Marrying Mr. English: The English Brothers #7 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 11) (16 page)

He took a sip of soup, thinking of the unopened letter from his grandfather in his coat pocket. Quite sure of what it contained, Tom hadn’t seen any point in opening it. Anything that insulted or threatened his marriage was unacceptable and unwelcome in his life. Giving up   Eleanora was unthinkable, and he wouldn’t beg for his grandfather to give her a chance either. Peace at that cost would mean that Eleanora would never be treated like an English. If he crawled back to Haverford Park on his knees, she’d always be seen as the albatross that had led him to beg for his birthright. No, if he and Eleanora ever returned to Haverford Park, it would be after his grandfather apologized and issued a respectful invitation. Anything less couldn’t be considered.

Tom had watched his father, Bertram, get beaten down by his grandfather’s threats and iron-fisted control. Once affable and easygoing, as Neville Gordon had indicated, Bertram English was now a spiritless, tired, empty shirt. The sum of his life added up to a handful of broken relationships: two sons who barely knew each other, an alcoholic ex-wife he’d loved deeply, a current wife he didn’t seem to love very much at all, a father who had never really respected him, a job he likely despised but tolerated because it was expected of him . . .

. . . and a very flush bank account.

Tom supposed that, in his father’s eyes, the flush bank account made the rest of it worthwhile. Or had, at one point in time.

Before her dreams were thrust aside, Tom’s mother, Rebecca, had been one of the more promising violinists in New York City, and his father had been one of the more promising cellists. But music wasn’t at all a suitable profession for an English, and Bertram had been brought to heel with mounting pressure to do his duty and threats of being cut off.

Unlike Tom, Bertram had caved. He’d gone to work for English & Son, dragging his unhappy wife and small son to live at Haverford Park. Tom’s father had clipped his mother’s wings and gotten a life of riches in return. Meanwhile, Rebecca English had been betrayed. Listless and depressed, consigned to the life of society matron when she’d hoped to be a concert violinist, she’d never quite recovered from Bertram’s betrayal. She’d turned to drink, and little by little, she wasn’t a wife or a mother anymore at all; she was the mistress to whatever brand of gin was her favorite. As her violin gathered dust in the top of her closet, Tom was neglected before being shipped off to Kinsey, and Bertram was eventually pressured to divorce his drunken embarrassment of a wife.

Thus had Tom’s family been shattered.

And he would not, under any circumstances, let history repeat itself.

Unless Eleanora’s talents and aspirations were as respected and supported as his own, Tom was adamant that they would not return to Philadelphia, nor take a dime of English money. He wouldn’t knuckle under to his grandfather for access to his trust. He wouldn’t dishonor his wife by making amends with the man who’d insulted her. Eleanora would come first. And
only
Eleanora.

He finished the soup and screwed the thermos lid back on, then started on the sandwich.

His lofty sense of honor, however, wouldn’t pay the rent. Tom needed to make more money.

A knock at his classroom door made him look up, then beckon Neville Gordon to come in.

“Mind if I join you, Tom?”

“Not at all,” said Tom, gesturing to his desk, which had plenty of room for Dean Gordon to sit across from him.

Neville pulled a chair from one of the student’s desks and sat down. “Please eat. I don’t mean to interrupt your lunch.”

Tom took a bite of his sandwich, chewing as Neville cleared his throat.

“I’ve had to let Milton Smiley go.”

Milton Smiley was the young phys ed teacher who’d also acted as the faculty resident adviser for one of four Kinsey dormitories.

“Huh,” exclaimed Tom, placing his sandwich down on the waxed paper it had been wrapped in. “Sorry to hear that.”

“He had a girl in his room last Friday night. Three of the boys saw her. More than that,
heard
her,” said Neville, shaking his head disdainfully. “Can you imagine what the parents will say when they find out? At least by firing Milton, we’ve headed it off.”

“He was young,” said Tom, picturing the twenty-something teacher in his head. He wasn’t much older than Eleanora.

Neville sighed. “It’s left me in a pickle, though.”

“How’s that?”

“Don’t have anyone to be resident adviser at Cambridge Hall for now.” Neville lifted his head as he said this, meeting Tom’s eyes meaningfully. “Could use a solid married man to take over for a while.”

