1
They were still together, an item, lovers, partners and companions. They had lived through the turbulence that had been the aftermath of family members being told of their relationship; their affair; the union of two people with an age gap that defied the odds of them remaining a couple for long or only until the lust and the novelty of it was supposed to have worn off and they had gone their separate ways again. They would have reverted to type and found partners that those they associated with, before it all happened, would accept. Of this, people had said, they could only hope, for their reputations were tarnished and his more than hers. He would be spoken of as a ‘dirty old man’. She? Who knows? But ‘slut’, or even ‘gold digger’ would at the top of the list, no doubt.
Their relationship had not followed the script others had written for them, or two people like them; she a woman of twenty-nine and the man, her lover, her companion and consort now sixty-three. She was a ‘gold-digger’ and he a man who had his image and vanity buffed by having a young woman on his arm and in his bed.
They had closed it all out and their lives together had defied the odds.
Helena Anderton and Robert Fennell, the odd couple many would say, but not by those that they now counted on as a new and vibrant circle of friends. They compensated for Robert’s unbridgeable rift with an ex-wife and the mother of his three children, adults now. None of them forgave him for the news of their mixed-race ancestry, and not being told of it. His affair with Helena had begun after his marriage to Connie had fallen apart and she had moved out of the family home, and in with her lover.
No, their union had not been the cause of the rift with his ex and the children. That was the subject that they no longer spoke of or thought it necessary to do so. Robert’s ethnic origins, the genetic spiral that had made him the man that he was, having manifested itself in their daughter, Jemima, less so in their son Patrick.
Helena had known that the chances were said to be infinitesimally small, but it had happened. It was manifest in their beautiful daughter Jemima, a precocious and happy child of four; she of a darker skin to her mother’s paler beauty and close to her father’s. Helena could look at father and daughter and see it to be so. The children were devoted to each other. They had yet to comprehend what was there before their eyes.
The common thread had soon become one of family; one not to be defined by the pejorative label of ‘mixed race’ as it undoubtedly was in Jemima’s case.
‘Nothing can be changed. I am who I am and how I’ve been made, through the generations, is to be seen in me and my children…discreet or only too obvious. Some will say the Fennell’s got away with it for far too long.’
Helena had known of it too, what could happen if her relationship with Robert became more than an affair and they chose to make a life together and against the societal odds. She had accepted the man for whom he was and would become; the father of her children; a man she had taken to and chosen to stand by so long ago; through the turmoil of an affair and then a deepening of their relationship until she had agreed to live in the Fennell family’s home, a residence to many previous generations.
She had set her own mark upon it soon after. She had fallen in love with the man who she now waited on to return home from work; their circumstances transformed beyond her wildest imaginings.
‘We’re equals,’ she had heard Robert say.
She had believed it in the literal sense. She had also wondered, with some concern, how Jemima would fare at school; the contradictions that the sight of her birth parents would arouse in others who saw her with them; those that were ignorant of the Fennell family’s history. It was a story of a romance and marriage between a half-caste young woman and a naval officer, early in the nineteenth century and in the West Indies.
Helena knew, also, that she and Robert were bound as never before by the birth of their girl.
♥
They did not live by another’s set of rules.
She ran her jewellery business from home, in an attic room converted by Robert, who had fashioned a bright and purposeful studio with a new lantern light set at the roof’s apex and casting a softer light over her workbench below. It also offered her a glimpse of the changing skies and weather.
Robert worked in the business he had joined before they had met and after he had left the Royal Navy; a takeover of that concern, in marine engineering, some two years ago bringing in a windfall that had set them up for life. A co-hab agreement had been entered into and on her insistence.
They had lived together now for nigh on five years.
She fretted; wanted her man to be home and to see their children. Who they were mattered above all else.
2
Helena heard the soft tap of his fingers on the door. They had agreed that he would do this in case she was using the soldering iron in the making of fastenings or chain links for the necklaces, bangles, jewelled bracelets and wristbands that she created, most of them to order. She removed the magnifying glass visor that she always chose to wear. It lessened eye strain when fashioning the more intricate strands of wire, or threads, that made up some of her work. She fingered out her hair.
Her man was home.
What had begun as an unlikely romance had endured, their bond all the stronger for having two children. They had confounded the naysayers; that their age difference would take its toll on them and how they were together. Their son and daughter bound them and the three of them gave Robert a purpose to take care of himself. She saw the results in him with every day that passed and that a rigorous diet, and exercise, were only partly responsible for.
