Forever Yours (43 page)

And then Constance was standing in front of her, and when she hugged her, murmuring, ‘Bless you, Polly. Bless you,’ she could return the embrace without fear.

When Constance and Matt emerged from the hotel in the midst of their noisy, laughing guests there was a small crowd gathered to watch their departure in the grand coach and horses, grander than anything Sacriston had seen for a long time. There were no smiles or well-wishes from the villagers, not for these two upstarts who had flouted all convention and added insult to injury by moving away. Molly hugged her niece and so did Beryl, who had made the journey from Kimblesworth with her husband; they had all partaken of a fine meal and not a little champagne, and were feeling on top of the world. It was Molly who whispered in Constance’s ear: ‘Your grandma would have been so proud of you the day, lass, so proud, and I’m sure she’s looking down on you and smiling.’

The tears spilling over, Constance hugged her aunty hard but could voice no words, her heart was too full. And then they were in the carriage, leaning out of the window as it began to pull away. Neither of them noticed the disapproving faces of the village women. Instead it was the beaming smiles from Polly and the others they carried away with them. Rebecca, hand in hand with Larry, crying happy tears. Ruth, with her husband leaning heavily on his stick, calling out, ‘Bless you, me bairns. Bless you.’ Beryl and Molly with Ivy, who was now in a wheelchair, and Florence who’d made the journey from Yorkshire, waving and shouting, and the rest of their guests adding to the general bedlam.

Constance didn’t know if she was laughing or crying when she sank back on to the thickly upholstered seat once they had left Durham Street behind them; maybe it was a mixture of both. She only knew she had never been so happy in the whole of her life as Matt took her in his arms and kissed her until she was trembling and aching for more. He only had to touch her hand or look at her in a certain way and her knees turned to jelly, and now he was her husband. Her
husband.
It had really happened. Until this minute she realised a part of her had been unable to believe he would actually be hers.

That Matt had felt the same was evident when he traced her lips with one finger, a note of wonder in his voice when he murmured, ‘At last you’re mine, my wife . . . Oh, Constance, Constance, have you any idea of how I feel about you?’

‘If it’s only a fraction of what I feel for you I’ll be satisfied.’ She snuggled up to him and he drew the thick fur rug the carriageman had wrapped round their knees up to her chin. Her wedding outfit, although exquisite, was no match for the icy December chill. It hadn’t snowed for two weeks but the frosts had been thick and relentless, and the countryside was clothed in a frozen glinting sparkle which looked picturesque but which numbed noses and fingers in seconds.

Constance, warm and cosy in her husband’s arms and a little light-headed with what she liked to think was excitement but which was probably more due to her first taste of champagne, looked at the winter wonderland outside the carriage window as her eyelids grew heavy. Two weeks in which they would be alone together without anyone or anything to claim their time except each other. It was heaven and she couldn’t ask for more. And then they would go home to their farmhouse and start their new life with Rebecca and Larry and Matt’s parents, and Jake. Dear, dear Jake. But each night it would be just the two of them again, wrapped in each other’s arms. It was all she had ever wanted, all she’d ever dreamed of, a life with Matt. To be his wife down through the years, to be at his side and enfolded in his arms at night. To be the one he shared his highs and his lows with; to know when he laughed and when he cried, and to be there when he reached out for her. It would only be death that parted them and then not for long: a love like theirs had to last into eternity.

She slept, and Matt continued to hold her tightly, his chin resting on the top of her head and her hat lying on the seat opposite where she’d thrown it when it had got in the way when he had kissed her. The sky was darkening, the snow which had been threatening to fall for days was on its way, but in the shadowed interior of the coach Matt’s face had lost the expression of cynicism which had cleaved deep lines between his eyes and either side of his stern mouth for many a year. The fast-falling twilight was kind to him; he no longer looked like a world-weary man of forty but someone years younger. A man just starting out in life with the woman he loved and who loved him.