Tom concealed a wince.

“How much does it pay?”

“One hundred dollars a week.”

Tom gulped, nodding, feeling miserable. Four hundred dollars more a month would increase his salary by almost fifty percent.

“Hours?”

“Monday through Saturday. Six o’clock p.m. until eight o’clock a.m.”

“And Sundays?” asked Tom softly.

“Seniors man the dorms one night a week for leadership credits.”

“I see.”

Neville took a deep breath and sighed. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it except when you took the job, well, you asked about ancillary income, so—”

“Yes,” said Tom. “Yes, I did.”

“It’s only until May,” said Neville. “Maybe not even that long if we can find and hire a new phys ed teacher before. I’ve already sent out some feelers.”

Four months. Four months of not sleeping next to his wife. Four months of wishing he was beside her as he slept across town in a dorm that smelled of gym socks and lead pencils.

His father had chosen money over love, and look where that had gotten him.

But Tom knew it wasn’t fair to compare the two circumstances. It was one thing not to
take
his grandfather’s money, but quite another not to
make
the money he needed to support Eleanora when it was offered to him.

“Give me until tomorrow to decide?” he asked, hating the words as they passed through his lips.

“Take until Monday,” said Neville, giving him a sorry look as he pushed up from his seat and exited the classroom quietly.

Tom wrapped up the last of his sandwich, his appetite gone. When he looked out the window, the playground was empty, and the bright sunshine was gone. Storm clouds were rolling in, over the landscape, over Tom’s heart.

The test hidden in the back of the bathroom cabinet at work only confirmed what Eleanora already knew to be true: she was expecting, and, if her calculations were right, she’d be a mother sometime in September. With her precious news pressed close to her heart, she spent the rest of the afternoon imagining the best way to tell Tom that he was going to be become a father. Taking fifty dollars from her dwindling savings, she went to the IGA and bought two filets mignons, baking potatoes, and fresh-baked croissants. In the bakery section, she purchased two vanilla cupcakes, one with “It’s a girl!” written in pink, and another with “It’s a boy!” written in blue. After dinner, she’d tell him that she had a special dessert and place the cupcakes in front of Tom.

Setting the table with special care, she found two votive candles and set them artfully in the center, then left to pick up Tom. She fishtailed twice on black ice on the way to Kinsey, which frightened her and reminded her to ask him if they could please get some new snow tires this weekend.

She pulled into the Kinsey faculty parking lot, looking at the double doors every two minutes until she saw Tom’s blond head exit the building. Her heart leaped with a mixture of excitement and anticipation, and she said a quick prayer that she’d be able to get through dinner without spilling the beans. He deserved to find out about his child in a special and memorable way, not sitting in a parking lot. Taking a deep breath, she smiled as he opened his door and sat down beside her.

Immediately, she could tell something was wrong.

He didn’t reach for her over the bolster and pull her as close as possible, kissing her breath away. Placing his briefcase on the floor, he buckled his seat belt before looking at her and offering a bland “hello.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh? Oh. Nothing, really. Just a lot on my mind.”

“Tom, I can tell that—”

“Let’s head home, okay?”

Forcing herself not to press him for answers was difficult, but she put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space. They fishtailed immediately, and she whimpered as the car swerved close to another car.

“We need snow tires,” she said. “How about this weekend?”

“Let’s try to make do,” he said. “It’d be over a hundred dollars for four.”

“But the car keeps—”

“We don’t have the money, Eleanora,” he barked at her. “Just . . . just drive slower.”

She hunched down in her seat, unaccustomed to him yelling at her.

“Sorry,” he said as she pulled onto Main Street, headed toward home.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s bothering you, Tom. A problem shared is a problem halved.”

“My bank account’s dwindling,” he blurted out. “And my salary isn’t enough to support us.”

She felt an unaccountable sense of relief at his words. This was about money? Well, she’d never had much money anyway. She knew how to live frugally. “We’ll just have to be more careful.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. “What if you get another sinus infection, or you crash the car into a phone pole, or . . .”

. . . find out you’re pregnant.

The words felt thick and uncomfortable in her head as she turned to look at him while stopped at a stoplight.