He was proud to have her by his side; she for having a passionate and successful man in her life and supportive in all that she had chosen to do and for her own account.
She saw Robert smile through the glass that he had arranged to have set into two squares of the four panels that had once made up the face of the door to her studio.
‘You’re home early!’ Helena laughed out, restraining the children. She met his slow kiss.
‘I can afford to do that once in a while,’ he grinned. Robert bent down to pick up Jemima and kiss her; felt his girl ruffle his hair and squirm in his arms. ‘I know, don’t overdo it…’
He picked up his son who simply hugged him.
‘We could go down on the beach, before supper?’ he went on. ‘Or I can take them? We would leave you to work for a while longer, undisturbed.’
‘That would help…I’ve got to get these pieces mailed out tomorrow.’ She followed him to her workbench and saw Robert pick up her latest creation, the design roughly sketched and described by a client, the exquisite detail of her devising and creation. ‘The last and the biggest…’
‘The longer you do this the better you become, darling…you’re quite the artist and a mother…all of it at the same time.’ She gripped the hand that he again held out to draw her to him, the children clutching her legs. ‘And…and my lover, of course.’
She met his approving look upon her, one that she had first met so long ago and had set her wondering where it could possibly lead them. ‘You know…?’ she whispered looking into his eyes.
‘Yes, I know…I love you too,’ he said on a teasing smile before breaking free of her embrace. ‘Mind our two for a moment while I get changed and then we’ll leave you to it…’
In spite of what Robert had said, Helena followed him down the winding stairs and into their bedroom, Jemima deciding it for them by clutching at his trousers until he picked her up. Helena lifted Patrick into her arms.
‘You’re back with us so we won’t let you out of our sight…’
♥
Her man was fastidious. She watched him undress before them all as he went to hang up his suit and put it in his wardrobe, along with his shoes and tie. She met his glance as he saw her reflection in the mirror. Helena shivered as he drew his shirt over his head and cast it over a chair.
‘What’s that look for?’ he smiled, ‘you should be used to it by now seeing me like this.’
‘Never, darling…never.’
Helena sighed and sought to control their children as she watched him move; to see him tug on a pair of cream chino shorts from a drawer and colourful t-shirt to go with it and carry them into the en-suite bathroom.
‘I’ll soon be gone…and you can work on,’ she heard him call out as he washed. ‘The day went so well that I decided to come home early…job done. Sure you won’t come with us?’
‘No, I’m not sure…but the work here needs to be done in spite of the distractions.’ She grinned at him as she saw Robert framed in the doorway, his pouch briefs stark against his skin; the swell in them arousing a palpable longing for him; one that she felt could never be quenched. All that they had shared in since the beginning of their affair, then living together, confounded all that had gone before.
Their worlds had been turned over, but for reasons that had only become clear after his wife’s defection; her admission of infidelity. The story had been much the same in her case, only she had been in a relationship with Robert’s son, Tom. She’d even lived with him for a time until that defining moment when Robert had felt compelled to disclose the family’s history; the genetic mix that had been the Fennell family from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
From the news that Robert had disclosed there seemed to have been no turning away from; no turning back from that day and the past that he had spoken of and all of it prompted by the mayhem of the BLM riots in the USA and other parts of the world.
And now, as she looked at him and then at the product of their union, Jemima, she knew it too. Love and understanding of him had taken on a new form from all that had gone before. She saw her little girl; she ignored the colour of her skin, a mute ebony; even paler than Robert’s; a man who could pass himself off as an outdoors, weather-beaten type. She could not ignore what the future might hold for them, even in the short term as Jemima was seen in the company of her parents.
‘You’ve gone all quiet on me,’ Robert said as he drew near.
‘I was just thinking back…’
‘We’re where we are now, darling…’
She nodded through his gentle kiss to her lips; could not still the sudden rush of longing for him. He was so strong. She felt it again as his arm went round her waist. Robert was big man, broad shouldered and his upper arms toned and that a weights routine in the exercise room, in the cellar, had bestowed; upon him. A regime was pursued but not obsessively so and often in her company. She was far too young for him, many would think, but he was not a domineering partner and they had grown to be as one, defying the odds and the contempt of Robert’s children. It worked for some celebrities, so why not for them? Love, lust, an uncommon bond – they could overcome scruples, it seemed, but not the legacy of those that had made him and previous generations. Their children carried that on with them too.
