Chapter Ten
The English houses of the aristocracy were so well-guarded with their myriad servants and their constant attention to detail. She had been perched across from the town house at Number Eighteen St James’s Square for a good few hours now, waiting for Summer to return home, and the dusk was starting to fall.
She knew he would arrive soon for she had spent the morning speaking with some of the servants from the house after pretending interest in obtaining a job there. She had heard that the Viscount was looking to employ a lad to see to the horses and so had used that opportunity to knock at the back door. From there she had begun to chat to one of the kitchen serving girls as she had waited and luckily the girl seemed to have a running tongue and a good deal of free time.
‘The Viscount is in the city until this evening when he is to come home to pack for a journey he will take on the morrow,’ the girl added, ‘to call on a woman who he is fond of. There’s talk of a wedding soon and all of us are in a tither as to what she will be like. His intended, I mean. Word has it she is a great beauty and very rich.’
Miss Crystal Smithson, presumably, the woman Vivienne Shayborne had also spoken of. She’d left after hearing this piece of news to wait out the hours in a tavern a few hundred yards away and, then, amidst the leaves of a spreading oak in the small park opposite the town house as the day turned to evening.
The Luxford carriage arrived just as she was beginning to think perhaps the information from the kitchen maid had been false, the horses running around the sides of the square in an easy canter and then stopping. Other servants from the house filed out and then Summerley Shayborne stood thirty yards away, dressed in clothes that befitted a titled viscount, his head turned so that she could not get a proper look at his face.
But it was him. The same straight posture, the same walk, though without the limp. His hair was the only thing completely different as now it almost reached his collar in a long wavy mass of blond, his fringe pushed back from his eyes with one hand even as he spoke with the man next to him.
Aurelian de la Tomber.
Stepping back into the greenery, she stood very still. She would have to wait until the Frenchman left for she did not dare to show her face to the one she had mistakenly thrown into danger with her accusations of treachery in Paris. Her fingers wound into the bark of an English oak, feeling its texture, finding a touchstone. Above the city, a small moon began to make its light felt in a sky that threatened rain. Eight o’clock. Her breasts ached with their unaccustomed fullness and the cold of the night settled inside her.
* * *
Two hours later de la Tomber left, using the Shayborne carriage as transport to wherever his home was here in London. The lights downstairs were then doused and another moved in a second-storey room, the French doors that led out to a balcony thrown open.
Celeste could not make out any form, save shadow, but presumed this to be the bedchamber of the Viscount. Below the balcony was a wooden lattice firmly fixed to the wall which was raised right up to the second-floor level.
So very easy to climb. This soft world of the English was laughable when compared with all the hidden defences of Paris. Here people lived without expecting trouble, the social norms observed without war tumbling in. The population here gave the impression that conflict would not follow them home and hence embraced their freedoms in a casual way, though from Major Shayborne she had expected more.
When the few other lights below were extinguished she moved forward, glad for clothes that were dark and ones which allowed ease of movement. The footholds were simple and within a moment she was on the balcony, staying still for a moment with her head tipped for any sound.
‘Come in.’
These soft words startled her, emanating as they were from the semi-dark.
He was sitting on a chair with his long legs stretched out before him. A single candle flickered on the table at his elbow.
‘You knew I was here?’
He ignored her query and formed one of his own. ‘Why are you back in England after all this time?’
He sounded distant, indifferent and cold, though the hand nearest the candle shook in the light as he raised it. His hair was tied back now with a leather thing, the formerly careless spill bridled and tamed. The aristocrat was well on show tonight, the political master, resplendent in surroundings that suited him and so far removed from the dirt and poverty of France.
‘I have come with a warning. Guy Bernard is on his way here to kill you.’
‘You had no need to come. De la Tomber has given me the very same news only this evening, Celeste.’ He said her name without any warmth. He said it as though the very sound pained him.
His eyes glanced across her clothing and she was comforted for the hat which covered much of her face and all of her hair.
He did not want her here, she could tell.
‘I did not realise Aurelian de la Tomber still maintained such good contacts in Paris.’
‘He is in Paris often and has kept abreast of all the happenings to aid his family. It is just as well you waited until he was gone for I am not certain he would wish to see you either.’
‘He was there when the Dubois family were murdered. I thought he was involved in it, too.’
‘Yet you slipped him a knife after he was taken.’
