The Sign (Unbreak My Heart Book 4)

A.S. Roberts
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 CONTENTS

Charity write up
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
 Version 1A
Copyright © A. S. Roberts
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Any unauthorised reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the express permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations and places or events are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
I am an English author and I write in British English. Except if a character is American, then I may use American slang.
 Unbreak My Heart

This story is part of Unbreak my heart Anthology, raising awareness and money for the Charity Heartbroken To Healed helping
people find a way through their grief and loss in Tyne & Wear, based in the United Kingdom. The authors taking part in this
anthology have agreed that all proceeds will be donated directly to the charity.
The grief index describes over 40 losses that create a grief reaction. Moving home, changing jobs and the loss of a pet are
also stressful losses. At H2H we believe that everyone has a right to heal their broken heart, no matter the cause or their
financial position so we operate a pay what you can afford policy. (PWYC) We need to do more than hope, kiss it better or
just get on with life. Those old fashioned attitudes cause harm to our bodies and minds, our home life and friendships as
well as our community and family life. Are you ready to feel better?
https://www.heartbrokentohealed.co.uk/

Anyone experiencing any grief please know that you are not alone and seek support.
Living in the UK? Find help here:
https://www.cruse.org.uk/get-support/helpline/

Living in the USA? Find help here:

https://whatsyourgrief.com/
Living in the AUS? Find help here:
https://www.grief.org.au/
PLEASE be aware that these stories may be a trigger for anyone experiencing or having experienced loss.
 CHAPTER
ONE

Lucy

‘H ey, Lucy.’
Hearing Becca’s voice, my thoughts dissipated.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, with the tone of voice I’d tried so very hard to master over the past twenty months, two days and…
I took a glance down from the rain spattered window and looked at Matt’s grandfather’s watch that adorned my wrist, and
found the answer I was looking for… three hours.
I expelled a long exhale.
I had been a widow for twenty months, two days and three hours. It still seemed unreal, like I was living in someone else’s
nightmare. Only I couldn’t wake up.
Placing my hand as subtly as I could against my chest, I pressed firmly as I tried to alleviate the all too familiar stab of pain
through my heart. The pain that whether it was night or day, sunny or wet, never seemed too far away. It grew in its intensity,
but after a few calming lungsful of air it gradually decreased to the ache I carried around with me almost every hour of most
days. Ours had been a teenage romance that, unlike so many others around us, strengthened as time passed. Until people
couldn’t even say our names separately, instead they said them together on one release of breath.
With a final inhale, the stabbing pain receded to an ache of love lost. I not only mourned his passing, and our son not being
able to grow up knowing the man his daddy was, but also the familiarity and comfort that I didn’t think I’d ever experience
again. As a leaf blew off one of the trees in the garden, I took in all its autumn splendour, and acknowledged that it was this
time of year I missed him the most. When the summer gave way to autumn, when the leaves on the trees turned colour. When
life went into retreat, before regenerating again come the spring. Because we had met during the autumn and it was our
favourite time of year. Spending a long morning in bed, walking our dog through the woods, and watching an old film on the
television wrapped up in each other’s arms, before ending the day by showing each other just how much we loved each other.
Those had been the best days of my life, and I still couldn’t comprehend they would never return.
As always, I felt the tell-tale pressure behind my eyes as tears began to form.
‘I’ve found something I think would be just perfect for you.’ Becca’s voice sounded again, and I cleared my throat loudly as
I attempted to pull myself together. I could tell how enthused my bestie was, as the leather she had been precariously sitting on
the edge of creaked and groaned as she flung herself backwards in satisfaction.
‘Okay,’ I answered, without turning around. Studying the birds feeding on the seed that I’d filled up that morning, gave me
the few minutes grace I was looking for. ‘I still can’t see him.’ Speaking out loud by mistake, I closed my eyes and grimaced at
my reflection.
‘Who?’ she enquired absentmindedly, as she continued to read through the vacancy page.
‘Nothing.’ I shook my head and once again rallied my tone to fob her off.
‘Oh, Luce.’ Suddenly, she was behind me. Wrapping her arms around me and placing her chin on my shoulder, she offered
me the comfort she knew I needed.
‘I’m sorry… but it’s things like this. I know the robins you always fed with Matt were a mated pair. I even remember you
both telling me about the female going missing, so the male was left by himself, but you can’t go on like this—You need to
move on. You need other distractions.’
‘I just hope nothing’s happened to him. Not him as well.’ We both knew what I was alluding to.
‘I know,’ she muttered, as she pulled me closer into her arms. ‘I’m sure he’s fine, maybe he’s just taking his time to return
this year?’
‘Maybe,’ I offered, not daring to hope she was right.
‘There, look.’ I followed the finger she was pointing. ‘That’s a robin, isn’t it? Isn’t that him?’
I studied the tiny robin taking shelter on the tree branch, carefully. ‘No, the male I’m looking for was bigger and he had an
extra toe on his left foot.’
 ‘Okay,’ she uttered, disappointedly.
‘I just want him to come back, to know he’s safe. If he had a new mate that would be even better.’ I was certain I sounded a
little crazy. It was as though I was comparing the life of that robin to that of my own.
‘Oh, Luce.’ She squeezed me tighter. ‘If this is all too much… you have a few more months grace. We don’t have to look
yet.’
Lifting my arms, I placed my hands onto hers and squeezed them to show my gratitude for her concern, for always being
there to hold me up, when at times I’d wanted the ground to swallow me whole. Hearing her emit a sob in recognition of my
pain, I released the tears trapped behind my eyes and tightened the hold I had on her once again. Together we focussed on the
rain pelting against the glass.
‘But we know that I do. Charlie and the others will be back next month, and…’ a sob caught me, momentarily causing me to
cease talking, ‘they’ll be without Matt.’
‘They’ll be happy to see you. Please don’t doubt that.’
‘I don’t. And truly, I’d be happy to see them. It’s always good when they return, safe and unharmed. But… I know I sound
like a mean-spirited bitch…’
‘Go on,’ she encouraged.
‘When your doors open and you all flood out and run into your husbands’ arms, finding solace, I can’t be here to witness it.
I just can’t. I’m sorry, Bex.’ I moved my eyes from the glass, which was beginning to steam up as we spoke, and looked down
at the floor catching sight of Teddy’s favourite car by my foot. The one Matt had bought for my bump when I was still pregnant.
He’d insisted I was carrying his son, way before he left for his last deployment into “a high security diplomatic area” and
never returned.
‘Okay, then,’ Becca sounded out resolutely, as she released her hold on me. ‘Then it’s best you come and look at this job…
It’s live in.’
‘It is?’ I tried not to sound too hopeful. But feeling a fleeting moment of optimism, I pushed myself away from the window
and followed her over to her laptop and began to read.

LIVE-IN NANNY REQUIRED

SUITABLE QUALIFICATIONS REQUISITE.
CURRENT DBS ESSENTIAL. EXPERIENCE PREFFERED.
Contact Dr Black
Black.99@nhs.co.uk

‘Well?’ Becca enquired, after watching my eyes flit over the words a few times.
‘I thought Dr Black was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in Cluedo?’ The words left me along with a badly disguised
giggle, which came out as more of a snort.
I watched as she turned her head suddenly and met with my questioning expression. ‘What?’ I asked. All at once, our
laughter filled the air and the earlier tension between us dissipated. Our laughter gave way to emotional hysterics, which only
stopped when the sound of mine and Matt’s eighteen-month-old son, Teddy, waking from his nap upstairs crackled through the
monitor, demanding my attention.
‘I’m coming, buddy,’ I called out.
‘What about Teddy and Stitch?’ I paused at the door, took a quick glance at my large, black Labrador curled up on his bed,
and turned to look at Becca.
‘Apply for it, all you can do is ask.’
 CHAPTER
TWO

Sebastian

‘I wantI pulled
to meet them too, Daddy.’
the tie away from my shirt collar with a flick of my wrist and looked into the mirror once again.
Smart, or more casual? I had no idea. But knowing I felt more comfortable in a suit, I placed the tie back around my
neck and tied it quickly, before I overthought my actions. If only Libby was here. The same thought that must have gone through
my head at least a thousand times since she’d left us, flashed through my mind. I had no idea why, perhaps just out of habit.
Shut the fuck up! She’s not here because she doesn’t need the two of you in her life.
‘I wish these interviews weren’t necessary,’ I muttered under my breath, inhaling sharply afterwards in an attempt to cover
it up.
‘Nanna says you shouldn’t mumble, Daddy.’
Yeah, I bet she does. I made a mental note to say something next time our paths crossed. The fact that my daughter had
selective mutism but talked to the two of us and Mrs Crooks, my housekeeper, was something to be encouraged. But as usual,
my daughter’s maternal family wanted more.
‘Just breathing, Pen pop.’
‘Daddy!’ The insistent little girl, sitting up high on the edge of my bed swinging her legs, demanded I answered her.
‘I’m sure you want to meet them, Pen. But I’m interviewing the ladies to see if they’re the right person to look after you. I
need to concentrate on their qualifications and experience, not on whether you think she’s pretty enough.’
‘Pretty is important.’
I stopped tying my tie and raised my eyes to find hers in the mirror. My beautiful, intelligent, if a little misguided, daughter.
I knew exactly where she would have got that line from. Her mother really was a first-class bitch. What the hell I’d ever seen
in her was beyond me. Sometimes, I even doubted my own intelligence and strength of character, to fall for her lies. Still, I’d
learnt from being married to her. The only women I let in right now, were the ones who were looking for the same as me; a
night of fun, a few hours of release and sexual fulfilment. And those women never got an insight into my home life.
Sex and home, in my experience, needed to be kept far apart, at least for now. That’s what I told myself, my brother, friends
and anyone else who thought they knew better. And when you repeat something often enough, even you begin to believe it.
Deep down, I secretly hoped that one day I’d feel differently. No one, including me, wanted to grow old alone. But when
and if I found the right woman, I knew she would be so completely different to my first wife that I’d know her immediately.
That concept scared me even more than being alone.
‘What’s much more important, Pen, is if a person is a good person. If they are kind, gentle and supportive. Pretty is lovely,
but much more important is that they care about you and will look after you.’ I stopped myself, knowing I was going too far. A
drawback of having such an extraordinarily intelligent six-year-old like Penelope, was that she would put two and two together
and think I was having a go at her absent mother. And even if I was, I sure as hell didn’t want her to realise that.
Turning around on the spot, I gave my daughter a small smile, before taking the couple of steps needed to reach her. Then I
pulled her against my legs and dipping my head, I inhaled the smell of apples that was permeating from her freshly washed
hair. Her small arms wrapped tightly around my thighs and, not for the first time, I knew that one day everything the two of us
had been through at the hands of her selfish mother would no longer be of any consequence—one day. I, for one, couldn’t wait.
After peeling myself away from her, I tipped her head back and brushed her white, blonde hair away from her eyes.
Looking down at her, I enquired, ‘Now, is there anything in particular you want from a nanny? Any questions you want me to
ask?’
‘She needs to like animals.’ She said the words enthusiastically.
I smiled at her and nodded back in agreement.
‘That’s a given, Pen.’ I thought over the small animal menagerie Pen now had in the small sitting room and smiled.
Whenever I felt concerned about her mutism, there was nothing better than standing quietly outside the room and listening to her
chatter away to the various hamsters, gerbils, and the feral kitten she’d named Lucky after finding it on a walk across the fields
a couple of weeks before.
Her face took on a thoughtful expression. ‘Hmmm, will you tell her I might not be able to talk to her?’
‘Of course, I will. There is absolutely no pressure here at all, Pen pop, for you to talk to anyone you don’t want to.’
I let the small sliver of hope that a new face could be a turning point, slip away. I was surprised that after two years, I still
looked for anything that might ease the anxiety she’d been crippled with after her mother walked out. We’d had many a
conversation where I’d explained that her mother leaving us was down to me and absolutely nothing to do with anything she
might or might not have done. But so far it hadn’t cured her selective mutism.
Trying to turn the conversation again, I asked, ‘So, tie or no tie?’
‘No suit… you’re not working today, are you?’ Fleetingly I saw a flicker of panic in her eyes as she tried to work out if
she’d got the day wrong.
‘No, Pen pop, not today. I have these four interviews with prospective nannies for you, then it’s all about me and you.’
‘Good.’ She sighed as she released her tension. ‘You look very handsome in a suit, Daddy. But you’re not at Harley Street
today.’
She grinned widely at me over her small joke.
‘I accept that,’ I nodded at her and transposed her grin with one of my own. ‘So, what should I wear then?’
‘Come with me!’ she shouted excitedly, before slipping off the end of the bed. She reached her hand out behind her waiting
for my hand to hold. ‘I know just the thing.’
Worryingly, I knew she would.
 CHAPTER
THREE