‘I’m ready…are you?’ he laughed as Jemima stumbled over the bed and fell into his arms. Patrick soon joined her. He picked them up effortlessly. ‘Will an hour or so be enough for you to finish what you’re doing?’
‘More than enough. I may join you…take your phone so you can tell me where you are.’
‘Sure…only don’t go sending me smutty texts,’ he grinned.
‘As if I’d do that!’ she laughed out and pouting a smile. It had been known to happen…
Helena brushed her fingers over his neck as he led the way down the stairs, carefully avoiding the children brushing against the pictures that hung there. She had wrought changes to the décor and the paintings that had hung in the house during the years of his marriage to Connie. Gone were reminders of those times. Many of his pictures of naval scenes were now hung in one of the attic rooms that was a tended haven for them all, along with an old sea chest and all that it contained; old letters referring to a family’s history that had begun the spiral of revelations, and recriminations, that had broken the Fennell family, as it then was, apart.
She blew them all a kiss and scurried back up the stairs to the studio, her thoughts possessed by the man who claimed all of her attention; also by undeniable concerns for what her children would face, and Jemima especially.
3
How disconcerting, after all this time, to see that her hands shook as she thought of her man, the look of him and what he brought so often a shock, as it had been again, only minutes ago, when he had stood before her in that pair of pouch briefs. Her man…Robert, her man…he brought so much to her when sharing in tempestuous ruts and their pursuit of a soaring fulfilment.
The news that she had brought him, when she lay in his arms one night and told him that he had found her…that there was no doubt that she was pregnant, with Jemima, was easy to recall. He had lost his usual control.
Her squeals of pleasure had been silenced by his kisses and grunts of effort; her demands, he had told her later on an amused smile for repeating her wanton cries, that he ‘give her the good stuff’, she clamping his tool, her muscles like a wet vice. She’d talked dirty, did that even now when she really lost it with him, and Robert found her depths in ways she never grew tired of.
‘You wonder…that you should bring that to me,’ Robert had kissed.
‘With your help,’ she remembered laughing out and on surrendering to his renewed claims upon her body, and to her breasts in particular on that occasion.
‘They’re for me, while there’s only the two of us…’
She loved the attention he paid to all of her body and could think of such things even as she worked on the final piece, of the jewellery consignment, as if in a dream; as an automaton as she remembered those moments with him…
♥
Robert slid his hands under her full breasts and brought them to his lips; he kissed and delighted in firm, bare flesh. Her hand found his greying hair and gently guided his lips to a nipple, then another. He kissed and swirled his tongue around then; sucked gently and drawing each into his mouth, eliciting a soft moan as she moved to meet his claims.
‘Let me taste you…’
His mouth moved from nipple to nipple, totally enjoying her breasts; his tongue and lips moving from them and down over her belly and over the strip of hair and then to her cleft, to the swell of soft skin, the soft warmth of her thighs. She recalled that Robert was fully aroused and wanted her, again, and so greedily. He had soon knelt between her slicked thighs, his hands pushing them up to her waist.
‘Not for long! I’m ready for you…’
‘I know…I know…’
She lifted her hips to allow it to happen. Robert had buried his face in her mound, lips and tongue exploring, then moving to kiss her and she smelt herself on his face. How brazen and animalistic it could so often be with him; the older and only too experienced man, her lover, who knew how to please her.
‘Oh fuck, Robert darling…yessss!’ The tip of his tongue flickered and danced; her hips bucked; her hands tugging on Robert’s hair to guide him to where she brazenly ached for him to be. Go on…go on!’
Helena cried out as tumultuous waves of pleasure coursed through her body, every movement to coax him keeping Robert to her. After months of bleakness and harsh words from others, when their relationship became known, their news had brought them renewed purpose; affirmed that it was no longer a tempestuous and fleeting affair.
He felt her grip on his body tighten as she drew him away. ‘Robert…Robert…let me touch you in my own ways…please?’
Helena soon straddled him; leant forward and had her breasts sweep over his chest before she moved; gripped his straining flesh and caressed it with her breasts in a wanton display that she had shamelessly learned from him soon after their affair had begun; allowed it to nestle between them before she felt him move her; to guide her until he could slowly press the swollen tip of his penis to her cleft.