Such is the power of love . . .

It had been a truly blessed day, everyone had said so. Even the weather had done its part to make Rebecca and Larry’s wedding on 2 April – which was also the bride’s eighteenth birthday – very special. For once the month of March had lived up to its reputation of coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb. For a week before the big day a determined spring sun had dried up the thick glutinous mud and deep puddles left after the last snow and sleet, and new life had responded with gusto. Birds were busily nesting, buds were unfolding and the continual stir of bees declared the harsh northern winter was over.

The happy couple had been married in the little parish church close to Bramble Farm, before they and their guests had returned to the house where a wedding feast fit for a king had been laid on. Constance and Rebecca and Ruth had been cooking for weeks in preparation for the wedding day, and although the big old farmhouse had bulged at the seams with family and friends, there had been ample for everyone.

It was close on ten o’clock when the last of the carriages Constance and Matt had hired to transport the wedding guests to and from their respective homes trundled off down the winding drive, and they were free to collapse in the oak-beamed sitting room in front of the fire with Jake at their feet.

Rebecca and Larry had left in the late afternoon for their week’s honeymoon in a splendid hotel in Roker a few miles up the coast, and Ruth and Edwin had long since retired to their cottage, so it was just the two of them alone in the house for the first time since they’d been married. It was Matt who remarked on this, saying, ‘The fledgling has left the nest. It’s just you and me, my love, and I can’t say I’m sorry the day’s over. I feel as though this wedding has been all anyone’s talked about for weeks. The dress, the food, the arrangements . . . It’s been too much for you.’ His hand reached out and gently stroked the mound of her stomach wherein their first child lay.

‘Nonsense, I loved it. And the dress
was
beautiful, wasn’t it?’ She and Rebecca had designed and made the wedding dress themselves and it had been just as Rebecca had wanted – a frothy, fairytale vision of organdie and lace.

‘
You’re
beautiful,’ Matt said softly, gathering her up against his chest so he could stroke the silky mass of her hair. ‘But with only two weeks to go until the baby’s due I still think it would have been sensible to delay the wedding until the summer.’

‘What has sense got to do with it when two people are in love? Anyway, you’d promised they could marry on Rebecca’s eighteenth and there was no way the two of them weren’t going to hold you to it.’ Constance giggled. ‘It’s not their fault we happened to have a big production of our own about the same time.’

She had been thrilled when she’d discovered she was expecting a baby. It wasn’t until she had known she was pregnant for sure that she’d admitted to herself that she had been afraid this last joy would be denied her. She had been given so much, it had seemed as if she was asking
too
much to expect more. And although the timing had been a little unfortunate as far as Rebecca’s wedding was concerned, it had been perfect with regard to the guesthouse plans. They’d had a separate wing built on the south side of the farmhouse consisting of ten bedrooms all with their own bathroom and indoor closet for guests, and she had recently finished fitting them out so the business was ready to get underway in the summer. The same builders had also converted one of the bedrooms in the farmhouse into a bathroom, again with an indoor closet.

The work had been extensive. It had involved creating a cesspool some distance from the house, but Constance had assured Matt that private bathrooms was the way of the future. It would give them something of an advantage over lots of other guest-houses in the area, she’d insisted, and before too long most folk would be demanding such facilities when they took a holiday.

Matt hadn’t been able to see it himself, but he had gone along with the scheme simply because he couldn’t deny Constance anything. Knowing this, she now reached up and kissed his chin which was stubbly with a day’s growth of beard. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said softly, but on the last word she stiffened as the ache in her back which had been present all day seemed to move round to her stomach and grip it in a vice.

She said nothing to Matt; she didn’t want to worry him and no doubt she was simply tired. Once they were upstairs, however, she wandered into the nursery and stood looking at the crib, hung with lace curtains, and all the other furniture in the room. She had travelled into Sunderland with Rebecca in the autumn before the winter snow and storms hit the north-east, and the two of them had had a wonderful day browsing round the big shops in the town. By the time she had returned home she had bought everything she needed for the baby, and once her purchases had been delivered she’d spent hours in the nursery, arranging and rearranging everything.