Lucy

rs Campbell.’
‘M I heard my name and on auto pilot looked up and smiled at what I presumed was Dr Black’s secretary.
‘Yes,’ I called cheerily back, as I watched the younger woman that I’d been sitting in the waiting room with earlier,
as she departed the imposing hallway/waiting room, giving absolutely nothing away.
‘Dr Black is ready to see you now.’
‘Thank you.’
She opened the large oak door wide and waved her other hand to beckon me in.
Relax, you don’t need the job. You still have plenty of time to find somewhere else to go. I ran the sentence around my
head a couple of times, and quietly inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and realised that I didn’t believe a single syllable I was
spinning myself.
What I did know, was that I needed to escape being a military wife, because quite simply, I no longer fulfilled the
requirements. I didn’t have a husband in the military. All I had left were the two medals he’d been awarded and a small boy
who needed something better than I was giving him at the moment.
I’d dreamt of Matt last night. In the hours caught between darkness and the promise of a brand-new day. He’d smiled as
he’d turned his head to find me there. In return, I’d run over to him, needing to feel his arms wrapped around me, and because I
had so much I wanted to tell him. Then I’d remembered that what we had didn’t exist anymore. The vision of him had slipped
away and like every day since he’d been gone, I’d woken up alone.
‘Mrs Campbell?’ I heard her voice again and realised that, for a few short seconds, I hadn’t moved any closer to the door
she was still holding open.
‘Sorry.’ I smiled. ‘I forgot where I was for a second.’ I laughed off what must have appeared to her as very strange, and
made my feet move decisively forwards. Finally, I entered the room and heard as the closed the door behind me.
‘Mrs Campbell.’ The deep voice owned by the man still sitting behind a large modern looking desk rang out through the
equally large office.
‘Dr Black,’ I reciprocated, as I walked further in. Clutching the folder containing my qualifications tightly to me, I took a
quick look around at my surroundings.
The office was decorated in a very masculine way, in duck egg blue with dark grey, heavy looking furniture. It was
beautifully done, with an air of professionalism but also with comfort in mind. Two settees sat either side of a huge Georgian
fireplace, with a low coffee table between them adorned with a bowl of fruit.
‘Please take a seat.’ He motioned to the seat directly in front of him, although he made no attempt to stand and greet me.
How rude. Call me old-fashioned, but I liked manners.
Let it go. You’re here for a job.
Although I would have loved to have had a less formal interview, sitting on one of the settees I just spotted, my feet
automatically complied with his direction, and I moved to sit down quickly.
As I placed my folder down on my lap, I allowed my eyes to travel across the desk and to rest on my interviewer. As my
eyes met his, he smiled quickly and looked down to the screen in front of him, as he probably tried to remind himself of all the
wonderful things Bex had told him about me in the application I’d let her fill out on my behalf. My vision was met by a broad-
shouldered man who, even though he was sitting behind a huge desk, still managed to dominate it with his large frame. A thick
crop of wavy, dirty blond hair sat on his head, and it looked as though he was freshly shaven. I stopped myself from leaning my
head to one side to study him, not wanting him to know how much he interested me. I was sure his eyes had been a dark brown,
but I’d seen them so fleetingly I couldn’t be sure.
I heard him clear his throat and instantly looked back at him.
It doesn’t matter what he looks like. Just concentrate.
 What I needed him to be was friendly, to like me enough to offer me the job he was offering, and to accept the conditions I
knew I would have to ask of him.
‘I’m looking for a special person to look after my six-year-old daughter. Could you be that special person?’
Direct.
‘I’m sure I could,’ I answered with as much confidence as I could find.
‘Your references are glowing with your attributes, and your enhanced disclosure has been checked. So, what can you tell
me about you that isn’t to be found here?’ He tapped his finger on the screen and leant back in his chair, before lifting the same
finger to his full looking lips.
‘What would you like to know?’
‘It says you haven’t worked for a while. Is that correct? If so, tell me about that?’ He looked at me intently and then down to
the information in front of him. ‘Ermm, Mrs Campbell.’
‘Please call me Lucy… Mrs Campbell reminds me of my MIL.’ I smiled sheepishly back at him. ‘And no, that’s correct –
my last employment was four years ago.’ I braced myself as I waited for the pain to come, when I saw a picture in my mind of
Matt and me getting married at Gretna Green, but it didn’t appear, and my body instantly sagged in relief.
‘MIL?’ he questioned, as he sounded out the abbreviation I’d just used.
‘Sorry, mother-in-law. And no one needs to be reminded of her.’ I smiled, hoping to break the weird feeling around us.
‘I understand.’ He nodded and gave me a hint of a small grin. ‘I too have a MIL, as you put it, that no one, especially me,
needs reminding of.’
We both emitted a strained, polite laugh.
As he looked down once again, double checking what he wanted to know, I surreptitiously took a quick glance around the
room—searching for any evidence of a Mrs Black. I found nothing, but my eyes were captured by a large, framed picture on a
side wall of a beautiful little girl with the darkest brown eyes I’d ever seen.
So, his eyes were dark brown.
‘And the break in employment?’
I heard the question and swallowed deeply.
‘I got married four years ago.’
‘You didn’t return to work?’ It wasn’t a judgemental question, more of an intrigued statement.
‘No,’ I answered hesitantly and instantly his eyes came up to find mine. As though he instinctively knew there was more to
what I was saying.
I sat up a little straighter in my chair.
‘I married my childhood sweetheart. He was in the army and it’s a little difficult being a nanny to a family, with the constant
risk of being deployed somewhere else with not much more than a moment’s notice.’
‘I see… so why now?’ he asked. My eyes transiently left his to look at the yellow and black pencil he was playing with
between the fingers on his left hand.
No wedding rings. Unlike my ring finger, which was adorned with my wedding, engagement, and eternity ring.
Eternity, what a joke.
‘My circumstances have changed.’ I faltered under his intense perusal.
Was it even possible to feel someone’s eyes penetrating your deepest thoughts?
‘I think you’re going to need to expand on that.’ His eyes narrowed.
I looked down briefly as I summoned up the strength to say the words that even now, I found so ridiculously difficult.
‘Matt, my husband, was killed on deployment twenty months ago.’ Once I’d started, the words fell over each other in a bid
to be heard by him, but not to hurt me in the process.
‘I see.’ Instantly, I saw pity in his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he offered.
‘Thank you.’
The air in the room stilled, as the formality around us seemed to slip away.
‘Would you like a beverage? We could go and sit over on the settees.’ Outside I heard a buzzer sound, just as he
gesticulated towards the furniture, I’d seen on the way in. Knowing I hadn’t heard it before with the two previous interviewees,
I fathomed that the interview was now over.
I let a small laugh of acceptance slip from my lips, as I gently shook my head.
‘It’s okay, you don’t need to offer me anything. I take it that you’ve heard enough?’ I started moving, getting ready to take my
leave of the situation. Embarrassingly, I could feel yet more tears making themselves unwelcome and causing a pressure behind
my eyes that I knew was soon going to be hard to ignore.
‘On the contrary, Lucy. You might be just the person we’re looking for.’
‘Really?’ I asked as a tear from each eye slipped out and started down the well-worn trail over my cheekbones.
‘Yes.’ Dr Black nodded just the once and stood abruptly.
As he made his way around the desk, I searched the jacket pocket I was wearing for a tissue to blot my face with. But of
course, found nothing.
‘Here.’ A freshly starched, monogramed handkerchief was placed onto the folder I had on top of my lap.
‘Dr Black?’ I heard the secretary’s voice again. Deliberately not turning, I dabbed at my face to try to regain some
composure.
‘Ah, Miriam. Could you get me my usual coffee… and what would you like to drink, Lucy?’
‘A camomile tea please, if you have one?’ I replied, as I moved on the chair out of politeness. Sitting sideways on to them
both I smiled a quick smile. I didn’t really look at either of them. Quickly, I turned back as I attempted to compose myself a
little more.
‘And some biscuits too, please,’ Dr Black added.
‘Biscuits?’ Miriam questioned, as if it was completely unheard of.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Certainly.’
I heard the door close behind her.
‘When you feel ready, Lucy, please come over here. It’s warmer and far less formal.’
‘You’re being very kind,’ I offered.
‘I really am deeply sorry to hear about your husband… but in some way, I think that because of your situation, you could be
just the person we’re looking for.’
‘You do?’ I questioned, at the same time an involuntary sob hit me. Instantly, I began to dab at my face again in an attempt to
not end up looking like Shrek when I finally managed to turn around to face him.
‘I would definitely like to discuss my exact requirements with you further.’ I heard metal hitting metal and assumed he was
poking at the open fire.
“Exact requirements” Oh, shit, just what I need. What’s the betting he has “nanny” issues.
Stop it! I heard Bex talking inside my head.
Oh well, here goes nothing.
I began to tell him precisely who I was. Because if this interview was a complete falsehood and he had sexual ideas about
getting himself a domineering nanny for spankings, the emotional mess I was in would no doubt convince him otherwise.
‘I’m a mess… an emotional wreck, if you will. I have around three months to get out of our married quarters… and there’s
more.’ I shook my head at the feeling of despair that engulfed me.
‘Tell me,’ he encouraged, as metal once again connected against metal.
‘I have an eighteen-month-old son, called Teddy, and a gentle giant of a black Labrador who also needs to be rehomed with
me. You see, the three of us come as a package.’ Regaining my composure somewhat, at what I felt had to be a “fait accompli,”
I doggedly folded up his expensive feeling handkerchief back into its predetermined creases and placed it on the edge of his
desk.
‘That as maybe… but you haven’t seen me yet.’
Was that amusement I heard in his tone?
‘Seen you?’ I spoke, as I pushed up from the chair I was sitting in, smoothed down the trouser suit I’d borrowed from
Becca, and stood up straight. Following the pattern on the carpet with my still damp eyes, I started to walk towards the door. ‘I
think it would be best if I just went.’
‘We all have our crosses to bear, admittedly yours are worse than mine,’ I could almost hear him nod in agreement with
himself, ‘but I have a six-year-old daughter who has been virtually abandoned by her mother. Because, putting it simply, her
job is more important.’ I stopped walking, instantly struck by the pain he and his daughter must be experiencing.
‘Go on,’ I encouraged, as I clutched my folder tighter to my chest.
‘She struggles so much with the emotion of that, she is selectively mute.’ He cleared his throat before carrying on. ‘None of
that is helped by the fact she is being brought up by her father who loves her very much, but who also went to all the very best
academic boarding schools England could offer, which means that his emotions are somewhat stilted.’
‘Oh.’ As the information he’d imparted penetrated, I understood that, for once, me being an emotional wreck might lend a
certain humanity and empathy to others. I lifted my head to find him. In my peripheral view, I watched as he placed his hands
on his hips and waited for me to take him in fully and my subsequent reaction.
‘Oh,’ I repeated, followed by a burst of laughter I couldn’t have held in even if I’d have tried.
‘It gives her the greatest pleasure to pick out outfits for me to wear.’ He nodded at me and grinned. ‘And because
sometimes I feel so helpless to help her in any other way, I let her.’
I ran my eyes over the large man standing tall in front of me. He was wearing a smart, well fitting, white shirt, tucked into a
kilt, long, thick knee socks and lace up boots. All the above would have been fine, but the kilt was like a joke fancy-dress one
and was only just long enough to come maybe two or three inches below his backside.
‘I see.’ It was all I could manage, whilst I was unable to peel my eyes away from his muscular looking thighs. ‘That’s why
you didn’t stand to greet me.’
 ‘Precisely. Not you, nor any of the others.’ He smirked back at me as he crossed his arms over his chest.
‘Good call,’ I offered, as my eyes opened wider with mirth. ‘But I don’t think you’re as emotionally stilted as you think you
are. There aren’t many dads who would allow that, especially when they knew they were interviewing.’ Another giggle slipped
from my lips, and in response he began to laugh too. His deep, genuine laughter at my obvious teasing, was cathartic, I
believed, for both of us.
‘I also have pink toenails,’ he added.
‘Wow.’ My eyes briefly dipped to his feet.
‘Now, I can see you’re headed for the door, but I’d very much like it if you would consider staying. I also think it would be
best if we sat on the same settee while we wait for our drinks.’
‘You do?’ I could feel a worried expression begin to attach itself to my features.
‘Yes, to both. But my reasoning for the second request is, I feel the need to spare your blushes.’
‘I think you could be right.’ I felt my cheeks heat up at the thought of what I might see otherwise. Slowly, I turned towards
the seating area.
‘Here we are.’ Miriam re-entered the room. ‘Where would you like the tray, Dr?’
‘On the low table please, and when you go back out, please inform the final candidate that the position has been filled.
Offer to reimburse them in full for their time and travel.’
Miriam placed the tray down and stepped back, looking between the two of us as she did.
‘It has?’ I questioned.
‘Maybe I’ve assumed too much, but I hope not.’ He opened his eyes wider at me in panic. ‘Lucy, I think you’re the person
my daughter Penelope has been waiting for. Would you like the position? It pays a very good salary, offers room and board, and
that includes housing your son and your…’ He stopped short for a second. Releasing one hand from across his chest he started
to click his fingers as if he was trying to remember what other baggage, I brought with me.
‘A Labrador called Stitch,’ I tendered.
‘That’s it… a huge black beast, otherwise known as a dog.’ He laughed again, and I noticed that it suited him. ‘What do you
think?’
‘Thank you. I would like the job please.’ I nodded, subtly at first and then with more exuberance. For only the second time
in my life, I had gone with something without mulling it over. Without compiling one of my famous “for and against” lists. The
last time I’d done that, was to run away to get married. I could only hope it would work out as well.
‘Wonderful…Thank you, Miriam. If you could do what I asked, please?’ He dismissed her with a smile. ‘Now, come and
sit down, Lucy. Let’s have that drink and discuss what I need in a nanny for Pen pop.’
I sat down on the settee after watching him pat the space two foot away from him, and for the first time in as long as I could
remember, I was distracted enough not to feel the constant pain I seemed to carry.
 CHAPTER
FOUR

Lucy

nly four days later, the driver of the small van that the other wives at the base had clubbed together to hire for us, pulled
O up in a wide avenue in Holland Park, London, so I followed suit. He only stopped momentarily, to check the address I
assumed, then pulled away again. Realising suddenly how quiet the road was, I leant down closer to the steering wheel
to gain a better view out of the small Mini Cooper’s front window, before I followed him.
‘Wow! Would you look at this.’ I spoke out loud but quietly, knowing Teddy was still asleep. But Stitch, noticing we’d
stopped and enthused by hearing me talk, instantly sat up to attention on the passenger seat. Standing, he then moved as close to
the window as his harness would allow. Knowing how desperate he was to experience the smells the new place would have to
offer, I wound down the window a little. The second his nose met the cool, fresh air, he strained excitedly against his lead to
get as close as possible. Until he was blocking most of my view to the side. His rudder like tail whacked against my shoulder,
as he wagged his tail excitedly. Equally excited I took a look around. From what I could see, the area was gorgeous, full of
immaculate, Georgian, whitewashed buildings, and trees; lots and lots of trees.
‘Good lad.’ I patted his back. ‘If only we were all so easily pleased.’ For the first time since saying my goodbyes back at
the base, apprehension flooded my system.
Finally, the man and van with our few possessions inside, pulled over again further down the road, outside “The Chapters,”
and nerves gripped me.
What the hell are you doing?
‘It’s going to be fine, Lucy.’ I blew out the breath I’d been temporarily holding.
I heard the words I’d just said, but truthfully, I wished I actually felt the conviction I’d spoken them with.
‘Mama.’
‘And there’s the exact reason it has to be,’ I muttered as I poised myself to be the parent my child needed. ‘Just have
courage, Lucy.’ I recited the few words Matt would always say as he left for each and every deployment. ‘I’m trying, Matt.’
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I met the blue, sleepy but inquisitive eyes of my young son.
‘Hey, buddy,’ I called back as I smiled at him. ‘We’re here,’ I added in a sing-song voice that would at least make him think
I was as happy as the stretched smile I was offering.
‘Mama just needs to move the car over here.’ I gave him the information as I pushed the gearstick into first and followed the
van’s previous path, to come to a stop outside what looked like a double-fronted mansion with a highly glossed, sage green
door.
‘This is our new home.’ I pulled up the handbrake and let out a sigh, while offering a brief wave at the driver as he opened
the van doors, so he could empty out the few bits and pieces that we were bringing from our old life to our new one. ‘And
we’re ten minutes early. Which is always good.’
Taking my keys from the ignition, I turned sideways and spoke to my two boys.
‘Right, Stitch, you’ll need to wait here a minute. Teddy and I are just going over there.’ I gesticulated at the door with my
thumb over my shoulder, to show Stitch exactly where I was talking about. Doesn’t everyone talk to their animals in the same
way? ‘Then we’ll be back for you… but when I come and get you, you need to make sure you are on your very best behaviour.’
Listening to my every word, Stitch sat himself back down, twisting his head as he concentrated on my words. ‘So, think on…
we do not, I repeat, we do not know if the lovely people in that building like your sort of licky kisses, do we, Teddy?’ I added,
trying to get my son’s take on it.
‘Stitchy kisses… no, no, no,’ Teddy added, waving his index finger in the air, with a giggle that let me know he was most
definitely on the same thought path.
‘Are you okay in there?’ I heard a tap on the glass and the deep voice of my new employer, and briefly shut my eyes tight as
I tried to compose myself.
Great, just what I needed, being caught talking to my dog like he was another one of my children.
 ‘We’re fine, thanks. I was just letting them know what was happening.’
I heard my door click as Sebastian, as he’d asked me to call him at our earlier meeting, opened the car door.
‘So I heard,’ he replied, with a hint of amusement to his tone. ‘Pen pop also talks to her animals.’
‘She does?’ I spun around to face him, all thoughts of my embarrassment pushed to one side when I heard the positive news.
In amongst packing up our possessions, taking some things to the local charity shop, giving notice on the base, saying goodbye
to friends who had become our family, and generally not sleeping, I’d been reading anything I could find on selective mutism.
‘That’s great!’ I enthused.
‘Yes, I like to think so.’ I watched his smile develop. The power behind it, as he lost himself in thoughts of his daughter,
was so intense it was like watching the sunrise.
All I could do was reciprocate and smile broadly back at him. Slowly, in the sudden silence between us, I let my eyes drift
from his face and took in only the second man I was going to share a life of sorts with. He was a man who had obviously just
arrived home from a run. Short, black running shorts accentuated his muscular legs even more than the ridiculous kilt he’d been
wearing only a few days before, but it was the lightweight running top that was literally stuck to every muscle and undulation
on his torso that had my mouth gaping wide and my body freezing to the spot.
Suddenly, a large hand reached out to take a firm but gentle hold of my forearm and Sebastian pulled me up from the car
and helped me to my feet. Completely taken aback by the strange feeling that was coursing its way around my system, I missed
my footing entirely and stumbled against the firm, muscular chest I’d been admiring only seconds before. All at once, his arms
wrapped themselves around me, stopping me from falling flat on my face.
‘Whoah.’ He released another laugh. ‘Are you okay?’ he questioned, while holding on to both of my arms and almost lifting
me back onto the soles of my boots.
‘I am—Sorry.’
‘No problem.’ Sebastian’s face disappeared from view as he bent down to the open door behind me, which gave me a few
valuable seconds to roll my eyes up high into my head and inwardly curse my clumsiness.
‘Hello there. You must be Teddy?’
‘Hello.’ I heard Teddy reply as I, having regained a small amount of composure, turned slightly to listen to the conversation.
‘Shall I get you out with your mum? Then perhaps we can go inside.’
I watched as Teddy froze. It was something he’d been doing around strangers for a while.
‘We have cakes. Do you like cake?’ Sebastian tried again.
‘Cake, Mama… CAKE,’ Teddy unexpectedly fired back at the both of us.
‘Well, you definitely know all the right words to use with children,’ I added.
‘It’s one of my favourites too,’ he called back, while squeezing his huge frame into my tiny, three-door and reaching further
into the back. ‘Penelope and I made some this morning. They don’t look so great, sponge has only risen by about an inch, but
the topping is about three inches thick and more than makes up for it.’ Again, he laughed.
It wasn’t unexpected really, but with Teddy now squealing in excitement and a man he’d never gotten a taste of before so
tantalising nearby, my docile giant of a dog, who until that very second had been sitting comfortably and on his very best
behaviour as he took in everything that was going on, abruptly lunged forward and started licking the side of Sebastian’s face.
‘Aaargh.’
‘Stitch,’ I reprimanded from the side. ‘Enough.’ It was all I could manage before laughing out loud.
‘A little help here,’ Sebastian shouted out as he tried to out manoeuvre Stitch, who was now making a bid to chew on the
lobe of one of his ears.
‘I’m coming around,’ I shouted out.
Quickly, but not quickly enough, I made my way to the passenger door. I pulled it open and after releasing Stich’s harness, I
pulled him off. Once Stitch’s paws hit the ground, he sat down beautifully.
‘Unbelievable,’ I whispered to him, and catching his eye I shook my head a little at him. Then I stopped the second I
became aware of the sound of Sebastian and Teddy’s laughter coming from the car. Stitch looked knowingly at me, recognising
his work here was done.
‘Are you okay in there?’ I offered, as I patted Stitch on the head in acceptance. He deserved it for seemingly knowing just
what was needed in a difficult situation. Bending down, I looked further inside to find Sebastian, who seemed to have
collapsed in a heap and was virtually lying prone on his side. ‘Oh no!’ I assumed he’d fallen, as he struggled between trying to
fight off a Labrador and entertaining my young son. But looking again, I could see it was part of a very deliberate sham.
‘We’re good, aren’t we, Teddy?’ he answered, as he gave me a smile and a conspirator’s wink.
I backed out and watched as Sebastian, with a now unbuckled Teddy cradled in his arms, slowly appeared from the car.
Standing tall, he looked over the top of my car.
‘Now we’ve got the introductions out of the way, perhaps we can go in for tea and cake?’
‘Cake, Mama.’ Teddy waved enthusiastically at me.
‘I have to admit, that was a fairly good ice breaker?’ I gritted my teeth a little and gripped hold of Stitch’s lead just a little
tighter, not sure if I was talking to the man or the beast.
‘But not nearly as good as a kilt.’ He grinned back at me secretly and still carrying my son, he turned towards our new
home.
 CHAPTER
FIVE

