Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

“Winnie’s doing well, by the way,” she added as they strolled down Oakley Street. “I talked to her this morning.” She didn’t want to think about her mum, and whether she would be well enough in a few months to attend. Not today.

“You realize that if we go to Glastonbury for Winnie’s blessing in the church, we’ll be married three times,” Kincaid said.

“Is that for luck, then?” she asked.

“I don’t know about luck, but it should make it stick.”

She punched his arm and he laughed, but when they reached the river, he stopped, his back to the railing, and looked at her soberly.

“Will you mind? About Winnie and Jack’s baby?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” she answered, but she knew what he meant. “I’m so pleased for them. Really, I’ll be fine.” And she realized, as she said it, that she was fine-that she was, in some indefinable way, healed, and that it was not a baby she wanted.

“But there is-” She struggled with the words. “I don’t want you to think that it’s not important to me to have a child of our own. But Kit and Toby, they’re just as much ours as if we’d had them together. I can’t imagine loving them any more, or any differently.

“And today”-she swallowed and went on-“when I knew what had happened to that little girl…to all those girls, I thought-If we could make a difference to one-”

“I know,” he said, and smiled. “And besides, the boys need someone to keep them in line.”

DEBORAH CROMBIEis a native Texan who has lived in both England and Scotland. She currently lives north of Dallas in McKinney, Texas, sharing a 102-year-old house with her husband, three cats, and two German shepherds. When not walking dogs or remodeling, she spends a good deal of time in the U.K., researching her Kincaid/James novels.

www.deborahcrombie.com