‘He told you of that?’ When he nodded she continued, ‘By then I understood the true nature of Mattieu Benet.’
‘Which was?’
‘He had accrued a fortune privately through the blackmail of others, so his scruples were compromised.’
‘God in Heaven.’
She frowned. She did not recall him as a man who’d sworn much at all, but, with his face dim and indistinct against the low light he felt like a stranger, like someone she did not know well any more.
‘Take off your hat.’
She swallowed, toying with the idea of refusing him completely and then discarding such a wasted emotion.
‘I want to see at least just who you have become.’
‘I doubt such knowledge could be so easily purchased, Major.’ She threw this back at him, even as she reached up for the felt beret.
* * *
Her hair was longer now, the same honeyed brown he remembered from her youth, but curlier. It grazed her shoulder blades, thick and glossy, a woman emerging from the plain clothes of a lad. So very beautiful. That thought angered him, as did the fact that his body warmed to her presence like a moth to flame. He knew she had seen his hand shake, but her unexpected reappearance had reignited inside him everything that he had thought dead.
‘You never wrote to say that you were safe.’
‘Perhaps it was because I wasn’t.’ Scorn and fury threaded each of her words.
He remembered this so distinctly. This fight and conflict. This anger that had kept him at a distance until she’d wound her body around his own in the darkness and taken every piece of him; poles apart like north and south, yet drawn together by gravity and emotion.
‘You must have expected some retribution when you meted out your accusations in Paris.’
‘You are right. I thought I would die. I thought that they would kill me quickly and then it would all be over.’
She sat on the floor suddenly, leaning her head against the wall behind her so that a slice of moonlight illuminated her face. This action reminded him so forcibly of their time in her father’s rooms high above Paris that he felt displaced and uprooted.
‘What stopped you from welcoming death after you escaped, then?’
An expression he did not recognise lay in her eyes, guarded, protective, fierce.
New secrets, he thought. Layers upon layers of them.
‘And so you headed south?’
She nodded. ‘To Rome. Caroline Debussy has good contacts there. It was comfortable and warm.’
‘Lian swears you never reached Italy. Madame Debussy is one of his godmothers and he made it his business to ask her.’
‘Where did he say I went?’
‘To ground. To hide. He said you were thin and sick and brittle when he saw you last and that he imagined you were now dead.’
She turned away from the light and reached into her pocket, plainly annoyed by his words.
‘If Guy Bernard comes, shoot him. He won’t give you the chance to make a second escape.’ A pistol he had not seen before sat in the palm of her hand. A beautiful piece inlaid with some shell that glistened in the light.
‘I’d forgotten just how brutal you were. Are,’ he amended.
‘There’s more at stake now, Major. Much more.’
‘More than even life or death? Now, that is intriguing.’
‘It is my duty to protect your back if you will not do so.’
He laughed then, her words so very ridiculous. ‘If you are discovered in my bedchamber, Miss Fournier, it might be your reputation that will need protecting.’
‘I don’t have one. It was lost years ago.’
‘In England you are the granddaughter of a woman who garners much in the way of authority and respect. I doubt she would agree with your assessment and believe me when I say that young women are forced into marriage on much less a count than being alone in the bedroom of an unattached male.’
‘But you are not that, are you? Unattached?’
‘Says who?’
‘Everybody I speak to. The ton is expecting the announcement of your nuptials to a woman of impeccable credentials any second now.’
‘You speak of Miss Smithson?’
* * *
The name jabbed into her heart, piercing her bravado. So it was true, all she had heard. This was not going at all as she had imagined it. Loring’s welfare sat in the wings of jeopardy and she needed Shayborne safe. Safe to be a father to him.
For the first time ever she felt distanced from Summerley Shayborne, her actions in Nantes and Paris leaving her caught in his disapproval and censure.
‘It is none of my business, of course.’ She tried to imbue some sense of apology into the retort.
‘You are right, it isn’t.’
At that she swallowed and was silent, the quiet stretching on between them into more than a few moments. Finally, he seemed to have enough of it and stood to pour himself a drink. He did not offer her one, though when it looked as if he might cross to her side of the room she flinched. He must not touch her. Her body was different now, changed, and a man of detail such as he would notice. As if he recognised her reticence, he moved back.
