by Lena Dowling
She was about to ask him what in the world he was talking about and then she remembered.
‘The swimming.’
‘Yes, the swimming incident, and I can say most honestly my preference is for you. Your figure is in every way superior,’ he chuckled.
Samuel sat down beside her, then lounged back, crossing one ankle over the other and folded his arms.
Colleen sighed, closed her eyes, smiled.
Thank God.
The old Samuel was back.
She had missed this so much; talk, company and how they could always make each other laugh.
‘And you are in every way superior where it counts too.’
Samuel stopped laughing, turning his head to fix her with a hard stare so that she could see the pain in his eyes.
Brilliant work, Malone.
Why did she have to go and remind him how many men she’d had to compare him with?
She looked away. Samuel had finally come back to her and now she had gone and ruined it.
‘You’re still angry,’ she said finally.
Samuel let out a slow deep breath.
‘Yes, I am, but I should say only so far as I’m angry at the world. It is brutal and unjust and I have been a fool in adding to that injustice. James said something that made me realise we need to take the pleasures of life as they are presented to us because they are all too few far and between.’ He swivelled around on the bench and took her hand. He spoke slowly and carefully as if every word was carefully chosen and every word was meant. ‘You are my greatest pleasure, Colleen, you and the baby.’
Colleen placed her free hand on top of his.
‘You’re not angry with me anymore?’
Samuel shook his head.
‘I was confused, that’s all; mixing up how I felt about you and what’s happened to you, making them the same when they’re not.
Colleen pushed herself up out of her chair and threw herself into Samuel’s arms. That’s all that she needed to hear. That he wasn’t angry — that he didn’t actually hate her.
‘Easy now, that’s our baby you’re heaving about.’
Samuel’s words struck her in chest, sending her reeling back out of his arms.
‘Our baby.’
But it wasn’t.
She had been lying about that as well. She couldn’t put herself through this again. Her heart couldn’t take it. She had to do what was right: tell him the truth for all their sakes.
‘There’s something else,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Your cousin Nellie, I know,’ he said cutting her off. ‘I promise you, we’ll find a way to have her freed from that place. We’ll save, we’ll borrow from James. He’ll be looking for a way to make things right, so that will help us, or maybe when Thea calms down some she might have a word with the Governor’s wife like she did with you.
‘Whatever it takes to arrange her freedom I’ll do it. She shouldn’t be in a place like that anymore than you should have been. I’ve been a dunderhead. When you told me about your cousin I didn’t think. If I had, I might never have had to know…and well, I did find out.’
He would rather not have known about her and James? If given a choice he might much rather go on believing that the baby could be his? She could say nothing. She had been so torn up with Samuel leaving she had barely been touching her food. If she continued that way the babe would be small. He would never have to know.
But the way Samuel was looking at her. Caring, decent, kind. All the things she had never known in any other man.
A person could be well intentioned and yet still be wrong.
Dead wrong.
No more lies.
Samuel would probably want nothing more to do with her after she told him, but she would rather know now, before the baby was born, than to give it a da only to have him wrenched away again, and if she told the truth maybe just maybe she could stay and give the baby a home. But if she said nothing and it came out later — and didn’t secrets always find a way of coming out?
‘No, there is something I have to tell you.’
‘Oh.’
Samuel stared at her intently now, his brow bunching up hard in the middle.
She looked down at her hands, too scared to look up. Her mouth dried up. She wasn’t sure she would even be able to find the words.
‘Would you call it “our baby” if you knew it wasn’t yours?’ she blurted finally, worried that if she didn’t say it quickly she might not be able to find the courage again.
‘Of course it is mine. You are my wife, which makes the child mine and I shall acknowledge it as such.’
‘No, I mean I thought I was pregnant when I came here. That’s why Danny sent me to The Factory in the first place, because soon I was going to be no good to him. It’s not yours, Samuel. It can’t be and after a while you’ll be resentin’ it. You were right from the very beginning when you said what we needed was an arrangement,’ she said hopefully.
Samuel grasped both her hands with his generous roughened paws. Instinctively she met his eyes, their usual sparkle replaced with something she had never seen before.
Surely he wouldn’t send her back to The Factory, but the look in his eyes was so fierce it sent a cold shiver down her spine.
‘Do you regret what has happened between us?’
‘What?’ She hadn’t been expecting a question. She was braced for anger, indignation, hurt at discovering another lie maybe, but not that. ‘No, I’m not saying that. It’s just another man’s baby — it’s too much to expect — too much of a burden that’s all,’ she said, as she tried to work out what was behind his question.
‘It doesn’t have to be that way. I know what it is not to have a father. My real father died when I was young.’
She was shaking her head even before he finished speaking. It was one thing to be fatherless, but being an unwanted burden to a stepfather; that was something different altogether.
‘But that’s not the same thing.’
Samuel’s grip tightened.
‘Just hear me out. My mother remarried and her new husband, a widower, brought me up as if I were his own, never making any distinction between me and his other children.’
Colleen narrowed her eyes, not sure whether to believe him, whether he was just saying that to make her feel better.
‘He never treated you different? Gave you less than your half-brothers and -sisters?’
‘Not once. I’m going to love this baby every bit as much as I love you.’
‘You love me?’
Colleen was so startled she tried to scoot back along the bench, but there was no escaping those big hands. She hadn’t got far before he stopped her, sliding her back towards him and into an enormous bear hug.
‘Yes Colleen, I do.’
‘Oh Samuel. I can’t breathe.’
Her chest was so constricted she couldn’t get any air and she wasn’t sure it was only his firm grip that was to blame. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was so choked up she thought she was going to burst.
‘What is it? Is it the baby?’
He let her go only to seize her by the shoulders anxiously checking her over from her face to her belly and back up.
‘No it’s you, you’re squeezing me too tight,’ she said settling for the answer that needed the least explaining.
‘Sorry, I hardly know my own strength these days.’
He wrapped his arms back around her more gently this time, more like he had her protected where no one could hurt her or her baby ever again.
‘Oh.’
‘Still too tight?’
And with that Samuel hugged her in close, only this time she didn’t mind at all because when the baby kicked again, Samuel jumped back, his beautiful smilin’ eyes dancing with delight.
He had felt it too.
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ISBN: 9780857991102
Title: His Convict Wife
Copyright © 2013 by Lena Dowling
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