Their lawyer had intended to talk about that, but the judge had cut him off.
Gil looked up at him. “Yes, Your Honor,” he said. “In India when I was a sergeant.”
“You were fortunate,” the judge said, “not to have been decapitated. Though I daresay you did not feel fortunate at the time.”
“No, Your Honor,” Gil said.
“Mysuggestion,” Judge Burroughs said, looking from one table to the other, “is that you get together in a private room, the four of you—the father, the stepmother, and the grandparents—and lock the door upon your lawyers while you come to a sensible, workable arrangement for the future of the minor child you all want. Consider what is best for her, if you will. And consider the accepted and traditional roles of parents and grandparents and besensible.
“People cannot always be sensible, however, when passions run high, and I daresay that if locked together in aroom the two men at least might come to fisticuffs. I would still suggest the meeting, but I will make a judgment in the event it should not happen or will not yield results satisfactory to all. I certainly do not wish to see you all back in my courtroom anytime soon. I find for Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Bennington as the parents of the child and therefore her natural guardians. And I do believe I will arrive home before my dinner grows cold and thereby avoid a scold from my wife.”
“All rise,” the bailiff said as the judge got abruptly to his feet.
And they rose while Abigail felt pins and needles dance painfully in her hands and her feet and Gil stood almost at military attention beside her, every part of his body, including his jaw and his face, looking as though they were sculpted of granite.
Beauty, also on her feet, woofed hopefully.
Twenty-two
Gil’s mind was no longer functioning. It had been so overloaded with information and emotion and hopes he dared not hope and fears he dared not deny that it had simply shut down. Yet as the door closed behind the judge, he knew it was all over, that arguments had been made on both sides, and judgment had been passed. And he heard the echo of something that had been said—
I find for Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Bennington as the parents of the child and therefore her natural guardians.
Other things had been said too, all of them lodged somewhere in his mind waiting to come forward to be heard and digested. But—
I find for Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Bennington as the parents of the child and therefore her natural guardians.
He turned toward Abby to find her gazing back at him, her eyes wide and suspiciously bright. “She is coming back to me?” he asked, afraid to believe.
“Yes.”
And he grabbed her and held her tightly against him as though to save them both from falling off the world. He would have folded her right inside him if it had been possible. Something in his brain told him this was not the way a gentleman behaved in public, and theywerein public, were they not? He could hear a buzz of sound around them. But to the devil with behaving like a gentleman. He rocked his wife in his arms, his eyes tightly closed.
Abby, Abby.
I find for Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Bennington as the parents of the child and therefore her natural guardians.
And Katy! He was going to get her back. He was going to be able to take her home to Rose Cottage. He and Abby. They were going to be a family. Perhaps after all dreamsdidcome true.
Her arms were wrapped as tightly about him as his were about her, he realized. Obviously it did not bother her to behave in unladylike fashion with a roomful of people looking on. Or else his obvious need to hold and be held had taken precedence with her over keeping a proper distance between them, as a lady ought.
And other snippets of what had been said began to make themselves heard in his head.
She would accept no support from me for either herself or her son—our son. Any gifts I sent were refused.
I was proud of him.
So I returned to viewing his career from afar.
In an ideal world this case would have the simplest of solutions. General Pascoe, you and your lady are Katherine Bennington’s grandparents. I daresay you love her...
Grandparents are supposed to love their grandchildren.
I daresay you love her...
My suggestion is that you get together in a private room,the four of you... while you come to a sensible, workable arrangement for the future of the minor child you all want.
Consider what is best for her.
