“That door never opened.”
“Today, you did not wait for me to hand you down from the traveling coach, my lady.”
Something shifted in Penelope’s gaze. “I stood outside your bedroom door too. Waiting, wishing, praying. I never want to lose another child, Vergilius.”
“Is there a ‘but,’ Penelope? I can live with you in a chaste relationship, if that’s what you want.”
She made a face that suggested somebody had boiled the tea, and the cakes were stale. “That is not what I want. I want to be brave and married. One or the other won’t serve.”
“I want to be brave and married, too, Penelope, because I realized that what I truly feared was losing you. Losing a child is awful, losing a parent is sad, no matter that it’s nigh inevitable. But I got it into my head that if you and I reconciled, and life handed us another blow, then the last of your formidable strength would give way. The last of my strength. I could have the ceasefire we called a marriage, or I could risk losing even that. I took the inadequate sure thing over the greater, riskier prize.”
Penelope regarded him as if he were a work of art, a sculpture full of subtle complexities, not merely a husband trying to speak from the heart to his wife.
“Half a love,” she said. “Like half a loaf being better than none. And we had a Greek chorus to remind us that a ceasefire was all we could hope for. Do you want more children?”
Gill had pondered that question until his heart ached with it. “I want you, Penelope. We honestly do not need to have children. Tommie and Bella have at least spared us that burden.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I want a marriage where you and I can discuss that issue,” he went on, “among many others. How much we entertain and why. Who our friends are—our real friends, not merely the acquaintances happy to show up for fancy dinners that leave us both exhausted. I want your help with the renovations here at the Hall, because I have no head for what makes a space pretty. I want your friendship and your trust, and if that means I cannot have your body, I will be grateful for the bounty you do share with me.”
“But what do you need, Vergilius? What do you dream of?”
“You,” he said, going down on one knee beside her chair. “To have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. We have suffered much, Penelope, and I’m sure if we remain together, we will encounter more storms. I am asking…” He took her hand and kept his grip light by effort. “I am imploring you for a chance to weather those storms together. If we are joined in love and courage, then I am confident that we can always find our way safely to shore, together.”
He had not answered her question about children, but Gill realized his answer did not signify. Their answer signified, the one they arrived at together, the one that felt right to both of them.
Penelope stroked her fingers through his hair. “I will not know how to go on, Vergilius. What shall we say to each other at breakfast?”
“Pass the butter? You look lovely this morning? I don’t expect we will ever again be that besotted young couple who honeymooned by the sea, Penelope, but we can be us.” He was about to get to his feet, bid her to consider the notion of a reconciliation, and inform her of his decision, but that wasn’t right.
This was not a choice one of them made and the other yielded to, but what did that leave for a couple who had nearly parted for all time?
Gill had no answers. He had only the abiding conviction that losing Penelope would wound him beyond bearing, and yet, he would never force her to remain by his side. The silence stretched, and Gill learned what true heartbreak meant. The inability to rise, the inability to reason. The inability to struggle on for even one more moment.
Losing Penelope had been his worst fear. Now it was to be his never-ending reality. He dragged a breath in, his surrender that of a drowning man yielding to the embrace of the unrelenting sea.
Penelope slid to her knees beside him. She was quiet for a moment, her head on Gill’s shoulder.
“I think of those two young people who married ten years ago,” she said softly. “That pair had no idea of the tempests they would face, or the forces that would conspire against them. I am so angry and heartbroken for that young couple, I can barely speak.”
She did fall silent, and Gill put his arms around her. She was on her knees, curled against his side, and that allowed his heart to keep beating.
“Those young lovers would tell me,” she went on, “to let my heartache go out on the receding tide. To reach again for the lovely man I married, the brave man I married, the man with whom I can share a wonderful future if I am courageous, and honest, and true to him.”
They clung to each other for a small eternity, both joy and trepidation trickling into Gill’s soul, along with a new kind of peace. Not the peace of a quiet, private moment, but the peace of having come safely into port after a long, stormy crossing.
A peace earned through courage and tribulation, through love and fortitude.
“I am still afraid,” Penelope said, wiping at her cheek. “What if we were to lose a toddler? A son gone off to war? A daughter in childbirth? Life presents a series of potential terrors once tragedy has struck.”
Gill helped her to her feet, took one of the chairs, and pulled her into his lap. “Then we must love as fiercely as we can and seize our joys with both hands, Pen. I would not want to erase the past, because I learned much in the years of our estrangement, but I promise you, I vow to you, nothing and nobody will ever again distract me from guarding our marriage. If we do lose another child—God forbid—then we will endure the loss together.”
“We are agreed,” she said. “Nothing and nobody will ever again distract me from guarding our marriage and guarding you. I could not stand to lose you again, Vergilius. Not ever.”
They cuddled in the chair until Penelope had taken a catnap, and Gill had begun composing a letter to MacMillan, explaining that the staff could have the rest of the Season off, with pay, because Lord and Lady Summerton were taking an extended holiday.
When Penelope woke up, Gill put that idea to her. They watched the sun set as they discussed an itinerary that included the Lakes, the Scottish Borders, and even the Highlands and Hebrides.
Gill did not particularly care where they went, and he sensed Penelope’s ideas were more suggestions than goals, but that was not the point. The point was that wherever they traveled—on a second wedding journey, to look in on their various holdings, or simply to hack out on a spring morning—they would make the journey together, hand in hand, husband and wife, best friends and lovers, forever and ever, amen.
What happens when a wallflower’s extremely make-believe fake suitor appears in the flesh just in time to ruin all her spinsterly plans?
Find out in An Affair by the Sea!
To my dear readers
I hope you enjoyed Penelope and Gill’s story of love re-kindled. I certainly had fun writing it, and if you go to Brighton today, you will doubtless hear all about the city’s beautiful, world-famous elm trees. I do love me some big trees, by the sea or anywhere else!
I’ve also had great fun working with writin’ buddy Erica Ridley on The Siren’s Retreat Novella Quartet. You’ll find an excerpt below of the next title in the series, An Affair by the Sea (pub date March 15, 2022). Number three, by yours truly, A Spinster by the Sea comes out March 19, and Erica will finish off the quartet on April 12 with Love Letters by the Sea. These stories can be read in any order, standing alone or as a series.