‘I never knew…I never knew…’ Lucy sobbed against her shoulder. ‘You gave up so much for me.’
It was not what she had expected. She had been braced for recriminations, for anguish and despair, but never for this.
Holding Lucy away from her Jenna looked into her niece’s crumpled face. ‘Lucy, what I did, I did out of love, love for my sister and love for her child…you,’ she said softly, ‘and although I’ve been at fault in not telling you the truth about your father, I did it because——’
‘Because you didn’t want me to be frightened that I might grow up like him,’ Lucy supplied for her. ‘James explained it all to me.’
Poor child, how dreadful it must be for her to have to accept that James whom she adored was not her father, and that he in reality…
‘I don’t really mind, you know,’ she said, surprising Jenna with the accuracy with which she had read her mind. ‘About James not being my father. I never really felt that he was. It was just with all that gossip about it in the papers I couldn’t help hoping that it was true, but deep inside I knew somehow that it wasn’t. That’s why I call him James…’ She grimaced shamefacedly. ‘I didn’t want to tell you, though, because I knew if you knew, you and James wouldn’t get married!’
Jenna was stunned for a moment an
d then she pulled herself together enough to say huskily, ‘Lucy, about your mother and father…’
‘Bill and Nancy have told me everything. I understand that my father was sick in some way and that he couldn’t help what he did, and I know enough about myself to know that I’m not like him. Children can’t always like their parents, or parents their children.’
‘You would have loved your mother,’ Jenna told her softly. ‘Everyone did!’
Lucy’s eyes lit up. ‘Tell me about her. Have you any photographs? Was she…’
Jenna laughed. ‘Oh, Lucy, there is so much I want to tell you about her, so much about her that I want to share with you. All these years I’ve longed to talk about her, but I couldn’t. You’re very like her, you know, but I think you have more of my personality.’
‘You mean we’re both survivors,’ Lucy said wryly. ‘James said she died when I was born.’
It was obvious that Lucy had not overheard their entire conversation and Jenna made a mental promise to herself that she would never know exactly what had happened.
‘Yes, she did,’ she agreed calmly. ‘But before she died she knew about you and she asked me to look after you.’
‘I wasn’t really eavesdropping, you know,’ Lucy murmured when she digested this. ‘I was hungry because Sarah and I had had an early supper and I came down for something to eat. I heard you and James quarrelling. I meant to move away and then I heard you saying that James wasn’t my father. When he said you weren’t my mother, I couldn’t believe it. I went back upstairs, then…’
‘What were you planning to do when James found you in the garden?’ Jenna asked her gently.
‘Nothing much, I was just plucking up the courage to come and ask you if it was true.’ She saw Jenna’s face and hugged her reassuringly. ‘Oh, no, I’d never have done anything silly. Life’s too precious to throw away. I’ve been an awful brat recently, haven’t I? But I’m much more mature now,’ she added naïvely.
Jenna had to laugh. ‘Ah, yes, three months or so makes a very big difference,’ she teased, and yet in a way wasn’t that quite true? She as much as Lucy had matured tremendously in a very short period of time—the period of time she had known James…
James. A small smile curved Jenna’s mouth, her eyes suddenly dreamy. ‘You’re thinking about James,’ Lucy accused with startling accuracy. ‘I know because that’s how he looks when he’s thinking about you!’
* * *
‘Well now, madam wife, that’s a very fetching costume you’re wearing!’
They were in their new bedroom in the Georgian wing. They had moved in on time just before Christmas and tonight was New Year’s Eve. Their charity ball had been exceptionally well subscribed, and Jenna had just put on her outfit. Down the hall in the large bedroom that they shared Sarah and Lucy were also getting dressed. For the first time tonight Sarah would be walking without her crutches.
‘I’m glad you like it.’ Jenna pirouetted mischievously in front of her husband, laughing as he caught her round her waist and pulled her towards him. The dress in question was a flimsy Regency ballgown, all gauzy drapes falling from the beribboned Empire waistline under her bust. The soft aqua colour suited her, the tiny puff sleeves sliding provocatively off her silky shoulders. The pearls, which had been her Christmas present from James, glowed warmly against her throat and ears.
‘Time we went down, I think,’ James murmured against her mouth, the words husky and indistinct. His hand slid from her waist, to the gently rounded curve of her stomach, concealed by the floating lines of her dress.
She had told him about their child at the end of November. At first she had been disappointed by the way he received the news. She had hoped he would be as overjoyed as she was herself, but when he had told her later in bed, that if she had any fears about the birth, that if she did not want to continue with the pregnancy, she had understood at once that it was because of his love for her that he had been so reticent. Strangely, perhaps, she was not at all frightened. She wanted to have James’s children…she wanted them to be a family…to banish any lingering shadows from the old Hall, and now she thought indulgently, there could be no prouder father-to-be.
‘The older they are the worse they are,’ Lady Carmichael had told Jenna drily over Christmas. ‘You’d think from James’s expression when he looks at you, thinking no one else is looking, that he’s the first man ever to have achieved conception.’
‘Ready?’ asked James.
Nodding her head, Jenna followed him through their bedroom door. On her way past the girls’ room she tapped on the door and glanced inside. Both of them looked lovely in their pretty Victorian-style dresses, their long hair demurely ringleted.
‘Don’t be long,’ she warned them. ‘Everyone will start arriving soon.’