by Susanne Lord
Will watched her hands, which she held crossed over her stomach, and he smiled wider. He lifted his gaze. “How are you, Charlotte?”
She wrapped her arms about her waist, knowing what he was truly asking, but years of etiquette lessons propelled the words from her lips. “I am well, thank you.” She lowered her arms. “I am well,” she said more pointedly. “Ben has been sending word, I believe?”
“Twice a day. I understand Doctor Simmons is very hopeful—”
“Why are you here? Are you unwell? Is John or Liz unwell? Did you have to postpone? Is the ship not sailing? Have you booked passage on another? Have you received word of Aimee?”
He looked at the flowers in his hand, then swung them forward at her. “These are for you.”
She blinked at the flowers. “What is the matter with you?”
He appeared to consider this. “Fewer things now, actually.”
“Are you avoiding my question?”
“Which one, sweetheart?”
“Any one.”
He took a step closer. “I would like to sit.”
“Sit? All right, but that is not a question I asked.”
Her legs shaking, she sat on the settee and, though there were a dozen other seats far more spacious, Will sat beside her, just as he had done the day they met.
She shifted to the end of the settee, but he followed, crowding her, and stretched a muscled arm across the back to lean close. Could he mean to kiss her? She ought to rebuke him if she could manage it—but then he rested his head on his hand. The way he used to hold his head up when he was fatigued.
Her heart tightened with concern. “Are you sleeping?”
“Not as well as when you were sleeping all over me.” He smiled. “But the nightmares are gone, Charlotte. All this week, I was alone, I didn’t have you, and the nightmares didn’t come back.”
There was something different about him. The guarded look in his eyes had disappeared. The skin about his mouth and nose was no longer strained. He looked…peaceful. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m glad.”
“But I am dreaming. Dreams of us. I dreamed of our baby. And he looked like me.” He threw his hand up weakly. “And he was dressed in a sailor suit.”
He wiped his face, and when he looked at her, his eyes were wet.
“I believe the Bourianne baby is alive.” He swallowed, a tear coursed down his cheek. “I need to. And I need to believe someone good and kind is taking care of her and I need to believe she forgives me for being too late to find her that day. I need to believe they all forgive me and I think they finally do, because I…I dreamed of them, too. My friends. And in the dream, they were all alive and happy.
“They don’t want me to sail. They don’t want me to save them anymore,” he said. “I think they want me to save myself.”
She nodded, gasping in a breath she forgot to take, too relieved for him, too overcome to speak.
“I still don’t know why I was spared and they weren’t. I don’t think I ever will. But I thank God for my life.” His eyes met hers, unashamed of the tears that spilled free. “I thank God because you are in it. I love you. You know that. Please know that.”
And suddenly she did. In the unwavering hold of his gaze, the warmth of his hand, and above all, the feeling—horrible as it was—that Will had fought his way to her from some place further than the other side of the world and deep as the darkest hell in his mind.
The tears in her eyes spilled over and she flung her arms about his neck, laughing and crying in relief.
They held each other a long time, until her tears dried and Will sat back to brush a stray hair from her cheek. “I was wondering…all this week actually, if you might love me, too? Or if you were still mistaking me for the man of your dreams.”
Her heart cramped in her chest. Why had she said that? “Will, I did not—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “I just wondered if your dream man argued daily with his valet over who has the right to shave his own face?”
She hesitated, uncertain what he was asking. “He is not overfond of quarrelling, no.”
“And if he locks himself in the study so he can spend a half hour hefting The Atlas of British Flora over his head because his wife is partial to his shoulders?”
She shook her head, a smile growing on her lips. “No, I…I don’t believe he exerts himself in quite that way.”
“And if he counts toad in the hole among his favorite foods?”
“Now you are just being absurd.”
He leaned close, his eyes latched to hers and his lips a breath away. “Then I can’t possibly be the man of your dreams, sweetheart. So maybe there’s a chance you love me, too?”
Her heart was beating hard, and her body flooded with so much love that for one of the few times in her life, she could not speak the words to tell him how completely, how ecstatically, she loved him.
So she kissed him and showed him, and very likely she would smother him with a thousand words of love.
Yes, very likely she would.
Later.
