Page 84 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘Not just someone,’ he said quietly. ‘Celeste has consented to marry me as soon as we are able and I hope you will give us your blessing.’
‘Then God has answered all my prayers and the sadness of Langley has been lifted for good. From now on there will only be wonderful times.’ She stopped. ‘At least until Loring grows up and begins to worry us with the taste for adventure he has most assuredly inherited. Then we will all have to take in a breath.’ Stepping forward, she took his hand in her own. ‘Your parents would have been pleased, Shayborne, and so would your grandfather, Celeste. Perhaps Mary Elizabeth, August and Jeremy will be looking down and smiling, too.’
‘I hope so.’
* * *
Much later, Loring was asleep in his cot and the night outside was silent and dark. Although Summer had wanted to do everything properly, as he put it, Celeste had no more will to wait.
She wanted him now, inside her, making her feel everything she had always thought she never would again.
‘Are you sure?’
His words entered the night as he slipped into the bed beside her, the warmth of his skin sending a blazing desperation through her.
‘I am. But you will find me different.’
She kept the sheet knotted in her hands, anchoring the fabric under her chin.
‘Different because you are now the mother of our son?’
‘Childbirth is not an easy thing.’
‘Let me look. Let me see you in the candlelight. Please.’
When she dropped the sheet he traced the small scars of childbirth that she knew crossed her hips and then his fingers rose up to the new curve at her breasts.
‘It’s why you did not want me to touch you in London?’
She could only nod.
‘You are even more beautiful than I remember you to be and that is saying something. You are tempered in steel, but bathed, too, in honey, sweet and supple and soft, and I want you.’
Relaxing back after such a compliment, she looked straight at him.
‘This time, Summer, we will make love from the fullness of our life. This time the future, not the past, will rule us.’
His hand fell lower as he leaned down to kiss her. ‘This time, Celeste, it is for ever.’
She came to him bathed in faith and when the hardness of his sex drove into her centre, she shut her eyes and breathed. Always she had tried to fill the nothingness with a temporary dissolution of fear, a momentary escape.
Tonight she could only find the joining, the place where they ceased to exist separately and both became one. Tonight as a nightingale called from the tree outside the window, Celeste knew she would hear these sounds all of the years of her existence, their existence, hers and Summer’s and Loring’s and any other child with whom they might be blessed.
‘I want lots of children,’ she told him as the waves inside her heightened and he lost the power to hold back and came within her strong and deep and true.
‘As many as you like. You are mine,’ he said as her own release followed. ‘For ever.’
* * *
As the moon rose he brought her a glass of white wine and they sat in the candlelight and talked.
‘Why didn’t you go to Italy, Celeste, to have our son?’
She took a large sip and leaned back. When she spoke she did not look at him.
‘The pregnancy was difficult. I was so sick I simply could not face the thought of a long journey south, so I chose to travel north instead.’
‘What happened?’
