Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Alice!’ Avery got to his feet and held out one hand to the child as he helped steady Laura with the other. ‘Come in. We need to talk.’
Laura’s heart bled for him as she saw the look in the child’s eyes: doubt, anxiety, trust wavering on the edge of betrayal, but this was no time for displays of uncontrolled emotion. They had to reassure their daughter, nothing else mattered. She moved briskly across the room, closed the door and took Alice by the hand. ‘Come and sit down, Alice,’ she said with as much calm firmness as she could muster. ‘This is going to be a very big surprise and it is a good thing you are such a big girl now and can listen carefully and try to understand.’
‘We’ll sit on the floor,’ Avery said, folding down to sit cross-legged on the carpet. ‘Then we can all hold hands and look at each other.’
‘I am your mother,’ Laura said without preamble when they were settled, Alice’s cold little hand in her right hand, Avery’s big warm hand in the left. ‘Your real mother.’
‘You left me.’ Alice bit her trembling lower lip.
‘I lost you,’ Laura corrected gently. ‘You know that people have been unkind to you sometimes because Papa was not married?’ A nod. ‘People get very cross if a man and a woman make a baby before they are married and I’m afraid that is what your father and I did. We loved each other and he had to go to war. And then, darling, I’m so sorry, he was killed. He was very brave and he was doing his duty.’ Avery’s hand squeezed tight around hers.
‘Like Cousin Piers?’ Alice was looking steadier now.
‘Cousin Piers was your father, sweetheart,’ Avery said. ‘So I thought I must look after you. Only when I found you I knew at once that I loved you and that I wanted to be your papa. So I let you believe that I was.’
‘But...’ Alice turned to Laura, her forehead crinkled with the effort of working it all out. ‘If you are my really mama, why didn’t you marry Papa?’
‘Because I didn’t know where you were,’ Laura told her. ‘You see, my mother and father thought it was best if they sent you away so no one knew I had been in love with your father and that we had had a baby.’
‘Because silly people get cross because of you not being married.’ Alice nodded, obviously having sorted that out to her satisfaction.
‘It took me six years to find you,’ Laura explained. ‘And I pretended to be Mrs Jordan because I didn’t know what your papa would think of me.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me? And who was the bad man you were running away from?’
‘Er...’
‘Mama did not tell you because I was cross with her, too, which was exceptionally silly of me,’ said Avery firmly. ‘And the bad man frightened Mama in the park, but he has gone now and will never come back.’
‘So it is all right now?’ Alice asked, the anxious quaver back in her voice. ‘Even though Papa isn’t my really father and Mama is...Mama?’
‘It is perfectly all right,’ Avery said. ‘Grown-ups make a lot of muddles about things sometimes and we can’t tell everyone about who really is who because otherwise some people will be horrid to Mama. But now we are a family and nothing is going to spoil that.’
‘Would Cousin...Cousin Piers be pleased? Can you tell me more about him?’ Alice jumped up and put her arms around Avery’s neck and kissed him. ‘I don’t love him like you, Papa, but I’d like to know about him.’
Laura found she was looking at her husband and daughter through a mist of tears. Avery appeared to have lost the ability to speak. ‘We will talk about him lots,’ she promised. ‘And he would have been very, very proud of you, Alice.’
And then Avery opened his arms and pulled them both close and they clung together, murmuring disjointed reassurances to each other. There were tears, but when Laura finally stood up and took her daughter’s hand and went upstairs so they could wash their faces and brush their hair it seemed as though none of them could help the smiles and the laughter of sheer happy relief.
* * *
‘Are you tired?’ Avery asked when finally Alice, who had been allowed to stay up for dinner, had fallen asleep with her head on the tablecloth and had been carried up to bed.
‘Exhausted,’ Laura admitted as she walked unsteadily into Avery’s bedchamber and collapsed on the bed. ‘I can’t face going downstairs for tea. But I do not think I will ever sleep either.’
‘Happy?’ Avery asked. He kicked off his shoes, then leaned against the bedpost and began to untie his neckcloth. The dressing-room door opened and he called, ‘That will be all for tonight, thank you, Darke.’ It closed again and he joined her on the bed.
‘Happy? I do not think I know the name for it. It is as though someone has swept away all the doubts and worries and pain and loss and I’m like a newly whitewashed house. Empty. And yet full. Confused,’ she added when he laughed. ‘Happy, content, terrified I will wake up and this is all a dream.’
Laura turned on her side and propped herself up on her elbow. Avery was lying on his back, eyes closed, mouth curved into a smile of pure content. ‘How do you feel?’
He opened his eyes and studied her for so long that Laura felt herself grow rosy with the intensity of the look. Then Avery sat up. ‘There are not the words. Let me show you how I feel.’
Time stood still as he kissed her, caressed the clothes from her body, then lay and allowed her to strip him and caress in her turn. All the urgency, the heat, that had driven their lovemaking before had gone, replaced with a tenderness that went far beyond the erotic. Avery made love to every inch of her body with lips and teeth and tongue and gentle, relentless fingers.
Laura was swept from one peak to another, her body saturated with sensation. When he finally took pity on her and fell back beside her she summoned what remained of her energy and moved on top of him, straddling the narrow hips. He closed his eyes as she rose up and took him into her body, sinking down until they were joined, perfectly, and she felt a tide of feminine power sweep through her, meet and meld with his maleness.