Lucy

Eight weeks later

‘S o,cuddle
tell me all about this week. How’s it going?’ I could imagine Becca and Charlie sitting together, wrapped up on their
seat, as she spoke to me.
I let out a sigh, while I fondled one of Stitch’s oh-so-soft ears and tried to analyse the situation I now found myself in.
‘It’s been good.’
‘Right.’ I could hear the uncertain tone in her voice.
‘It’s a beautiful place to live. I appreciate it more each week that passes. You’ve seen the photos of the house. Teddy, me,
and Stitch have been welcomed with open arms. I’ve had my second month’s pay. For the first time in forever, I have money in
the bank and Teddy has a whole new wardrobe,’ I responded.
‘That’s all great, but it’s not quite what I meant, and you know it. Are you happy?’
‘We’re happy here.’
‘And are you happy?’
‘I am.’
‘Do you wanna try that again? I mean if it’s awful, you need to say. Charlie and I will be down ASAP to come and get you.’
I heard Charlie omit a growl in the background.
‘You don’t need to, honestly. It’s just weird, Bex, that’s all.’ I leant myself back on the pillows stacked up against my
headboard, and closed my eyes to the opulence of the beautiful room that was now mine, but would never be mine and Matt’s.
‘You couldn’t have found a better job for me, or place for us all. Both the boys have settled in well. And equally the
housekeeper, Mrs Crooks, has been very accommodating of Stitch and Teddy. She’s also sat and given me an ear when she’s
rightly detected that I might need it. She lost her husband when she was young, too.’
‘She did?’ I heard the surprise in Becca’s voice.
‘To illness. I haven’t had the heart to enquire more as yet.’
‘Poor thing.’
‘Yep.’
‘How’s it going with Penelope?’
‘I knew I wasn’t going to get a miracle.’ I sighed loudly, and my shoulders drooped in response.
‘But?’
‘I suppose I’d hoped for more by now.’ I thought back to our first day in the house. Pen had greeted us all with a smile as
we’d walked in the door with her dad. She had happily taken Teddy by the hand and led him to the large, open-plan kitchen and
helped to feed him one of her cupcakes. She’d then excitedly taken us around the house, showed us her much-loved animals,
and finally shown us our bedrooms with her father.
‘It’s very obvious she has no problem with us all being thrust into her life. She’s accepted us wholeheartedly. When I pick
her up from school or sit her on my lap to share a story with her, she’s happy to be with me. But I’ve not been able to help her
take that next step yet… when I’d hoped to have by now.’
‘It’s only been two months, Lucy. I think you need to remember that. I’m sure the very rich Dr you work for would have had
her before many of his colleagues. If they couldn’t help, then why are you punishing yourself because you haven’t been able to
change things in eight short weeks.’
‘True.’ I accepted.
‘Consistency is the key. Love and consistency. As it becomes more and more like home for you, hopefully she’ll become
even more comfortable around you.’ Becca’s degree in psychology was starting to show.
‘I know.’ I nodded in agreement. ‘Thanks. I appreciate your take on it.’ And then with a sudden rush, I remembered the other
part of my problem. I felt guilty that I felt so at home in Holland Park, in the employ of one Dr Black. Our two children loved
each other already and eagerly looked forward to playing together after we collected Pen from school each day. In fact, I
couldn’t be happier with the way our families had seemed to blend seamlessly together. ‘On the plus side, last weekend I heard
her talking to Teddy while they were in the playroom together. She tends to mother him like any big sister or cousin would.’
‘Well, that’s good news.’ I heard her say something to Charlie about Teddy. ‘We miss that little man; he brings out the best
in everyone.’
‘He does.’ I nodded in agreement, full of pride for my little boy. ‘Pen also speaks to her animals, Stitch, Mrs Crooks and of
course her dad.’
‘Just not you?’
‘Me, her classmates, teachers etc and anyone new.’
‘You’re around her, what’s your take on it?’
‘I think her dad was right when he employed me. It’s to do with her mum leaving.’
‘That’ll do it. Isn’t it sad? I think it’s the reason I chose to work with adults and not children.’
‘It is. Pen is a beautiful little girl, and I sincerely hope that just by showing her that the three of us mean to stay around, it
will give her the security she needs to open up.’
‘Good. You do mean to stay, then?’
‘I do. I mean how could I willingly make a decision to leave, when so many others get that decision taken from them and
are ripped away from their families without so much as a goodbye.’
‘He couldn’t have found anyone better than you for the job. I just had a feeling when I read the advert that it had your name
written all over it. I said to Charlie it was as though Matt was leading you in that direction.’
Could that be true?
At her statement, tears intuitively started to trickle down my face, and lifting my hand from Stitch, I trailed my index finger
over the picture of him beside my bed.
‘I’ve made you cry, haven’t I?’
‘I’m okay.’ I sniffed loudly and laughed through my tears. ‘You know me. The slightest thing sets me off.’
‘I know. Hopefully, one day it will be easier.’
‘I think it might be, one day,’ I imparted, and instantly guilt flooded my system.
‘That sounds positive.’
‘I mean… oh, I don’t know what I mean.’
‘Night, Charch.’ I heard the tell-tale noise of the two of them kissing, and then a few seconds of silence.
‘How are you getting on with him?’ she asked, as once again, even from over a hundred miles away, she had a sixth sense
for what was really going on. I closed my eyes and exhaled as silently as possible. I knew that if I didn’t answer the question
soon, my silence would answer her question.
‘Sebastian, I mean Dr Black, has been really welcoming.’
‘Sebastian?’ I heard her question.
Guilt stirred up panic inside me. I hadn’t once mentioned to her that we called each other by our first names. Although it
was something I was more than happy to do, because it extinguished the formality between us and was better for the children, it
was something I had chosen to deliberately not tell her, and I understood exactly why.
‘We thought it was better for the children.’
‘I agree. I’m just intrigued as to why you didn’t say so before?’
‘Guilt.’ The single, defining word fell from my mouth.
‘Guilt?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Charlie has gone to bed. I’m all ears.’
‘Bex.’ I hung my head forward in shame.
‘Share with me. I’m sure it will help.’
‘I’m really happy here, Bex. Happier than I could have ever imagined I would be.’
‘And you think that’s wrong?’
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps it should be wrong.’
‘Okay, lady, buckle up, because I’m about to give you some home truths… Matt has been gone for nearly two years.’
‘I know.’
‘You are allowed to be happy, Lucy. I loved that man and I know he would want you and Teddy to have a life full of
happiness and fun. In fact, you owe him that much. Just because he’s no longer here to share it with you, it’s even more
important to strive to find it once again. You need to find happiness enough for the both of you. Guilt that you’re living when he
no longer is, isn’t something you should have ever felt, and it’s definitely not something you should be carrying around any
longer.’
 ‘Should I look forward to my employer coming home from work each day, Bex? Is it a good idea for me to want to stand at
the lounge window with his daughter and my son and feel the need to jump up and down, like them, when the gates open and his
car pulls onto the drive?’
‘If that makes you feel alive… if that makes you happy… then, yes, you should do all of those things.’
‘Truthfully, I’m not so sure. I’m no longer convinced I have the skills to judge my own emotions. So, for now, I’ll just
concentrate on the children.’
I heard her sigh at my judgement of myself. But my guilt did begin to lift slightly at my admissions and when she didn’t tell
me I was wrong to let happiness back into my life once again.
‘Does he see you the same way?’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t. He always has a date every two weeks, on the night Pen stays at her grandmother’s. As far as I know,
he doesn’t come back home on those nights.’ Ridiculously, I felt a stab of pain in my chest as I remembered how much I hated
those nights, knowing what was obviously going on.
‘So… that could be just something he does out of habit. Does he choose to spend time with you?’
‘We all eat dinner together when his work allows.’
‘Does he seek you out, by yourself, at all?’
‘I have no idea, Bex. We share a coffee in the evening, after the children have been bathed and put to bed. We talk about the
day, about Penelope. But I’m sure it’s no more than that.’
‘Does he make you laugh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then whatever it is, give it a chance. If you two are happy, the children will be too.’
‘I’ll try. Thanks for the chat.’ I nodded. ‘Now go and get into bed with that husband of yours. I love you both.’
‘We love you too.’
 CHAPTER
SIX

Sebastian

Two weeks later

he intercom buzzing and flashing up its impatience in red, had me checking my grandfather’s large wall clock. I removed
T my reading glasses to give it my attention.
‘Yes.’ I flicked a switch and answered the antiquated but still efficient system.
‘Dr Black. I have Mr. Oliver Black on the phone,’ my receptionist imparted.
‘Snr or Jnr?’ I asked the imperative question, while still looking at, but not seeing, the information I needed to absorb
before my next private patient arrived.
‘Jnr.’
‘Hmmm.’ That’s the one I was worried about. At least my father would say exactly what was necessary and then go. My
older brother, on the other hand, would stay on the line for as long as he could, baiting and waiting for the information he and
his wife were desperate to know. Truthfully, I’d been waiting for the call for the past couple of days, ever since my mother had
been over to meet Lucy at the weekend.
‘I’ll take it,’ I sighed, ‘but before you put him through, please remind him that I have a very full schedule to get through
today, and at some point, need to get home to my daughter.’
‘Certainly,’ she replied and the line went quiet for a few seconds.
Loosening the tie slightly around my neck, I leant back into the chair behind me and waited.
‘Put your hand between your legs and check you still have a pair, Seb.’
‘Afternoon, Oliver.’ I smirked into the phone. ‘I assure you they’re still there.’
‘Good to know. I was worried, with you using Mrs Seaton to read me the riot act.’
‘She’s just doing her job… How’s Cassandra and Emily?’ In an attempt to throw him off track a little, I mentioned his
vivacious wife and my beautiful niece, who had been born just six weeks ago.
‘Doing fantastically,’ he enthused. ‘How’s my favourite brother?’
‘Only brother,’ I corrected.
‘Still…’ he counteracted.
‘Doing well, thanks.’ I thought about how easily I’d answered his question. For the first time in a while, the words made
sense. They weren’t an automatic response to say what people wanted to hear. I raised my eyebrows at my reflection on the
screen in front of me.
‘That good? I like the sound of that. So, tell me all about your very lovely Lucy.’
‘She’s not my Lucy,’ I corrected him. ‘But she’s certainly an asset.’
‘Then tell me about her assets, little brother of mine.’ His teasing laughter sounded out loudly, and I couldn’t help but join
in.
‘I’m sure Mother has told you all you need to know.’
‘Not nearly enough.’
‘I have a patient in…’
‘I know. You have a patient coming in…’ I heard him pause as he checked the time, ‘in twelve minutes.’
‘Yes, and I still have notes to go over.’
‘Then best you tell me what Cassie and I need to know.’
‘Go on then.’ I shook my head, resigned to the fact I would need to give him something, anything to make him go away. ‘Fire
away.’
‘How is Lucy with Pen?’
‘Amazing. She’s brought a slice of normality to our strained, stilted household, from almost the minute her and her
menagerie turned up two and a half months ago.’
‘Great. Is Pen talking to her?’ And there it was; the million-dollar question.
‘No, but she talks about her to her animals. And, by what I hear her say, she’s happy that Lucy, Teddy and Stitch are in her
life. Obviously, I’m hoping for more.’ I swallowed down my hopes and in doing so, remembered something positive. ‘But, you
know, she actually cried the other day when she fell over in the hallway and bashed her knees on the tiled floor... Real tears.’
‘Wow!’
‘Lucy scooped her up into her arms and sat her on the kitchen breakfast bar while she tended to her.’
‘Like any normal parent would,’ he added.
‘Yes. She looked at her bruised knees, put a cold towel on them, dabbed at her wet face, and cuddled her until she stopped
crying.’
And there were other things. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to voice them just yet. How I loved the smell of the fresh scent she
always wore lingering around the house. Even the sound of her not-so-great singing voice brought a smile to my face. My
favourite, however, was when she offered me a conspirator’s grin at something one of the children had done. It was as though
we were in it together, and I no longer felt alone.
I heard him relaying our conversation to who I presumed was Cassie and took the time to recall the exact morning, last
week, when I’d been hurrying to get ready for work. I’d made myself late as, like a stalker, I’d watched the scene take place
through a crack in the kitchen door. A scene that to many would be so very normal. But in our home, emotions had stopped
being attended to, nearly ten years before. When I’d first met the extremely successful, world-revered barrister, Emily Cousins.
I’d married her two years later, swept up in what I thought was true love. It was only once she’d found out she was carrying
our “mistake,” that I’d seen her in her true light, and she was a dark dusky colour. I thanked God most days that she’d been too
late in discovering our little problem, as she’d put it. Penelope, to me, was everything and the thought her mother would have
discarded her like some unwanted gift item, when we had everything to offer a child, was completely baffling. Had she been
ill, or the two of us unable to afford having a child in our lives, I’d have had more sympathy. But the reason she didn’t want our
child born into the world was none of those things. She was plainly far too selfish and wrapped up in her own life to need or
want a child in it. After Pen had been born, I’d seen her for who she really was. Truthfully, what I’d found was abhorrent. It
should have destroyed me when she’d walked out, after I’d sacked our third nanny for leaving our child to cry for hours, but the
relief at her departure had been palpable to all who knew and loved us.
We’d struggled on for the past year, with my housekeeper’s help. Now, in the space of a few months, our home had been
transformed.
‘The house is full of laughter, even manic at times, and Pen loves Lucy’s little boy, Teddy.’ I spoke again, bringing myself
out of the memories of how quickly our large house had been turned into a home, and back to my large and somewhat chilly
office, as I looked once again at my schedule for the day, written out on a piece of paper next to me.
Just two more patients to go.
‘Mother told Cassie that Lucy was very attractive.’
I couldn’t help the muted laugh that fell from my mouth as I pinched the top of my nose between two fingers. Needing the
distraction, I picked up my expensive fountain pen and began to fidget with it between my fingers, but inside my head all I
could picture was her. Her long, blonde hair tied up haphazardly on top of her head. The jeans she so often wore that fitted her
to perfection and the short, round-necked jumpers that showed off her toned waistline every time she moved suddenly or
stretched for something out of reach. An unforgiving hard-on reared its ugly head inside my suit trousers, and I closed my eyes
as I attempted to erase the images, I’d been using for my personal wank bank for the past couple of weeks.
Trying to clear my head, I spoke to him again. ‘And here was I thinking you’d phoned out of concern for your niece?’
‘You know I have… but equally you, my little brother, who still has his balls intact apparently, need something in your life
too.’
I agree.
After failing to make my erection calm, the situation suddenly worsened. I felt my balls tighten as I thought of the view I’d
witnessed only yesterday, when I walked into the family room. Lucy had been bent over, clearing up some mess or another,
from one of the animals. She was singing at the top of her voice to some old record on the radio and the children were sitting
up eating their breakfasts, smiling and laughing. If that view wasn’t enough, the sight of her wiggling to the song had certainly
been enough to stop me in my tracks. Her legs had been encased in her old, worn, tight jeans, the ones that fitted her arse to
perfection, and the vision it had given me of her riding me while wiggling that same arse, had forced me to stop my feet from
moving. Because I simply couldn’t trust where the hell I might put my hands, if I’d got too near.
‘I can assure you I have all my “needs” covered, thanks for your concern.’
‘I hear what you’re saying, Seb.’ He said one thing, but his tone of voice let me know he didn’t believe a word of it.
‘She’s Pen’s nanny.’ I shook my head, once again fighting against something that was becoming far too hard to ignore. ‘Our
relationship doesn’t have that sort of dynamic.’
‘Why?’ he questioned and I chose to ignore him, the self-righteous bastard.
 ‘As you well know, I’ve sworn right off relationships.’
‘Again—at the risk of repeating myself… why?’
‘She’s a widow. When she goes looking again for a suitable life partner, he will need to be able to offer her everything.’
Was it bad I felt enraged at the thought of another man’s hands on that fine arse of hers. My body instantly sagged, and I
pinched the bridge of my nose with two fingers. I loved my brother, but made a mental note not to accept any more of his calls
at work, unless it was an emergency. I was normally a calm, level-headed sort of guy. His line of questioning had fucked with
me.
‘Someone like you, you mean. I’ve never met another man who was more committed to offer the woman he loves
everything—except me of course.’
‘Sorry to interrupt, Dr Black, but your next appointment is here,’ my receptionist’s voice cut in between the two of us. I let
out a loud exhale and hoped that Mrs Seaton wasn’t the sort to eavesdrop on conversations.
‘Thank you. Show Mrs Fenton in in five minutes, please.’ I disconnected quickly, ‘I need to go, Oliver. We’ll see you soon.’
‘No problem. We’ll see you Sunday.’ I could hear the tell-tale amusement lacing his tone.
‘Sunday?’ I narrowed my eyes as I concentrated on trying to remember something I’d obviously forgotten.
‘Sunday dinner.’
‘You’ve got me,’ I admitted.
‘Not yet, little brother… but on Sunday, when we arrive for the dinner that the very lovely Lucy invited us to only this
morning.’
‘You spoke to her?’ I interrupted in disbelief.
Lucy invited him?
‘Yes, stop interrupting! Anyway, as I was saying, I’ll be sure to check out your dynamic on Sunday, and we’ll judge then if
I’ve got you, as you put it.’
‘You’re a bastard.’
‘That I am! Older brother’s prerogative. Off you go now. You have a client waiting.’ The phone went dead.
Using the three minutes I had left, I made myself concentrate on work and talked my overreactive body into calming down,
when all I really wanted to do was be at home basking in the new dynamic Lucy Campbell had brought into our lives.
 CHAPTER
SEVEN

