Mary Balogh - Simply Love

She stepped back and watched curiously as he drew a handkerchief out of the inner pocket of his greatcoat and flicked open the folds with his thumb to reveal a little cluster of seashells within. He would, he thought, feel foolish if she did not remember.

She touched one forefinger to them.

“You kept them,” she said. “Oh, Sydnam, you have kept them all this time.”

“Foolish, was it not?” He smiled at her.

But a shout distracted them as he flicked the corners of the handkerchief in place and put it back into his pocket.

“Mama, look!” David called from the middle of the meadow. “Look, Papa, I have caught one.”

But even as they looked the indignant sheep pulled free and ambled away to resume the serious business of cropping grass and clover. David, laughing gleefully, went chasing after it.

Sydnam wrapped his arm about Anne’s waist and drew her back against him. He spread his hand over her abdomen and hid his face against the side of her neck as she tipped back her head onto his shoulder. He felt almost dizzy.

“He called you Papa,” she said softly.

“Yes.”

He raised his head and looked around him at his home. All of it-the house and stables, the garden, the meadow, the circling trees, the boy chasing sheep, the woman in his arms. And he felt the future beneath his fingers in the slight rounding of his wife’s womb.

“Are we mad,” he asked her, “standing out here in the cold like this when a warm house awaits us?”

“Utterly mad.” She turned her head to smile at him and kiss his lips. “Take me home, Sydnam.”

“We are home, love,” he said, releasing her in order to take her hand in his. “We are always home. But I’ll take you to the house. I want to see if the morning room looks like sunshine.”

“And if the hall looks more cheerful without the browns,” she said.

They half ran down the slight slope in the direction of the house. They were also laughing. Their fingers were laced together.