‘Take me into you…go on…go on..’ he growled. She moved to tease him; allowed it to enter before she drew away; had him raise his hips from the bed as Robert’s hands clenched her hips and dragged her onto him in one penetrating thrust that had her shuddering out of fear for what he would now ensue.
‘You have your ways…go on!’ She could not stop him in his claims or what he again expected of her; the bed head thumping the wall as she rode him. ‘It’s alright if you cum, Robert. This is just the start, and we have all night to do this, remember!’
Those words pushed him over the edge, and as a deep growl of pleasure escaped his lips, his penis twitched; Robert’s hands were like vice grips on her breasts, and she leant forward to ease the pain and abject pleasure of his renewed claims upon her.
She rose and fell; twisted and tugged on him; heard the sharp intake of his breaths; his movements unrelenting; her renewed whimpers of pleasure urging him on.
In the soft light from the bedside lamp, he saw her slide her hand down between her legs and knew she was teasing her clit as they fucked. Together they ascended the pinnacle, and as she cried out, he felt the pulsing, tingling rush of release and her fevered clamps upon him as Helena shuddered.
‘So much…you bring me so much! She cried out; shuddering as she climaxed and not wanting the moment to end.
Robert reached out to her; gripped her shoulders and drew Helena down to kiss her; to encourage the sweep of her breasts over his chest before she settled on him; pressed her lips to his throat and simply shred in the heat of their bodies against each other. He loved how she had clenched her flesh around his penis as she rocked on him; the easy glide and settlement of him in her hot wetness.
‘Move my darling…move,’ he coaxed.
‘Again?’ she cried out as he pushed her away before reclaiming her; pushed her legs up and entered her body purposefully as Helena bucked her hips to meet his frenzied thrusts. ‘Believe in me…in us!’ she yelled out as fear overwhelmed her that he was making good for what had once happened with others.
She hasped as his strong hands again found her breasts, and he squeezed them; enjoyed the claims of his lips on her hard nipples. He felt her hand move between their bodies as she began teasing her clit with a fingertip. As Helena’s moans got louder, Robert quickened his pace. He could feel his own body flush and knew he was reaching the point of no return.. Robert could not hold back and with a last deep thrust, he felt the sweet release as he came deep in her body; felt her fingers dig into his back and shoulders; the clamp of her thighs on his hips as she held him tight and met the flurry of his kisses.
‘You wonder…my beautiful wonder,’ he groaned, even as he felt his cock soften and she finally eased him from her body; shivered at the residual caress of his penis tip to enervated skin.
‘As you are…that you’ve found me and so soon…that I have your baby growing inside me…already. There’s no going back from any of it…’
‘No, none of it…’ Robert savoured the sensation of again sharing in the act with the young woman beside him.
Helena drew close and nestled against him; swept her hands lazily over his chest and stomach; gently squeezed on him and the length of now flaccid skin. She’d never known of it in quite this way before, the brutal strength of his passion for her; had not heard his loud gasps of release and their intensity; his almost animalistic passion for her.
It would lessen, surely?
4
She saw them on the beach and knew that the rush of affection, her deepening love for the man, would not lessen. Robert was the father of her children and her guardian from all that now lay ahead of them…them, a couple, unlikely as that had seemed not so very long ago to those who had wanted them to fail.
‘Mummy! There’s mummy!’ Jemima shrieked, her hand pointing over Robert’s shoulder as the three of them sat on the sand.
Her heart went out to her. Jemima’s wonderful smile was a beacon of joy, her long twisting tresses of black hair a riot; the sleeveless shift dress, in denim with an embroidered hem to the skirt, a captivating sight on one so young; her silken, soft brown skin a wondrous sight; Jemima’s smile a reflection of her mother’s. Everyone said that of her.
She confounded them; had also done that at her birth when the maternity staff at her birth had held the babe up to them and they had seen and heard joy and gasps of dismay soon replaced by her newborn babe’s wails until Jemima had nestled against her mother’s breast.
‘We’re blessed,’ Robert had kissed. ‘She’s ours…a Fennell gene…and Mina’s legacy again made real.’
The midwife had overheard him, and a consultant had soon appeared in the room. ‘You are not as surprised as we are. We would have thought it to be a recessive gene but what you were heard to say suggests otherwise…’
Robert had left the room and had explained it all.
