Her One True Love (26 page)

 

T
he knock at Jane's bedroom door at the Manor House could only belong to one person. She slowly shifted her aching body upward and settled back against the cushions, unable to fight her smile.

“Come in, Mrs. Cage.”

Her friend and mentor pushed the door open wide and brought her wonderfully, healthy frame into the room, a babe asleep on one arm and a toddler gripping the other. “Here you are then, a mother of your own babe at last.”

Jane laughed. “I've been a mother to many more before now, though.”

“You have indeed.” Mrs. Cage looked at the little girl beside her, who eagerly eyed the crib next to Jane. “Go on, then. It's all you've been asking me all the day long.” She met Jane's gaze. “You would never think this one was surrounded by babes and children the way she's been carrying on about seeing your baby.”

Jane looked to the little girl. “Why don't you climb up next to me, Clara?” The bed dipped as the child climbed aboard, and Jane leaned across to lift her two-day-old daughter into Clara's arms. “Here. Put the pillow on your lap like this. That's it. Bend your arm. There.”

Clara grinned, her eyes shining with delight as the babe gurgled.

Jane turned to Mrs. Cage. “So, how are things at the house? Do you have everything you need?” She frowned. “Are you and Jeannie managing well enough—”

“Of course we are.” Mrs. Cage hefted her bosom and frowned. “It's you who we are worried about. Rushing from here to Bath every few weeks, working yourself silly, until you had no choice but to surrender to your confinement a few weeks ago.”

Jane smiled. “And I couldn't be happier . . . but that doesn't lessen my impatience to get back to work and introduce little Alice to all our other children.”

“All our other children?” Mrs. Cage raised her eyebrows and nodded toward Alice and Clara. “So I can call one of yours mine too?”

“Of course. Alice is just a new addition to our big Bath and Biddestone family.”

“Well, I like the sound of that.” Mrs. Cage beamed. “So, where is that husband of yours?”

The door opened and Matthew poked his head into the room. “Everyone decent for visitors?”

Mrs. Cage sniffed. “What else would we be? Just 'cause you live in this big ol' manor house, it doesn't mean the rest of us don't know how to be respectable.”

Matthew smiled and came into the room, followed by Monica, Thomas, little Thomas, and their latest addition, Jacob.

Jane's heart swelled with love, but it nearly burst from her chest when two more visitors peered around the door, mother and son grinning so widely, Jane laughed.

“Billy? My goodness, how can you have grown so much in the two short months I have been in confinement?”

The boy grinned and ran toward her, wrapping his hands tightly around Jane's and kissing her cheek.

She looked to his mother. “Mary. How are you? I have hated not being able to visit you and Billy these past weeks.”

“I am well, Mrs. Cleaves. How could I not be with Billy around to entertain me day and night?”

Jane brushed her hand over the boy's dark blond curls. “He is a credit to you. I can't begin to say how much I miss his face at the boardinghouse door even now.”

“He's yours and Mrs. Cage's credit as much as mine. I don't know how much longer I would've survived without your help getting him back home to me.”

“Well, you are more than welcome, and since then, Matthew, Mrs. Cage, and I have managed to reunite four more children with their families as well as take in four new children who desperately needed our care. If they all turn out to be as happy as you are right now, my life's work will be done.”

Mary eased her son from Jane's grasp, and when Monica lifted baby Alice from Clara, the whole group clucked and cooed over Alice as they wandered toward the window.

Jane stared at her growing family as they chattered and laughed, passing Alice from one set of waiting arms to another as though she were the first baby to be born in the country or city. As Clara clambered down from the bed, Matthew took her place, putting his arm behind Jane's back and pulling her close.

He kissed her temple. “Happy?”

She lifted her head and gazed into her husband's beautiful blue eyes. “Happier than I ever thought possible.”

Rachel Brimble
lives with her husband and two young daughters in a small town near Bath in the UK. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and Romance Writers of America. When she isn't writing, you'll find Rachel with her head in a book or walking the beautiful English countryside with her family. Her dream place to live is Bourton-on-the-Water in South West England. And in the evening? Well, a well-deserved glass of wine is never, ever refused . . .

 

Readers can visit her website at:
www.rachelbrimble.com

To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

 

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Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Brimble

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First Electronic Edition: March 2016

ISBN: 978-1-6018-3277-1

 

ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-278-8
ISBN-10: 1-60183-278-8