For Love's Sake (21 page)

Hattie wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Only that he was nice to look at, but I don’t think he carried too much upstairs.” She pointed to her wiry gray hair for emphasis.

“Christopher was very intelligent. He went to Oxford.”

“Right good a college education did him! That boy couldn’t even run a cotton mill!”

Laurel slammed her fork down on the table. “He ran the mill and a sheep farm to boot!”

“If he could’ve ran the mill, then why did he sell it?”

“He sold it?”

The old woman didn’t bother looking up at her. “Didn’t anyone tell you? Well, I guess it’s really none of your business now.”

“Hattie, when did he sell it?”

“Thursday last,” she said between bites. “I reckon he got a pretty penny for it.”

Suddenly Laurel did not have much of an appetite. Christopher finally sold the mill. He was gone from her life forever. For some stupid reason, some part of her had hoped that she would see him again. Now he would never come back.

The new mill wouldn’t be ready for months yet, so Laurel had to find some other way to support herself. Nobody in town was willing to give her work—probably on account of her lack of ‘moral fiber’. Laurel thought that someone should lecture
them
about morality, because a few of the pillars of the community approached her with various propositions for secretly earning a living. With a few choice words, she assured them that she was not about that at all! In the end, she made a little money working as a seamstress and taking in washing.

Every Thursday, she collected laundry from women who could afford to have someone else do it for them. It was always delivered back to their homes early Monday morning. Laurel could have kicked herself letting out seams for the druggist’s daughter, or scrubbing Lucy Holbrooks’ dirty underwear. A month ago, she was having tea in a silk gown while sitting on the lawn of an English castle—a far cry from being elbow deep in lye soap, working a stain out of some old man’s favorite shirt.

“You’ll ruin your back stooping over like that,” Hattie called from the back door. “At least at the mill you could stand up!”

“I don’t want to talk about the mill anymore.”

Laurel pulled two clothespins out of her apron and draped a white cotton nightgown over the line. The bed sheets that she hung earlier were dry enough, so she took those down and folded them.

“Well, what
do
you want to talk about, child? Seems like everything’s off limits these days.”

“Maybe we should take a trip down to the beach some day,” Laurel wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Have you even seen the ocean?”

“Nope, and I don’t know how you expect us to get there if we don’t take a train.”

“Is it too far for a wagon?”

Hattie choked out a laugh. “You’re the one who’s been all over the world! You tell me.”

The summer breeze whipped up the laundry on the clothesline all around her. Laurel reached out and caught two petticoats before they blew away.

“I guess trains aren’t that bad, I mean, I’ve been on four of them and lived to tell about it. Maybe I can take some of my jewelry over to Gastonia and see what I can get for it.”

“You’d better hold on to those. And don’t go wasting a trip to the beach on an old woman. Save your diamonds and your pearls, Laurel. Someday you might need them.”

“Do you regret coming back?” Deirdre asked. She stopped by to return a casserole dish that Laurel had sent over a few weeks before.

The three women sat in Hattie Stroup’s parlor, folding the last of that week’s laundry.

“I don’t know. I never really felt like I belonged over there. But neither am I very welcome around here.”

“Well, me and Danny are sure glad you came home. And I am sorry that things didn’t work out between you and His Lordship.”

Laurel smiled. “I told you I wasn’t the marrying type.”

That statement caused Hattie to snort. “Somebody should have told
him
that!”

“I did tell him that. About a hundred times.”

“But he asked and you said yes. You didn’t keep up your end of the bargain.”

Poor Deirdre did not know what to think about this argument. “I still don’t understand why you gave up all those fine things to come back here and mend clothes. Did he really make you
that
unhappy?”

“No,” Laurel confessed. “He made me very happy. And sometimes I really miss him.” With that, she burst into tears. She had not cried over him, and when she finally let the tears come, it seemed like they would never stop. “I really loved him…you believe me don’t you?”

Deirdre nodded as Laurel continued sobbing.

“And…and…I didn’t deserve him…I could never be the kind of woman…he should have married!”

CHAPTER THIRTY

That night, as Deirdre and Danny sat down to supper, there was a knock on the door.

Danny pulled his napkin out of the collar of his shirt and laid it on the little table. It was only a few steps from his seat to the door. When he pulled it open, he looked dumbfounded.

“Um, Deirdre, you’d better come here.”

Standing outside of the little apartment was ‘His Lordship’ himself.

For the moment, Christopher looked just as confused. “Would Laurel be in?”

“Laurel doesn’t live here anymore,” Deirdre said. “When she left, we took over the rent. A young couple needs a home of their own...”

“Of course.”

“Would you like to come in?” she asked, gesturing for Danny to move out of the way.

Christopher stepped over the threshold of the tiny one room apartment. It had much of the same furniture as when Laurel had lived there, but something added an extra sense of hominess. Perhaps it was because it now belonged to two people in love instead of an abandoned young woman.

“We were just having supper. Can I get you a plate, Your Lordship?”

“No thank you. I ate at the hotel.”

“Laurel stays with Hattie Stroup,” Danny blurted out.

“Does she?”

“Oh yes, Sir,” Deirdre said. “They’re thick as thieves out there. Really, it does them both good since neither needs to be alone.”

Christopher furrowed his russet brows. “Why wouldn’t Laurel need to be alone? I thought that was what she truly wanted out of life.”

