at the beautiful Montclair estate near Williamsburg, Virginia. These compelling, dramatic stories reaffirm the importance of committed love, loyalty, courage, strength of character, and abiding faith in times of triumph and tragedy, sorrow and joy.

  About the Publisher

  Founded in 1931, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Zondervan, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, is the leading international Christian communications company, producing best-selling Bibles, books, new media products, a growing line of gift products and award-winning children’s products. The world’s largest Bible publisher, Zondervan (www.zondervan.com) holds exclusive publishing rights to the New International Version of the Bible and has distributed more than 150 million copies worldwide. It is also one of the top Christian publishers in the world, selling its award-winning books through Christian retailers, general market bookstores, mass merchandisers, specialty retailers, and the Internet. Zondervan has received a total of 68 Gold Medallion awards for its books, more than any other publisher.

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