True Born (18 page)

When I was younger I wished for a daughter,
as they are such comfort to fathers, and bring such joy -- but the
life of a woman is a perilous and precarious thing. This girl does
not yet know how poor her poor father is. I feel for Mr.
Blake, who realizes there is only himself between his girls and
utter destitution.

You are proud and may think of refusing the
money, and making your own way, but I beg you to accept it for the
sake of this girl and her sisters. You will be able to do much
good, and put the fears of two fathers to rest, and I know you will
want to do this.

Above all, my dear, I know you will want
this girl to know nothing but happiness in her life, and her
happiness lies with you. She will be happy if she can marry you,
and be safe, and her sisters too.

I would never want to see that little face
and that loving soul marred by any sorrow, and neither would you,
so accept your inheritance, and marry her.

If the two of you know half the love that
your mother and I have known, you will be happy indeed, but
something tells me that when you marry Georgiana you will know
double our happiness, and this fills me with happiness too.

May every second, every minute, every hour,
every day of your lives be blessed and filled with joy, my darling
boy!

Your papa

John folded the letter carefully, kissed it,
and put it inside the drawer of his desk. He did not today reflect,
as he had done when he had read it months before, with what love
and wisdom his father had tried to keep him and Georgiana together,
and away from harm. He had had a knot in his throat upon reading
the letter for the first time, not only because it had brought a
father whom he missed back to life, but also because he had
realized how much pain, sadness, and danger would have been averted
if he had been given his inheritance two years before.

Yet he knew that there was no need to look
back, or wish anything different, as he heard Dotty's voice outside
calling him, "John! John! Come and see!"

He ran down the stairs and outside. In the
distance he saw their new house being built, with the
recommendations of all that Cecily and Dotty thought would be
amusing and comfortable, even a secret passage and a room for
dancing. Upon his remonstration that they would soon be married and
have their own houses, they had protested that they had had enough
talk of marriage for a while, and would not go away until they had
quite exhausted the happiness of being together. John had smiled,
thinking they were nowhere near that time, and had given in to
almost all their whims.

The three sisters were amidst the golden
fields of wheat in their summer dresses and their straw hats. They
saw him at the gate and started running towards him, Dotty with a
yellow chick in her hand to show him, all of them laughing.

But his wife, Georgiana, wanted to get to him
first, and she untied the ribbon beneath her chin so that her hat
would fly off and not hold her back.

"You are cheating!" Cecily called after
her.

Georgiana did not care, for she did get to
John first.

And in her fine dark eyes he saw nothing but
joy, and that was all he ever longed to see.

THE END

The saga of the Halford
title continues in
The Last
Earl
, set in 1856, available now in
Amazon.

The third title of the
trilogy,
This Hell of
Mine
, which takes place in 1947, will also
be available in Amazon by January 2016.