“Well, you see…to be perfectly honest, Sir…people don’t take too kindly to her being back. According to them, she made a prostitute out of herself.”

“A
prostitute
? I was going to marry her!”

Deirdre tried to calm him down. “I know that. She showed me the ring. But there ain’t no use in trying to convince people of anything. They made their mind up about her a long time ago.”

“Damnit,” Christopher said. “I should have never let her go.”

“No offense, Sir, but from what she told me, folks over there weren’t exactly friendly neither.”

He turned his hat over and over in his hands. “They never are! Here, there, it makes no difference. If I went around expecting everyone to like me, I would be sorely disappointed!”

“I think she just wanted to belong somewhere,” Deirdre said.

“Well, she belongs with me!”

Danny cleared his throat. “You’ve come to fetch her?”

“I don’t know. That is entirely up to Laurel.”

“So, do you love her?”

Christopher lowered his pale blue eyes onto his. “More than anything.”

It was exactly noon on Sunday. Christopher stood at the dusty intersection. Just like before, it was both a physical crossroads as well as a personal one. He had first met her there almost a year before, and his life had changed dramatically. Christopher was certain that when he met Laurel there a second time, nothing would ever be the same again.

He kicked red dust off of the top of his white oxfords. Christopher waited months to see her, but he was too impatient to wait much longer. He would give her fifteen minutes, and then he was going to go look for her.

At ten minutes after noon, a small figure could just be made out coming down the dirt road. Christopher squinted in the sunlight, narrowing his focus on the person. He could definitely make out a bicycle.

Laurel pedaled slowly, trying not to get her white dress caked with red dirt. She wanted to look her best for the town picnic, even if all of Piney Shoals prayed that she wouldn’t show her face. She was so worried about her skirts that she did hardly noticed the tall gentleman standing in the middle of the road.

As Laurel moved closer, however, something about the tableau struck her as familiar. A man in white starkly contrasted against the red earth. Waiting at the crossroads. For some reason, her palms began to sweat against the grips of her handlebars.
Was her heart really beating that fast?
Perhaps it was just the heat getting to her. Maybe she should take a rest. Laurel slowed her bicycle to a stop.

The man took a few tentative steps toward her. It was then that Laurel
knew
she was having a heat stroke—he looked like Christopher.

Only, it could not be Christopher, because he was at home in Wiltshire.

She wiped her hands across the front of her dress, and then cursed herself for doing so. White was too damned hard to keep clean!

Why did this man keep walking towards her?
Laurel blinked her eyes two or three times to see if he would disappear, but every time she opened them, he was always one step closer. Whoever he was, he was an imposter—one with Christopher’s face, and Christopher’s eyes, and Christopher’s smile.

“Christopher?” she called.

He held out his arms to her.

“
Christopher!
”

Laurel ran to him. He ran, too. Christopher scooped her up into his strong embrace. They were a tangle of hands and lips. The straw boater hat on his head fell to the ground unnoticed.

“I was afraid that I would never see you again,” Laurel said.

“Then why did you leave me?”

She buried her fingers in his thick auburn hair. “I don’t know!”

“Don’t ever do that again.”

Laurel shook her head. “I won’t.”

“And you have to marry me right away!”

“We’ll do it today! Everyone’s still at the church, and I’m already wearing white!”

Christopher could not help but laugh. No doubt a few members of the congregation would have something to say about her getting married in a white dress!

“I have a surprise, Laurel. I’ve bought your Meadows! All one hundred and sixty acres of it! You can have your big white house right beside your oak tree.”

She blinked at him. “I thought we were going back to England. Hattie told me that you sold the mill.”

“Only half of it—to Jonathan. We’re going to be partners,” Christopher explained. “But we can split our time between here and Wiltshire. I don’t care where we live! Laurel, I followed you halfway across the world for love’s sake!”

EPILOGUE

As the bells of the Baptist church rang, the members of the Piney Shoals community spilled out of the whitewashed building and onto the lawn. Some shook hands with the preacher, others congratulated his son on his engagement to Miss Lottie Dellinger. It was the summer picnic – a celebration of another year and the promise of a few months of beautiful weather. Tables were piled high with fresh biscuits, fried chicken, potato salad, and sweet tea. Hattie Stroup even sent a few of her famous apple pies.

Boys ran foot races while their sisters jumped rope. Parents and grandparents spread out blankets in the shade, talking about the sermon, and how beautiful Miss Dellinger looked in her new dress.

“Isn’t her mama proud?” they asked.

Everyone knew she’d make the prettiest bride in Gaston County.

Their happy conversation was interrupted by shouts of laughter. The boys and girls paid it no attention, they kept on playing games, but the parents sat down their glasses of sweet tea and took notice.

Coming down the dusty dirt road was none other than Lord Christopher Brayles. He sat on the handlebars of a bicycle, his feet dangling on either side of the front tire as it wobbled under his weight. No one could remember ever seeing him smile, and certainly not the bright, wide grin plastered across his face at that very moment.

Behind him sat Laurel Graham, pedaling as hard as she could. The same happy grin showed on her face, and she laughed as they weaved their way down the road.

EDWARDIANS IN LOVE SERIES

FOR LOVE’S SAKE
LOVE AND BE LOVED

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

FOR LOVE’S SAKE

Copyright © 2014

Fifty Forty Productions

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This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.