‘Go home, Celeste, to wherever that might be. I do not need you here.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘There are things I have to tell you, things you do not know.’
‘Start talking, then. I am listening and this is surely as good a time as any.’
Crystal Smithson’s name sat in the room alongside his anger and irritation. Aurelian de la Tomber was there, too, with his hatred and his ruined face. But above them all, Guy Bernard lingered for it was only because of her that Shayborne was being hunted. Again.
It was not the right time to throw Loring into the mix, she thought, her beautiful perfect son who only needed to be loved. So she stood and straightened her jacket.
‘I will be here on the morrow, watching over you, and for as long as it takes to know you are safe.’
‘I have already refused such help.’
‘I know.’ It was the only thing she could think to say there in the darkness of a cold London night. When he did not answer she simply walked to the balcony and climbed down the latticed frame under it. Her place beneath the tree opposite would be out of the wind and there she could watch the house for any untoward shadows.
He might not want her, but she needed him. More so now after seeing him again than she ever had before. It was only that simple. She pushed away hurt and uncertainty as she buttoned up her jacket, jerked down her hat and sat among the numerous autumn leaves.
* * *
Shay finished his brandy and poured himself another. Where the hell would she go at this time of night in a city she did not know well? He smiled savagely. She was a woman who dissolved into her surroundings. Anywhere might do it. Still, he resisted the urge to watch for her, closing the doors instead and locking them firmly, curtains pulled across the night.
She had left her pistol on the floor next to where she had sat. When he reached down for it her warmth still remained in the metal and he closed his eyes to feel it.
He had seen her the instant he had returned home with Lian, bathed in the shade of the trees. He had always been aware of even the slightest change in his surroundings, long years of jeopardy imprinting such necessity into him. The shock of seeing her had made his world blur momentarily and he was glad Aurelian had not commented on his unease.
He had known she would come up the trellis and in through the doors when she was able. He’d left the lattice there when first he had taken over the house from his brother, reasoning that an easy way in meant he could monitor any suspicious activity. He wondered what Celeste had thought of such laxness when first she had spied the entrance. In Paris the stone walls were unassailable and every apartment had supplementary locks. She would have thought it easy. He hoped Guy Bernard would think the same.
She had looked different. Softer, perhaps, and more filled out. He was glad of it for her sake. She had jumped when he had come closer and he knew to the very marrow of his bones that she had not wanted him to touch her.
Another difference.
The lavender perfume had gone, too, and there had been a scent on her that he did not recognise. Unfamiliar and alien. The anger in him grew.
It had taken him a good year to recover from the loss of her in France. The last few months had been easier, though, more social. Politics had taken the place of the military and he had made himself attend more of the ton soirées and balls in all their elegant dysfunction.
Crystal Smithson had become a friend. If she had wanted more than that, she had never mentioned it and he was glad of that. Celeste Fournier’s swipe at such a relationship had surprised him. Did others think he was angling to marry the girl? The thought had him frowning.
Lytton Staines had intimated much the same the other day when he had run across him in Regent Street. God, if he was not careful he could wind up married, pining all the rest of his days for another woman and a time when he had felt free.
He crossed the floor and sat where Celeste had sat, viewing the room from that angle. She would have noticed his books, the spines from here easily seen in their neat lines on the shelf. She would have seen the painting of his parents, too, above the bed, which also had him and his brother as boys included in it.
He’d seen her observe it closely, the likenesses well drawn in red pastel and watercolour. A soft and gentle rendering that he had always admired.
Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back just as she had.
What did he want? What did she want? Things had changed between them, time having clawed away ease and comfort. Now they were confused and estranged. He wished he might have the energy to go out into the night to find her. But even in France she had never declared her desire for more than the bedding and her indifference today had suggested she now fancied even less than that.
And therein lay the crux of it all, he ruminated. He’d wanted so much more when he had returned to England and it had shattered him, leaving him broken and uncertain for months. He could not withstand another round of loss.
He shook his head. No, if she came again he would allow her no glimpse into the hurt she had smote him with. He swore this on the departed soul of his brother.
* * *
Loring looked exactly like Summer as a child.
The picture behind the bed had been a revelation. The same shape of eyes and line of nose. The same fairness of hair and length of body. Her breasts prickled at the knowledge and she was pleased she had thought to bind them so tightly. The smell of her milk lay on the air and prompted a desire to hold Loring that was so vital it almost undid her.