He let her set the pace, lay and watched her through heavy-lidded eyes, his lips parted, his breathing ragged as she slowly, slowly built the tension, twisting the rope of passion between them until he reached out, gripped her wrists and thrust up, taking them both over the edge, into the storm.
* * *
They lay there, blissfully relaxed, drifting in and out of sleep, for hours. Eventually a clock, somewhere deep in the house, struck three.
‘I am awake,’ Avery said. ‘And hungry.’
‘So am I. Shall we raid the pantry? There is plum cake and cheese.’
‘A recipe for indigestion,’ Avery teased, but he belted his banyan and followed her downstairs, through the sleeping house. They filled plates and made tea and then tiptoed out again.
‘Goodness knows what we are going to have to tell Miss Pemberton,’ Laura said as they curled up against the pillows and tried not to get cake crumbs in the bed.
‘I will tell her that I was a foolishly suspicious husband. Miss Pemberton will consider me a brute and will probably order A Vindication of the Rights of Women from the library for you.’
‘Poor Avery,’ she teased and then, suddenly anxious, added, ‘Are you truly comfortable with Alice realising you are not her blood father?’
‘I am very happy. It has done my conscience no end of good, confessing. She’ll have lots of questions, but we will deal with them honestly as they come up.’ He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.
‘Thank you for agreeing to let Alice have a puppy,’ Laura said.
‘I had forgotten I had a bone to pick with you, my lady,’ Avery said sternly. ‘Whatever possessed you to promise Alice a puppy at dinner time? I foresee months of puddles on carpets, shredded upholstery and missing slippers.’
‘Um...’ Laura wriggled free and caught Avery’s left hand in hers, fiddling with his wedding ring, keeping her eyes fixed on it. ‘I thought it might be a good idea, because her nose is going to be very out of joint in a little while, I suspect, bless her.’
There was a moment when she thought he did not understand, then Avery pulled her round to face him, his fingers tipping up her chin so he could look into her face, his own intent and flushed. ‘You are with child?’
‘I think so. So does Mab. But it is very early, just weeks, and I have not seen a physician yet.’
‘Oh, my love.’ His arms around her were strong, possessive yet strangely tentative. ‘You should be resting... You shouldn’t have had all the strain and anxiety. You—’
‘Avery.’ She gave him a little shake. ‘I am pregnant, not sick! Are you pleased?’
‘Pleased?’ He sat back and regarded her as if she had asked whether he had a head. ‘Pleased? I am delighted. Why did you not tell me before?’
‘Because I thought I would never find out your true feelings for me once you knew,’ Laura admitted.
‘I see.’ Avery rolled off the bed and got to his feet in one fluid motion and turned away. Her heart sank. ‘Trust. It keeps getting in the way, doesn’t it?’
‘Lack of it does,’ Laura admitted.
‘You thought I would lie to you, pretend an affection I did not feel, if you gave me a child?’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘I wondered.’ Surely, after all that had passed between them, she had not had lost him again? Trust was so important to him and so fragile and she had shown she doubted him. Her hand went instinctively to her belly. She shouldn’t have said anything yet. It was to soon, she could be wrong and then he would think—
Avery paced back to stand in front of her. He looking down, his face shadowed. ‘I wonder if perhaps we are being too hard on ourselves,’ he said. ‘We are going to make mistakes, hurt each other, I am certain. But that is part of it, part of growing together. Love cannot be a magic potion, can it? One moment we are just two fallible human beings full of faults and fears, the next we are in perfect harmony? No, this isn’t a fairy tale, this is real life and real love.’
He reached out and pulled her gently to her feet. ‘I love you. You love me. We will work it out, Laura. We will learn how to trust and how to tell each other of our fears. We will learn to argue and make up and not see that as a sign of failure.’
Her hand was still pressed over where she hoped his child lay. ‘I may not be...’
Avery caressed her cheek. When he spoke his voice was husky. ‘I think you are.’ He laid his hand over hers. ‘But if not, then we have time and love and what will be, will be.’ He bent closer to look into her face. It was shadowy under the bed canopy, but the candlelight threw his face into relief, showed her both the strong man she loved and the tender lover she was coming to know. ‘Are you crying? Oh, Laura, my love.’
She found her voice from somewhere. ‘Only because I am happy. Ever since Alice was born there has been an empty, hollow place inside me. When I found her again it was filled and yet, somehow, something was still missing. I was not complete. Avery, I am complete now, with you.’
When he pulled her into his arms and kissed her there was no need for words. Impossibly, when she had given up all hope of happiness she had it all. A husband she loved, who loved her. Her daughter and the hope of all the years ahead would bring.
‘Tomorrow, shall we pack and go to Wykeham Hall?’
‘Start afresh?’ Avery asked. ‘Yes, my love. That house has been long neglected. It is waiting so we can make it ours. Let’s go and build a home together. Raise a family.’
As he embraced her she saw their shadows, strong against the subtle silk of the wall hangings. Two figures entwined, two hearts as one, Laura thought as Avery began to kiss her and her eyelids fluttered closed. Finally at peace.
* * * * *