She raised her hand as if warding him off and walked to the huge open fireplace. She stared into the smoldering embers and Matthew’s unease grew. Could she not even bear to look at him?
Meeting his eyes, she exhaled. “When we were together . . . in Bath, it was the most amazing time of my life. I love you too. I don’t want you to doubt that for a second after you have heard what I have to say, but say it I must.”
He dropped his hand and returned to the desk, curling his hands around the edge to stop from reaching for her. “After everything it has taken for us to get this far, please don’t throw away what we have now. Tell me what it is that has put such distance in your eyes. I have made a huge mistake by bringing Elizabeth here, but I didn’t have it in me to leave her alone at the house on Christmas Day. I’m sorry.”
She smiled softly. “And I wouldn’t expect anything else of you. You are a good, kind, and loving man. It is I, not Elizabeth, who has brought forth doubts. I don’t think I can live in Biddestone, working side by side with you. Not anymore. It isn’t fair to you if I am not entirely honest about that. I’m . . .” She came toward him and touched her hand to his cheek, her eyes glinting with unshed tears. “I can’t risk falling back into the dutiful role I so desperately wanted to escape. I love you, but I can’t trust that you will not want a wife entirely devoted to you and your work one day. I want . . .” She shook her head. “I need my own work too.”
He drew her hand from his face and grasped it tightly. “You must trust that I will never ask anything of you that you do not wish to do. If our being together means I leave Biddestone and come with you to work permanently in the city, I will make it so.”
“Why would you do that when you love this village more than any person I know?”
“Because I love you more.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I have wasted too many years, too many moments, trying to be everything to everyone. I don’t want that anymore. I want you.”
“And I you.” She blinked and a tear rolled over her cheek.
Relief loosened the knot of panic in his chest. “Then we must come to a compromise.”
She smiled at him, hope shining in her beautiful eyes. “I am so glad to hear you say that. If we are to be happy, we must find a way to divide our time between the village and the city.”
“Absolutely.”
Her smile faltered. “But we are not to make promises to one another. You are yet to divorce. That will not be a smooth path to travel, no matter how much we might wish it. I won’t be seen with you until you are legally separated, Matthew. I can’t.”
“And I wouldn’t ask that of you.” He thumbed the tears from her cheeks and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I will do whatever I can to prove how much I want us to be together.”
She pulled back. “And I you. First, though, I want to return to Bath in the New Year and help reunite Billy with his mother.”
Matthew smiled, his heart full of love and admiration for a woman unrecognizable from the subservient daughter who had cared so diligently for her parents. His entire heart loved her. His entire body wanted her. “Billy? This is the little boy you have fallen in love with deeper than I suspect me.”
She laughed and playfully swatted his arm. “I do love him. I want to do everything I can to reunite him with a mother Mrs. Cage told me didn’t want to give him up but had no other choice. Billy’s mother has slowly gotten her life on track over the four years she has been separated from her son. It would be for the best for them to be together. I cannot imagine the anguish the poor woman has endured. She is working at a shop and has a small flat in town. She desperately wants her little boy back.”
The words tumbled from her mouth, her eyes wide.
Matthew frowned. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“So much.”
“Tell me.”
“I’d like you to come to Bath as soon as possible and use whatever influence you can with the Board. They need to listen to the poor woman’s pleas and previously dire situation. This is just the beginning, Matthew. I’m sure, between us, we can do so much more than Mrs. Cage would ever manage without us. Let us show her we meant what we said when we first came to the house. Her work is so important. I don’t want to fail her or the children.”
He pulled her forward, the hunger to kiss her flowing hot through his blood.
As though sensing his intentions, she stiffened and pressed her hands to his chest. “Matthew. No, not here.”
“Not here? Not for a single kiss?” He stared at her tempting mouth before dipping his head to nip at her neck. She trembled, and God help him, his body caught with every inch of passion he felt for this fantastic woman.
“We are going to have a wonderful life together, Miss Danes. A wonderful life.”
He slowly inched closer. She met him halfway and their lips met. He kissed her gently, praying she understood the depth of his love and commitment.
After a few moments, she eased him back and looked deep into his eyes. “If we work together to get that little boy reunited with his mother, I promise I will divide my time equally with the demands of the village. I will be everything you want in a wife . . .” She blushed. “If you want me as a wife, that is.”
He grasped her waist. “I want you as my wife.” He kissed her firmly on the lips a second time. “I want you as my everything.”
