Newborn Under the Christmas Tree

by Sophie Pembroke

  ‘Be honest—you were only objecting because it was my suggestion.’ What was it about her that meant she just couldn’t ever admit he was right, or that an idea he had might be worthwhile?

  ‘Pretty much.’ She flashed him a smile, and he forgave her. At least she admitted her prejudices. ‘But it would be good to get some fresh air. And it might help Jamie drop off.’

  ‘Exactly. And that almost sounded like you were agreeing with me for a moment there.’

  Alice’s face turned serious. ‘I’ll have to watch that. Bad habit to get into.’

  * * *

  It took a few minutes to get the three of them prepared to leave the castle. First, they all needed to get wrapped up warm enough to cope with the British winter. Then Jamie threw up his milk all over Alice’s jumper and she had to get changed. But eventually they were ready. Jamie nestled against Liam’s chest, his tiny face peeping out from under his hood with ears. Liam appreciated the extra warmth the minute they stepped outside.

  ‘Jesus, this country of yours is cold.’

  ‘It’s yours now too, remember,’ Alice commented as she strode off towards the fields at the back of the castle.

  ‘So it is.’ The thought was an astonishing one. That he belonged here—on this frozen, far-flung island. Not in the heat and the beaches of the country of his birth. The place he’d spent so long looking for home.

  Instead, he’d apparently found it in the last place he’d expected.

  No. Liam shook his head as he hurried to catch up with Alice. Thornwood Castle would never truly be home. How could it? It was an antiquated folly full of bad memories and family expectations. The castle wasn’t home—it was a money-making scheme, at best.

  But the land around it... Liam had to admit that the English countryside looked stunning, coated in a layer of frost that sparkled and shone in the winter sunlight. The air was cold but crisp, a sharp bitterness that woke up every cell in his body as he walked out into it. Overhead, the occasional bird chirped out from the bare trees and as they crested a small rise on the well-trodden path the village of Thornwood sprung into sight below them, all honey-coloured stone and the rising spire of the church. Picture perfect.

  When he’d arrived, on that grey, rainy day, he’d decided that winter in Britain was unbearable—lifeless and miserable, depressing and dead. It had fitted perfectly with his memories of Rose and Thornwood.

  Today, the world looked different. It looked alive—vibrant and full of possibility—from the wisps of smoke from a cottage chimney, to the warmth of Jamie’s body tucked against his.

  He hadn’t expected life from this place. Hadn’t for a moment thought he’d find anything that could entice him to stay any longer than he had to.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Alice said beside him.

  ‘It is.’ He glanced down at her, at her shining face, her hair like spun gold in the sunlight, and knew he wasn’t just talking about the view. ‘I’m starting to think you might not really want to leave.’

  She didn’t answer, but he didn’t need her to. He could see the truth of it on her face.

  Alice came alive in this place too. When they’d first met, he’d thought she was just another Thornwood relic—cold and unfeeling, miserable. But over the week or so that he’d been there she’d already shown him so many other parts of herself. Her passion for her mission, her love for the women she helped, and for Thornwood itself. But more than anything, the way she looked at Jamie.

  Her face as she held that baby in her arms told him almost everything he needed to know about her.

  But only almost.

  It told him how brightly she could love, how fiercely. It told him what mattered to her—that every person had a place they could go that was safe, that could be called home.

  But it didn’t tell him what had caused the sadness behind her eyes as she looked at Jamie. And Liam knew he couldn’t leave Thornwood until he’d found the answer to that question.

  He blinked as she smiled up at him, and he felt something unfurl in his chest that he’d almost forgotten had ever been there.

  He couldn’t be falling for Alice Walters. Could he?

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALICE LOOKED AWAY from Liam’s face, uneasy with what she saw there. Or, rather, how his expression made her feel.

  He looked like a man who had found the promised land. Who had finally realised how much Thornwood Castle had to give him. He looked as if he’d come back to life—utterly unlike the laid-back, bored and uncaring man who’d arrived a week ago.

  This Liam would want to jump into making changes immediately—which meant getting her out of there.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we take a look around at some possible sites for your women? I think there were some barns over to the east of the castle...?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course.’ He was already walking ahead but she didn’t try to catch up, following a few steps behind instead, his earlier words echoing in her brain.

  ‘I’m starting to think you might not really want to leave,’ he’d said.

  But of course he was finding a way to get rid of her anyway.

  The truth was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. But that feeling had nothing to do with the view, or the castle, or even the women she helped there. Well, maybe the women.

  But the biggest reason for that feeling was snoozing happily, his little face resting against Liam’s chest.

  When she’d looked out over the village, she’d had a vision. A daydream, she supposed, but one so vivid it felt as if she could reach out and claim it for her own.

  She’d imagined leaving a chocolate box cottage home and taking Jamie down to the village—as a baby, as a toddler, as a boy. Imagined walking down the path to the local school on a summer’s morning, or the playground on a Saturday afternoon.

