The Hazardous Measure of Love: Time Into Time Book Five Read online

  Then I realised that something was not right with me, either, and that was the point where my world turned upside down.

  * * *

  By the middle of October the bulletins from Luc, delivered by Frank Ponsonby, were more encouraging. Matthew had benefitted from a month at the seaside and Lady Radcliffe was able to stand and walk a few steps with a stick.

  What poor Frank thought about me snatching these mysterious envelopes out of his hand on a regular basis, I didn’t know until one day, in late November, when I had ripped one open in front of him and it was all good news and I burst into tears, he guided me back into the living room and sat me down.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me about it,’ he said. ‘But Welhampstead has some uncanny features, I’ve discovered. I’ve been reading the diaries that my ancestors who were in the firm have left and, frankly, very little would surprise me.’

  I blew my nose and eyed him cautiously. ‘What, exactly, do you mean?’

  ‘Just that I am guessing you might be something of an expert on the early nineteenth century,’ he said. ‘And it isn’t only you: there’s a house in town that is… strange. But don’t tell me any secrets, I just wanted you to know I am making sure there’s no speculation about your boxes and envelopes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I would have thought that Frank was the most down to earth, stolid type you could imagine, not someone who could take the possibility of time travel for granted. ‘The thing that had been worrying me – it is all right now.’

  ‘Just the one thing?’ he asked quizzically.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said stoutly. But it wasn’t just the one thing. I had no way of communicating with Luc and he, clearly, did not feel it was safe to leave his family yet. What if he never did? What if he saw how frail his mother was now and decided that he must marry again, give the twins a proper mother? Forget me and our hopeless situation?

  I surfaced from my back hole to find Frank making a pot of tea. ‘Mr Grimswade has been telling me what a help you are being to him.’

  Aristotle Grimswade, the delightful elderly owner of St Christopher Antiques was becoming increasingly frail, so I spent as much time with him as I could, helping him send things to live auctions and also putting some stock up on on-line sites.

  ‘Just don’t sell the bear,’ I had begged him. I was very fond of the vast and ancient stuffed bear that had greeted me (or so I’d thought) when I had first entered the shop. ‘One day I want to buy that.’

  ‘Where are you going to put it?’ he’d asked. ‘Not in your flat, surely?’

  ‘No,’ I’d agreed. That would be far too small. In fact, I needed to move, but not until Luc had come back to my time. I hated that he had no idea why I had not returned to him, that he might think I had deserted him, and the risk of him not being able to locate me if I moved was enough to stop me even looking at new homes on-line.

  If he comes back, the horrible, negative voice in my head kept muttering. You need him, but he isn’t here. You’ll have to get used to managing by yourself.

  * * *

  Of course, when Luc did come back it was typical of us, involving loud bangs and shrieks – anything but romantic, in fact.

  It was a Wednesday morning. Trubshaw was being particularly bloody-minded and was refusing the new (and expensive) cat food that I had bought him. He complained loudly, then retreated to the sofa to sulk and shed all over it. The cover was, of course, just back from the dry cleaner.

  I told him what I thought of him and decided to try the new, and also expensive, cereal I’d bought at the same time as the Gourmet Kitty Knibbles. Food was becoming increasingly comforting. So was shopping.

  Of course, I had put the cereal on the top shelf. I was stretching up for it when there was a thud behind me, a shriek of catly outrage and Trubshaw shot into the kitchen area, straight under my feet. With Sod’s Law operating to its fullest, I dropped the open packet on top of myself as I fell to the floor on hands and knees.

  The swearing from the sofa was blissfully familiar, even if Luc rarely used bad language in my hearing. I crawled through the crunching muesli and peered around the end of the island unit.

  ‘Hello.’

  He blinked at me, then grinned and I saw, with a wrench, how haggard he was looking. ‘What is that in your hair?’

  ‘Breakfast.’ I shook my head to get the worst out, then hauled myself to my feet, suddenly very nervous. Now was the time for the big reveal, with the emphasis on big. I stepped out from behind the island and just stood there while he looked at me.

  Luc didn’t say anything. He was off the sofa so fast that I would have fallen on my backside if he hadn’t caught me up in an all-enveloping hug. Then he kissed me, very softly, and, finally, stepped back, his hands still on my shoulders, and said, ‘You are pregnant?’

  ‘Um. Yes. You noticed?’ I said, my hands on the very significant bump.

  ‘A baby,’ he breathed.

  ‘Two actually. It is another set of twins.’

  ‘Can we sit down?’ He sounded as though I had punched him in the solar plexus, but he was smiling, thank goodness.

  We reeled over to the sofa, sank down on it in a shower of cereal grains and had a long, slow and very satisfactory smooch. When we eventually came up for air I said, ‘This is why I was sent home. It wouldn’t be safe for me to travel with all that bumping and the rough landings. I realised when I got back, and could think again, that I hadn’t been taking my contraceptive pills since Jerald was killed – it simply went out of my mind and then, with the accident, it was the last thing I was thinking about.’

