Teapots & Tiaras: A sweet and clean Christian romance in London and Cambridge (Love In Store Book 5)

by Autumn Macarthur

  Her heart still ached. There would still be challenges ahead. She had no idea if she’d done the right thing with Matthew or not. She’d need to keep looking after Daisy and pray for Jen’s recovery. Beth would need support as she started married life and helped Portia through the new treatment.

  But she knew she’d be okay.

  God’s love was real. He’d never abandon her, and that made all the difference.

  Chapter 17

  Leaving Anita and Daisy ripped a piece out of Matthew with each step.

  He’d offered Anita something he’d never offered another woman, and she’d refused. As he’d told her the day they met, he hadn’t wasted a single minute imagining his wedding.

  He’d also never imagined that, when he proposed, he’d be turned down.

  Seemed Dr Matthew Coalbrooke wasn’t such a catch, after all. He barked a short bitter laugh, telling himself her rejection only bruised his dignity and honour. But walking away, he realised it wounded something else.

  His heart.

  The organ he hadn’t believed he had.

  He cared for her. Cared in a way he hadn’t cared for any other person. Much as he wanted to leave and not look back, something stopped him. Told him if he cared, he’d need to prove it with an act of true service for her.

  No matter how much he argued that he’d saved Daisy’s life, it wasn’t enough. Giving an adrenaline shot was easy. God asked him for more, to truly give of himself. God asked him for humility.

  So here he was an hour later, searching through a mountain of rubbish bags.

  Getting a cleaner to let him in had been easy. Finding one toy cat in a day’s worth of trash—not so easy.

  As he’d hoped, the bags were left to stack up once the compactor operator went home for the day. He thanked God for the hospital’s strict waste policy. Anything clinical went to the incinerator. Nothing worse in here than household rubbish.

  Still, picking through the bags wearing thick rubber gloves, he wished the hospital had the foresight to make them transparent. If the contents were visible, he’d see the bright pink Bagpuss, instead of having to open each bag, poke through it, and then knot it closed again.

  Every time he thought of giving up, he recalled Anita’s pain at losing her beloved toy, the symbol her birth mother had cared for her. He had nothing of the kind from his own mother.

  Until now, he’d never thought he wanted or needed it.

  His staff in Mapateresi would laugh to see their Bossman doing the dirty work. He’d always been careful to keep his superior position as Oga, the way his grandfather taught him.

  “Run your clinic like an army,” the old man had said. “You’re the General. No fraternising with the lower ranks.”

  How pompous he must have seemed to his staff. To Anita, as well. No wonder she laughed at him so often. His balloon of pride had needed popping.

  He laughed, too, his spirit suddenly lighter.

  Proof positive God had a sense of humour. If he hadn’t already gotten the message about humility, knowing God wanted him to poke through the rubbish to rescue Bagpuss for Anita proved it.

  The cleaner, who’d let him in, rattled into the room with a new trolley full of bags. At least he didn’t need to check those.

  “The girl must really be something, doctor, to be worth you doing this for.”

  He looked up from a bag filled with the ribbons and gauze that had decorated the chapel. Bagpuss couldn’t be far away. “She is.”

  The next bag contained the leftover afternoon tea. Squished sandwiches and cakes. And at the bottom, something soft and pink. His heart jumped. He pulled out Bagpuss. Tea-stained, cream-smeared, stuck with crumbs, but intact.

  “Yes!” His free hand victory punched the air.

  The woman grinned. “Only wish my man loved me half as much.”

  He started to reply this wasn’t love, and then closed his mouth, the words unsaid. He still wasn’t sure what love was, or if what he felt for Anita was love.

  But he did feel oddly certain God had a plan to show him.

  Soon.

  ~*~

  The following day, ice shivered down Matthew’s spine as his godfather’s ancient car trundled over yet another bridge, turned a corner, and the dark stone mass of Coalbrooke House reared up from the flat and featureless fens. Proud and remote, it stood on a slight rise in the flat windswept farmland and marshes, with no other buildings but a small chapel nearby. The cottages for the farmworkers lay on the estate’s far side, hidden by a low hedge.