  An entire life with Jamie had flashed before her eyes, as impossible as anything she’d ever wanted. As any of the dreams that had been stripped away from her four years ago.

  Jamie wasn’t her child, and he never would be. Daydreaming about a future with him could only bring her more misery.

  And she wasn’t even going to admit to herself the other part of that idle daydream—the man walking beside them, laughing and loving them both.

  She hadn’t seen his face, but even in her vision she’d known exactly who he was. And Liam Jenkins was an even more impossible part of her future than Jamie, for so many reasons.

  No, she had to give up these thoughts. And she had to step up their efforts to find Jamie’s real mother. If they couldn’t find her, then she’d have to give Jamie up at the end of the week anyway, and who knew what would happen to him then? She was under no illusion that the care system in the UK was any better than the one that had let Liam down.

  ‘What do you think?’ Liam asked, and Alice realised, belatedly, that they’d reached the first of the barns he was considering as a possible location for her groups.

  She blinked and tried to think objectively for an argument that sounded more impressive than I don’t like them.

  ‘I know they’re not in great shape now,’ he went on. ‘But you have to ignore the state of them. I can fix all that, trust me. It’s more about the location, and the possibility.’

  ‘And the planning permission.’ She was bursting his bubble, she knew, but she didn’t care. She prided herself on being realistic. If Liam was pursuing flights of fancy with her future, she’d have to rein him in.

  Just like she had to quash her own daydreams.

  She turned and looked back over the path they’d walked, then spun slowly in a circle to take in the full surroundings. The location was what mattered, he’d said. And the location sucked.

  ‘Won’t work,’ she said bluntly. ‘What else have you got?’

 
‘Hang on. I need more than that.’ Liam’s smile had faded slightly, along with his enthusiasm. ‘Why won’t it work?’

  ‘It’s too far from the village. There’s no easy road access—and that would be a nightmare to try and get permission for. And the path we just took isn’t suitable for pushchairs. So, like I said, what else have you got?’

  ‘Reasonable objections,’ Liam admitted. ‘But I’ll find you your perfect location yet. Come on.’

  They viewed three more sites before Jamie woke up hungry. Fortunately the last one—not big enough, and too close to the village this time—was a short walk from the Ring O’ Bells, which served a tasty steak sandwich and chips and also had good baby facilities.

  By the time they were all suitably replenished, the afternoon was wearing on.

  ‘It’s getting towards the shortest day,’ Alice noted as she shrugged on her coat again. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour and a half. We should head back to the castle.’

  Liam nodded. ‘Okay. There’s one more site I wanted to show you, but it’s on our way anyway.’

  If it was on their way, Alice was pretty sure it wouldn’t work as a venue for her women. They needed to be far enough away from the village that they couldn’t be observed going in and out—otherwise a lot of them wouldn’t come in the first place. Privacy and discretion were important.

  But if it was on their way she couldn’t reasonably refuse to view it either. She’d promised she’d be open-minded, so she strapped Jamie onto her front this time and trudged after Liam back up the hill towards the castle in the distance.

  After about ten minutes, Liam veered off the path, up a small side track through a small copse of trees. ‘I think it’s up here.’

  Curious, Alice followed. She’d never even noticed this path before, let alone taken it.

  Ahead of her, Liam came to an abrupt stop. ‘Yeah, no. This place is definitely too small, and I can’t see me getting permission to expand as much as you’d need. Funny, it looked bigger on the plans.’

  Alice frowned, leaning around him to try and get a glimpse of what he was looking at—and felt her heart stutter for a moment.

  It was her cottage. The one from her vision on the hill. Oh, it looked different; it was half-falling-down, for a start. But underneath all that—under the overgrown ivy vines and the gaps where roof tiles were missing—it was her cottage.

  Her impossible, dream life cottage.

  Which was beyond absurd. She wasn’t even staying, and if she was she wouldn’t have Jamie with her.

  She’d have no need for a family cottage like this one.

  ‘No. You’re right. Too small.’ She turned her back on the cottage, and Liam. ‘Let’s go.’

  * * *

  Liam stared at the cottage a moment longer, then turned to see Alice already halfway back up the track to the main road. He frowned after her, trying to decipher what he’d heard in her voice as she’d dismissed the cottage as a possibility.

  Of course it wasn’t suitable—he’d told her that, for once. But there’d been something behind her words—something he hadn’t heard at any of the other apparently also unsuitable sites. It had sounded like...longing? Like the way he’d felt sometimes as a child, wishing for something permanent, something real.

  Something his.

  Did she want the cottage? Or was the cottage just a symbol of all the things she didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t let herself have?

  He wanted to know.

  He caught up with her easily, taking the path at a lazy jog.

  ‘Shame, really. It’s a great cottage. It would make someone a lovely family home, don’t you think?’ The track was too narrow for them to walk side by side so he couldn’t see her face, but he was close enough that he could feel her shoulders stiffen at his question.

  ‘It’s very pretty,’ she admitted without emotion.

  ‘Did you ever want that?’ he asked. ‘The whole chocolate box cottage thing. Marriage, a family, not living in a creepy old castle.’