Lucy

pening my eyes a little, I peered out into my large bedroom, and remembered.
O It was Saturday, my day off. I stretched out my limbs, feeling the high thread count sheets as they touched the bare
skin of my legs and arms; the parts of me that weren’t covered by the old tank top and shorts set I slept in. Slowly, I
absorbed the feeling of comfort and let a smile spread over my face, before snuggling back into the heavy quilt on top of me.
Soft snores coming from the corner of my room, let me know that Teddy was still fast asleep. He had a room of his own, one
that had been transformed with the diggers that Teddy loved so much, by the decorators that Sebastian had commissioned. But
most nights he slept on a small, low day bed Mrs Crooks had provided for him. I knew if he was there and still asleep, then that
was exactly where I would find Stitch, without even looking. Instinctively, Matt’s much-loved dog had taken over the role of
protector, when his master had been unable to.
I sniffed quickly and blinked away the tears I could feel.
‘No crying today, Luce,’ I whispered to myself, before wiping my nose on the back of my hand.
‘Alexa, what’s the time?’ I spoke softly to the device beside my bed, knowing she would whisper back to me in turn.
‘The time is seven-eleven a.m.,’ she murmured back.
Bliss. I had nowhere to be. Not right at that minute anyway.
It was two weeks before Christmas, and I had everything in hand. Cards had been posted, presents sent to Becca and
Charlie, who were hoping to visit in the New Year, and I’d wrapped up Teddy, Penelope and Mrs Crooks’ gifts. I just needed
something for Sebastian, but what do you give the man who appeared to have everything? I knew in my heart what he would
treasure the most and I was working tirelessly to help Pen feel secure enough that her mutism didn’t rule her life. Oh, and I
wanted a new dress for Christmas day, as me and Teddy had been invited to stay here for the holidays, and then that was it, I
was done.
Loving that thought, I squeezed my eyes tight and listened to the rain pelting against the windows, and the wind as it
whipped up the autumn leaves. I could see in my mind’s eye, the wet colourful piles that would have been created as they were
swept together. It was seriously the best time of year in my opinion, with all the excitement of Christmas still to come.
The house was quiet, which was rare, so I forced myself to stop moving my arms and legs to appreciate the peace. Then I
remembered why. Mrs Crooks would be out at the local market, and then at the bakery buying the fresh pastries she knew both
Teddy and I loved so much. Pen had broken up from her private school at midday yesterday and she’d been picked up by her
maternal grandmother, to spend the afternoon and overnight with her. Consequently, Sebastian had gone out to spend the night at
his club in Piccadilly, apparently.
Apparently?
Was I jealous?
I had no idea why I was even asking myself that. I couldn’t be, right? But deep down inside, I knew the bitter taste I was
left with as visions of what he did at his club captured my imagination, meant I was.
What on earth was wrong with me? We had a perfectly good working relationship. Teddy and I were happy here and that
meant everything to me, after feeling so helpless after losing Matt. I had found not only a well-paid job to provide for my son’s
needs, but one that I knew would be fulfilling too. I refused to ruin it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I knew how to be with anyone
other than Matt, let alone a man like Sebastian. I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to give a man like him what he wanted from
a woman.
But when by some miracle he’d arrived home from work early the other evening, and I’d watched him tickle both Pen and
Teddy to the point of hysterical laughter, I’d grasped just how hard it had been to stop myself from walking over to the three of
them. I’d envisaged edging myself into the huge, winged chair they were sharing, but instead I’d smiled at them all, while
taking in how beautiful his face looked when his dimples appeared as he grinned back at me. I’d then sat down on the chair
opposite his by the side of the large fireplace in his office/library, feeling empty inside.
 With that thought, I sat bolt upright in bed. My heart was hammering in my chest in panic.
‘Seriously, stop thinking.’ I spoke out loud and then froze again as I watched Teddy turn over and talk in his sleep.
Time to get a cup of tea and get outside of my own head.
Knowing how warm the house was, as well as devoid of anyone else, I slipped out of bed and pushed my feet into the plush
cream carpet and made my way out of my room.
‘I can bring the tea back to bed.’ A feeling of pleasurable decadence rushed over me and in a hurry to reach the kitchen, I
took the steps on the wide staircase two at a time, humming “Fairytale of New York” as I went.
Once I reached the door, I peered around it just to make a quick check.
‘Yesss,’ I hissed quietly. Just as I’d expected, the kitchen come family room, which ran the whole expanse of the back of the
house, was completely empty. I made my way to the huge cupboard above the kettle and coffee maker and opened the cream,
wooden door. Running my finger over the packets and boxes, I took in the array of teas and coffees available. I had no idea
why, when I knew only one tea would do. Finally, I found the yellow box of English breakfast and nodding my head to myself, I
pulled out two bags.
‘All I need is a pot,’ I murmured.
Looking up higher at the open cupboard, I could see a basic white one on the very top shelf. Looking around, I located the
small steps set that Mrs Crooks kept so she could reach the tall cupboards and moved them quickly. Without, I was pleased to
note, scraping the legs across the highly polished slate floor.
In my head I had a plan. When Teddy woke up, I was going to be enjoying my second cup of tea from the pot, while
appreciating being warm and comfortable in bed. He’d join me and we’d watch some cartoons together, and afterwards I’d
bring him up some breakfast.
Pushing the steps into place, I mounted them and, on my tiptoes, stretched out my hand to bring the pot forward.
‘How on earth does she reach things this high?’ I questioned out loud, visualising the shorter than me Mrs Crooks not being
able to reach anything up here. In fact, who could? Once again, a picture of Sebastian filled my head.
‘Why on earth would you keep stuff out of reach?’ Raising myself up and placing one knee on top of the worktop, I realised
I still couldn’t reach my goal. Carefully, I climbed onto the worktop and holding on to the edge of the cupboard I stood gingerly
up, and gradually edged the piece of china further forwards.
‘Honestly, Luce. Why wouldn’t one cup do?’ I questioned, as I took hold of the pot and started to lower it to the work
surface below me. Holding it carefully, I realised that the teapot wasn’t quite as basic as I’d first thought. On the wall across
the other side of the kitchen, the phone began to ring, ultimately making me jump out of my skin in reaction.
‘Nooo!’ I shouted out, as the light, fragile piece began to slip through my fingers. Attempting to regain a hold, I quickly
realised that the teapot I was juggling with was bone china. Then, as the glazed piece smashed against the floor and the shards
scattered everywhere, a wedding tag became visible. Finally, I understood just why the piece was so high up. My mouth turned
dry, and not in response to having had no tea. My stomach churned with a sick feeling.
‘Oh, God… Not a wedding present!’ I exclaimed, frozen to the spot. ‘Could this be any worse?’ I questioned and raised my
arms a little as if I was expecting an answer. The only response was the bloody annoying phone stopping its incessant ringing,
and a hush fell over the kitchen once again.
‘Now what?’ I asked myself, while still looking at the mess I’d created. I had no idea how I was going to get down, without
impaling my bare feet on the sharp slivers on the floor. But worse still, how was I going to explain how I’d broken something
that Sebastian obviously felt the need to protect, and was consequently keeping out of anyone else’s reach?
‘Shit!’ I sighed.
‘In answer to your question… I’m not sure it could be any worse.’ I heard his voice, and the exhale that followed, before I
saw him.
‘I’m so sorry.’ In resignation, I momentarily closed my eyes before I instinctively replied. ‘I’ll make it up to you. I’ll pay
you back for it… I’m really sorry.’ Turning my head, I followed the sound of his voice to the doorway.
Leaning one shoulder against the frame of the open door, with his arms crossed over his chest, I found Sebastian. Very
quickly, I comprehended that he wasn’t anything like how I normally saw him. Apart from when he worked out, he was
habitually smart, probably because of his line of work. But this morning, I found him with his smart shirt pulled out from the
top of his trousers. It was undone and hanging loosely, displaying an area I suddenly, and rather ridiculously, wanted to run my
tongue over to feel the well-defined muscles he normally kept out of sight. His hair was dishevelled, and over his square jaw I
found what could only be described as scruff, where normally he was clean shaven. Not sporting the mask that he always faced
the world with, I could see his vulnerability, and he was beautiful.
The normally spacious and airy room, all at once felt hot and stifling and the air crackled around us.
‘That could be fun… how?’ he probed, as his eyes drank all of me in.
‘I didn’t mean to…’ I started, before looking at him again more intently and wondering if I’d misheard him.
‘Didn’t mean to what?’ His head leant to one side as he questioned me again, breaking my train of thought.
Has he just arrived home?
 He had the just fucked look about him.
Has he just left someone else’s bed?
Jealousy swept through me once again.
Without him coming any further into the room, I watched him look me slowly up and down. Every single piece of my bare
skin felt the nanosecond his eyes came into contact with it, until I could feel my cheeks burning and my nipples pebbling against
the thin, blue cotton covering them.
‘I was just trying to get a teapot to make a pot of tea.’ I looked down at the mess below me, and then back to him. He bit his
bottom lip with his teeth and nodded at my answer, looking very amused.
‘That’s a shame,’ he acknowledged, before letting his eyes casually wander over my body once again. It was then I realised
his tone had a slight slur to it.
‘It is?’
‘Yeah. There was me hoping it was a deliberate ploy to get me to rescue you.’ His grin widened, and I understood he was
teasing me.
‘It was a wedding present,’ I offered, shaking my head before looking down to the floor.
‘Was it? Not a clue.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s a lot in this house that means nothing to me,’ he stopped talking and looked
attentively at me, ‘and then there’s a few things that surprisingly, I’m not sure I could live without.’ His brow furrowed, and my
mouth dropped open a little at his sudden honesty.
Does he mean me?
All at once, he pushed his body off the doorframe and began to move. Underneath his tan brogues, the shards of the teapot
crunched, breaking through the intense silence. With his eyes now fully focussed on mine, he closed the gap between us and
intuitively I held my breath.
‘I’m going to lift you down,’ Sebastian informed me.
‘Have you been drinking?’
What the hell has it got to do with me?
‘Not for a few hours,’ he answered. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing, if that’s what you’re asking?’ His large hands lifted
and enclosed my waist, touching the uncovered part of my torso and making me gasp in response.
‘Sorry if my hands are cold.’
‘They’re not,’ I retorted, just as he lifted my feet up from the worktop.
Shut up, Luce.
‘No? After a really fucked up night, this morning is getting better and better.’ He lifted his eyebrows, and a smile spread
over his face as realisation at his words hit me. ‘Put your hands on my shoulders, Lucy,’ he instructed, as he nodded at me just
the once and I did his bidding. Feeling his muscular shoulders beneath my fingers and inhaling his signature cologne did things
to my sex starved body.
Things I really would rather have kept to myself.
‘Teddy still asleep?’ he questioned.
‘Yes, and Stitch is with him.’
He smiled. The whole household knew how unusual Teddy was for a toddler. He could sleep through anything.
Too slowly, he started to lower me down, using his hard body as a place for me to rest against. All the while, my fingertips
flexed gently against his shoulders as I allowed myself to touch him. After what seemed like forever, and me feeling his hard
body against my soft compliant one, his movement stilled. Finally, he’d lowered me enough that we were face to face. And
there I was, suspended in the air, wearing next to nothing and fighting against every single force inside me, not to wrap my legs
around my employer and climb him like a tree.
‘I’m not drunk,’ he insisted, as his warm breath touched my lips.
‘Okay.’ The one word left me on a murmur. Quite honestly, I knew I no longer cared.
‘I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do for the last few weeks.’ His head tilted to one side as he spoke to me again. My
heart began to hammer in my chest, sending my pulse racing. And butterflies took flight inside my stomach.
‘You have?’ I asked as my eyes went between his and the full looking lips he owned. The same ones I so needed to feel
against mine.
He said no more but nodded ever so slightly, before pressing his warm flesh against my own, gently at first and then with
more insistence. He kissed and teased, until my lips parted as my body demanded it required more, so very much more.
For the first time in so very long, I packed away my guilt, insecurities, and all the “what if” scenarios I had inside my head
and went along with what I wanted, needed and at this minute, I felt I deserved. To feel a man holding me in his arms. To
submit to the physical needs that I’d packed away a long time ago. To feel someone holding me tightly, like I was all he could
ever want or need. A person who wanted me with equal fervour.
How can this be wrong when it feels so right?
I heard my question, but refused to answer it for fear of breaking the magic spell around us. Instead, my arms moved up and
tightened around his neck, just as his tongue swept into my mouth, discovering and teasing the soft needy flesh inside.
Goosebumps broke out all over my body, until all I was aware of was me and the man who was holding me. Acting on pure
want and need, and nothing more, I allowed my legs to wrap around him. His hands came up to cup my backside as he
repositioned me above his sizable erection. Finding something inside of me, I ground myself against him and felt the groan he
omitted reverberate into my mouth.
Suddenly, I was aware he was walking once again, as I heard the sound of more shards being destroyed beneath his feet.
Having reached his intended destination, he stopped and began to lower me onto one of the high stools at the breakfast bar. My
backside found the floral covered, padded top and my spine rested against the low bar behind me. He gripped hold of my
thighs, and ground himself against my pussy, releasing a flood of wetness onto my flimsy, checked shorts.
Only then did he allow his mouth to lift away, before leaning his forehead to mine and inhaling deeply, as though he was
trying to calm himself down.
‘I haven’t eaten.’ His voice had deepened, and he looked down between us. My eyes followed his gaze to find an obvious
damp patch between my legs. Embarrassed at my noticeable need showing, I looked up to find his eyes waiting for mine.
Sebastian’s darkened, taking on a predatory look, and I felt my own open wider at his meaning.
‘Good morning!’ we both heard Mrs Crooks call, as she returned from her shopping trip.
Sebastian laughed as he saw horror capture my features. ‘Saved by the housekeeper,’ he exclaimed, before placing a quick
kiss to my forehead and moving away.
Instantly, I closed my legs and crossed one over the other to cover the wet patch he’d left me with. Hopefully, the flush I
could feel on my face and my rock-hard nipples would disappear quickly.
‘Morning, we’re in the kitchen,’ he called back, as though nothing had happened between us.
‘Oh, what’s happened here?’ She appeared through the doorway, looking down at the floor, carrying a reusable bag in each
of her hands.
‘I arrived home and had to rescue Lucy,’ Sebastian informed her.
‘I was reaching for a teapot.’ They both turned to look at me.
‘Are you hurt?’ she questioned, after taking in the mess all over the floor once again.
‘No.’
‘She’s good, really good,’ he added, before offering me a smirk as Mrs Crooks looked away.
‘If someone could get me some shoes, please, I could go and get dressed and come back down to clear up.’
‘No need.’ She smiled at me and took in just how little I was wearing at the same time. ‘But I’ll get you your dressing gown
and some slippers.’
‘I don’t have a dressing gown,’ I admitted. ‘I do have an overly large cardigan that used to be my husband’s. It will be on
the bottom of my bed,’ I added as I waited for the feeling of guilt to swamp me, after bringing up Matt. But was shocked when it
didn’t arrive.
‘I’ll be right back.’ She smiled at me as she took in the information I’d imparted. Before moving away, she left the bags on
the surface nearest to her and turned to go back out of the door.
‘That was close,’ Sebastian whispered as he leant his backside against the range cooker opposite me and offered a smile I
would gladly die for.
‘Too close,’ I admitted. ‘Can you find me the brush and pan, please? I want to help clear up this mess at least.’
‘Sorry, no can do.’ He walked closer to me, with a sexy, confidant swagger that I wasn’t sure I’d seen before. After pushing
his hands in his trousers pockets, he leant close to my ear. So close I could feel the warmth he expelled as he spoke. ‘And I
wouldn’t describe your need for me as a mess.’
‘I wasn’t talking about that.’ I swiped at his arm and landed a smack that rang out around the room. Sebastian grabbed at the
top of his arm and stepped back, laughing.
‘I don’t know where she keeps them. Honestly.’ He held up his hands in surrender at my accusing look.
I could hear Mrs Crooks coming back downstairs and unless she was talking to herself, she was bringing Teddy with her. I
looked at the floor between myself and the doorway, just as the phone started ringing again, breaking through our playful banter.
Mrs Crooks stopped in the hall with Teddy to answer it.
‘Come on. I’ll carry you over there and out of the way.’
‘That’s how this started,’ I offered, as he strode forward and expertly swung me up into his arms.
‘It is… and sometime very soon I intend to finish what we started.’ He laughed at the look of surprise on my face.
‘Okay,’ I uttered, as he placed my feet on the tiles of the hall floor. ‘I think I’d like that.’
‘I’ll see you do, make no mistake.’
‘Yes, of course. I have no idea why the phone wasn’t answered before. I’ll get him for you now.’ Mrs Crooks held out the
phone to the man behind me with a troubled look on her face. Sebastian strode past, accidentally knocking into me as he made
his way to retrieve the phone she was holding in her hand.
‘Mama.’ Teddy toddled towards me with a beaming smile on his face as he caught sight of me for the first time today.
 ‘Hey, baby. Did you sleep well?’ I bent down to pick him up and into my arms, to snuggle him closer to me as a fraught
atmosphere surrounded us all. Sebastian’s face grew more and more tense. Until finally, he turned away from the three of us
and slammed his open palm against the newel post in anger.
‘I have no idea why the phone wasn’t answered. I’ll be over to get her in the next thirty minutes. Put her on the phone so I
can talk to her please… please, Belinda… Belinda!’
It was obvious his instruction hadn’t been adhered to when without talking to anyone, Sebastian dropped the phone onto the
side table and rushed up the stairs. ‘Mrs Crooks can you call Lawrence for me,’ he shouted out. ‘I’ll need him here within ten
minutes.’
Knowing he was probably still under the influence of the alcohol he’d consumed, he was requesting his driver, who he
used occasionally.
‘Yes,’ she shouted up, as she retrieved the phone from the table and pressed the single button that was programmed to
connect to the driver. ‘Hello, Lawrence. Sorry, but Sebastian needs you here as soon as possible. Thank you.’
‘Get some clothes on,’ she instructed gently, placing Matt’s cardi and my slippers into my arms, ‘then we can get some
breakfast.’
‘What’s happened?’ I questioned, looking between her and the phone, now once again in its cradle. Knowing the call had
come from Penelope’s grandmother.
‘Who knows. This isn’t unusual. I’m sure we will find out more once Penelope is back home. If, of course, she’ll talk to
us,’ she answered, as she opened the door to go back into the kitchen. At the same time, Sebastian’s feet thudded across the
landing and down the stairs.
‘I hope she’s okay,’ I offered.
The only reply I received was a curt nod of his head, before he opened the door wide and slammed it behind him, making
me and Teddy jump in response.
‘My goodness, you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt,’ Mrs. Crooks exclaimed.
‘I know,’ I agreed as I stared after Sebastian, making a decision not to allow myself to be so easily swept away by passion
again.
Standing in the hall, cradling my son in my arms, I looked between the door he’d just slammed and the kitchen, in disbelief.
My body was throbbing with need, but I wasn’t hurting—not yet.
 CHAPTER
EIGHT