Walking over to the window, she stood looking out into the quiet, moonlit night as her fingers idly stroked the thick, rich material of the curtains she had made. She didn’t know why, but when she had known she was expecting a child, she’d found herself wondering about Vincent McKenzie all the more. He had been a baby once, a helpless infant relying on those around him. What had made him into the monster he’d become? Her grandma had once said he’d been a troubled little boy who had grown into a troubled youth and an even more troubled man – but why? She knew his father had been a drunkard, it had been common knowledge, and her grandma had never liked his mother, labelling her ‘a cold fish’, but that alone couldn’t have been enough to turn a man into someone who could kill other human beings without remorse or regret, surely?

She had fought against forgiving him for what he had done to her family and what he would have done to her, given the chance. She’d felt if she forgave him it was betraying her parents and granda somehow, belittling the terrible crimes he’d committed and allowing him to get off scot-free. It had been when she’d first felt the baby kick inside her belly that she’d known she had to let the bitterness and hate go. He was dead and she was alive. Through her and her child and her grandchildren, her parents would live on, whereas Vincent McKenzie’s name was already lost in the mist of time. He had lived and died without love and affection. That was his epitaph and her revenge, if it was revenge she sought. But she didn’t think she did. Not any more.

It hadn’t happened overnight, but gradually in the last weeks and months, his hold on her mind and emotions had lessened. It had felt as though she was recovering from an illness as the weight of bitterness had sloughed off her and the memory of that last awful night had ceased to bring a surge of hate with it.

She was free of him.

She turned and looked at the room again, prepared for the child who was going to be loved and adored unconditionally. In the next room she could hear Matt whistling as he got ready for bed and the sound made her smile. And then, as the vice gripped her stomach again, harder and longer, her mouth opened in a little O of awareness. It was two weeks early and she could be wrong, but maybe the backache which had awoken her long before dawn and which had got more uncomfortable as the day had progressed hadn’t been just backache, after all.

When she was able to, she walked through to their bedroom and stood looking at Matt. He was reading one of the many books he’d bought on husbandry. He had a stack of them in the bookcase downstairs detailing various aspects in the care of animals, different feeds, which crops to sow and when, and how to make best use of limited acres. He was engrossed, but after a moment or two he became aware of her, looking up from his book and smiling as he said, ‘Come on, slowcoach. This bed’s not the same without you.’

She was so glad he was free of the pit. For months after they’d got married he’d woken in the middle of the night in the grip of some nightmare or other, all connected with being shut in underground. Now even his smile was different.

Quietly, she said, ‘You know you thought it was going to be just you and me for a little while now the fledgling’s flown the nest? Well, I think the next one has other ideas.’

It didn’t register for all of two seconds. When it did, he shot out of the bed as though he’d been scalded, but as the next pain had her hanging on to the bedstead and gasping for air she didn’t notice. Once he had helped her change into her nightdress and get into bed, Matt went for Ruth and it soon became clear to the older woman that there was no time to fetch the midwife.

Looking at her son, she said calmly, ‘Get me plenty of hot water and towels and a sharp pair of scissors.’

‘But – but it’s two weeks early.’

‘Two weeks early or not, it’s coming, lad, and fast. Now get me that water.’

The next hour was the worst and best of Matt’s life. The worst because the whole time he was terrified he was going to lose Constance, in spite of his mother telling him the pain was natural and Constance trying to reassure him between the contractions. The best because he helped deliver his son into the world. He was a fine baby boy with a shock of blond hair, and he yelled for all he was worth until he was put to his mother’s breast, whereupon his cries stopped like magic. And Matt knew if he lived to be a hundred he would never forget the look on Constance’s face when she held her son.