“Terribly. I used to return to Lampton Park, eager to traverse the gardens and land, lounge in my favorite corners of the house. None of that has brought me a feeling of home since returning here this time.” He tucked her in ever closer. “It hasn’t felt like home until now. I suspect, Julia Jonquil, this house will never be home to me without you in it.”
“Would you read to me if I came to stay here?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She looked up at him, a hint of devilry in her eyes. “And maybe play hide-and-seek now and then?”
He let a wicked smile spread over his lips. “Oh, yes.”
She laughed, though she made hardly a sound. “I suspect I’m going to enjoy my time here.”
“That is the goal, sweetheart.”
It was, in fact, the goal he, in that moment, set as his top priority from that moment on: that his darling, dearest Julia would always be happy in their home, wherever that home might be.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Julia awoke the next morning in a cozily appointed bedchamber in the family wing of Lampton Park to find a pleasing bouquet of forget-me-nots in a vase on the bedside table. They’d not been there the night before when Lucas had read to her. She must have fallen asleep before he’d finished, because she didn’t remember his leaving. Though she was reluctant to admit it to herself, she was a little disappointed to not find him wrapped in a blanket, sleeping beside her as he’d done a couple of times at Brier Hill. She missed the way his wavy hair turned into a chaotic mess during the night and the way sleep relaxed his face into a look of boyish softness. She missed the way he would smile at her when he awoke and saw her there.
He loves you, Our Julia. The Gents had each said that again and again.
She reached out and brushed her fingers over the petals of the flowers he’d left for her. He truly was thoughtful. He always had been, truth be told. Sometimes, he was simply . . . forgetful.
But, then, she was often distrustful. They both had their shortcomings. All couples must struggle to adapt to each other’s weaknesses. If only Mother were still alive. She would have words of encouragement and advice, and she would offer them with the gentleness Julia so desperately needed.
She forced herself from the comfort of her warm blankets. The floor was cold against the soles of her feet. Winter was all but upon them.
She retrieved her silver hairbrush from the top of the dressing table and crossed with it to the window. Lampton Park was a beautiful estate; she’d always thought so. She drank in the sight of it while she brushed the night’s snarls from her hair.
Someday this would be her home. How she wanted it to be a happy one.
A light knock echoed off her door. Julia snatched her shawl from the back of the dressing table chair and wrapped it around herself. “Come in.”
She had expected one of the maids, had hoped for Lucas, but had not been at all prepared to see her mother-in-law step inside. “Lady Lampton.”
The lady assumed a theatrically straight face. “Lady Jonquil.”
Heavens, that sounded strange. She’d always been called Julia by this lady who was almost as much a mother to her as her own mother had been.
“Perhaps, Julia,” Lady Lampton said, “you might consider calling me something more familiar now that we are truly family.”
“I would like that,” she said. “But I don’t know what I would call you.”
“When my mother-in-law was still living, I called her Mother Jonquil.” She set her arm around Julia’s shoulders and led her back to the window. “I think, though, if you called me that, I would be put too much in mind of that lady to remember to answer to it. Mother Lampton might work for the nonce, but once you have inherited the title of Lady Lampton, it would be too confusing, I think.”
“Perhaps, since I haven’t a mother living to make this confusing, I might call you simply Mother.” She watched her nervously.
“Oh, my dear girl. I would be so very honored if you did.”
Warmth spread through Julia’s heart. “I have missed having a mother. And I have needed one so desperately, these past months especially.”
“‘These past months’ are the reason I am here just now.” Lady Lampton—no, Mother—motioned to the window seat, then sat there beside Julia. “We did not do you two any favors tossing you into this marriage so quickly and with so little warning. I feel I ought to have realized that without your mother at your side, you would have been rather lost beginning this new chapter of your life.”
“I confess I have been in a perpetual state of confusion.”
Mother set her hand atop Julia’s. “Lucas is a very intelligent young gentleman, but he too often hides it, sometimes entirely.”
“His friends have told me that he is, by all accounts, something of an idiot.” She smiled a little. “But they love him.”
“So do I,” Mother said fondly, softly.
Julia’s chin quivered a little despite her best efforts. “So do I.” Without warning, tears pooled. “I don’t know what to . . . do with that though. I have lost so many people I love. I’ve been disappointed by them, abandoned by them. Loving people terrifies me.”
“I do not think it is loving people that scares you. It’s losing the people you love.”
Julia brushed at a tear. “I’ve made too many goodbyes, both figurative and literal. My heart cannot endure another.”
“Then, dear, stop pushing him away. You are the one who keeps saying goodbye now. It is time to claim the unbreakable connection you have deserved all your life. He came after you. He has continually reached out, has pledged to make things right, to continue doing better. And, Julia, dear, he loves you.”
