THE WAR BRIDE CLUB (30 page)

      A smile lit her face. “Ralph, I’m not leaving you, silly.”

      Relief was clear in his eyes. “You’re not?”

      She picked up his fork and put it back in his hand with a chuckle. “What I was going to say was that I want to hand my notice in at work. As soon as you find out whether you have the job you applied for today, I want to leave.”

      He nodded. He probably would have agreed to anything right now so long as she didn’t ask his permission to leave the country!

      “I know you didn’t ever expect to work like this, Alice. I’m sorry, I truly am. Once I’m working there’s no need for you to continue.”

      She flapped her hand at him. “It’s not that I don’t want to work, Ralph, it’s just that I want to enjoy what I do.”

      “So you want to keep working?” He looked confused.
 

      “I want to start nursing again, Ralph.” She smiled, shyly. “I know it will mean retraining over here, but I want to help people. I want to do something worthwhile.”

      He finished his mouthful and put down his knife and fork, gently this time. “That’s a great idea.”
 

      She could see in
 
his face that he meant it.
 

      “If you hadn’t been nursing in London, I never would have met you. You were great at it then and I’m sure you’ll make a great nurse here.”

      “Are you sure?” she asked, needing his support.
 

      He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You’ll make a fine nurse, here, Alice. I’m so proud of you.” 
      Her heart swelled from his words but her mind betrayed her. She could see Matthew sneering at her, could see his face swirling in her thoughts. Remembering
 
what they’d done together made her sick.
 

      She did want to nurse again, but she also wanted to run as far from her boss as possible. And that meant handing her notice in, making up an excuse, and never looking back. Leaving that world, and her affair, behind her. Burning the fur coat or smuggling it back to him. So she didn’t owe him anything, not a penny.

      “Alice?”

      She looked up to see Ralph watching her.
 

      “Did I tell you about my family’s publishing company before we got married?”

      She wasn’t sure exactly what he’d told her, but he’d mentioned bits and pieces about it. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

      He squeezed her hand again then sat back in his chair.
 

      “All my life we’ve had money. Been well off.”

      Alice placed her own utensils down and settled in her chair to listen. She’d been waiting a long time to hear this story, didn’t going to miss a word.

      “My grandfather started a publishing company here in New York, but my father never wanted to join the family business. To cut a long story short, a manager was appointed, and my family lived off a trust fund.”

      He leaned further back, his chair on two legs, eyes on the table. Alice wished he’d look at her, but he seemed to find it easier avoiding her eyes.
 

      “I wasn’t my father’s son. My mother always said I was just like my granddad, but he died when I was a boy.” He took a deep breath. “I spent all my life, right through school, wanting to join the family business. I didn’t want to live off the funds, I wanted to run the place, build on what my grandfather had started.”

      “So what happened?”

      “I spent every summer working in the company, doing anything and everything, learning whatever I could. When the manager handed in his resignation, a meeting was held, and I was given a probationary management position.” Ralph paused. “I know what you’re thinking, I was young, but I did well. The company did well.” 
      Alice didn’t know what to say. When had things gone wrong?

      “When war was declared, I thought I was going to be safe. Well, you know, that my job meant that I wouldn’t be called up, but my father was having none of it. He told me that I had to fight, that choosing my job over volunteering was turning my back on my country.”

      It was a story Alice had heard before, from other young men, from her mother’s friends. A story that usually ended up with a heartbroken wife or mother, and a dead young man.
 

      “So I resisted to start with, then eventually gave in. The board of trustees appointed a new manager, and I went off to war.”

      “You seemed so confident in your position, like you were destined to be a success in the army.” When she’d met him he seemed to fit the role with ease.
 

      Ralph agreed. “I was good, I got on with the other men and I proved myself. I was the first of my age to be promoted.”

      Alice smiled at him.
 

      “And I met you, so who’s complaining?” he said.

      The pain, the torture making his face crack told her otherwise. He’d lost a lot, something he’d wished for his entire life, because of the war. And something had gone wrong, seriously wrong, because she’d never heard him even speak about the company since her arrival. And they certainly didn’t have a trust fund to live off now.
 

      “I survived the war, Alice, and I found you, but what had kept me going
 
was knowing what I had to come home to. I didn’t blame my father. He was no different than plenty of other fathers out there.”

      “But?” she asked.
 

      “But when I got home, the life I’d known, the life that had kept me going all that time, over the years, had disappeared.”

      They sat in silence. Alice wanted to hear more, but Ralph was just staring into space, like he was seeing it all over again in his mind.
 

      “What happened to the business, Ralph?” she asked.
 

      He laughed. A cold, sad laugh that gave her goose pimples.
 

      “I came home to an empty trust fund, a business run into the ground and facing bankruptcy due to bad management, and a father on his death bed.”

      Alice kept her eyes down and swallowed. There was more, she could hear it in his tone.
 

      “I did everything I could, but nothing could save the business. I was home in time to see the notice put on the door, announcing the foreclosure. There was so much debt owing that the building was sold to pay our creditors. We hadn’t turned a profit in over a year, and there was nothing left in the accounts.