Epilogue
April 1851
“That’s good, sweetheart.” And Will meant it. Charlotte’s drawing was improving with the help of her new drawing teacher. He could discern a human form, too small to be an adult. Their son, John, then. A safe enough guess. He was her favorite subject.
This was how they often spent their leisure time in their new home in Richmond. Though there was little of that for him the past month. The published collection of his travels, even without the salacious recounting of Tibet, had sold so well, the book was in its fourth printing and was being translated for sale on the Continent. With the popularity of the book, there were speaking engagements to prepare for and assemblies to attend with his dazzling wife now that she was delivered of their baby.
Fortunately, Lucy, Ben, and Wallace were often invited to the same events so there were friends for him to speak with. And nothing made Charlotte happier than to have her family with her in Society.
And nothing made him happier than spending a quiet afternoon planning his next expedition. This time to Cumbria in the north. With his family.
“Good, is it?” She held up her drawing. “Then tell me what it is.”
“Not a what, a who. Obviously, it’s our son sleeping in a wheelbarrow.”
Her smile fell and she looked at her drawing, a puzzled look on her face.
“I mean, a…sled?”
She looked at him as though there was something very wrong with him. “That is a crib.”
“Right, a crib.” He grinned.
“Why would he be in a wheelbarrow?”
Will squinted at the picture, but Charlotte pulled it away. “Honestly. Your son is lying two feet from us in his crib and—”
He kissed her to silence, trying not to laugh.
“Mr. Repton?” their butler called from the door.
Stifling a sigh, he lifted his head. “Yes, Mr. Simms?”
“You have visitors, sir. A Miss Georgiana Mayhew.”
The laughter rumbling in his chest died and he stared, unable to understand what the man had said. “George is dead.”
Charlotte’s delphinium blue eyes swung to his, wide with surprise.
He didn’t know why he blurted that, but all these months, all these long months, there’d not been any news of George. Seth hadn’t given up hope for Aimee—but he’d written…
Seth believed his sister was dead.
The butler inclined his head and spoke slowly. “The young lady is a Georgiana Mayhew—”
“Yes,” he said, the word barely breathed, barely audible. Will sank next to Charlotte, only dimly feeling her arm around him.
“Please put Miss Mayhew in the front parlor,” Charlotte said, and the butler dipped his head and left.
“Will?” Charlotte squeezed his hand. “George is alive. She made it back.”
Alive…how…?
Charlotte tightened her arm about him. �
�Shall we see her together?”
He wiped his face with a hand that quaked. John slept in his crib, his blond hair looking so soft on his pallet. His little boy. The sight propelled him to standing.
“I’ll call the nurse to sit with John,” Charlotte said.
He nodded. He never left his son alone, asleep or awake. Charlotte understood his need to keep him near and never shamed him for his weakness, never questioned his wish to have John’s cot in their bedroom. He was still such a little thing, as small as…as small as Aimee had been.
Charlotte released his hand to pull the bell. Will started to pace. “Why would she come here?”
“She will tell you what she learned in Tibet.”
“Right, right.” He held out a hand to Charlotte and she took it, standing beside him. Always beside him. He’d come to depend so much on her.
He was his father’s son, after all.
John’s nurse arrived and he could delay no longer.
The door to the parlor was ajar and Will hesitated before entering. Charlotte laced her fingers through his and, impulsively, he lifted her hand and pressed a kiss into the palm.
He could bear this. He could bear anything.
They stepped into the room.
He’d never met the intrepid, wholly remarkable Georgiana Mayhew, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the child in her arms.
“Oh…God,” he whispered, before he staggered forward. Please…please…
Georgiana turned the child to face him, and when the little girl’s wide blue eyes found his, she lifted her arms and squealed happily.
It was almost as if she remembered him.
About the Author
Susanne Lord lives beside a beautiful pond surrounded by hawthorn trees and wildflowers. When it’s quiet and no one is about, she can pretend she is taking her exercise on the grounds of an ancient family estate. When it’s not, she’s reminded her family is not of the landed gentry, the pond is in the middle of Chicago, and the only adventure in her day comes in the form of emails marked “urgent” at her advertising job. She is an active member of Chicago North RWA. When not working, writing, attending theater, or reading, she travels to England, where she enjoys getting lost in the woods.
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