Was he happy at Langley? Was he unsettled? Please God, let Guy Bernard be here tomorrow so that I can go back, she prayed.
But Summer needed her, too, and seeing him in the flesh for the first time in fifteen months had brought forth a barrage of feelings.
She wanted to lie with him and tell him all the things that had happened to her, all the hurts and the secrets. She longed to whisper everything she knew of Loring to him, all the small insignificant triumphs and worries that only another parent might understand and savour.
Bernard would be here either tomorrow or the next day, she was sure of it. He would come with his stealth and his anger and he would attack when they least expected it. She had to be ready. She had to be prepared. The gun in her pocket was loaded and primed. All she had to do was to wait.
* * *
She was asleep, curled into the base of the tree in a bed of leaves. This uncharacteristic defencelessness was so surprising Shay simply stood there watching her, the sun newly rising in the east over a waking city.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked gruffly a few moments later.
‘Long enough to have killed you had I been Guy Bernard.’
Unexpectedly she smiled, her eyes brightening. ‘Then I am glad you were not.’
‘Come and have breakfast with me, Celeste. You look like you need it.’
She stood, brushing the detritus of a night’s interrupted slumber from her clothes and when her jacket gaped a little he saw the rise of one breast above a heavy binding of linen. More rounded and full. He looked away before she noticed. ‘This protection you insist on giving me is not necessary.’
She said nothing as she followed him into the house. The sideboard in the dining room was laden with fare to break their fast and his servants watched her with more than interest. Today she looked nothing like the lad she was dressed as, and when she took off her hat her hair spilled down, curlier than it had been yesterday.
‘If you would like to wash first, there is a bathroom through that door.’
She nodded and promptly disappeared, returning five moments later with water sluicing down her wild curls and her face washed. She looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Shaking away that thought, he gestured for her to sit.
‘If you do intend to stay, perhaps I could offer you the use of my library. You once enjoyed books, if I recall?’
‘I’ve barely read in years.’
‘And yet people have not stopped writing. There are some recent editions of novels that I could recommend.’
She met his gaze then, full on, and he could see things inside her eyes that he had no words for, hidden dark things brittle with sadness. The servant at her back interrupted such discoveries, though, as he asked her what her preference was for the morning’s meal. When she had given her order she once again observed Summerley Shayborne.
‘I was sorry to hear about Jeremy. He sounded like a lovely man. I cannot remember meeting him, before.’
‘Who told you of his death?’
‘Many people.’
That was also a lie for there was complicity on her face. Lord. So many feelings came flooding back. Complex complicated feelings that he had no need of.
‘When did you arrive in England?’
‘Just over a week ago.’
‘Have you been down to Langley?’
He knew that she had even before she answered him.
‘My grandmother was pleased to see me. You were right about that.’
‘And now? After this? Will you go back to Sussex again?’
‘For a little while. Just until I find my feet.’
‘I am due down at Luxford next week. Vivienne, my brother’s wife, has been despondent since Jeremy’s death so I try to see her when I can.’
The bruising in her eyes darkened. She was not pleased with his words. Breathing out, he began to eat his eggs and bacon and she did the same.
* * *
The food tasted like dust in her dry mouth. Summer would be in Sussex next week! It was too soon. The wheels of fate were turning too fast and she could stop none of it.
This morning he was dressed down and he looked so much more like the man she had traversed France with, the man she had slept with every night for weeks.
Love me, she felt like saying, here in a room filled with food and servants. Take me in your arms and make the world right again.
Swallowing such emotions, she directed her mind to other things and was pleased when he spoke.
‘Aurelian said that Les Chevaliers was disbanded along with a few other of the agencies of Napoleon?’
Such a change in topic was welcomed.
‘Perhaps de la Tomber may have been happy with such a result. It strengthened the remaining agencies, the Ministry of War included, though I did not stay around the city to be sure of that.’
‘I don’t think he would have seen it in such terms.’
Celeste caught the edge of something. ‘Why?’
‘He was unveiled, I suppose, which is a difficult thing to be when you wish to work as a spy. The same might be said of you, Celeste. Being unveiled, I mean?’
‘Once that was true.’
‘But now?’
‘Now I have other more important responsibilities.’
She could see he was more than interested to know what these might be, but was too polite to ask.