  During their meeting yesterday, when he’d left Anita and Daisy in the hospital, his godfather suggested he should go back there before making his decision. Hoping it might somehow help him see God’s will in the tangle of options, Matthew had agreed. Now, forcing down apprehension, he wasn’t so sure.

  As David steered his car off the country lane and onto the driveway leading to the house, he shot a quick questioning glance. “How does it feel, coming back?”

  Matthew stared at the solidly Georgian manor ahead of them. How much should he say?

  Despite the day’s warmth, the same dread he had as a child coming home from school now chilled his veins, slowing his heart to a dull thud.

  His lips twisted, and he decided on honesty. “As if Grandfather, stern, judgmental, ready to find fault, will be there waiting for me. Ready to inspect me, list all I’ve done wrong, enumerate my failings, and remind me God will judge me even more harshly.”

  David brought the Rover to a halt outside Coalbrooke House and didn’t answer until they both stood on the front steps. “Henry expected Colossians 3:20, ‘Children, obey your parents in everything,’ to apply to his family. He never acknowledged the next verse, ‘Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged,’ applied to him.”

  After that moment of God-given insight with Anita yesterday, Matthew was more willing to admit to the emotions he’d denied. “I am embittered. I need to surrender that, I know. I don’t want my feelings for my grandfather to affect my work.” He gave David a straight look. “I accept I must stay in England and take over the Trust. Things have to change. I’ll need your help with that.”

  “I agreed with your grandfather for over thirty years.” David chuckled quietly. “Learning to agree with you is a new process. I’ll need time to adjust.”

  “Unlike Grandfather, I don’t want a yes-man.” Matthew ran a hand through his hair. “I value your advice, as long as it’s what you truly think is best for the mission. But ‘Your grandfather insisted we do it this way’ is an argument I won’t accept any longer.”

  More disdain for the man who raised him crackled in his voice than he’d intended.

  Help me, Lord.

  Dragging in a deep painful breath, he turned to stare out over the land. A huge sky stretched in a full half-circle from horizon to horizon. A light wind shook the golden heads of ripening wheat in waves. Curlews cried in the marsh reeds surrounding the shimmer of the lake. He’d never witnessed this quality of sunlight anywhere else, softer yet clearer.

  Something tightly clenched in his heart let go. This felt right. He’d endured Africa as his duty, done his best to provide quality medical care. The role fed his Coalbrooke pride and self-worth, propped up his belief he had to work hard to be good enough for God.

  But he hadn’t experienced a real connection to Mapateresi, or to anywhere else, either. The sense of place that hit him in this instant told him this land was in his blood, his genes, his very bones.

  Another piece of the puzzle God had set for him clicked into place.

  He turned to David. A hint of satisfaction tipped the older man’s smile, suggesting he’d guessed at least some of what Matthew felt, perhaps hoped he’d feel it today. “It takes a special kind of person to appreciate the fens. If you’re brought up a fenman, it never leaves you. You’re not at home anywhere else. Your father felt it.”

  Matthew nodded, slow and thoughtful. “I never saw it before. I allowed my
bitterness toward Grandfather to turn me against this place. I was wrong. I don’t know yet what God wants me doing, but Coalbrooke House will be part of it.”

  “It’s all yours now.” David handed him a heavy bunch of keys. “Shall we go in?”

  Squaring his shoulders, Matthew suppressed an irrational quiver of fear as he opened the door. His grandfather was gone, but he carried the old man’s lessons in his heart. He still judged himself harshly and believed God did, too.

  Closed curtains shrouded the huge entrance hall in dimness, so the curve of the stairs disappeared into darkness. White dustsheets veiled the furniture. Each footstep echoed on the black and white tiles.

  The place felt like a mausoleum. It would take all Anita’s bright vitality to bring a house this dead back to life. And she’d refused him. He suppressed a sharp pang of loss.