      “The worst thing was knowing I could have prevented it. My father was a kind man, he never did me wrong, but he wasn’t a businessman, that was my grandfather. When I got home, he just shook his head and blamed the recession, but he was wrong. I know I could have made it work, I could have kept the place going for my own sons. But I never got that chance.”

      “And then things got worse?” Alice’s voice was soft, low. She didn’t know if there was anything else left to say.
 

      “My father died the same week the business closed, and after the funeral my mother left to live with her sister. It was like I lost my future, my family, my destiny, all in that first week home.”
 

      He made a fist and hit the table, enough to make a bang but restrained enough not to scare her.
 

      “I didn’t know when you were coming, where we were going to live, how I was even going to provide for you. I had it in my head that you’d take one look at me, the loser with nothing to his name, and turn around. Go back the way you’d come and I’d never see you again. That you’d think I’d lied to you, that I’d lived a lie while I was with you in London.”

      She didn’t know what to say. All she knew was that she hadn’t been able to turn her back on him, not completely, even when she’d wished she could.
 

      “But you didn’t leave me,” he whispered. “I know you wanted to, I know I disappointed you, but you didn’t leave me.”

      She reached for him across the table and smiled as his big hands clasped her wrists.
 

      “I just wish you’d told me all this from the start. I would have understood, Ralph. I would have tried to help you.”

      “If I hadn’t started drinking, if I’d just kept trying to get a job, kept trying to make something of myself, maybe it wouldn’t have been so hard on you.”

      “What matters is what we do now. We can make this work,” she told him.
 

      “I know we can, Alice. Because I love you, and I’m not going to disappoint you again.”

      She closed her eyes for a heartbeat and smiled up at him.
 

      “I think half my problem is not having anyone else here, no one to talk to. No friends,” she confessed.
 

      “I lost touch with all my school buddies when I enlisted, and half my soldier friends either didn’t make it home or live in different states.” He shook his head. “I never meant for you to feel so lonely here. I never meant to drink. I…”

      “Let’s not talk about what we could have done, Ralph, let’s just think about the future, okay? I met some wonderful girls on the ship here, and I just need to find them.”

      “You’re going to make a wonderful nurse again, Alice, you know that?” 
      “And you are going to make your granddad proud and start a publishing company of your own one day. Promise me that, Ralph Jones.”

      He winked at her. A kind, trusting, loving wink. Not the smart, knowing wink her boss and one time lover had liked to throw her way. This one made her feel loved.
 

      “Whatever happened in the past is going to stay there. We have a future together, a future and a family to look forward to one day.”

      She grinned at him.
 

      “Are we starting over?” she asked.
 

      “Let’s just say we’re going to do our best to forget the past few months. I wouldn’t forget the time we spent together in London for anything.”

      He pulled her in for a kiss across the table, but his finger reached for her necklace before he kissed her.
 

      “You’re wearing the necklace again.”

      She smiled.
 

      “You remember the day I gave this to you?”

      Of course she did. That’s why she’d put it on again this morning.
 

      “I could never forget that day, Ralph. Not for as long as I live.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THERE was no longer anything about Roy that Madeline liked. Nothing she could find about him that made her want to love him.
 

      Her fingers fell to her belly, to touch the roundness of it, to feel the soft movement of her baby. As a girl, she’d hoped that as a pregnant woman she would have a husband who would place his hand over the stretched skin, wanting to feel the life they had created as it grew inside her. But now, even the thought of Roy touching her, of his skin on hers, made her nauseous.
 

      It had been better in a way when they’d moved into their own place, even if was the size of a shoebox with drafts that she could imagine would chill to the bone in winter. Had they stayed, things may have stayed good. The future may have been a bright one.
       

      They had little, but at least what they had was theirs.
 

      Only they wouldn’t have this for much longer.
 

      She heard footsteps on the timber deck, then the door as it creaked. Madeline went back to stirring the stew, one hand rubbing gently at her back, easing the soft ache that seemed to plague her in the evening.
 

      “Hi.”

      She looked up to see Roy as he hovered at the doorway. It still shocked her, seeing him like this. Nothing like he’d been in London. But then perhaps she just hadn’t looked deep enough. She was so taken by the tales of a foreign country, by the shiny buttons on his jacket and the gifts he presented her. She’d never thought herself shallow, but maybe she was. Maybe she had been.

      “Dinner won’t be far away.”

      He nodded and went down the hall to change his clothes.
 

      There were times she didn’t even want to talk to him. Wanted to think about the baby, or lose herself in work. Dream of seeing her parents.
 

      But now… she still hadn’t told him about the telegram. But he’d find out soon enough. And then he’d guess that she was stuck here.
 

      Part of her wondered if he didn’t already know. Was that why he’d been so cold? Insisting that he knew she wouldn’t be able to leave him all that time ago? It was silly, but she did wonder.
 

      But she wasn’t stuck here. She might have to go back to the farm, but it wasn’t going to be for long.
 

      Madeline only had two more days of work before she was forced to quit, but she’d been putting money away, just small amounts. And once they were down to one wage, once they were back at the farm, she was going to be as frugal as a squirrel. She’d hide what was hers and would never say a word of the money she’d tucked away.