“I think so too.”
“I know my boy. A mother sees these things.” She gave Julia a linen handkerchief. “He loves you. And while he will not be a perfect husband, he will be a loving one and a tenderhearted one and a loyal, supportive one.”
“Do you think he is happy to be married to me?”
She smiled. “That is a question I believe you should ask him. It is your belief that he is unhappy and dissatisfied and, therefore, will abandon you again, not necessarily physically this time, that lies at the heart of your hesitancy.”
Her mother-in-law was correct, of course. Julia spent a lot of time pondering and worrying over questions: When was he leaving? How long would he be gone? Why didn’t he tell her or invite her to join him? Why were some of his promises proving difficult to keep? But those questions were, if she was fully honest, just distractions from the more important question she was afraid to have answered. Difficult, but necessary.
“I hope that you will think of me as a mother and that you will ask me all the things you would ask your dear mother were she still with us. I have loved you as family from the moment you were born. And I always will.” She squeezed Julia’s hands. “Now, go find that upended husband of yours and summon the courage to ask the question that has become a wall between you.”
Julia took a fortifying breath. “I will.” She didn’t even pause to change her clothing. Her nightdress and shawl would have to be good enough.
Lucas proved to be in the first room she checked—his bedchamber. He was pacing.
“Lucas?”
His head snapped up on the instant, and his eyes seemed to drink in the sight of her. “Julia. Did you see my flowers?”
“I did. Thank you.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you, sneaking in to place them there.”
She shook her head. “May I ask you a question?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
She crossed to him, stopping near enough to look in his eyes. “I know you didn’t choose this marriage, neither of us did, but”—she took a fortifying breath—“are you happy being married to me? Are you glad that our parents arranged this match?”
He’d been grappling with the same uncertainty she had been. It was past time they both had the answers they needed.
“Some of the happiest moments I’ve had in years were at Brier Hill these past weeks,” she said.
“Mine as well.” He slipped an arm around her waist, slowly and hesitantly, clearly allowing her the opportunity to object. She had no intention of doing any such thing. “Sometimes I feel as if my life has been building up to this, as if I’ve been half living while fate pieced together my best reason for living.”
“And when something matters enough, you do whatever is necessary to make that something—or someone—part of your life.” What had felt like a blow now felt like a reassuring promise.
“It’s why I’m here, Julia. It’s why I went to Farland Meadows so often this past week. It’s why I would have followed you all over this kingdom if I had to.”
“Because I matter to you?”
He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “More than all the world.”
Peace like she hadn’t known in recent memory washed over her with the gentleness of a light evening rain. “And you love me the way a husband ought to love his wife?”
“My precious Julia, I love you more than any husband has ever loved his wife.”
She breathed for what felt like the first time in the eight years since he’d left her behind in this lonely corner of the world.
With that welcome and needed breath came a lightness of heart. “Then why in heaven’s name haven’t you been kissing me far more than you have been?”
“I will gladly rectify that oversight.” Lucas slipped his other arm around her waist and pulled her up flush with him.
She set her hand on his chest. “I have it on good authority that you will likely continue making a mull of things and that I should be patient with you because you can’t help yourself, on account of your being an idiot.”
“Ah. One can always count on the Gents.”
Julia smiled. “And your mother told me that you love me, that as your mother, she knows you well enough to be certain of it.”
“I do love you, my Julia,” he said. “I will love you with every year, every day, every breath I have.”
“And we can build a life together?” She leaned closer, her other hand sliding up his arm.
He rested his forehead against hers. “What else can I do to keep your trust in me and help you be happy in this marriage?”
“Build a life with me.”
“Gladly,” he said.
“And read to me as I’m falling asleep.”
“Of course.”
“And love me.”
“Always and with all my heart.”
Just as he’d done all those weeks ago, he kissed her right cheek, then her neck, just below her right ear, then below her left. She sighed and melted into him as he kissed her left cheek. He brushed his lips over the corner of her mouth, the tip of her nose, her eyebrow.
“Lucas,” she whispered.
“I mean to take my time, sweetheart. We’ve all our lives ahead of us. No need to rush.”
But she rose on her toes and found his mouth, kissing him with all the fervency spilling from her overflowing heart. All thoughts fled beyond him, them, that moment.
He pulled her fully into his arms and returned her kiss with every promise of tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lucas passed the weeks before and after Christmas at Lampton Park with Julia, happier than he’d ever been there. They had made a new beginning built on the foundation of the friendship they’d forged as children and the love that had begun to blossom between them. She smiled and laughed with the ease he remembered from long ago, and her face lit with joy when he walked into a room. His heart became every inch hers. His dreams and hopes and future revolved around the life they could build together.