  “Mrs Dewsbury, the farm manager’s wife, comes in two days a week to clean and air the rooms,” David said. “Apart from that, I doubt anyone has been here since Henry died.”

  Matthew dragged in a deep breath. Grandfather being gone didn’t seem real. “I’ll go down to the churchyard and pay my respects to him.”

  “I want to show you something first.” David opened the door to Grandfather’s study and walked to the imposing oak desk. “You have the key to the drawers on your key ring.”

  Matthew returned the bunch to the older man, then pulled aside the thick velvet curtains, allowing light to filter into the room.

  Unease clutched at his gut as David searched the desk drawers.

  “Going through his papers feels wrong. As if he’ll appear any moment, in a rage with us.” Matthew forced himself to laugh at his qualms. “Though unless I leave the house as it is, I’ll need to eventually.”

  David straightened and placed a flat cardboard box on the desk. “I think you should read these letters. Around the time you turned eighteen, I suggested he give them to you. Predictably, he exploded and forbade me to mention the letters or their contents. Whether he planned to let you have them, I don’t know.”

  Matthew picked up the box and glanced at the ornate carved throne of a chair his grandfather usually sat in. This room entombed only painful memories.

  “I’ll read the letters outside. Perhaps the chapel.”

  He intended to sit in the family graveyard, where his father and grandfather lay with past generations of Coalbrookes.

  David nodded. “I’ll wander down to the cottages and see if Dewsbury is about.”

  They walked through the house to the back door and unlocked it. The path to the farm cottages curved past the family chapel. So typically Coalbrooke to require their own church services, rather than mixing with those they considered hoi polloi, in the village church.

  He paused with his hand on the gate into the small churchyard. “Thank you, David.”

  The older man shook his head. “It’s high time I exercised my responsibilities as godfather, rather than allowing fear of Henry to stop me.” A wry smile twisted his face. “I should have done this when you first came home.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Better late than never?”

  “I hope you still feel the same after you read those letters. Henry didn’t tell you the whole truth about quite a few things. His pride and arrogance deluded him into thinking he could replace God in his family’s lives.” David threw him a straight look. “It’s not too late for you to change, let go of the wrong beliefs he taught you.”

  Without giving him a chance to reply, his godfather saluted and walked away.

  Even a few days ago, Matthew wouldn’t have accepted he needed to change, or that he clung to mistaken beliefs. The timing gave him more proof God did have a purpose and plan. One that didn’t stop at judgment and hellfire.

  He still wasn’t clear on God’s will for him, but this box probably contained a few more puzzle pieces.

  In the churchyard, he walked down the row of headstones, past the still-raw scar of his grandfather’s grave, until he reached his father’s resting place. As a child, he’d longed to know his father. He’d been whipped when his grandfather found him late one night, sleeping on the cold granite slab. He must have been all of five or six, too young to be at boarding school yet. He hadn’t set foot in the churchyard since.

  Perhaps the contents of this plain white box would help him finally know his parents. Not his grandfather’s versions, but his real mother and father.

  Help me, Lord. Show me the truth. Show me what You want me to know.

  He sat on the wooden seat beneath the gnarled willow, steeling his fingers not to shake as he opened the box and pulled out the letters. Flimsy and insubstantial airmail paper rattled in his hands.

  His father’s handwriting scrawled across the pages in bold black strokes, so like his own. His mother’s, in contrast, looped light and feminine. Beginning a few months after his birth, the letters between his father in Mapateresi and his mother here at Coalbrooke House showed how much his mother loved his father.

  Just as clearly, she’d loved her baby, too. Several letters mentioned trouble with Henry over her indulging Baby Matthew with too much of her time, instead of relegating him to the care of the nursery maid.

  In the final letter of that bundle, dated only weeks before his father’s death, she’d begged him not to get ill again and reminded him how much Matthew missed his daddy. The enclosed snapshot showed a fair pretty woman, holding the hand of a sturdy boy, no older than Daisy.