‘Jemima…she’s ours to have and to hold,’ he had told her upon his return. ‘You clever woman to have brought this to me…a beautiful girl in our lives. The family’s past has become only too real.’
Thoughts of those moments had flashed into her mind as she now walked to close the space between them, Robert and their kids looking on.
‘Hi…I came as soon as I could,’ she now smiled.
Robert saw the intense look of concentration on her face as he drew near with Jemima in his arms and Patrick stumbling in the sand. She caught him before following Robert back onto the smooth pavement that was the promenade. They chose to sit on the low wall and look out to sea.
‘Away with that…your look of disbelief, darling,’ he said softly as she nestled against him, Jemima and Patrick wriggling in their arms.. He offered a moment’s caress to her long slender legs. ‘I’ve always loved you in that denim skirt…remember it from another time and place.’
Helena remembered it too; her agreement to go with him to the top of Spinnaker Tower before he drove her home from a defining moment, over lunch. She had been asked to be with him and to look over the wide stretch of harbour and to be alone with him. They had their partners then; he with a wife and she still in a relationship with his son; she disconcerted by his impetuous ways and the look of his eyes upon her; she dressed in that denim skirt and a flattering Boho style, scoop necked, top with its blue and white zebra print and flattering fit; all of that similar to what she had chosen to wear now.
Reckless as it was then, she felt the man to be ‘hot’.
‘Don’t be surprised if I grab your arm. I just want to be close to you…I worry about our girl and what she may have to face next week when she goes to school…for the first time.’
‘I’ll be with you…will keep you company. It’s an important day, as it was so long ago…that lunch and me then driving you home’
‘Something happened between us, even then, and I couldn’t quite believe it…’
‘But you do now?’ he asked on a teasing smile and seeking to move away from her and drop down onto the sands once more. ‘Time for a walk…not reminiscences.’
‘In a moment…’ She kept him from leaving; met his kiss unhesitatingly before he dropped onto the sand below their place on the sea wall. He held a hand out to steady her as she clutched Patrick.
‘Isn’t mummy naughty?’ he smiled at Jemima, but he soon turned to look at his young wife as she grabbed his shirt to draw his attention back onto her.
‘I’m nervous Robert,’ she murmured in his ear, ‘as I was in the beginning; in those early days and nights when I went with you.’
They walked down to the edge of the surf, attentive parents holding their children’s hands and all of them with their shoes soon taken off before they gamboled at the edge of the surf. They were a family engaged with each other. Her man’s associations with his ex, Connie, and their three kids had been fractured. She knew it had not been on account of her, but she had been there for him when irredeemable breaks began to appear after his wife had left him for another man. Their architect, when the house had a makeover had become a lover; a man who had claimed her when Robert had been away on military duty. It had been an affair rekindled some years later.
Now, she had him and their children all to herself. Their affair had become a civil partnership and it was one that she had never regretted entering into, in spite of the Fennell history and that was now only too evident in their daughter Jemima. Their spirited girl with her honey-brown skin and delectable twisting tangles of hair, her wonderful smile and captivating irrepressible nature.
They had made her; the Fennel family’s genetic legacy finally revealing itself in their girl, not in any of Robert’s children from his marriage to Connie.
‘I have all I need,’ he told her as Helena clutched his arm; saw how his eyes drifted from her to his other girl. ‘There’s no going back on anything…even if I wanted to do that, which I don’t.’
‘We made her…you and me. I remember it all so vividly…still.’
He simply nodded…
♠
She could feel her heart beating faster; feel his fingertips caressing her breasts; feel Robert’s fingers and thumbs, lightly at first stroking her nipples, gradually pinching and pulling in such delicious ways that she could not stifle her moans of delight.
One hand moved down her body, fingers making circles, small and large with his fingertips, her knees almost buckled as her skin was covered in goosebumps. She gasped as Robert’s fingers found her; caressed in long, soft and slow strokes over outer lips; darted expertly here and there, his exquisite touches sending shock waves of pleasure coursing through her body. Her breaths were quickening gasps now as her feet pushed on the bed as she squirmed to escape the scratch of Robert’s stubble on her smooth skin, all of these sensations vying with the pleasure that his fingers aroused in her.
Then she sensed his tongue, felt its tip dart and probe into her and she felt the heat of his breaths to her soft folds as his tongue darted in and out so expertly, so teasing and captivatingly measured in their claims on her senses. Where would he go…what would he do next?
