“Barely,” he murmured back. “Blame Toby.”
“Do your friends know you always blame them for your tardiness?”
“Of course, because they do the same.” He caught her hand briefly, just long enough to feel her fingers squeeze his.
“Right then, let’s go outside and open this place before there is a riot,” Jamie said. “But I must warn you, my sweet, that there are quite a few society members out there.”
“Really?” Her lovely eyes widened.
“Really, and that is why we will make haste, as it’s not an area many are used to frequenting.”
“And as they opened their purse strings to help us get this clinic up and running, we will not leave them standing for too long?”
“Exactly,” Jamie said.
Leading Alice through the front door, he stepped back to stand with Anthony and Toby. He and his friends may have provided some of the money, but this was her achievement.
The crowd had grown, he noted. A small line had formed a short distance away, those waiting, careful not to step too close to the clinic’s benefactors. They did not wear elegant fashions, but rather threadbare coats and patched skirts. Faces hollowed by worry, shoulders stooped from long days and longer nights.
“Clearly, they know the clinic is opening soon,” Anthony whispered into his ear.
“Thank you all for coming,” Alice said, stepping forward to look at those assembled before her. “There are many, many people who live within walking distance of us today, who werenot born into privilege or can readily seek medical help. It’s my hope that for a few, we can change that with this clinic.”
She was magnificent, Jamie thought proudly, clapping loudly along with the other guests when Alice had finished talking. Some polite, some genuine. The wealthy smiled as if they’d discovered philanthropy for the first time. But the locals like the mothers clutching their children, and the old men leaning on sticks—their faces told a different story. Wonder, disbelief, and something dangerously close to hope.
Jamie’s throat tightened. He’d spent years surrounded by privilege, insulated by power. He’d worn his title like armor. And yet, standing there, watching his wife bridge two worlds with nothing but compassion and determination, he realized how thin that armor was.
When the speeches ended, the crowd began to move inside, curious to see what was beyond the façade.
He turned to Anthony, who stood beside him with Toby. “Did you believe we would ever one day be here? We were unfit for anywhere but hell for a while, but—”
“If you say the love of a good woman again, I will hit you,” Toby added.
Jamie laughed. Blackwood Hall had tried to break them and had nearly succeeded. But the scars that had once marked them had now become their strength.
“Do you recall,” Toby said, “that miserable classroom where we were locked for days without food?”
“I try not to,” Jamie said dryly. Searching inside himself, he felt nothing but pity for the boys they’d been. The anger had gone.
Toby’s smile was grim. “I thought then we’d never be free. And now look at us. All married to women far too good for us.”
“Speak for yourself,” Anthony said, though his grin gave him away. “And now we had better mingle, or Alice will scold, andthen tell our wives, as they meet often at the book club my aunts lured them into.”
Anthony and Toby drifted off to speak with patrons, leaving Jamie to wander back inside. Alice joined him a few minutes later, her hand light on his arm as they stood to one side of the room and looked at the guests mingling with the clinic staff.
“I’m so proud of you, Alice.”
“I’m proud of us,” she countered. “Proud of the people we have become together.”
“Together,” he agreed. “Now, and always.”
“Do you ever think of Blackwood Hall? Do Anthony and Toby?”
“Every day,” he said. “But it no longer owns us. We can now speak to each other freely of that time, and there is healing in that too.”
Alice rested her head on his shoulder briefly.
“You’ve done something extraordinary here, Alice,” Jamie said.