Sebastian

fter making sure Pen was secure in her car seat, and refusing to look at the two of them standing on the threshold as they
A pretended they cared, I closed the car door. Then I jogged around the back of the Daimler, pulled the door open and sat
down quickly next to my baby girl. Releasing some of my pent-up anger, I slammed the door behind me.
‘Let’s go,’ I instructed Lawrence as I moved across the seat to get closer to her.
Picking up the tiny hand closest to me, I cradled it between my two larger ones and gently caressed her fingers with my
own.
‘What happened this time, Pen pop?’
I had no idea why I was even asking. I could see the scenario playing out step by step in my head. And it wouldn’t be the
first time they’d done it to her. Her grandmother would have picked her up from school like normal and, at some point, her
mother would have turned up without Penelope being warned. Then she would have been shamed, coerced and cajoled I
expected, just like last time. Even attempts of blackmail would have been used to get her to talk to her mother. To not mumble,
not to stammer and to answer the questions her mother was asking. Like she was some fucking puppet, they would have pulled
the strings and expected my baby to dance. They showed absolutely no understanding of the emotional trauma she’d been
through. Refused to recognise, nor accept it.
Eventually, bored of getting nowhere, I’d been called.
Well, no more.
I wasn’t going to stand by and watch this happen every few months, not again.
‘It’s okay, Pen pop, I’m here now. None of it matters.’ I shook my head, before speaking again. ‘You don’t have to go again,
not as long as you don’t want to.’
When her sobs found my ears and tears started to fall down her face, as she continued to stare out of the car window rather
than answer me, my stomach dropped as though I’d swallowed a lead weight. The damage they’d so obviously done in less
than twenty-four hours had sent her backwards again, and I knew I’d never forgive the pair of them.
The silence between us was deafening as we travelled from the West End of London back to Holland Park, and home. But I
continued to gently stroke her hand in mine, as I attempted to wordlessly communicate that I was here for her, and always
would be. Although she didn’t utter a word to me, she didn’t pull her hand away and that, I had to accept for now, was a
positive. The journey home, however, was less forgiving. The roads were full of Christmas shoppers, but I knew that driving
anywhere inside Greater London would be a nightmare.
What a fucking mess!
That one thought banged around inside my head several times over as we crawled along the main roads. I made a mental
note to contact my lawyer again in regard to my custody of Penelope. I’d been worried for a while now that visits to her
maternal grandmother were affecting her badly. Now, adding in that her bitch of a mother had taken to turning up out of the blue,
it was really bothering me. Why the two of them were surprised that Pen was then unable to talk to either of them, stunned me. I
had no idea why. My ex-wife was a creation of her mother—and it was up to me to make sure the bad parenting stopped right
here. Even if that meant protecting my precious baby and for the foreseeable future not letting either of them near her, until she
was old enough to make her own mind up as to whether she wanted them in her life at all.
With a mental note to contact Jonathan, her paediatrician, about getting her mutism reviewed again to use in the court case
that would most definitely follow once I took their access away, I felt my head clear a little.
Now, all I needed to work out was the mess I’d walked out of back at home.
What the fuck had I been thinking?
You’d had a drink. Blame it on the alcohol.
I sounded out the excuse in my head. But I’d never been a liar, so there was no way I was going to be able to use it
objectively.
 Yes, I’d been drinking the night before.
As usual on my night off, I’d gone to my club to meet friends and to find the company of some beautiful woman. Our club,
which had once been a men only premises, had thrown open its doors to professional women nearly twenty years ago. So, like
a bunch of teenagers at some seedy joint in another part of London, we drunk a lot and searched around for someone to hold for
the night. I loved a woman who was so wrapped up in her career that she only had one night every few weeks to satisfy her
needs, and I was there, very present in giving her everything she fantasised about. In return, she had to be a woman who wanted
to know nothing about me, and who gave me no information about herself.
But after drinking far more than the few fingers of my favourite Glenfiddich I’d normally have, I’d had to conclude that it
wasn’t touching the sides. The smooth amber liquid was doing nothing for me. The whole evening had been an utter waste of
time. I’d spent an unusually solitary evening, only occasionally making small talk with acquaintances while staring at the glass
in my hand. Swirling the alcohol around the cut glass tumbler over and over, as I comprehended that wasn’t going to come
close to quenching the need I seemed to have to be with and around Lucy.
All I could see and focus on was the past week. The jokes we’d shared over the evening meals we ate with the children.
The same ones I’d been working through my lunchbreak, in order to leave my office on time to make. The coffee we took
together every evening as we discussed Pen’s day, which had soon become the coffee where we’d talk about both of the
children’s day, and then ours too. The woman had captivated me. Not only was she an amazing nanny and perfect for Pen, but
she was also a brilliant mum. In the couple of months she’d been in our lives, she now treated our two children no differently.
The woman had percolated into my head and there was no shaking her free. Even when I’d been offered a bed for the night,
with a couple of ladies I’d stayed with a few times very satisfactorily with in the past, the vision of her hadn’t cleared from my
head. I’d had to make my excuses to them, about my workload and how I was needed back at the office, and I could tell by their
faces they hadn’t believed a word I’d spoken.
Truthfully, that made three of us.
When I’d finally arrived home in the small hours of the morning, I’d quietly come in and sat in my office dozing on and off
and wondering what the hell my next steps were. If that hadn’t been disconcerting enough for a man who normally had every
single part of his life planned out, I’d been able to hear her moving about in her bedroom directly above my study, as I
supposed she dealt with Teddy.
Finally, I’d heard Mrs Crooks go out for her regular early Saturday morning shopping trip and at long last sleep had
claimed me. I’d been jolted awake by Lucy dropping the pot and the subsequent scream that followed it. Like a blind man, I’d
stumbled to the kitchen door to find out what had happened. But the sight of her wearing next to nothing had stopped me in my
tracks, and awakened more of me than just my bleary eyes and fuzzy head. I couldn’t remember a coherent thought following it.
All I could focus on was the sight of her, standing on the worktop in some very worn scraps of cotton, which in places were
nearly see through and left nothing between her beautiful, bare skin and my very vivid imagination.
I was sure Lucy didn’t need me as an added complication in her life, but in those few minutes that hadn’t crossed my mind.
All I could focus on was how much I wanted her and by her response to me, how much she seemed to want me too.
‘Daddy.’ A small voice sounded beside me, wrenching me out of my thoughts.
Thank fuck! She’s talking.
I looked down at my beautiful daughter to find her looking back up at me. Her tears had dried on her cheeks, and sadness
was still to be found in her eyes. But she was talking to me, and I had so much to be thankful for. I used my spare hand to trail a
finger down her cheek, before touching it gently to her nose.
‘It’s going to be okay, Pen. We’ll be at home soon.’
She nodded at me, and a hesitant smile pulled at the comers of her mouth. I tugged a couple of tissues out from the packet I
had in my pocket and dabbed at the corners of her eyes, as I looked after her.
‘It appears, young lady, that we have an unexpected afternoon ahead of us. So, what would you like to do?’ I deliberately
asked a question she would have to answer. Because we’d been here before, when she felt so emotionally traumatised that she
couldn’t even talk to me. And right now, call me a selfish bastard, but I needed to hear more than the tiny whisper of the daddy
I’d just heard.
‘It’s beginning to snow,’ she replied.
My gaze jolted to the window. Bending from the waist to get a better view out of the glass, I watched as the small flecks
blew around the car. I’d been so wrapped up in my own thoughts I hadn’t noticed.
‘So, it has. They’ve been saying on the weather programmes for the last couple of days that it might,’ I added.
‘The snow’s beginning to lay in places, Dr Black,’ Lawrence chipped into the conversation.
‘Is it going to cause us a problem?’ I asked, twisting to the side slightly to catch his eyes in the rear-view mirror.
‘No, Sir. They’ve already gritted the roads.’
‘Good.’
‘Can we go ice skating at the museum?’ Pen asked, hopefully.
I looked again at Lawrence and watched him nod to indicate that he thought the roads would be okay to come back into the
centre of London.
‘Do you mean where we went last year?’ I questioned her, knowing exactly what she meant but wanting to keep her in the
conversation.
‘Yes… The British History Museum.’ She squinted slightly, looking even more cute than normal as she summoned up its full
name from the depths of her memories.
‘Yes, Pen pop, we can do that.’
‘Can we take Lucy and Teddy too?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at me as she looked up.
Now what? How can I say I’m not sure Lucy will want to come anywhere with me? After my very obvious dismissal of
her as I’d rushed out to pick up my daughter.
‘We can ask, sure. But it’s Lucy’s day off and they might have other plans.’
‘K,’ she replied thoughtfully, before looking out of the side window again.
‘I wonder if Uncle Ollie and Aunt Cassie will still be able to get here from Buckinghamshire tomorrow?’ I asked the
question out loud, reeling Pen back in. Knowing full well with the large 4x4 Oliver drove, hell would have to freeze over with
ten-foot-tall drifts to stop him arriving at our house tomorrow.
‘Are they bringing Emily?’
‘They are.’
‘YAY! I’m so pleased. I love Emily, and Teddy will love her too. We could play in the garden with Stitch… I wonder if he
likes snow.’ Words fell from her mouth quickly and I released a quiet exhale in relief at her excitement. ‘We can play the three
of us, our family,’ she released, almost as an afterthought.
Our family?
And there, in those few minutes in the car, my path forward became clearer. Lucy and Teddy had been brought into our lives
for a purpose. Now, all I had to do was to find a way to steer through the clusterfuck of a situation I’d created at home. I could
still see Lucy’s confused face as I’d stormed out earlier and I wasn’t proud of how I’d left things between us. I could only hope
the fact I’d had to get my daughter out of a toxic situation would go in my favour.
The reason none of those women would do last night was because I wanted Lucy. I wanted Lucy in both of our lives. I
needed her for Pen, and in truth I needed her for me. I wasn’t sure how to go about the two of us being together when both our
children were our priorities, but with a resounding clarity of thought, I knew I had to try. She certainly didn’t need to be in any
doubt about how I was beginning to feel about her. Lucy needed security for Teddy, and I knew she felt she’d found it in our
home. I hoped somewhere deep down inside her, she not only wanted security for Teddy but also wanted to be with me, for me.
Now, all I could hope, was she was willing to set aside the risks we both knew would be involved and would still be
enthusiastic to take the step forward together.
I had… I moved to see the clock on the dashboard of the car… less than twenty-four hours to achieve all of this, before my
brother arrived to check out our dynamic.
Fucking Oliver.
 CHAPTER
NINE

Lucy

ama, play?’ Teddy thrust a yellow object in front of my face. So close that I couldn’t focus on what exactly it was he
‘M was holding.
‘In a minute, Ted. Mama just needs to put away our clean clothes.’
Luckily for me, my son was less demanding than most children of the same age. I watched as he nodded at me and walked
over to where he’d left the rest of his favourite vehicles by Stitch’s back leg. Once there, he began to drive them around the
prone figure of a dog who’d been run through Holland Park by a woman with a young child in a sports buggy, as she tried to get
out of her own head, even if only for a short while.
Had it worked? No.
But it had worn out his trusty companion.
‘Brrrmmm. Beep. Beep.’
As Teddy went back to his game, I put the last of our clean clothes away in the wardrobe and drawers. Then I sat down on
the luxurious carpet and went over my day so far.
After Sebastian had left, I’d quickly helped Mrs Crooks clean up the mess I’d made. Trying to maintain a sense of
normality, Teddy and I had then shared the pastries she’d so caringly bought for us. But all the time, I was sure I could feel her
looking at me differently. She wasn’t unkind, oh no. But I was sure she had her own ideas as to just what had gone on before
she’d arrived home.
Or perhaps it was just my own guilt manifesting itself once again.
As breakfast ended, I excused myself to put on some washing, and then gathering up my son, his pushchair and cosy toes,
we’d called Stitch and disappeared out through the garage, shouting out our goodbyes as we left. Rather selfishly, after running
with the two of them for a couple of miles, I decided to prolong my hiding out and treated us all to some lunch in the dog
friendly café to the west side of the park.
I’d finally arrived home, knowing I couldn’t stay out any longer. The temperature was most certainly dropping with every
half an hour that passed, and the sky appeared to be thick and heavy with snow. So, I made my way back inside the way we’d
left, dried off Stitch, and fed and watered him. Back in our large room, which had views out over the park, I’d busied myself
with putting away the now dry washing that Mrs Crooks had kindly placed on my bed.
‘Now what?’ I spoke out loud, understanding that sooner or later I was going to have to leave the room we were currently
cossetted in. Truthfully, I knew I wanted to see Sebastian after what had confusingly passed between us this morning. But as he
and Penelope still hadn’t returned, it wasn’t possible. I only hoped I’d done the right thing by putting our clean clothes away,
and not back into the cases we’d unpacked a couple of months previously.
Sudden movement outside caught my attention. Standing, I made my way over to the large window that dominated my room,
taking hold of Teddy’s hand as I did so.
‘Come with mama, Ted… Look, it’s snowing outside.’ Even feeling as I did, I could hear the excitement in my voice.
Together, we made our way to the window, and once there I picked him up and cuddled him to me as we watched the world
outside being transformed by mother nature.
‘That’s snow.’
‘No,’ he repeated, as always eager to repeat new words.
‘That’s right, snow.’ I added extra emphasis on the “s” as I spoke the word again.
When our combined breath steamed up the panes in front of us, I wiped my hand over the glass in an almost perfect circle,
so the two of us could still see outside. A whirring sound caught my attention just as the electronic gates began to open, and a
car I instantly recognised swept into the semi-circular driveway.
Not able to tear my eyes away, I watched as the tall figure of Sebastian got out one side. He pulled up the collar on his
jacket to shield himself from the snow that was beginning to increase in density, then walked around to the other side and lifted
out Penelope. In my arms, Teddy started to move up and down at the sight of them, and squeal with excitement, which woke up
Stitch. Feeling how excited his young charge was, our dog began to dance around us both, eager to be part of whatever was
going on.
I watched on as Sebastian, holding Pen close to him, caught sight of the movement from my window and fleetingly stopped
as he looked up. Unable to look away, I attempted to glean how he felt about what had happened between the two of us this
morning. Watching intently, I saw his smile develop when he saw us both there watching. As I reciprocated and offered him
one in return, his grew in size until his dimples were on full show. Unknowingly, I placed my hand against the cold glass in
between us, as though I was asking a question I anxiously needed the answer to. When Sebastian nodded slightly in answer to
me, I knew I’d been right to put our clothes away and not back into the cases under my bed. Then I watched those lips I’d felt
against mine earlier, move, as he told Pen we were there. When the two of them looked up at us both and she waved eagerly at
us, I relaxed.
For a couple of minutes, the four of us greeted each other from a distance. The grins on our children’s faces matched, as
they greeted each other as though they hadn’t been together in weeks, not the day and a half it really was.
‘Mama… down,’ Teddy demanded.
I released his wriggling body so he could stand on tiptoes and tap his hand on the window and understood how desperate
he was to let Pen and Sebastian know how thrilled he was to see them both. Stupidly, I wished I could show my excitement in
the same way. Either that, or to go running down the stairs, throw open the door and launch myself into Sebastian’s arms.
But I knew we weren’t there, not yet. Hopefully, one day soon. A tiny flicker of panic erupted inside me as Sebastian, with
Pen in his arms, disappeared from view as they continued to the front door. On instinct, I placed the palm of my hand just
below my ribcage trying to calm myself.
“Have courage, Lucy.” I heard Matt inside my head and closed my eyes to feel him there. For the first time, I didn’t feel
the urge to cry, only to smile at what we once were, and with Teddy, what we would always be.
‘I’ll try,’ I whispered into the room in reply.
Instantly, whatever it was I’d been literally running from earlier and hadn’t escaped, disintegrated. The guilt I’d been
wearing as a stone around my neck, broke in two, fell away and crumbled into nothing.
All at once, I could see the path forward.
And dare I say it, it looked happy.
 CHAPTER
TEN

Lucy

‘L ike this, Teddy,’ Pen directed.