They talked at length and with honesty about what they both wanted in life and what they both needed to feel valued and cherished and loved. He would travel with her whenever and wherever she wished and with her input and insight when she chose to remain at home. And they would pass long, happy, peaceful months in the quiet comfort of home, because that was as important to her as seeing new places was to him.
They had found balance, and in that balance they’d found the hope that had eluded them for so long.
They returned to Brier Hill after the Christmas season. Mrs. Parks expressed her delight at seeing Julia again, a show of tenderness quite out of character for the usually gruff woman. Even Pooka overflowed with excitement, running in energetic circles around Julia just as he’d done the day of the allemande in the circular sitting room. Julia simply smiled and looked at Lucas in helpless delight.
“Leave her be a moment, Pooka.” Lucas shooed the pup away. “I’ve something to show her, and I can’t do it if you keep her prisoner out here.”
Curiosity filled Julia’s expression. “You have something to show me?”
He nodded. “And keeping this ‘something’ a secret has thoroughly tested my self-control. I’ve been desperate to tell you about it for weeks.”
She held her hand out to him, a gesture that had become so common between them that he could hardly remember a time when he hadn’t walked about nearly all day with her hand in his. After Pooka half ignored a few more commands, Lucas and Julia made their way to the house. The dog trotted off once they’d stepped inside.
Lucas led the way up the interior stairs, and Julia ran her hand along the carved banister with unmistakable fondness. She had come to love this house; that meant the world to him.
“Perhaps, if his mother wishes to travel, little Lord Falstone—His Grace, I mean, he being a duke now—might come visit us here,” she said. “This house is not so grand and imposing as a castle, but I do think he would be happy. We would make certain he was.”
She knew what it was to be a lonely child. Her heart naturally ached at the knowledge that another little one was somewhere feeling alone.
“In another couple of years, he will likely begin his time at school,” Lucas said. “But in the meantime, I will make certain our invitation is known to the duchess.”
“Only a couple of years?” she asked. “He will still be so very young.”
Lucas pressed a quick kiss to her temple. “Some boys begin their time away from home even younger than that.”
“Ours won’t,” she said firmly.
Ours. How far they’d come since their parents had first forced them into this match. She now spoke so easily of their future children when once she could not even speak of their current status as husband and wife without obvious misgivings.
They’d reached the top of the stairs. Julia eyed him with a side-glance. “Will you at least tell me where your surprise is?”
“No.”
She laughed. He adored the sound. How easily he could imagine their home filled with her laughter and that of their children. What a joy it would be to have a bevy of daughters, little girls like Charlotte and Harriet and Julia.
“I admit, Lucas, I’m a little disappointed.” Too much teasing lay in her tone for him to be the least worried.
“Why is that, sweetheart?”
She gave him a saucy look. “I had hoped we were headed for the cozy little coat closet.”
His grin was likely absolutely wicked, but he couldn’t help himself. “All in good time, my dear.”
He led them through the antechamber connecting their private rooms, then through her bedchamber to the door of the circular sitting room. He turned the handle, and the door opened. Mrs. Parks had, as he’d requested, left it unlocked.
Lucas motioned Julia inside. She took a single step past the threshold, then stopped on the spot, her hand pressed to her lips.
“Oh, Lucas,” she said from behind her fingers.
He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around his beloved Julia. Her gaze didn’t leave the perfectly proportioned desk, curved to fit the shape of the room, placed exactly where she’d wanted a desk from the very first day she’d lived at Brier Hill.
“Where did you find it?” she asked. “That isn’t the desk from the book room.”
“We’ve a cabinetmaker in Irthington,” he said. “I arranged with Mr. Parks to have him come and take measurements to make you a desk for our room.”
She turned in his arms, looking up at him. “Our room?”
“It ought to have been ours from the beginning. I was a fool to ever think otherwise.”
She rose up and kissed him. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“There is more,” he said.
She looked about, not leaving his embrace.
“In the drawer of the desk, sweetheart.”
That pulled her away but not far. He’d been a fool to ever think her presence would detract from the contentment and peace he felt in this room. She enhanced it.
“Letters.” She spoke almost breathlessly. “For me.” Julia looked back at him. “This is your handwriting.”
He nodded. “I’ve written you a number of letters. After seeing how much you enjoyed receiving missives from the Gents, I’ve committed myself to being your most faithful correspondent.”
She pressed the letters to her heart. “You’ll write to me when you’re away?”
“I’ll write to you even when I’m not away.”
“My father told me that one day I would be grateful for this match he chose for me,” she said. “I didn’t believe him.”
“Do you now?” Asking that question would have terrified him mere weeks earlier. He no longer worried over the answer.
“I cannot imagine a life without you, Lucas. My dearest friend.”
Forget Me Not (The Gents Book #1) Page 27