  He stared at the photo, trying to see beyond the paper to the woman she’d been, regretting he’d believed Grandfather’s lies and never tried to discover more about her.

  Henry told him that within weeks of her husband’s death she’d gone travelling, leaving him behind. That much was true. His grandfather’s implication, that she’d chosen to leave him to seek more excitement than Coalbrooke House offered, was not.

  The next letter, addressed to his grandfather from an old friend of his, who ran a private sanatorium in Switzerland, explained why. Grieving, her health failed, and she’d been sent away to recover. They believed her chest pain and fainting spells was psychosomatic.

  Another small bundle contained unopened letters, all addressed to Matt-matt but with a note on the back of the envelope asking the nursery maid to read the letter to him. He carefully slit each one open with his penknife. They contained sweet little stories of the cook’s cat having kittens in the dining room, and the games the children from the nearby village played, illustrated with skilfully drawn pencil sketches. Each letter ended with the words, “Remember, Jesus loves you, and I do too!”

  The final letter, again from the director of the sanatorium, regretted that Susanna had died and asked if the remains were to be repatriated. The accompanying death certificate stated cardiomyopathy as the cause.

  Hardly psychosomatic. She’d literally died of a broken heart.

  Tears burned in his eyes as his fingers clenched on the letter. Anger formed a huge tangled knot in his chest, threatening to suffocate him.

  All those lies, and for why? His grandfather’s bitter pride and a need to control. Or had the loss of his only son unhinged him? Easier for the old man to blame God and his daughter-in-law, than take responsibility for his insistence Robert return to Africa. Or to accept he’d misdiagnosed Susanna and sent her away to die, too.

  Grief ripped at his throat as he read again his mother’s signature line.

  “Remember, Jesus loves you, and I do too.” The words resonated in his heart and mind.

  Grandfather taught him to believe in a God he’d created in his own image, angry and vengeful. His mother would have taught him a different vision of God, the one Grandfather discounted as soft and fluffy, only for the weak.

  Now he realised—acknowledging one’s weakness was the core of true faith.

  He longed for the God his mother wrote about, for the relationship and faith Anita had when she bowed her head and spoke to her Father in heaven.

  Surely if
she’d lived, Mother would have told him the words he needed to hear. “No, we can never do enough to make ourselves right with God by ourselves, but remember, God is love. Yes, He judges our sins, but He also covers us with His mercy and grace. We are saved not by our own works, but by simple faith in Jesus.”

  Her faith was there, in her letters. Not weak but rock hard, shining brighter than any diamond. He leaned his head forward into his hands, allowing tears he’d never shed to flow.

  Lord, I believe. Forgive me, and help me forgive Grandfather. Take away my bitterness and pride. Show me what You want from me. Show me what love is.

  His heart twisted. He knew.

  He’d seen it and dismissed it, the same way he’d dismissed God’s love.

  Love was there in the way his African nurses cared for their patients. Love was there in the letters, in the way his mother and father missed each other and longed to be together again. Love was in every line of the drawings his mother drew for him. Love was the sweet warmth in Anita’s eyes and the gentleness of her touch when she cuddled Daisy or held Portia’s hand.

  He admitted it—he loved her.

  He hadn’t asked her to marry him because she was suitable or she’d make a good mother or any of the other so-logical reasons he’d hidden behind. He’d asked her to marry him because he loved her.

  Not that admitting it changed the fact she’d turned him down.

  Of course she did. You never told her you loved her.

  Scrubbing his face with his hands, he laughed out loud. Thanks to his wretched pride, he’d made a mess of his first attempt at a proposal. God willing, he’d get a second chance.

  Next time, he’d make sure Anita couldn’t doubt his love.

  Chapter 18

  Anita surveyed her wall of shoes. Which pair to wear today?

  She didn’t have to go out. She didn’t need to impress anyone. It was just her and Daisy. She’d done an exhausting extra-long shift at work yesterday while Mum looked after Daisy, to make up for all the time she’d had off. Today was all hers.