Sarah linked her arm through her husband’s, laid her hand on his forearm. “We’ll go with you and take the children back to London. The marquess could be in town. And if not, we’ll leave the children with Nora and Max and travel with you wherever he is.”
Gwendolyn gripped her skirts with white knuckles, her jaw a line of stone. “Thank you. I was not always nice to you, and likely do not deserve your support. But I will take it nonetheless.”
“Bah,” Sarah said. “Nonsense we’ve already put behind us. You have not always trusted me, no, but you were protecting people you loved, and I admire that. I’ve not held it against you.” She swiped the bad air between them away as if it were nothing, but tears shimmered in her eyes.
“Thank you,” Gwendolyn said. “You are a better mother than I was born with.”
“Oh.” Sarah clutched a hand to her chest and pressed a heel of her hand to her eye. “Now I’m going to cry.”
Uncle Henry kissed the top of her head. “Let’s banish tears and focus. Preparations for London. Can we leave tomorrow?”
“I don’t see why not,” Sarah said.
“Excellent. Let’s get to work! It will take ages to round up the children.” He guided Sarah out of the room, and with a final glance over his shoulder at Gwendolyn and Jackson, a final smile, he closed the door.
Gwendolyn turned to Jackson. “Do you remember when I told you I would likely cry all over you later?”
He nodded.
“Well, now is later.” She barely choked out the last word before she fell against his chest, a cry ripping from her throat.
He gathered her into his arms and held her tight. Her hair was still damp from her bath, and she smelled of roses, the scent of her soap.
What awaited them in London?
He wanted to keep her safe at Seastorm, a quiet wedding followed by whatever life she wished to live—traveling and playing the scholar, staying and playing the lady of the manor. He did not care, as long as she was happy. Though he hoped she wanted to call Seastorm her home, to settle at least part of the year in these walls. Their home.
Her sobs racked his body, and his chest tightened into a boulder. She had suffered through so much so silently all these years. No wonder her thorns. No wonder her running.
He understood why she could not run from the marquess now. So even though he wanted to wind her round with cotton and keep her here, he would not. He would take up a sword and stand by her side; and should any marquess or otherwise threaten the new smile that had made a home of her lips, he’d slash them through.
Her shaking softened, and she lifted from his chest. Second shirt to be soaked today. He did not mind in either case.
She wiped her eyes, red-rimmed and glittering. “That is the second time I’ve cried in six years. And both on the same day. I must have opened a door I cannot shut. It feels good, though. Clean.”
He pushed a fallen curl behind her ear. “My shirt is here to be soaked whenever you need it.
She laughed, then leaned on him once more, spoke into his chest. “You do not thinkhehas returned to England? Is that the reason his father wrote to me?”
She spoke of the man who’d tricked her into marriage, used her parents need for money to buy himself a third wife.
“I do not know,” Jackson said. “Considering his sentence of deportation, he would not be welcome. It would be dangerous for him to return, and after he’d gained his freedom”—he shrugged—“I can’t say a return would be worth it.”
“I know. You’re right, of course. But I made myself anew. He could too. I’ve thought of it often through the years. Feared I would be walking down the street and see him. And he’d see me, and somehow, I’d be lost again.”
He squeezed her, kissed her temple. “You can’t be lost anymore. I’ll know where you are. Or be there with you.” He stroked the hills of her knuckles, up and over, up and over, one direction then the other. “What would you do? If you had to face him once more?”
She took a shaky breath that rattled his very bones. “I’ve thought of that often. At times I’d thought I would run. Others, I knew I would have a speech prepared, something brilliant that would make him see what a cad he is. But I think, what I’d really like to do is—”
“Punch him?”
She shook her head.
“Throw him in front of a mail coach?”
“No!” A laughing answer.
“Lower a portcullis on top of him?”
