by Laura Martin
‘We have more immediate concerns—’ he said.
But Lucy interrupted. ‘We don’t,’ she said. ‘Our whole relationship, our whole future, depends on your ability to forgive me. I understand if you can’t, I do...’ her voice broke and she took a deep breath to compose herself ‘...but I am asking you to try.’
‘To forgive you?’
‘For running away, for taking your son away from you, for not allowing you to grieve for our boy.’
He saw the tears in her eyes and reached out slowly to take her hand. It was an instinctive gesture, a need to comfort his wife when she was so upset.
‘I haven’t made it easy for us to reconcile,’ she continued. ‘I was so worried about losing myself, losing the freedom I’d grown used to over the last year, that I didn’t realise something much more important was at stake.’
‘More important?’
She nodded. ‘Our future. Our happiness. Together.’
He felt a surge of hope. It was the first time she had ever initiated a conversation about their future.
‘But we can’t move forward if you are always going to doubt me,’ Lucy said. ‘I know I haven’t given you much reason to trust me, but I promise you I will never leave again, not unless you want me to.’
Oliver found her eyes with his own and saw the sincerity there. She truly believed she wouldn’t ever run again, wouldn’t ever deal with adversity by fleeing from him.
‘I don’t know if I can believe that,’ he said quietly.
Lucy nodded, her face a picture of pain. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Then perhaps we should discuss how best to move forward with our lives.’
Oliver had a sudden unwelcome image of Lucy living independently from him, waking up in her own bed, going about her life without him by her side. It was painful and uncomfortable. He wanted his wife—it was all he’d wanted this past year—and the only thing holding him back was his own inability to forgive.
‘Wait,’ he said, reaching out for her hand once again.
‘I love you,’ Lucy said so quietly he barely heard the words. ‘I want to be your wife, I want to raise this child with you, whatever challenges we might face.’
‘You love me?’
She nodded. ‘And I know you love me.’
It was hard to deny, despite him trying for the past year. He’d fallen in love with his wife and loved her all the time he’d searched for her. Oliver knew that now, but he’d never expected Lucy to love him in return. His heart soared and he wondered if this could truly work.
‘All I have to do is forgive you,’ Oliver said, more to himself than Lucy.
‘If you can.’
He thought about the year of pain, the worry, the suffering of not knowing what had become of his son. It would never go away and the grief he felt was still acute, but what was the point in holding on to the feelings of betrayal and mistrust? If he forgave Lucy, they could have a fresh start; they could build a life together with no underlying resentment or fear.
‘I forgive you,’ he said softly.
‘Truly?’
‘Truly.’
Bending down, she kissed him again and this time he pulled her on to his lap for a longer embrace.
‘And if this child is born the same way as David?’ Oliver asked.
‘We will love the child with our whole hearts and we will be stronger together,’ Lucy said.
Oliver closed his eyes, wondering if all the heartache was truly over. All he’d wanted this past year was his wife back in his arms, and of course their son. Nothing would bring David back, but at least he had Lucy.
‘What do we do now?’ Lucy asked.
‘Let’s not get a divorce,’ he said with a grin on his face. ‘Too much bother.’
She shook her head. ‘Let’s never say that word again.’
‘Perhaps we could travel back to Sedgewick Place and start making plans for the future together.’
‘I’d like that very much.’
He held her tightly on his lap, wondering if he was being foolish. Could it all really be as simple as deciding he was going to forgive her and moving on? Love meant he couldn’t bear to be apart from her, but he knew it wouldn’t necessarily be a straightforward path.
‘I’ll never hurt you again,’ she whispered as he pulled her closer. ‘I never want to cause you any more pain.’
Oliver found that he believed her.
‘I can’t ever lose you,’ he said, nuzzling into her neck.
‘You never will.’
Epilogue
The day was bright and sunny, the streets bathed in the warm glow of autumn. It was nearly a year to the day since Oliver had first found her walking south of Russell Square, heading back to St Giles, and dragged her home to start their life again together and Lucy couldn’t believe now how much she’d resisted at the time.
‘This way,’ she said, grabbing Oliver carefully by the arm and pulling him along a narrow alleyway. ‘We don’t want to be late.’
‘Your mother is getting impatient with our slow and steady speed,’ Oliver whispered to the little bundle cradled in his arms, loud enough to be sure Lucy could hear him.
‘Your father is dawdling again, Georgina. He spends all his time staring into your eyes.’
She had to admit it was hard not to get lost in the huge dark eyes of their baby daughter. Lucy thought she was the most beautiful child in the world, although she probably was a little biased. Oliver seemed to agree with her, though. The little girl had Oliver’s dark hair and huge brown eyes that were beginning to resemble Lucy’s. Her skin was soft and smooth and when she looked into Lucy’s eyes the new mother found her heart melting.