‘Robert!’ Her hips rose from the bed to meet his claims, the sensations that he aroused now making her moan almost continuously. ‘Come into me…bring it to me!’ she cried out as she felt the rush of her orgasm and the claims of his hands on her thighs to keep her where she had to be for him.
‘Like this you mean?’
Together they reached down and guided the swollen tip of his penis to her opening before she clamped his hips with fevered hands and pulled on Robert’s body. Helena tensed as she felt the tip stretch her. She felt but a moment’s discomfort, then soaring pleasure as his lithe movements, and her grasp upon his hips, brought Robert so very deep inside her.
‘Robert…Robert!’ she gasped.
It felt like she was being split as he entered and withdrew in deepening thrusts. Robert brought so much to her, he was only too well-hung, and had her feel that no one had stretched her as Robert’s prick now made her feel. The tightness that she had been so afraid of was soon replaced by the sensual slide of his flesh within her body.
‘Yes…yes…do that on me!’ he growled as she clamped on him. He was deaf to her screams and moans. He languished in all that she now did for him.
‘Robert…another! Yes…another!’ She felt him stiffen and then explode deep inside her body; shuddered as the force of his lustful releases had her clamp her arms and legs about him and yank on that prick until wave after wave of her orgasm coursed through her body. She came hard; threw back her head and was oblivious to Robert stifling his cries on and between her breasts; his fevered clamp upon them finally bringing her to her senses.
He bore his weight on his arms and feet; would no longer crush her body to him. Instead he gloried in the young woman’s body; languished in the slow clamping caresses that Helena still offered to him and that prolonged all that had been so tempestuously discovered within her.
‘I’ve become lost over you, do you know that?’
Helena clenched her lips shut and nodded her reply. She had felt it too. Now, she shivered as he moved from her and went to sit at the edge of the bed.
‘Robert? Stay by me.’
Robert met her kisses to his neck and shoulders, then to his face, as he turned to look at her naked body and the soft indolent droop of her wonderful breasts. He felt her press against him as Helena knelt behind him, her embrace surprisingly possessive.
Where was he to go with this? Those he still counted on as friends would be dismayed at this development in his life, particularly that he had bedded a young woman, their differences in age a possible barrier to progress. To be seen together would be to invite ridicule and set tongues wagging…on how long it could endure. And all of that before his children weighed in, his ex-wife Connie too, perhaps.
‘Did I hurt you? Lust overcame love,’ he confided.
‘No, you were wonderful. We helped each other…’
‘To forget…to close the door on how it once was, you mean?’
He felt her nod. He felt Helena’s embrace upon him tighten. He felt the press of her breasts on his back as she moved to caress him in her unrestrained ways of it.
‘I want to be Mina to your Robert…’
Her embrace seemed to seek his agreement to what she had said. History might yet be repeated if they had children.
‘We’ll see, Helena…we’ll have to wait and see.’
He lay back on the bed, his feet still touching the floor, and she leant over him, her hair sweeping his face and chest as she bent to kiss and reclaim him; to caress all that he had brought to her. The young woman had confounded him in what she had sought and bestowed upon him.
‘That’s all I wanted to hear, Robert…my wonderful lover.’
He knew it to be so.
‘We really would be breaking chains if we allowed it to happen…what you’ve just said and ask of me, now.’
Robert met the young woman’s wondering look upon him…
♥
‘I’m here with you,’ Robert smiled as they each understood what had silenced them and they had spooled back the memories to those earliest days of their affair, then their decision to live together. It had not been many months before he had heard Helena tell him that she was pregnant.
Now, their wondrous daughter Jemima, was seen to play on the beach and to lovingly care for her young brother. The one was of a dusky skin, the other pale.
‘There was no way back for my ancestors and that is how it is for me now and with you.’
She heard the certainty in his voice as he spoke. Whatever the roll of the dice had brought to them; whatever Robert’s ancestry and genetic mix had made real, once more, in Jemima, they would love and live on. They would do that together.
‘I’m here…Robert, I’m here,’ was all that Helena said in reply.
They were the words she had used once before, when the enormity of his disclosures of the Fennell family history had been disclosed to his incredulous family over that lunch, so long ago.
There was to be no one else for her then and there was no way back from all that had happened between them. She had been there for him ever since.
♥