“. . . or anything,” he continued. “We have no savings. I have a few hundred dollars in my account, Eleanora. We’re barely scraping by, and it, well, it makes me nervous.”

“I’ll pick up more hours,” she said. “I’m sure Mr. Jenk—”

He huffed loudly, interrupting her. “Can you please not do that? It makes me feel like total shit.”

“What? Why?”
“Because I’m old-fashioned, and I want to support you.”

“Well, you can’t,” she said baldly, starting to feel annoyed with him. It was one thing for him to be concerned about money. It was another for him to sideline her from helping.

“Great. Thanks for that.”

“You’re a brand-new teacher, Tom. You’re still getting used to—”

“I don’t need my wife supporting me!” he yelled, his eyes angry and narrowed.

Eleanora stepped on the gas, seething as she turned down their road and parked the car in their driveway. As soon as she cut the engine, she turned to him.

“You’re being a jerk.”

“And you’re emasculating me.”

“I’m your wife, not some princess on a throne. I don’t need to be catered to. Can you see that I’d feel better if you’d let me help?”

He turned to her, his face hard. But underneath the rigidity, she saw frustration and worry. “Neville offered me some extra hours.”

“Well, hey, that’s good, right?”

“Is it?” he asked, rubbing his chin. When his eyes met hers, the hardness was gone, and misery had taken its place. “The hours would be from six at night until eight in the morning six nights a week.”

“What do you . . .?”

It took a moment for his words to register, but when they did, they sucked the breath from her lungs. He was talking about working the night shift at the dorms. He was talking about being away from her for twenty-two of the twenty-four hours in a day, and it made her heart clutch. Suddenly she understood his bad mood. He wasn’t angry at her—he was angry at the situation. He was upset about the prospect of being away from her.

Eleanora placed her hand on his arm. “Tom.”

He took a deep breath and sighed, his eyes sad. “It kills me to think of being away from you every night. But sunshine,” he said, reaching up to palm her cheek, “we need the money.”

“I think we could get by on what we make,” she said softly, hating the idea of him spending almost every night away from her, money or not.

“I don’t,” he answered, dropping his hand. He gave her a sad smile before opening the car door and trudging up the walkway to the front door.

She watched him go, fear making her chillier than the storm clouds that had rolled in a couple of hours ago. In many of the love stories she’d read, writers had mentioned a honeymoon period, during which newly married couples were madly in love, making love every night and reaching for each other every moment. And after the honeymoon, they settled into real life and all its hardships. Is that where she and Tom were? Had their honeymoon ended?

And left without the exhilaration of belonging to each other, would their marriage survive?

She thought about the tiny baby growing inside her and squared her jaw. Yes, they would survive. Hell, yes. They just had to figure out how.

***

Tom shucked off his boots and hung up his cashmere coat in the front closet, peeking out the door to see her still sitting in the car, a thoughtful expression tightening her pretty face, and he hated himself for making her worry.

But Neville’s offer wasn’t one that Tom felt he could refuse. They needed the extra money desperately. He needed to feel like he could take care of her should some unexpected expenses crop up, and how could he do that on one thousand dollars a month?

His coat slipped from the hanger, and he picked it up, hanging it again, and again it slipped to the floor. Growling with anger, he threw the coat on the floor and yelled “Fuck!” just as his wife walked into the house.

“Tom,” she said, her eyes darting to the hanger in his hand. “I’ll hang it up. Why don’t you . . .” She reached for the hanger, then bent down to retrieve his coat, and something about her gentleness, her patience, her faith in him, made hot tears sting his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick with emotion as he stared down at the floor. “You married me for a million dollars, and I can’t even buy you snow tires.”

“Stop.”

He shook his head, looking up at her, stunned—as he always was—by her beauty. “You could have had anyone.”

“I wanted you,” she said, blinking her eyes and sniffling softly.

Unable to bear the thought of making her cry, he pulled her into his arms, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling the sweet smell of his wife. “I feel like I’d die without you.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I’ve never known . . . I mean, I’m a thirty-two-year-old man, and I’ve never known what it was like to struggle to make ends meet.”