They rounded the corner and Lucy marched up to the smartly painted black door that looked a little out of place in The Mint. A highly deprived area of Southwark, it had seemed the perfect place for Mary to open her second location for the newly renamed London Women and Children’s Foundation. Lucy suspected Mary had plans to expand throughout all the largest slums of London; this was just the first step in the grand master plan.
‘Come in, my dears,’ Mary said as they pushed open the door, revealing a wide hallway with rickety stairs rising to the upper floors. The building had been in an awful state when Mary had bought it a few months ago, but hard work and some generous donations from their benefactors had meant she was able to fix the worst of the structural damage and spend a little on getting the new location equipped.
As yet there were no residents—Mary would open the doors to the women and children of Southwark from tomorrow—so for now the hallways and bedrooms were silent and empty. Lucy had no doubt they would fill up soon after word got around about the new charity. There were plenty of women in Southwark who would be relieved to find someone to help them in their darkest hours.
‘The guests will all start to arrive in a few minutes, but first let me have a cuddle with my goddaughter.’
Oliver handed her over and Lucy watched with affection as her closest friend cooed over the little baby. Georgina’s lips twitched into what passed for a smile in a two-month-old baby. Mary had travelled down to Sussex for the christening a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time she’d left London or the Foundation in the years Lucy had known her, but nothing was too much bother for her beautiful goddaughter.
‘I need you to be all lordly today,’ Mary said to Oliver as she led them into what would be a communal dining room, but today was serving as a place for all the invited benefactors and governors to mingle.
‘I’ll try my best,’ Oliver said.
‘It is amazing how people are swayed into supporting a cause when someone titled and important is attached to it.’
For the past nine months Oliver had given support to the Foundation whenever he could, often just needing to lend his name to inspire others to do the same. He�
�d done this willingly, but at the same time had asked for something from Lucy in return. She’d agreed not to go traipsing through St Giles after the eighth month of her pregnancy, and had happily retired to Sussex to give birth to Georgina shortly after. They’d spent two blissful months in the countryside, ensconced in Sedgewick Place, falling more and more in love with their little girl every single day. Today was their first day back in London and, although she was nowhere near ready to step up to her previous levels of commitment, Lucy was eager to start getting involved with the Foundation again.
‘I’ve brought the accounts back to London with me,’ she said to Mary as they entered the empty dining room.
‘She was doing them while in labour,’ Oliver muttered.
‘You exaggerate,’ Lucy said, shaking her head. Although he wasn’t, not really. She had insisted on finalising the accounts for the last quarter while getting the first few twinges that had indicated Georgina was on her way, but it had been a good distraction, and as soon as the contractions had started properly she’d put the books away.
‘What would I do without you?’ Mary said affectionately.
Handing the little baby to Lucy as there was a knock on the door, Mary rushed out to greet the first of her guests.
‘Now I’m going to have two slums to choose from when searching for my wife,’ Oliver murmured as he looked around the room.
‘I promise to leave you a note,’ Lucy said, smiling down at Georgina as she wriggled in her arms.
‘Perhaps I’ll just have to accompany you everywhere.’
‘Now that would be a hardship.’ Lucy smiled, glancing at the door just as her husband leaned in to kiss her. There was no one there yet, so she allowed herself ten seconds of bliss before pulling away. ‘Someone will catch us.’
‘I know it’s not fashionable to be seen to be so in love with one’s wife,’ Oliver whispered in her ear as Mary led the first of the guests in to the room. ‘But I just can’t seem to help myself.’
Before she could stop him he captured her for another quick kiss, despite the two women bustling across the room to greet them.
Her cheeks pink, Lucy didn’t bother reprimanding him again. In truth, she loved it that he still couldn’t keep his hands off her—even if it did lead to one or two embarrassing situations.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story you won’t want to miss these other great reads by Laura Martin:
An Earl in Want of a Wife
A Ring for the Pregnant Debutante
An Unlikely Debutante
An Earl to Save Her Reputation
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Captain’s Christmas Journey by Carla Kelly.
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The Captain’s Christmas Journey
by Carla Kelly
Chapter One
‘Buck up, Captain Everard,’ he told his reflection in the mirror. ‘You promised you would do this, so to Kent you will go.’
Joseph Everard, post captain, Royal Navy, turned around to stare hard at Lieutenant David Newsome’s paltry heap of personal effects on his desk, wishing he could make it go away. It remained there unmovable, another sad testament to the fleet action now called Trafalgar. That one word was enough to convey all the horror, the pounding and the fire, which combined to create the most bittersweet of victories, with the well-nigh inconceivable loss of Vice Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson.