Epilogue
Two Years Later
The knock at Jane’s bedroom door at the Manor House could only belong to one person. She slowly shifted her aching body upward and settled back against the cushions, unable to fight her smile.
“Come in, Mrs. Cage.”
Her friend and mentor pushed the door open wide and brought her wonderfully, healthy frame into the room, a babe asleep on one arm and a toddler gripping the other. “Here you are then, a mother of your own babe at last.”
Jane laughed. “I’ve been a mother to many more before now, though.”
“You have indeed.” Mrs. Cage looked at the little girl beside her, who eagerly eyed the crib next to Jane. “Go on, then. It’s all you’ve been asking me all the day long.” She met Jane’s gaze. “You would never think this one was surrounded by babes and children the way she’s been carrying on about seeing your baby.”
Jane looked to the little girl. “Why don’t you climb up next to me, Clara?” The bed dipped as the child climbed aboard, and Jane leaned across to lift her two-day-old daughter into Clara’s arms. “Here. Put the pillow on your lap like this. That’s it. Bend your arm. There.”
Clara grinned, her eyes shining with delight as the babe gurgled.
Jane turned to Mrs. Cage. “So, how are things at the house? Do you have everything you need?” She frowned. “Are you and Jeannie managing well enough—”
“Of course we are.” Mrs. Cage hefted her bosom and frowned. “It’s you who we are worried about. Rushing from here to Bath every few weeks, working yourself silly, until you had no choice but to surrender to your confinement a few weeks ago.”
Jane smiled. “And I couldn’t be happier . . . but that doesn’t lessen my impatience to get back to work and introduce little Alice to all our other children.”
“All our other children?” Mrs. Cage raised her eyebrows and nodded toward Alice and Clara. “So I can call one of yours mine too?”
“Of course. Alice is just a new addition to our big Bath and Biddestone family.”
“Well, I like the sound of that.” Mrs. Cage beamed. “So, where is that husband of yours?”
The door opened and Matthew poked his head into the room. “Everyone decent for visitors?”
Mrs. Cage sniffed. “What else would we be? Just ’cause you live in this big ol’ manor house, it doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t know how to be respectable.”
Matthew smiled and came into the room, followed by Monica, Thomas, little Thomas, and their latest addition, Jacob.
Jane’s heart swelled with love, but it nearly burst fro
m her chest when two more visitors peered around the door, mother and son grinning so widely, Jane laughed.
“Billy? My goodness, how can you have grown so much in the two short months I have been in confinement?”
The boy grinned and ran toward her, wrapping his hands tightly around Jane’s and kissing her cheek.
She looked to his mother. “Mary. How are you? I have hated not being able to visit you and Billy these past weeks.”
“I am well, Mrs. Cleaves. How could I not be with Billy around to entertain me day and night?”
Jane brushed her hand over the boy’s dark blond curls. “He is a credit to you. I can’t begin to say how much I miss his face at the boardinghouse door even now.”
“He’s yours and Mrs. Cage’s credit as much as mine. I don’t know how much longer I would’ve survived without your help getting him back home to me.”
“Well, you are more than welcome, and since then, Matthew, Mrs. Cage, and I have managed to reunite four more children with their families as well as take in four new children who desperately needed our care. If they all turn out to be as happy as you are right now, my life’s work will be done.”
Mary eased her son from Jane’s grasp, and when Monica lifted baby Alice from Clara, the whole group clucked and cooed over Alice as they wandered toward the window.
Jane stared at her growing family as they chattered and laughed, passing Alice from one set of waiting arms to another as though she were the first baby to be born in the country or city. As Clara clambered down from the bed, Matthew took her place, putting his arm behind Jane’s back and pulling her close.
He kissed her temple. “Happy?”
She lifted her head and gazed into her husband’s beautiful blue eyes. “Happier than I ever thought possible.”
Rachel Brimble lives with her husband and two young daughters in a small town near Bath in the UK. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and Romance Writers of America. When she isn’t writing, you’ll find Rachel with her head in a book or walking the beautiful English countryside with her family. Her dream place to live is Bourton-on-the-Water in South West England. And in the evening? Well, a well-deserved glass of wine is never, ever refused . . .
Readers can visit her website at: www.rachelbrimble.com
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Brimble
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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First Electronic Edition: March 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6018-3277-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-278-8
ISBN-10: 1-60183-278-8
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