It was hard not to allow the room to fall to silence as the five of us heard her speak clearly. But for at least a minute,
we stopped hanging the Christmas decorations, stoking the open fire, and decorating the tree, while we concentrated on
her beautiful voice as it resonated with us all.
A breakthrough?
Could it really be? Only the day before, a small handwritten note had been slipped under my bedroom door, not more than
five minutes after their arrival home. Apparently, Pen had personally wanted to invite me and Teddy to go ice-skating with her
and her daddy. It was the first time she had attempted to converse with me. I’d had smiles, hugs, and gestures, but writing to me
felt like it was a huge step. Of course, I’d accepted gladly and the four of us had a wonderful afternoon together. Playing,
skating, and enjoying everything central London had to offer at Christmas time. Once we’d eaten, Lawrence had driven us
around to see the lights. As light flurries of snow had fallen around us on and off, the late afternoon had turned into dusk, and
the experience became almost magical.
The only downside had been when Sebastian and I hadn’t gotten the alone time I’d hoped for once the children had fallen
asleep. Soon after we’d arrived back home, he’d received a call to say that one of his private patients had gone into labour and
was experiencing difficulties. Out of concern for her and the baby, he’d travelled back into central London to attend her at the
hospital she’d been admitted to.
I knew, when he’d arrived home in the early hours of the morning, he’d looked in around my bedroom door, which I’d
deliberately left open. I knew it, because somewhere in my sleep filled subconscious, I’d felt him there. I’d left the door open,
so he could see where Pen was. Since whatever had happened at her grandmother’s house and the wonderful afternoon the four
of us had spent in London together, she hadn’t left my side. There was no way I was going to condemn her to sleeping in her
own room, by herself, if that wasn’t what she’d wanted. So, after her and Teddy had shared the huge bath together, I’d dried
them off and explained that after I took a very quick shower, we were all going to watch a film and have snacks in my big bed.
Her eyes had opened as wide as saucers when she’d understood I’d meant her too. And there, with stomachs full of popcorn
and hot chocolate, and with the television still flickering, the three of us had fallen asleep together amongst the crumbs to be
found in every fold and crease of my once fresh bedding.
I was convinced he’d spent some of the dark hours of the night stretched out on the day bed. But, when the three of us had
awoken to the smell of fresh pancakes drifting up from the kitchen and him calling our names from downstairs, I knew he’d felt
it was best to vacate the room. Left behind was the smell of his cologne, creases on top of a Fireman Sam duvet cover, an
impression where his head had rested on the pillow, and a thrill I hadn’t experienced for a very long time. I’d known he had
been there because it was where he had wanted to be, and it filled my heart with a sense of joy and hope. The conversation we
still needed to have, had to once again be pushed aside, as his brother and sister-in-law had arrived soon after our breakfast
that morning.
‘Did you all hear that?’ Sebastian whispered in question and we all nodded in return. From various places in the expansive
sitting room, her daddy, uncle, aunt, and Mrs Crooks turned to look at the little group of children on the floor. I watched from
my peripheral view as Cassie put a hand over her mouth as though to stop her emotions seeping out, before she swung back
around quickly to face the window to compose herself.
‘So, as I was saying…’ I spoke a little louder to get everyone’s attention, desperate as I was for Pen to not feel like anyone
was listening to her apart from Teddy, her baby cousin and Stitch, who had lovingly curled his protective body around the
small group. But it was when Sebastian stepped over towards me and reached quickly for my hand to give it a quick squeeze
that I stopped talking altogether, so I could look at him and share his excitement.
‘I was hoping the next thing you were going to say was that Seb here had fallen on his arse while ice-skating.’ Oliver spoke
loudly, snapping our quintet of adults to their senses and I smiled gratefully over to him.
 ‘You’re right, Oliver. That’s exactly what I was going to say.’ I matched the pitch of his voice, to try to disguise that
although the adults were talking, in reality we had every single sense we possessed trained on Penelope and her conversation.
‘Language, Oli,’ Cassie added loudly.
‘Like any children of ours will ever learn to speak without using the occasional cuss word,’ Oliver added, laughing. ‘Now,
Lucy, you must tell me more. It has always driven me insane that my younger sibling is good at any sport he turns his hand to,
while I must work too damned hard for my liking to be anywhere near as good as him.’
‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know he went down on his arse, as you put it, twice.’ I grinned back at Oliver and took in, as I
turned back, that Sebastian had narrowed his eyes at me as he pretended to be angry.
‘I’ll get you for that, Campbell.’ I could see he was suddenly uncomfortable as he’d spoken without thinking. He stared at
me, to check I was okay with him using my married name.
‘You can try, Black,’ I responded, laughing as I tried to convince him it was okay.
‘You see it makes her smile,’ Pen spoke again, when Teddy giggled in response that his gentle touch on the cheek of baby
Emily had meant he was proffered a cute looking smile in return.
Mrs Crooks moved suddenly and rushed towards the open door, knowing she was about to release a sob or two. ‘I’m going
to make hot chocolate. Who wants one?’ she asked.
A chorus of ‘me please’ went up amongst us. I watched as Pen raised her hand to add herself.
‘I’ll be back very soon,’ Mrs Crooks added, before rushing gratefully from the room.
‘Anyone wanting marshmallows and whipped cream best shout now,’ I pushed into the conversation hopefully, knowing it
was a favourite of Pen’s, and could have heard a pin drop as everyone stopped breathing as they waited in anticipation.
‘I do,’ Penelope replied.
My heart leapt into my mouth. My pulse quickened, resulting in my hands shaking a little in front of me. But with calculated
movements, I carried on what I was doing, even though I could feel that the others around me had frozen in place.
In the background, I heard Teddy giggle again. Bless him, always there to lighten a moment and to offer his love.
‘Tickle, babay.’ He spoke, and it gave me a sense of normalcy, even though I knew that this very minute in time was far
from it.
Without looking directly at Penelope, I hung a silver bauble onto the tree in front of me and watching in the reflection of the
shiny object I replied, ‘Best you go and find Mrs Crooks then, Pen.’
‘K,’ she answered without thinking. Then jumping up she disappeared out of the same door Mrs Crooks had just gone
through.
‘Oh… my… God,’ Oliver released as we all turned to face one another.
‘She answered you,’ Sebastian responded.
‘I know.’ I looked at them all and took in the looks of sheer happiness on their faces, before placing a hand against my
chest. I was convinced that in those few seconds, all the shattered pieces of my heart, each individual sharp and painful shard,
had shifted. A warm glow filled me as they once again conjoined and melded back into place.
‘You are one amazing person, Lucy,’ Sebastian exclaimed, before walking towards me and pulling me into his arms.
‘You’ve shown my little girl more kindness and consideration in the last few months, than—well, you know who has, in all her
years.’
‘She’s very easy to love,’ I offered.
‘As are you.’ He spoke again, before, with his eyes focussed on me, he placed his forehead against mine and exhaled.
‘Thank you,’ I responded, before wrapping my arms tightly around his waist in return.
‘And this is the dynamic I’ve been waiting to see,’ I heard Oliver tease Sebastian.
‘I think we need to make time to talk,’ Sebastian whispered in my ear, while ignoring his brother.
‘Yes, we do.’ I nodded as I smiled back.
‘Take a look at this,’ Cassie called out from where she’d been stood at one of the large sitting room windows, while she’d
been decorating the fresh bough with lights and sprigs of holly. ‘I’ve never seen one like this before.’
Intrigued, I moved with Sebastian, to close the distance between us.
‘What do we need to look at?’ Oliver questioned, unmoving from the top of the ladder he was stood on.
‘Two robins. They’ve been looking in the window for the last few minutes while I’ve been decorating, and one of them has
been tapping against the glass with its beak.’
‘Sometimes, Cassie… I wonder about you,’ Oliver replied without descending his position, as he continued to hang the
decorations he was holding.
‘And he’s so unusual, too,’ she declared, still looking out into the garden. ‘He’s polydactyly… I think that’s the word.’
It can’t be. Momentarily, I stopped moving.
‘What’s that?’ Sebastian enquired as he came up beside her.
‘It means to have an extra working digit,’ I answered.
‘Interesting,’ Sebastian answered. ‘I can see it now. It’s on his left foot.’
 ‘Come and get your hot chocolate, everyone.’ Mrs Crooks re-entered the room with Penelope holding a tray of freshly
baked biscuits.
Sebastian and Cassie left me alone at the window to join in the loud commotion behind me.
With my breathing momentarily stalled, I took the last step I needed and lifted my arm to part a couple of the branches on
the windowsill in front of me. In utter disbelief, I looked out at the two robins. Just as Sebastian had said, I found his extra toe
on his left foot.
‘Is it you?’ I whispered, as we stared at each other through the pane of glass.
‘Aren’t robins monogamous?’ I heard Cassie question those around her as they added whipped cream and marshmallows to
their cups.
‘I bet if they are, it’s because their wives don’t make them help decorate for Christmas,’ Oliver answered before laughing.
‘Oli!’ Cassie reprimanded, as she laughed back at him.
‘They are for a season, I think,’ Mrs. Crooks added. ‘Unless misfortune takes their mate away. Then they must have the
courage to move on and look for another one.’
The conversation behind me fell into silence as they started to sip on their hot drinks.
I touched one fingertip to the cold glass, expecting the robins to depart. When the larger of the two tapped the glass again
with his beak, I released the breath I was holding.
It’s you. I know it is.
Can you see us, Matt? We will always love you…
‘Mama.’ Teddy’s small arms wrapped around my jean clad leg. Instantly, I bent down to pick him up to show him what I
was concentrating so hard on.
‘Do you see the robins, Teddy?’ I asked.
‘Robins,’ he copied back perfectly, before touching his small finger to the glass next to mine. Once again, the robin tapped
his beak against the glass and Teddy squealed, before lifting his finger to check it hadn’t been pecked.
Sebastian and Pen arrived next to us.
‘Daddy, can I see too?’ Penelope asked, before Sebastian lifted her and all of us looked out.
The two robins looked back at us.
‘It’s strange. It’s as though they’re trying to tell us something.’ Sebastian spoke as his spare hand slipped over mine.
‘Isn’t it?’ I turned to look at him and reciprocated the smile he was offering.
‘Well, I’m listening,’ he nodded resolutely. ‘Are you?’ He gently squeezed my fingers in encouragement. In that moment, I
understood that we were a four. Sebastian, Pen, Teddy, and me.
‘Yes.’ I nodded back.
Movement caught my eye, and I watched as the robins took flight, to shelter in one of the tall trees in the garden.
‘I think they’re going to stay.’ I smiled as I spoke.
‘That’s good,’ Sebastian answered. ‘And what about you and Teddy… how long are you staying for?’
‘Would it be alright if we stayed forever?’
‘Yes.’ He released my hand and wrapped his arm around my waist, before pulling me and Teddy closer to him and
Penelope. ‘It was the only answer I was going to accept, anyhow,’ he added, just as the children began to laugh at the huddle,
we were now in.
I felt the pain I’d carried around for so long, as it released me from its hold. You never know the weight of what you carry,
until you feel the minute you let the weight go.

THE END
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea S. Roberts is a British author. Her loves include her soulmate, their children, and the family dogs. She is the first to admit that she has a quick temper, a sarcastic
sense of humour and is a loyal friend. A lover of live music she can sometimes be found in London at the weekend. She loves to create any sort of romance story from
suspense to rock stars.
In every novel expect heart stopping moments and plenty of heat.
Her thirteen published books can all be found on Amazon.

Please check out her website for more information.