  ‘I tried marriage once. It didn’t suit.’

  The words were throwaway, as if they didn’t matter, but they hit Liam in the stomach all the same.

  ‘You were married?’ He tried to imagine it, and couldn’t. The Alice he knew would never let any man that close.

  Which, now he thought about it, was probably because of the aforementioned marriage.

  Was this the missing piece of the Alice puzzle he’d been looking for? Part of it, maybe. But not all. There was still so much he didn’t understand about her. And this admission was the first hint that she might be willing to give him some more clues.

  ‘For a year and a half,’ Alice said. ‘It was a disaster, it’s over, and I don’t really like to talk about it.’

  Yeah, he wasn’t letting her off that easily. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It might.’ He couldn’t say why, but it did matter to him. ‘Did he cheat?’

  ‘Probably.’ She sighed. ‘But not that I know of. Look, really, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘You got married young, then?’ She didn’t answer so, as they turned from the track onto the main path, he nudged her shoulder as he walked beside her. ‘It’s still a decent walk back to the castle,’ he pointed out. ‘And I can keep hypothesising the whole way.’

  She stalled to a halt. ‘Why do you care?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t really want to analyse his reasons too deeply. He just knew he did care. ‘We’re working together, living together, looking after a child together...and I know next to nothing about you. I told you all about my shining childhood. Now it’s your turn. It’s only fair.’

  She looked away and started walking again. Then she said, ‘Fine. I’ll give you three questions. What do you want to know?’

  Three questions. So like her to put limits on his curiosity, to find a way to make him play by her rules again. He’d just have to choose carefully, then.

  ‘Why did you split up?’ That was an obvious one.

  ‘He was abusive, so I left him.’ Her words were almost robotic, as if she was distancing herself from the very memory as well as the events.

  Liam clenched his jaw, a strange fury burning through him. He’d known, he realised. He’d already known that Alice had suffered—he’d read it in her eyes, in her words, in her very actions. He’d known all along—but it hadn’t felt real until now. And the idea of anyone laying their hands on Alice made his fists clench and his mind rage.

  ‘You have two more questions,’ Alice pointed out, totally calm, and he realised he had to get a grip on himself.

  ‘He was violent, I assume,’ he mused. Keeping it abstract and factual helped. Looking at the particulars—and not the woman involved. Because if he thought too much about that he was going to lose it. ‘And no, that’s not my second question. How many times? Did you leave the first time he hit you or...’ He trailed off, unable to even articulate the idea.

  Alice looked away, her arms around Jamie’s carrier on her front. ‘The first time was just a push.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as “just” when it comes to this.’ He’d seen it before. One of his mother’s boyfriends who had ‘just’ slapped her, then ‘just’ pushed her and then she’d ‘just’ happened to fall down the stairs. The next time he’d ‘just’ broken her arm.

  Liam had wanted to break his face. But he’d been eight years old and puny with it, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do.

  Just like he couldn’t change the past for Alice.

  ‘I know that now,’ she snapped. ‘But back then...’

  ‘You stayed, then.’

  ‘For a while.’ She picked up speed as the castle came into sight. ‘Look, we’re nearly there.’

  ‘I still have one more quest
ion.’

  ‘Then ask it fast.’ Alice didn’t slow down at all. If anything, she walked more quickly.

  Only one more question. It had to be a good one, then. And suddenly he knew what it had to be—the question he’d never been able to ask his mother.

  ‘Why did you stay?’

  She sighed. ‘Because... Because I wanted the future he’d promised me. A family, a home, a place to belong. I’d built all my dreams on that marriage. I couldn’t just give it up so easily. And... I honestly believed that I could change enough, be the person he loved enough that he wouldn’t react that way again.’

  Liam supposed that made a twisted sort of sense, although a future that involved being violently abused or being someone she wasn’t didn’t sound like much of one to him. And it should never have been up to her to change, to be anything else or less than what she was. The fault was with her husband, not Alice.

  He opened his mouth to say as much, but she cut him off. ‘And that was your third question, so we’re done with this conversation. Understood?’

  Liam nodded his agreement, even though he had an inkling they weren’t anywhere near done with this topic. She’d answered everything he asked, given him the whole sorry story.

  So why did he feel like he’d been asking the wrong questions all along?

  * * *

  It was almost too easy to settle into a routine over the next few days. Alice made sure to put all the focus on Jamie—and not the exposure of her confessions—and in no time it started to feel as if this was the way things had always been. They still shared Liam’s suite of rooms, taking turns between the daybed and the king-size, mostly, while Jamie slumbered in his travel cot. And if there had been one or two nights that had ended with all three of them sprawled out in the king-size, Jamie resting on Liam’s chest as he sat up and held him, half-awake, and Alice curled up beside them, well, she wasn’t considering them too closely. With a newborn, she’d learned quickly, you did whatever you had to do to make sure everyone got at least some sleep. That was all.

  Even if it felt alarmingly like a family sometimes.