“It sucks, doesn’t it?” she asked, flattening her palms against his chest as she relaxed against him.

“The worst.” He kissed her head. “I love you so much, baby. I just want to take care of you. You gave up so much for me, and—”

She gasped. “I gave up so much
for you
?”

He nodded, leaning back to look down at her. “You left your home and your job. Meeting me and moving away meant losing your cousin. Yeah. You gave up your whole life for me.”

“Tom,” she said, tears spilling over the wells of her eyes. “You gave up
millions
for me. Your job. Your family. Your home. Your connections. Everything. I gave up a crappy life that I didn’t even like that much.
You
gave up . . . everything.”

“I’d do it all again,” he said, knowing it was true. Knowing it was true even though they were down to a few hundred dollars and he was faced with the prospect of an awful second job to help make ends meet. “Every time, I’d choose you.”

“I have to tell you something,” she whispered.

He pulled her closer, resting his cheek against her hair, feeling some measure of peace despite the financial problems that hounded him. She was his and he was hers, and they’d figure it out. As long as they had each other, they’d find a way to make ends meet. He was sure of it.

“Go ahead.”

He felt her gulp against his shoulder.

“Sunshine?” he asked.

She raised her head, her blue eyes twinkling with tears as she looked up at him. Her lips twitched like they wanted to smile but she wasn’t sure she should.

“Eleanora, what is it?”

Her tongue slipped out to wet her lips, and she searched his eyes. “I . . . I’m . . .”

“You’re what?”

“Tom, I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her face—at her wet lips and glassy eyes, full of apprehension—trying to process those three simple, life-changing words. Later, it would occur to him that you aren’t in control of your eyes or your facial expression or, for God’s sake, your words in a moment like that, which was why Tom would be eternally grateful to God in heaven and every star in the sky that when he was finally able to draw breath, he started . . . laughing. Laughing and holding her tight and swinging her around in a circle of unadulterated happiness while looking down at her relieved face.

“How do you know?” he finally asked, feeling breathless and electric as he reached to cup her face.

Beaming back at him, she answered, “Haven’t you noticed, I’ve never . . .” Her cheeks colored. “I’ve never had a period since we’ve been married.”

No, it hadn’t actually occurred to him. He’d just lived in the bliss of having her whenever he wanted her and hadn’t questioned his good fortune. He counted back quickly in his head, raising his eyes to hers.

“Seven weeks?”

She nodded. “About that.”

“Christmas Eve,” he said softly.

She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but the test only works after six weeks, so . . .”

“The test?” He hated the way his anxiety about money rose up again. “You’ve seen a doctor?”

“No, not yet. I took at test at work today.”

“But you need to see a doctor. You’re going to need . . .” He blinked his eyes against the burn of happy tears. “. . . vitamins or diapers or, God, sunshine, I don’t know. Stuff. Babies need lots of stuff, don’t they?”

She giggled. “Doctor? Soon. Diapers? Not until September.”

“Hey! I’ll have health insurance by then.”

She placed her palms on her tummy, smiling down at them. “Good timing, little one.”

And suddenly it struck him again: there was a baby inside her. A tiny person whom he and Eleanora had made together. “Can I . . .?”

“Tom,” she whispered. “Of course you can.”

But instead of covering her hands with his, he dropped to his knees before her and leaned forward, pushing up her turtleneck and pressing his lips to the warm skin of her stomach. He closed his eyes, breathing in the clean scent of his wife, knowing a gratitude he’d never felt before—not ever in his entire life.

Her hands landed gently in his hair. “You’re happy about it, Tom?”

He nodded, kissing her soft skin again, whispering in a hushed, almost reverent tone, “I’m happy.”

After they celebrated with their fancy dinner and festive cupcakes, they went to bed, lying side by side, staring at each other in the darkness. Eleanora reminded him of what he’d told her in Las Vegas—that he was a little jealous of the Swiss Family Robinson, with all those brothers, and how he’d said that he wanted a “gaggle of kids” of his own someday.

“The gaggle has officially started,” she said, covering his hands, which were resting against the bare skin of her belly.

“I was on the fence before,” he said, his voice determined, “but I’m not anymore. We need the money, baby. I have to take the job.”