Had anyone been interested, Joe could have explained his reluctance to deliver David’s effects in person. It wasn’t because his second luff had done anything amiss, or behaved in any way unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. True, he was young, but weren’t we all, at some point?
Joe had done this sad duty many times before, whenever possible. He should have been inured to the tears, the sadness and the resentment, even, when a mother, father or wife had stared daggers at him, as if he was the author of their misery, and not Napoleon. Left to his own devices, Joe Everard would happily have served King and country patrolling the seven seas and engaging in no fleet actions whatsoever. He had never required a major, lengthy war to prove his manhood.
They were all puppets in the hands of Napoleon. Now that war had resumed, after the brief Peace of Amiens, Joe saw no shortcut to victory for years.
Something worse explained his reluctance for this distasteful duty, something Lord St Vincent, or as he had been then, Captain John Jervis, had described one night.
They had come off victorious in some fleet action or other—they tended to blur together—and Captain Jervis and his men were moping about in the wardroom. The wounded were tended and quiet, and the pumps in the bowels of the ship had finished their noisy job.
‘Look at us,’ Captain Jervis had remarked to his first lieutenant, an unfortunate fellow who died the following year at Camperdown. ‘There is nothing quite as daunting as the lethargy that victory brings.’
No doubt. Trafalgar, a victory as huge as anyone in the Royal Navy could ask for, dumped a full load of melancholy on Joe Everard’s usually capable shoulders. Why one man should die and another should not was a mystery for the ages, and not a trifling question for a mere post captain who had done his duty, as had every man aboard the HMS Ulysses, a forty-eight-gun frigate. He and his crew of well-trained stalwarts had babied the Ulysses through the storm the next day, limped into Torbay and remained there waiting a final diagnosis from the overworked shipwrights.
He and his officers had travelled from Torbay to Plymouth to sit in the Drake and drink. They talked, played whist and cursed the French until they were silent, spent and remarkably hung over. Joe couldn’t release anyone to return home to wives, but the wives could come to Plymouth.
More power to you, he thought, as he had listened to bedsprings creaking rhythmically and wished he had found the leisure, or perhaps the courage, to marry.
After a week, the verdict was a month to refurbish and repair in the Torquay docks. He released his officers to their homes for three weeks and cautiously gave his crew the glad tidings, wary that some might not return and truth to tell, hardly blaming them if they did not. His sailing master, a widower with children in Canada, had no objection to staying in Torquay for the repairs. Such a kindness gave Captain Joseph Everard no excuse to avoid the condolence visit to Weltby, Kent, where Second Lieutenant Newsome’s parents and one spinster sister resided.
Since England apparently still expected every man to do his duty, Joe sent a note to Augustus Newsome, explaining t
he reason for his visit and hoping he would not upset the family by returning their son’s belongings in person. He added a postscript stating when he could be expected in Weltby.
He chose to take the mail coach from Plymouth to Weltby, mainly because he enjoyed the sight of ordinary folk going about their business, almost as if the war raging at sea was happening on Mars. He could listen to idle chat and observe people not poised on the edge of danger possessed with that peculiar thin-faced, sharp-featured look that all men at war seemed to wear as a badge of office.
He hadn’t reckoned on the power of Trafalgar. Joe never thought of himself as a forbidding fellow, but truth to tell, an ordinary ride on the mail coach would have been a silent one. Maybe he did look like a man who had no wish to talk. God knows he had frightened a decade’s worth of midshipmen.
But Trafalgar had loosened people’s tongues and heightened their curiosity. If the spirits of the deceased hung around for a while, as Shakespeare claimed they did in Romeo and Juliet, Joe had to imagine Admiral Nelson would have enjoyed the praise heaped on him by England’s ordinary citizens.
Joe thought he might be troubled to talk about the battle recently waged that was still giving him sweating nightmares in December, but he wasn’t. The other wayfarers were genuinely interested in the contest of the British fleet against the combined forces of France and Spain.
They even wanted him to explain his ship’s role, which also surprised him, because the newspapers had sung the praises—well deserved—of Mars, Victory, Agamemnon and Ajax, ships of the line with stunning firepower.
But, no, they had questions about the service of the battle’s four frigates and he was flattered enough to explain the frigates’ role as repeaters on such a roiling scene, with smoke obscuring battle signals. ‘We read the flags and passed on the messages, where we could,’ he said. ‘It meant moving about and coming in close so other ships of war could read Nelson’s flags.’
It sounded simple enough, but the reality was timing movements and darting about to avoid obliteration, which nearly came when the French Achilles’s powder magazine exploded and rained fire on the deck of the much smaller Ulysses. That was when David Newsome died, struck by a flaming mast. Joe paused in his narration and bowed his head, which gave the old lady next to him silent permission to hold his hand, the first such gesture he had felt in years. No one ever touched the captain.