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striking personality and individuality that shut her up within herself as
within a husk, and kept her from mingling with others. This absence of all
capability of thought or feeling, this perfect blank and stupefaction of
intellect and heart, took away from her all that lively sense of novelty, all
that interest in the unknown which is so strong and so beneficent in youth.
She did not ask to understand either the things or persons round her. She
accepted them dully, as she would have accepted any other order of things;
they did not affect her at all; they moved her neither to love nor to hatred,
scarcely even to wonder; through them all she pursued her own dull way,
crossed by these other threads of existence perforce, but never entangling
with them, or allowing herself to be woven into the common web. Their
outcries and laughter, their manifestations of feeling, their fondness for each
other, the perpetual movement of life among them, affected her only with a
vague surprise too faint for that lively title, and a still more languid
contempt. She had nothing in common with them; they were, it seemed to
her, restless, afflicted with a fever of activity, bound by some treadmill
necessity to talk, and walk, and move about, and be always doing, of which
her frame and mind were totally unconscious. A vague resentment against
them—the girl scarcely knew why—for disturbing her with their
companionship, and subjecting her to such strange demands for a sympathy
which she had not to give, and an affection for which she felt no need, gave
a certain reality to the mistiness of her sensations. But that was all; she
came among them like a thing dropped out of another sphere, having no
business, no pleasure, nothing whatever to do or to learn upon this alien
earth.
But there was an exception to this rule. Innocent clung to Frederick as a
savage might cling to the one white man who had brought her out of her
woods and from among her people into the strange and beautiful world of
civilized life. She knew him, though she knew no one else. Frederick was
her revelation, her one discovery out of the darkness which surrounded
every other nature. She formed no very close or distinct estimate of him, but
at least she was conscious of another existence which affected her own, and
upon which she was to some degree dependent. When Mrs. Eastwood found
her lurking in the hall in the cold and darkness, waiting for Frederick, an
immediate and full-grown love tale glimmered before the unfortunate
mother’s eyes, filling her with dismay. But Innocent’s thoughts had taken
no such form. She was as unconscious of love as of any other passion, and
had as little idea of anything to follow as a baby. It was, however, her only
point of human interest, the sole thing which drew her out of herself. When
Frederick was present she had eyes only for him; when he spoke she
listened, not much understanding what he said, but vaguely stimulated by
the very sound of his voice. When he told her to do anything she made an
effort to bring her mind to bear upon it, and somehow took in what he said.
The moment when he came home was the moment to which she looked
forward the whole day through. A vague sense that he understood her, that
he did not ask too much from her like the others, made no bewildering
demand on her comprehension, but accepted what she gave with a matter-
of-fact simplicity equal to her own, gave her confidence in him. Could she
have been with Frederick alone she would have been happy; or would he
even have permitted her to sit close to him, or hold his hand, while the
bewildering conversation of the others—conversation which they expected
her to join in and understand—was going on around, Innocent would have
been more able to bear it. This, however, he had privately explained to her
could not be.
“When we are alone I do not mind,” he said, with a condescension which
suited his natural temper, “but when we are with the others it makes you
ridiculous, Innocent; and what is more, it makes me ridiculous. They laugh
at both you and me.”
“Why should they laugh?” asked the girl.
“Because it is absurd,” he said, frowning. “I cannot allow you to make
me a laughing-stock. Of course, as I tell you, I don’t mind so much when
we are alone.”
And he stroked her hair with a caressing kindness which was at that time
about the best sentiment in the young man’s mind. He was often
embarrassed by her, and sometimes had asked himself the question, What
on earth was it to come to? for he too, like his mother, believed that
Innocent was in love with him; and the love of such a girl, so manifested,
was more absurd than gratifying. But yet he was always kind to her. Evil
impulses enough of one kind and another were in his mind, and he could
have made of this girl anything he pleased, his slave, the servant of his will
in any way. But he never treated her otherwise than as his little sister, and
was kind, and put up with her demonstrative affection, and did his best to
advise her “for her good.”
 “You must not shrink so from my mother and Nelly,” he said. “They
want to be kind to you. If you could only take to them, it would be much
better for you than taking to a fellow like me——”
“I don’t like women,” said Innocent. “My father always said so. I cannot
help being one myself, but I hate them. And nobody is like you.”
“That is very pleasant for me,” said Frederick, “but you must not keep
up that notion about women. Your father was a capital judge, I have no
doubt, but he might have taught you something more useful. Depend upon
it, you will never be happy till you make friends with your own sex. They
may be dangerous to men, though men are not generally of your opinion,”
continued the moralist, “but for you, Innocent, mark my words, it is far your
best policy to make the women your friends.”
“What is policy?” she asked, stealing her hand into his, much as a dog
puts his nose into his master’s hand.
“Pshaw!” said Frederick. His mother had come into the room and had
seen this pantomime. “You ought to be put to school and learn English,” he
added, somewhat roughly. “I don’t believe she understands half of what we
say.”
“Indeed, I should not be sorry to think so,” said Mrs. Eastwood, not
without severity in her tone. But the severity was lost upon Innocent. She
understood, as she did always by some strange magic understand Frederick,
that she was now to withdraw from him and do her best to appear
indifferent. It was a Sunday afternoon, rainy and miserable—and a rainy
Sunday afternoon, when English domestic virtue shuts up all its ordinary
occupations, is, it must be allowed, a dreary moment. I do not at all agree in
the ordinary conventional notion of the dreariness of English Sundays
generally, but I allow that a Sunday afternoon, when all the good people are
at home, when the children are forbidden to play, and the women’s work is
carefully put away, as if innocent embroidery were sin, and the men do not
know what to do with themselves, is trying. If you are musical to the extent
of Handel you may be happy, but the only thing to be done otherwise in a
good orthodox respectable family, bound by all the excellent English
traditions, is to pick a quarrel with some one. About five o’clock or so, with
the rain pouring steadily down into the garden, the flower-beds becoming
puddles before your eyes, the trees looking in upon you like pitiful ghosts—
if you have not dared the elements and gone to afternoon church, you must
quarrel or you must die.
Mrs. Eastwood felt the necessity. She called Frederick close to her, and
she addressed him in an undertone. Innocent had gone away, and placed
herself in a chair close by the window. She had not even “taken a book”—
the impossibility of making her ever “take a book” was one of the miseries
of the house. She was gazing blankly out upon the rain, upon the trees that
shivered and seemed to ask for shelter, and the beds, where a draggled line
of closed-up crocuses were leaning their bosoms upon the mud. Her
beautiful profile was outlined distinctly against the pale gray dreary light. It
was a beautiful profile always, more beautiful than the full face, which
wanted life. Blank as the day itself was her countenance, with that
motiveless gaze which was, indeed, almost mystic in its absolute want of
animation. Her hands were crossed upon her lap, her whole limp girlish
figure seemed to sympathize with the dreariness outside. Mrs. Eastwood
looked with a mixture of pity, sympathy, and disapproval at this apathetic,
immovable being, so self-absorbed, and yet so childish and pitiful in her
self-absorption. She drew Frederick to her and laid her hand upon his arm.
“Frederick, look there,” she said in a low tone, “if you were not in the
room Innocent would rush off up-stairs. She stays only for you. I saw you
just now with her as I came in. For God’s sake, take care what you are
about. You are turning that child’s head.”
“Bah! nonsense,” said Frederick, freeing himself with a complacent
smile.
“It is not nonsense. I have watched her since ever she came. She has
neither eyes nor ears but for you.”
“Is that my fault?” said Frederick, making a motion as if to break away.
“I do not say it is your fault. Stop and hear what I have to say. It was
very good of you, no doubt, to be so kind to her on the journey, to gain her
confidence——”
“Your words are very nice, mother,” said Frederick, “but your tone
implies that it was anything but good of me, as if I had gained her
confidence with an evil intention——”
“Frederick! how dare you put such a suggestion into my lips? If I were
to answer you as you deserve, I should say that only a guilty mind could
have thought of such a thing, or thought that I could think of it,” cried Mrs.
Eastwood, becoming involved in expression as she lost her temper. This
heat on both sides was entirely to be attributed to the Sunday afternoon. On
arriving so near the brink of the quarrel as this, Mrs. Eastwood paused.
“Sunday is not a day for quarrelling,” she said, “and heaven knows I
have no wish to quarrel with any one, much less my own boy; but
Frederick, dear, you must let me warn you. You do not know the world as I
do (heaven help the innocent soul!) nor how people are led on further than
they have any intention; nor how the simplest kindness on your part may
affect the imagination of a girl. She is not much more than a child——”
“She is an utter child—and a fool besides,” said Frederick, throwing the
female creature about whom he was being lectured overboard at once, as a
sacrifice to the waves, according to the wont of man.
“I would not say that,” said Mrs. Eastwood doubtfully. “She is a very
strange girl, but I do not like to think she is a fool; and as for being a child
—a child of sixteen is very near a woman—and, my dear, without meaning
it, without thinking of it, you might do a great deal of harm. With a
brooding sort of girl like this, you can never tell what may be going on. If
she was one to speak out and say what she is thinking, like my Nelly——”
“Nelly! Well, to do her justice, she is very different from Nelly,” said
Frederick, with that natural depreciation of his sister which is also usual
enough, and which was largely increased by Sunday-afternoonishness.
“No, indeed, she is not like Nelly, more’s the pity,” said Mrs. Eastwood,
fortunately not detecting the injurious tone. “She is so shut up in herself that
you can never tell what may be going on within her. I am sure you don’t
mean it, Frederick, but sometimes I think, for Innocent’s own sake, it would
be better if you were not quite so kind. I don’t like her waiting for you in
the hall, and that sort of thing. There is no harm in it, I know—but I don’t
like it. It is always an unpleasant thing to have ideas—which she would be
better without—put into a girl’s head.”
“You are too mysterious for me to follow,” said Frederick. “What ideas?
If you will be a little more plain in your definition——”
She was his mother, and thought she knew a great deal more than he did
about life; but she blushed as red as a girl at this half-contemptuous
question.
“Frederick, you know very well what I mean,” she said quickly, “and I
hope you will not try to make me sorry that I have appealed to you at all.
You may make Innocent more fond of you than will be good for her, poor
child, and that can produce nothing but unhappiness. I am not finding fault,
I am only warning you. Her I cannot warn, because she so shuts herself up.
She is a mystery,” said poor Mrs. Eastwood, shaking her head.
“Whip her,” said Frederick, with a little scornful laugh; and he walked
off to the library, where Dick was pretending to read, and really teaching
Winks, who had been having a mauvais quart d’heure, and whose patience
was so utterly exhausted that nothing but his regard for the family could
have kept him from snapping. Winks made his escape when the door was
opened, and rushed to the drawing-room, where nobody was allowed to
insult his intellect by tricks. He came and sat up before his mistress on his
hind legs, waving his feathery forepaws in expostulation. She understood
him, which is consolatory alike to dogs and men. The tears had come into
her eyes at the unkind scorn of Frederick’s tone, but this other complaint
brought a little laughter and carried off the sharpness. “Yes, Winks, they are
wicked boys,” she said, half laughing, half crying. Dick declared after that
Winks had been “sneaking,” and I think the dog himself was a little
ashamed of having told; but it did the mother good, and set her thinking of
her Dick, who was not too bright, nor yet very industrious, but the honestest
fellow!—and that thought made her laugh, and healed the little prick in her
heart.
 CHAPTER XVI.

INNOCENT’S FIRST ADVENTURE.

Innocent had remained quite unconscious that she was the subject of this
conversation. She was still a little in doubt even of the words of a dialogue
carried on by others. The quickness of utterance which strikes every one
when hearing an unaccustomed language, the half completed phrases, the
words half said, confused her mind, which was not equal to such a strain,
and her want of interest in the matter limited her comprehension tenfold
more. She sat with her profile marked out against the light, the line of the
curtains falling just beyond her, the garden furnishing a vague background,
until some time after Frederick had left the room. She had scarcely moved
while she sat there; there was nothing to look at, nothing to occupy her, but
that did not matter to Innocent. When Frederick was gone she, too, moved a
little, and after a few minutes stole out and up-stairs like a ghost. She went
to her room, stealing through Nelly’s, where her cousin was occupied about
some of the little legitimate Sunday employments which a good English girl
may permit herself on a rainy Sunday. Nelly made some little friendly
observation, but Innocent glided past and closed the door upon her.
Innocent, however, had nothing to do; she sat down by the fireplace, where,
Mrs. Eastwood being extravagant in this particular, there burned a cheery
little fire. But the fire was no comfort to her. So far as she had any feeling at
all, she disliked the warm little room, with all its cushions and curtains, and
its position so close to her cousin’s. Now and then she thought of the cold
and bare rooms at the Palazzo Scaramucci, so large and empty, and lonely,
with something like a sigh. Her life there, which was so void of any interest,
so blank and companionless, came back upon her as if it had been
something better, more natural than this. There no one bade her talk, bade
her do anything; no one cared what she was about. She might stand for
hours at the window, looking out, and no one would chide her or ask why
she did so. Books and music, and such perplexing additions to life, had no
existence there: and in Pisa there was room enough to move about, and air
enough to breathe. With the help of a scaldino, and the old velvet cloak,
which she kept in her box now, she had been able to keep the cold at bay;
but here she grew drowsy over the fire, and had no need for her cloak.
There too she might do what she pleased, and no one ever said Why?—no
one except Niccolo, who did not matter. Whereas now she could not go in
or out of her room without being observed, without having somebody to
peep at her and to say, “Ah, it is you.” What did it matter who it was? If
people would but let her alone! I do not know how long she had been alone,
shut up in the little room, when Nelly knocked at the door. During the short
time since Innocent’s arrival Nelly had gone through a great many different
states of mind respecting her. She had been eager, she had been
sympathetic, she had been sorry, she had been angry, and then she had
recommenced and been sympathetic, sorry, and indignant again. The only
thing Nelly could not do, though she advised her mother with great fervour
to do it, was to let the stranger alone.
“Leave her to herself, mamma,” Nelly said with precocious wisdom, “let
us have patience, and by and by she will see that we mean her nothing but
good, and she will come to herself.”
This was admirable advice if Nelly herself could only have taken it. But
she could not; a dangerous softness would come over her at the very height
of her resolution. She would say to herself, “Poor Innocent, how lonely she
must be!” and would go again and commit herself, and endeavour in
another and yet another way to melt the unmeltable. On this Sunday she had
begun the day very strongly in the mind that it was best to leave Innocent
alone; but the sight of the pale girl gliding past, escaping to her solitude,
shutting herself up alone, was too much for Nelly. The soft-hearted creature
resisted her impulse as long as possible, and then she gave in. Surely this
time there must be an opening somehow to the shut-up heart. She knocked
softly at the closed door, which, indeed, Innocent had almost closed upon
her. “May I come in?” she said softly. It was not easy to make out the
answer which came reluctantly from within; but Nelly interpreted it to mean
consent. She went in and sat down by the fire, and began to talk. It was
before her engagement, and she had not that one unfailing subject to excite
Innocent’s interest upon, if that were possible; but she chattered as only a
well-conditioned good-hearted girl can do, trying to draw the other from her
own thoughts. Then she proposed suddenly an examination of the house.
“You have never been over the house, Innocent; come, there is no harm in
doing that on Sunday. There is a whole floor of attics over this, and the
funniest hiding-holes; and there are some curiosities which, if we only
could find room for them, are well worth seeing. Are you fond of china, or
pictures? Tell me what you like most.”
“No,” said Innocent, “nothing.”
“Oh, that is just because you don’t know. China is my delight. If I had
my way I would cram the drawing-room; but mamma is no true
connoisseur; she likes only what is pretty. Come along and I will show you
the house.”
Innocent rose, more to avoid controversy than from any interest in the
house. Nelly showed her a great many interesting things in the attics; an old
screen, which you or I, dear reader, would have given our ears for; a whole
set of old oak furniture, which had once been in the library; old prints,
turned with their faces to the wall; and one or two family portraits. The girl
moved quite unaffected through all these delights. She neither knew their
value nor saw their beauty. She answered Nelly’s questions with yes or no,
and vaguely longed to get away again. To do what?—nothing. Once, and
only once, she was moved a little. It was when Nelly introduced her into the
old schoolroom, a bare room, with a sloping roof and two windows, looking
away over the elms to the suburban road some distance off, which led into
London, and showed moving specks of figures, carriages, and people,
diminished by the distance, over the bare tops of the trees. There were
neither curtains nor carpets in this bare place. It was cold and deserted,
apart from the other rooms, up a little staircase by itself. Innocent gave a
cry of something like pleasure when she went in. “I like this room,” she
said, and it was about the first unsuggested observation she had made since
her arrival. “May I come and live here?”
“Here! far away from us all?” cried Nelly, “with no furniture, no
pictures, nothing to make you cheerful! It would seem like banishment to
put you here. You do not mean to say you like this bare little place?”
“Yes,” said the girl, “I can breathe here. I can see out of the windows;
and I should not trouble anybody. I like this best.”
“Innocent, you must not talk of troubling anybody. All that troubles us is
when we think you are not happy.”
“I should be happy here,” she said wistfully, sitting down on the ledge of
the window, which was low, and turning her gaze to the distant road.
“Oh, Innocent!” said Nelly, half inclined to cry in her disappointment;
“if you knew how much I wished to make your room pretty, how I worked
at it, and how anxious mamma and I were to make it look like home to you!
We thought you would feel less lonely if you were close to us, and felt that
we were within call night and day. We hoped you would grow fond of us,
Innocent! You don’t really mean that you would like to get away from
mamma and me?”
To this appeal Innocent made no immediate answer. She looked far away
over the tree tops, and watched the omnibuses, crawling like flies along the
road. It was not a beautiful or exciting sight, but it soothed her somehow,
like “the woven paces and the waving hands” of Merlin’s spell—the subtle
influence of motion apart from herself, which acted upon her like a cadence
and rhythm. Then she said slowly, as if to herself, “I like this best.”
“Oh, you cold-hearted, unkind thing!” cried impetuous Nelly, growing
red and angry. “After all we have done and tried to do to make you
comfortable! Don’t you care for anything or any one? Good heavens! how
can any girl be so indifferent! You deserve to have nobody care for you;
you deserve to be kept by yourself, to be allowed to do whatever you
please, never to be minded or thought of. You deserve—to be shaken!” said
Nelly, with all the heat of sudden passion.
Innocent turned round and looked at her, vaguely wondering; though she
did not comprehend the gentler emotions, she knew what it was to be
scolded. It was an experience she had gone through before. Her father and
Niccolo had both scolded her, and the sound was familiar. Perhaps it might
even have penetrated her apathy, and roused some sort of life in her, had not
poor Nelly been smitten by instant compunction, and gone down
metaphorically on her knees to expiate her fault.
“Oh, what a wretch I am,” cried Nelly, “to lose patience with you like
this, you poor, dear, little lonely child. I dare say you will care for us in
time. I did not mean to be disagreeable, Innocent. It was only
disappointment and vexation, and my horrid temper. Forgive me, won’t
you?” she said, taking the girl’s hand. Innocent let it drop as soon as she
could extricate her fingers. She was moved only to wonder, and a feeling
scarcely lively enough to be called impatience—weariness of this perpetual
emotion. Nelly seemed to her to be always laughing or crying, always
demanding sympathy, requiring to be responded to, asking answers which
by no strain of her nature could Innocent give.
 “Oh, don’t!” she said, as her cousin put her arms round her and pleaded
for pardon. Poor Nelly, transported with anger and repulsed kindness, had
nearly blazed up again, but fortunately restrained herself, looking with a
kind of dismay at the other’s composure, which, indeed, was a little
disturbed by confused amazement, but nothing more.
“You are a very strange girl,” she said, drawing away with a feeling of
offence which had never before surmounted her friendliness and pity; “but
if you will keep us all at arm’s length, I suppose you must be allowed to do
it. If you wish for it very much mamma, I am sure, will let you have this
room.”
“I could sleep there,” said Innocent, pointing to a hard little settee, which
Nelly knew was far from luxurious.
“Oh, you need not be afraid. I shall take care that you are comfortable,”
said indignant Nelly, and she went away down-stairs with dignity to lay the
case before her mother. “You know the way back to your own room?” she
said, pausing at the door. “As it is Sunday we cannot make the change to-
day.” Innocent heard, and gazed at her, but made no answer. She did not
know how she had offended her cousin; neither, it is true, did she care; but
yet a certain surprise awoke in her mind. Why was Nelly angry? What was
there to make any one angry? Innocent did not connect the “scolding”
which she was aware of with anything that might have called it forth.
Scolding was in her experience a phenomenon by itself, not attached by
way of cause and effect to any other phenomena. Many times in her life she
had been scolded; but very seldom could she have told why. In this present
case the cause was one entirely beyond her moral grasp. If she had broken a
china tea cup or torn a dress, these would have been tangible causes of
displeasure, which her mind could have taken in; but this was altogether
mysterious. Perhaps it was partially owing to the strange way in which she
had been brought up, and the absence of natural love in her early life, that
Innocent’s entire mental constitution was of so peculiar a kind. She had no
consciousness of the home affections, no need of them, no perception of
their sweetness. Whether there might not be in her the capacity for a great
love was yet unproved; but she had no affections. Such a condition of
nature is not so rare perhaps as we think. There are both men and women
who can love with passion the lover or the mistress, the husband or the
wife, but who remain through all the warmth of that one possibility cold as
death to all other affections. The decorous guise of ordinary life prevents
such natures from making themselves fully visible in many cases. But
Innocent was like a savage; she was unaware of the necessity of those
gentle pretences and veils of apparent feeling which hold civilized life
together. Therefore she sinned openly, and, so to speak, innocently, against
the softer natural sentiments which are general to humanity, yet did not
exist in her own bosom. She knew nothing about them, and she had never
been taught to feign a virtue which she did not possess.
She sat in her newly-found refuge till she was thoroughly chilled with
cold, and gazing from the window she found out an object which exercised
some influence upon her afterwards, and got her into some immediate
trouble. This was a little chapel in the distant road, which some freak of her
imagination connected with that little church of the Spina which she had
been in the habit of frequenting in Pisa in so strange and passive a way. I
need not tell the gentle reader that the Methodist chapel in the Brighton-
road was profoundly unlike any chapel ever dedicated to Our Lady. This
particular Little Bethel, however, was ornamented in front with some stucco
pinnacles and tabernacle work, which caught at a stray corner of Innocent’s
memory. She had been taken to church that very morning, to a church
utterly unlike Santa Maria della Spina—a huge place, with pews and
galleries full of people, where she had looked on at a service of which she
had very little knowledge, and listened to a sermon which she never
attempted to understand. A longing for her old haunt came upon her as she
saw the place which seemed to recall it to her mind. If she could but get
there it seemed to her that part of her old life—with which she had never
been dissatisfied—would come back.
Innocent had so far felt the thrill of awakening novelty and change as to
know that her present life was not satisfactory, though rather in the
instinctive way of sensation than by any conscious thought. The little
chapel possessed her not with any idea of improvement or knowledge to be
gained, but only as a possible means of drawing back to her a scrap of the
past. Innocent had a consciousness that were she to rush out immediately to
find this place she would be stopped and “scolded,” or perhaps locked in,
and prevented for ever from gratifying her wish, so she resisted her impulse
to go at once. The dreary afternoon by this time was over, and the dressing-
bell sounded its welcome summons through the house. Frederick was
dining out, so that there was nothing to detain her in the drawing-room
during the evening. She stole up to her room as soon as dinner was over,
and, taking her old velvet cloak from her trunk, and the old black hat which
she had worn in Pisa, stole very carefully down-stairs, and out into the
darkness. Nobody saw her making her stealthy exit, and it was with a
strange sense of bewildered freedom mixed with fear that she found herself
out of doors alone, in the drizzling rain and darkness. She had no
superstitious terrors, however, of any kind, her imagination being too little
active to make them possible, and she had run down the long dark stairs of
the Palazzo Scaramucci too often to be afraid merely of the dark. It was the
novelty, the uncertainty as to how to turn and where to go that moved her.
However, Innocent had the good fortune which so often attends the
beginning of a foolish enterprise. By a maze of muddy turnings, which she
took aright by mere luck, and without making any note of them for
guidance on her return, she managed to make her way to the chapel. It was
resounding with the clangour of a hymn, chanted at the top of their voices
by the young men and young women who form in all places and in all
churches the majority of the evening worshippers. The noise startled this
poor little pilgrim; but she stole in notwithstanding, to the mean little
building full of pews and glaring gas-lights, which was like and yet unlike
Mr. Browning’s wonderful description. The sight of the place inside startled
Innocent still more. The quaint darkness of her little Italian church, the
silent people kneeling and sitting here and there, the priest proceeding with
his uncomprehended mystery at the altar, the glimmer of the tapers, the
odour of the incense, were strangely replaced by the glare of light, the
clangour of the hymn, the people packed close in their pews, who stared at
the lonely girl as she entered. The chapel was very full; but Innocent, whose
instinct led her to the dark corners, found a refuge in a dim pew close to the
door, underneath the little gallery, where, after a while, a grim old pew-
opener with a black bonnet came and sat beside her. Innocent went through
her own little simple formula; she kneeled down and said the Lord’s Prayer;
and then she seated herself and gazed towards the pulpit, which stood in
place of the altar. I do not know whether the sermon that followed would of
itself have attracted her attention any more than the more regular and
decorous one which she had heard in the morning. But while poor Innocent
sat looking rather than listening, and began to think of repeating her prayer
and going away again, the old woman at her side uttered a groan which
chilled the very blood in her veins. The girl shrank away from her into the
corner of the pew as far as she could go, and turned her eyes from the pulpit
to her terrible neighbour. But no sooner had she recoiled thus than a man in
front of her uttered another exclamation. The preacher was one famous in
the Wesleyan connexion, whose appearance prepared his audience for
excitement, and as he went on the exclamations grew louder and louder.
Innocent, who had no understanding of this proceeding at all, who could not
make out even the words of those cries which rose around her, was first
startled into fright, and then frozen into physical terror. I don’t know what
dreadful vision of savages and cannibals and human sacrifices came into
her bewildered mind; a mixture of fairy tales and those horrors of ghosts
and vampires which still linger about Italy, and which she had heard,
though at an ordinary moment her memory would not have retained them.
The old woman by her side was pale and haggard, with long teeth and large
jaws. She groaned at regular intervals, so regular that Innocent got to be
prepared for them, though they made her jump each time they sounded on
her ear. When her endurance was almost at an end, and she had become sick
with very fear, there came a lull in the proceedings; a hymn was sung, and
part of the congregation went out. Innocent made an anxious effort to go
too, but the old woman stood immovable between her and the door, and the
girl watched with agony the last figures retiring, and an evident movement
to begin again taking place. “Let me go! Let me go!” she cried in her terror.
The old woman clutched her shoulder with long, lean fingers, which looked
like claws to the girl’s excited fancy. She approached her face to Innocent’s
ear, and hoarsely whispered something which she did not understand.
Innocent was half frantic with fear. She did not know what might be the
next step. It seemed to her that other people were approaching her, and that
she saw the gleam of knives, an idea which was natural enough to her
Italian breeding. She uttered one loud shriek, and springing over into the
pew in front rushed out of the chapel, pushing down someone in her
passage. It seemed to her that she heard steps pursuing as she flew madly
along the dimly-lighted road. She had taken the turn towards London in her
bewilderment, and by the time she lost breath and was obliged to stop, had
come to the verge of a greater thoroughfare, crowded and noisy. No one had
come after her, though she had thought she heard steps resounding close
behind. She stopped short, panting for breath; and, leaning against a wall,
looked round her in dismay up at the dark sky, and down at the muddy road,
and along the long line of dim lamps and passing figures, all strange, and
without help for her. When the full sense of her helplessness, her loneliness,
her desolation, burst upon her, she crouched down upon the pavement close
to the wall, and burst into tears. “Niccolo! Niccolo!” she cried, with a wail
of childish despair. Another girl in such circumstances would have called
upon God or her mother; but Innocent knew nothing of her mother, and
very little of God. The only being who had always been helpful to her was
Niccolo. She called upon him with a bitter cry of helplessness. Niccolo in
Pisa—how could he come to her? What could he do for her? But other help
—less tender, less sure than Niccolo’s—was approaching slowly to her
along the crowded way.
 CHAPTER XVII.