‘What else did de la Tomber say to you of Guy Bernard?’
‘He said he had taken a long while to get back to full strength after his “accident”. He also said he was a wild cannon whom no one now had any time for.’
‘Which makes him doubly dangerous.’
‘I thought the same.’
‘Where was his information coming in from?’
‘Clarke’s office, I suppose.’
‘A second source, then. My warning was from Caroline Debussy.’
‘And I hold a third. Bernard was seen coming off a fishing ship late last night in the English port of Dover.’
Celeste frowned. ‘Then he will be here today.’
‘Which is why I want you out of it. I want you gone.’
‘No.’
‘Your presence will only make the meeting more difficult, given the last time he saw you, you cut his throat.’
He was striving for cold distance and she could not allow it. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one and I can fire a gun with expertise.’
‘The bloodthirsty Celeste Fournier?’
‘He is dangerous to us.’
‘Us?’
‘All of us,’ she amended and looked away.
‘Me. You. Who else?’
‘Anyone around us. He will kill anyone at all to get what he wants.’
‘And you lived with a man like this?’
‘He helped me once. He helped me survive.’
‘After your father’s death?’
She stood at that suddenly, pushing the chair back so hard it fell over, the noise of it bringing the servants in quickly from the kitchens. ‘England is the soft land of ease and excess, Major. There is nothing here that could make you understand exactly what it was like for me there in the middle of a war in France. You could not know how it was.’
* * *
He got up, too, his blood running as hot as her own as he grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room. When she went to scratch him with her other hand he fastened on that one, too, lacing her fingers together with his fury. Once in his library he pushed her inside and locked the door.
‘Then tell me what it was like for you, Celeste. Tell me what happened after the soldiers took you away from the house of Caroline Debussy; the same five soldiers who were found a day later with their throats cut in a room off the Champs Elysées.’
‘You know that?’
‘It was Guy Bernard who killed them for you, wasn’t it? He killed them because they had hurt you.’
‘No.’ The croak of the word was barely audible. ‘You can’t know this. You were not there. Anyone who was is dead.’
Tears were running down her cheeks now, tears that she did not even dash away as they fell unstopped, a dam of emotion that had suddenly burst.
‘What happened to you, then?’ This time he was gentler. This time he felt his own throat thicken. ‘Tell me, Celeste, and then live, damn it!’
She brought one hand up, running it through her hair, and he could see the conflict of whether or not she should allow him the truth in her eyes. Finally, resolution settled.
‘What do you think might happen when five soldiers take a young girl to a private room?’
He’d asked himself the very same question, but was now silent as she continued.
‘They raped me for a whole day and all I thought of was you.’
‘Me?’ He could not quite understand what she was telling him over the loud beat of his heart, over the sound of rushing in his ears.
‘You were the only man who had ever touched me like that before...and so I pretended that...it was you until all...I could see was your face and all...I could feel was your body. I could even smell you there, that particular scent that I have never forgotten. Even when I screamed I imagined it was you.’
‘Hell, Celeste.’ This time he leaned forward and took her in his arms. This time she did not fight and she felt soft and right and warm. She felt like home as they stood together with the horror of the past streaming down her face.
‘It’s over now. I will see you safe. I promise it.’
He whispered the words into her hair as he held her close, the clock in the corner ticking away the moments and then the half hour.
He would keep the fury of all she had admitted inside him until he was alone, keep it in a place where it was controlled and manageable until he could deal with it in his own way. He kept swallowing away the thickness in his throat.
When she finally pulled back he let her go, but he was not quite finished with his questions, for he needed to know what had happened as desperately as she needed to tell him.
‘Then Bernard came and killed them all?’
She nodded. ‘He’d heard the commotion for his contacts had alerted him of the soldiers’ presence. I did nothing to stop him. I stood there and watched until every one of them was dead and I was glad of it.’
‘Good for you. I would have done the same thing. They deserved exactly what they got. Sometimes justice like that is the only punishment for men who have stepped so far outside humanity. Sometimes death is the only option for a depravity that is staggering.’
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For listening. For not judging. Even for asking me to tell you because I am certain things like this are easier out than in and I have always thought that it was my fault, or my father’s.’
‘It’s not. I hope like hell that you know it wasn’t.’
‘I know. Now I know. Before I didn’t.’