  ‘But you were pregnant when you came back here,’ Luc said, suddenly anxious.

  ‘Only just. And it is all right, honestly. I have been checked out really thoroughly. Everything is as it should be.’ No wonder he was anxious: his wife had died giving birth to the twins. ‘Childbirth is so much safer now, I promise you. We are all going to be fine. But how are the boys? And your mother?’

  Everyone was better, apparently, which was why Luc had felt able to come to me. We brought each other up to date on all our news and I explained that I had stopped volunteering as a Special Constable as soon as I realised I was pregnant, not because I needed to stop so early, but because I was working all the hours I could and taking any translating job that came along. ‘I’m going to need a bigger flat. Or a small house,’ I said. ‘One bedroom isn’t enough.’

  That started Luc worrying about how to support us and how to move money forward in time. I wasn’t going to object – he quite rightly wanted to share the responsibility and I wanted the best we could provide for the babies.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘You have inherited family jewellery and have decided to sell it,’ Luc said, unpinning the very handsome sapphire from his neck cloth. ‘We could start with a valuation on this.’

  * * *

  And so we did. Later, Luc sent a good haul of jewellery, plus a “will” bequeathing them to me by my fictitious Regency ancestress, along with the deeds to a certain small moated manor house in Buckinghamshire which he had swapped with Matthew for another property with a lake – and a boat. Frank was around to witness me opening the box, which was quite enough for the local high-class jewellers to give me valuations on the gems, and for when I auctioned them off, piece by piece.

  Owning Rook’s Acre was a dream, but it wasn’t the right place to bring up two small persons on a daily basis, not with that moat, so I planned to use it as a holiday home for all my family until we had some vaguely responsible teenagers.

  As it happened, rather sadly, I didn’t need to spend the money on a house in Welhampstead because darling Mr Grimswade died, quietly reading an auction catalogue by his fireside. He left everything to me, so I am having the shop and residential part converted back into a house as it once was. I’m keeping the stuffed bear, of course.

  My parents and Sophie adore Luc. They don’t know who he is, only that he has to travel a great deal and can�
�t talk about his work. They have decided that he is a spook – MI something or another – and have cautiously accepted his word that he doesn’t get involved in dramatic car chases or gun fights with foreign agents.

  The twins – my set – are gorgeous and female. Maddie (Madelaine for Luc’s mother) and Jamie (Jamesina, for their uncle) have Luc’s green eyes, my blonde hair and, naturally, all the best characteristics of both parents. Or so we think. Trubshaw has adopted them as his kittens.

  Luc, of course, has to switch back and forth between times, but it seems to work, something I had never dared imagine before. We can’t take the girls to visit their paternal grandmother yet, not while they are so young, but an artist friend of mine does pencil portraits almost weekly for Luc to take to her. When they are rather older I will leave them with Soph, or my parents, to babysit while I go back to visit all my friends – I am itching to see Garrick and Carola’s baby, a little boy called Thomas. Eventually we will have to find a way of explaining to the girls that their father is over two hundred years old, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

  Luc is settling down very well as a part-time twenty-first century man, although it did take him a while to recover from a train journey to London, and he refuses point-blank to take driving lessons. We even visited Whitebeams with him bearded and wearing sunglasses. Seeing his own descendant from a distance shook him rather.

  So there we are – a functioning dual-time family. I never thought we could have a Happy Ever After, but whatever the force that has been sending me back is, it appears to have decided that we can do very well without murders, kidnappings and drama now and appears quite content to let us be joyfully content.

  Frank Ponsonby is the only person who appears to have the slightest inkling that Luc is not what he seems and, just sometimes, I wonder about our friendly junior solicitor. Is he who he seems? Or could he simply be a modern man who is attuned to the wavering threads of time that link Luc and me and, if Frank is to be believed, drift through other parts of this very ordinary little commuter town?

  I am not going to probe – I am far too happy just as I am.

  The End

  Time Into Time – The Series

  The Hazardous Measure of Love is Book 5 of the series. Here are the first four in order –

  An Earl Out of Time

  A Kiss Across Time

  A Love For the Moment

  A Dangerous Time For Love

  Coming next will be a new series, with a new heroine and hero. It seems that the town of Welhampstead still has some secrets to discover!

  About the Author

  Louise Allen lives on the North Norfolk coast close to the 18th century seaside town of Cromer. She is a passionate collector of late Georgian and Regency ephemera and prints and is the author of over seventy historical romances and non-fiction works, mainly set in the Georgian and Regency period. She also blogs about Georgian life at http://janeaustenslondon.com

  Full details of all her books, including extracts and buy-links, can be found at www.louiseallenregency.com

  I do hope you have enjoyed this book – and I would be very pleased if you would leave a review. Every review helps me connect with readers and make the next book just that bit better.

  Thank you.