FREDERICK TO THE RESCUE.

“What is wrong?” said one of two young men who were coming along the
road.
“Bah! what does it matter to us?” said his companion.
This companion was Frederick Eastwood. He had dined out, and he had
looked in for half an hour at his club, and he was now walking leisurely
home with a friend who was going the same way. Why should two
gentlemen thus making their way homewards on a Sunday evening pay any
attention to a group of people gathered on the muddy pavement? But the
curiosity of his companion was stronger than Frederick’s indifference.
There were a dozen or so of people standing round some one who was
crouching down against the wall, and there was a policeman in the middle.
“Ask her her name; even if she’s furrin’ she’ll give some sort of an
answer to that,” suggested one of the bystanders.
“It is some tipsy woman,” said Frederick; but the next moment he
changed colour, and stepped into the midst of the crowd.
“Call me a cab,” he said to his amazed friend, and put out his hand to
grasp, not very gently, at the old cloak which he recognized. “Heaven and
earth! what has brought you here?” he said, in a tone of passion. The
crouching figure uttered a cry, and, springing up at once, rushed upon him
and clung to his arm.
“She’s found her young man at last,” said some one in the crowd; and
the very policeman grinned as he cast the light of his lantern upon poor
Innocent, who, pale and scared, and dazzled by the light, clung closer and
closer to her cousin.
“Oh, Frederick, I lost my way. Take me home! take me home!” she cried
piteously.
“Why did you ever leave home, you little fool?” he asked, and thrust her
savagely into the cab which drove up. He threw a coin to the policeman,
and waved a good-night to his companion. He did not give any explanation.
It was better, he thought, to leave his friend to suppose that this was some
adventure—some disreputable acquaintance whom he took the trouble to
help, than to let him know who it really was whom he had found in such a
position. But he was savage when he got into the cab, and thrust away the
girl, who put out her trembling hands to cling to him once more.
“How can you be such an idiot?” he said. “Where next must I pick you
out of? Do you know you are behaving like a shameless creature, and
doubly like a fool? Did you come out after me? or why are you here, and
where were you going? By heaven, it is enough to drive a man mad to see a
girl making an idiot of herself like this!”
Poor Innocent could not stand against this torrent of reproof. She shrank
back into a corner, and cried and sobbed. It seemed to her that heaven and
earth had risen up against her, now that Frederick “scolded” her too. She
had done no harm. But what an evening, what a round of miserable
adventures she had gone through! Her limbs were aching with fatigue, and
her mind with fright and terror. He had seemed to her the very messenger of
heaven for her deliverance. Her cry when she saw him was one of those
outcries of pure joy which sound keen and sharp as if a pang were in them.
Out of the darkness, the forlornness, the utter misery, he appeared to her
like an angel. But when the angel began to scold her, poor Innocent, muddy
and wretched, shrank up into her corner. For the first time a consciousness
of her own foolishness came across her mind. How could he, so spotless
and smooth as he was, touch or look at her, with mud on her dress, with her
old cloak wet with the rain, and her hair hanging limp and damp upon her
shoulders? Yes, she deserved to be scolded: she perceived this for perhaps
the first time in her life.
“When you have done crying,” said Frederick, still savage, “perhaps you
will explain to me what ridiculous cause brought you to this plight. Have
you run away entirely? Where were you going? What do you want! You
little fool! They are far kinder to you at home than any one would be
anywhere else. You would gain very little, I can tell you, by running away.”
“I did not mean to run away,” said Innocent, crying softly as it were,
under her breath.
“You will find no other people so foolish,” said Frederick savagely.
“What did you want? what were you thinking of? Good heavens! you are a
girl, are you, and not a spirit of mischief? Fancy my dismay when I saw you
—you, who ought to have been safe and sound at home, questioned by a
policeman in the midst of a London crowd! Try and imagine how
disgraceful such a thing is to yourself—how exasperating to me.”
“Oh, Frederick!” cried the girl, overwhelmed by his reproaches, and
roused into understanding by the sharpness of the pain to which she was
subjected, “I did not mean it. Do not be angry: it was not my fault——”
“Not your fault!” he cried in his rage. “Good heavens! if it had not been
that I was afraid you might get into some still more disgraceful scrape, I
should have left you to your fate. The thought did go through my mind. If
this were known, nobody would ever speak to you again; nobody would
believe your excuses. Not your fault! What made you come out at all, away
from home?”
“Oh, don’t be angry,” she cried piteously, and put out her trembling hand
to touch his coat, to propitiate and pacify him with abject self-humiliation.
By this time his passion had begun to wear itself out, but he would not give
her any sign of forgiveness. When the cab reached the gate of the Elms, it
was thrown open to them by all the servants in a body, who were searching
about among the shrubbery with lights.
“Oh, here she is, with Mr. Frederick. I know’d she’d be found with Mr.
Frederick,” said one of the maids, whom Frederick overheard.
Mrs. Eastwood met them at the door, looking pale and frightened. “Oh,
thank God, here she is at last!” she cried to Nelly, who was behind.
Innocent clutched tightly at Frederick’s arm as she stepped down,
bewildered and dazzled by the lights that flashed everywhere around her.
He had scolded her cruelly, but yet she clung to him in preference to the
women who had been so kind to her. He felt the implied compliment, even
in the midst of his wrath.
“Yes, I have brought the little fool home,” he cried loudly, that all might
hear him. “Where do you think I found her? In the middle of the Brompton
Road, with a crowd round, crying, and unable to tell where she came from.
What were you thinking of, mother, to let such a child go out alone?”
“I! let her go out alone!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, astonished at the
undeserved blame. “Are you mad, Frederick? I have been more unhappy
about her than I can say. The gardener has gone out to look everywhere, and
we have been all over the grounds with lanterns. But bring her in—bring
her in. Thank God we have her safe at last!”
 With the lights apparently flashing all round her, dazzling her eyes,
Innocent went in, half dragged by Frederick, to whom she kept clinging. He
pushed her roughly into a chair, pulling away his arm. “There! let us see if
you can give any account of your escapade,” he said harshly.
The tones of his voice, his harsh words, sunk into poor Innocent’s heart
like stones sinking into water. She remembered nothing else afterwards, and
the pain seemed something more than she could bear. She sat and gazed at
them all, holding her old faded cloak round her closely, and showing the
stains of mud on it and upon her black frock. Her hair fell limp to her neck:
her poor little hat was pushed back from her head. The excitement and
distress threw out, as nothing before had done, the peculiar beauty of her
face, but a more forlorn figure could not have been seen. Mrs. Eastwood
was more anxious and more compassionate than her son.
“How was it, Innocent?” she asked: “I am sure you could not mean any
harm. Tell me where were you going? where had you been?”
The girl sat silent, like one under a spell, eager yet dumb, on the point of
utterance. She seemed to struggle with some force which prevented her
from speaking. She turned her eyes from one to another, eager, miserable—
trying, it seemed, to tell her story—incapable of beginning. At last she
surmounted the spell, and burst suddenly into wild tears.
“I did not mean it. I saw the church from the window—I thought it was
like the Spina. Oh—h! it was not a church at all: it was some dreadful place.
They tried to kill me, and then I fled—fled! and I did not know the way
——”
“What is the Spina?” said Mrs. Eastwood, wondering. “You frighten her,
Frederick, making those grimaces. Innocent, no one will be hard upon you.
Tell me plainly; what sort of a dreadful place was it? Why did you go?”
The girl looked round her at them all, one after another. Why did she go?
She did not really understand the question, but it seemed to drive her to that
necessity for an answer which sometimes brings the truth from our lips, and
sometimes calls up an involuntary fiction which appears like truth to other
minds, and sometimes to that of the speaker. “I was—lonely,” she said, after
a long pause.
Mrs. Eastwood gave a cry of pain. She turned her back upon them all,
and walked up and down the room two or three times with an agitation that
no one understood. Then she came and stood by Innocent, and put one arm
round her. “Oh, Nelly,” she cried, “Nelly, this is our fault!”
It would be wrong to say that Nelly was less tender-hearted than her
mother, except in so far as youth is always less considerate, less tolerant
than experience; but on this occasion she stood unmoved, feeling more
indignant than sorry. She, too, had made her essay at sympathy, and she had
not got the better of its rejection. She stood by without any particular
demonstration, while by degrees some sort of account of the evening was
got from her cousin. Innocent told them in broken words all that had
happened to her. She shuddered as she described the groans. She was sure
she had seen the gleam of the knives, and heard the steps approaching of the
men who were going to kill her. This curious Italian version of a very
commonplace incident puzzled the family greatly, to whose imaginations
knives were quite strange and impossible things. When she had told her tale
somehow, she sat, looking at them all, one after the other, with strained
eyes, not knowing what they might do to her for the crime she seemed to
have committed, without knowing it to be a crime. She did not catch the
sense of what they said to each other, though her eyes followed every word,
trying to divine it on the lips of the speaker.
“I was lonely,” she repeated, with a curious mixture of wistful misery,
and the childish cunning of the perception that she had made a successful
stroke with these words before.
The result, so far as Innocent was concerned, was that she was taken
tenderly up-stairs, and committed to the care of Alice, who put her to bed,
and questioned her over again, making her own reflections on the
adventure. Innocent cried herself to sleep, sobbing while drowsiness crept
over her, and waking up to sob again. The groans of the old woman in the
chapel possessed her brain, and the strange black desolation of the streets,
which every time she dropped asleep seemed to enfold her again,
frightening her back out of the world of dreams to feel for the first time the
soothing of the firelight, and the kindly warmth and comfort of her little
room. These, however, were but superficial tortures. The one which gave
them their hold upon her, and which had indeed produced a sort of half
awakening of her spiritual nature, was the terrible disappointment of being
“scolded” by Frederick. She knew no more tragical word to use, even in her
own mind. He had forsaken her. She dwelt upon the fact with an acute pang,
almost like the birth-pang of the soul which had not yet come to life within