He swallowed as he gave her his next words. ‘I want to talk to Guy Bernard when he comes. I want to have the chance to comprehend this revenge of his, to understand why he has come here now.’
‘I tried to kill him. He will never give such retaliation up and I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for ever.’
She looked spent and exhausted. Her eyes were red and her nose was running, but the fear in her face was lessened.
‘You won’t need to. I will see to that.’
‘So what happens now?’ Her voice was small and hollow.
‘I’ll be the one waiting for him to come.’
‘No. I want to be here, too.’
‘Very well.’
To send Celeste off alone after what she had admitted seemed wrong. ‘But you have to promise not to get in the way, not to shoot. Guy Bernard is mine, the final piece in the puzzle of the past. I want you blameless in his death. Do you understand?’
* * *
He was giving her the gift of the life she once thought she had taken. He was allowing her clemency. After all she had told him, he would still give her that? She could barely believe it.
‘He will come this evening, using the trellis beneath your window. He will wait until it is dark and the house is silent because that is what he taught me to do. If you greet him in the same way you did me, you will have him at a disadvantage.’
The clock in the corner chimed out the hour of eleven in the morning. Had it been that long since breakfast? It felt like hours on the one hand and like no time at all on the other.
‘I’ll ring for tea. I think we both need it and afterwards the housekeeper will find you a room so that you might have a sleep. It will probably be a long night.’
She nodded, pleased at the way he had taken charge of everything since her mind was still ringing from her confession. Once, she had imagined she might never have survived such an admission. Now all she knew was the relief of it.
He had listened to her words as a man and an honourable one at that. She could have asked for no more and the discharge of culpability was empowering.
Her body was free again and only hers, no longer soiled and tarnished. The grace Summer had given astounded her. She wanted to cross the room and crawl back into his arms, the protection found there so very precious.
But she did not, of course. Tea was coming and so was Guy Bernard, and if Summer had any chance of defeating him, he’d need his mind on the job. Already she could see him thinking in that particular way of his, the spy who had outwitted all his enemies because of cleverness and sharp wits.
‘Unload the gun you brought and put it on the table there. Live bullets in a room this size are liable to hit things they are not meant to. Besides, people generally want to tell their story and he will be no exception. But for now, we will have a drink and rest for there are plenty of hours to wait.’
* * *
His housekeeper had taken Celeste to the yellow bedchamber, a room that overlooked the back garden and which caught the afternoon sun. Situated on the next floor up, Shay was glad of the distance between them. His body shook with outrage from all she had told him, the fury building until he could stand it no more.
Shutting his door, he drove his fist into the wall beside it, the scrim jagging against his skin and drawing blood and pain, and the sort of ache that finally broke through the blinding anger of what had happened to Celeste.
He drew back his arm and slammed it in again, this time a sob of anguish escaping with the crash and then he hit out a third time, the madness diminishing exponentially with such temper and passion as his more usual resourcefulness crept back in.
He didn’t want to break his fingers, he needed the damn things to confront Guy Bernard when he came. Leaning back against the wall, he slid down it, legs folded up, his mouth against his hand, sucking at the bruising and the split skin.
He felt worn out and drained. He felt het up and energised, too, if that was indeed possible. It was how Celeste had always made him feel as she rode upon the edge of danger in everything she did. She was unlike anyone else he’d ever met and that was saying something in his walk of life.
He would deal with Guy Bernard and take Celeste Fournier home to Luxford. He did not care what happened in the future or how difficult it all was. She was his. She always had been his and always would be.
He would protect her and cherish her and keep her safe. Nobody would ever hurt her again. He was willing to sacrifice everything to make certain that this happened.
And so I pretended that it was you until all I could see was your face and all I could feel was your body. Even when I screamed I imagined it was you.’
Celeste challenged him and made him furious. She’d offered him her body even after everything she had been through and filled him up completely with her own brand of passion. Her secrets were dark and heinous, but then so were many of his own, the shady deals of espionage wrought in blood and deceit. He’d killed people, too, under the banner of war and sometimes it had not been pretty.
She was exactly right for him. She made his blood beat faster when she came near and his heart swell with bursting pride.
In her he could only see the grace and the hope of survival. She was the rose that bloomed among the debris, determined, brave and true. The White Dove. James McPherson had the truth of it there.
He laid his hands finally upon his knees and wept for all that they both had lost.