A Baby For Lord Roderick. Emily Dalton
Allie Lockwood’s personal life?”
“I’m not asking you about Allie Lockwood at all, Gran, and you know it,” Liam said gently. “When you talked of a country doctor, you were thinking of Allie’s grandfather, Jacob Lockwood, weren’t you?”
Looking startled, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Mary set her mug down on the table with a thump. The tea spilled over the brim and onto the pine tabletop. She mopped up the tea with a green checked napkin, her eyes fixed to her task. “Perhaps I was,” she finally admitted.
“Tell me about him, Gran.”
“Well, he’s a good doctor, too, although he is retired, you know.”
“At the present, I’m not interested in his abilities as a doctor.”
She finally braved a look at him. “Then what are you interested in, Liam?”
“I know there was something between you and him, bits of which I’ve heard a little of over the years, but now I want to know the whole story from start to finish.”
“It’s really ancient history.”
“It’s why you don’t go into town, isn’t it? And why no one visits you when you stay here? That doesn’t sound like ancient history to me.”
Liam had had all night to think about Allie Lockwood, the baby, and his grandmother’s history with Allie’s grandfather. He wasn’t sure why he’d never been curious enough about it to inquire before, but he supposed he had been so involved with his own life, and Mary had been so happy with his grandfather, he hadn’t felt the need. Now he wanted every bit of information available about that family and how it was connected to his, no matter how trivial the connection might turn out to be.
Mary sighed and tapped her fingers gently against the side of her cup. “It’s a very simple and short story, Liam. I was raised in Annabella, as you know. My father was the pharmacist at Woolworths and Mother stayed at home…as most women did then. Jacob Lockwood teased and tortured me all through grammar school, but when we both turned thirteen, things changed.”
A shy smile curved his grandmother’s mouth, making her seem suddenly so much younger. “He was my sweetheart all through high school. We were going to move to Salt Lake City, so Jacob could go to the University of Utah, where he had a scholarship. He’d take premed, then go on to medical school. But first we’d get married.”
“Then the war came and changed all that,” Liam said.
Mary nodded sadly. “Yes. I wanted to marry him before he joined up, but he refused. He didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Times were so uncertain.”
She seemed to get lost in thought for a minute, then continued. “Jacob was in the Navy and stationed in the South Pacific. I got frustrated waiting for him, waiting for his letters. Sometimes months would go by. I wanted to do something, not just sit about the house waiting and wondering.” She smiled ruefully. “We were a patriotic bunch back then, Liam.”
“It’s a good thing you were,” Liam replied quietly.
“I became a WAC and trained as a nurse. I was immediately sent over to England. I met your grandfather in the hospital in Dover. He’d had a head injury and didn’t even know who he was. I fell in love with him, Liam. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know who he was, or anything about him, but I knew we were meant to be together. I know that sounds sickly sweet, but it’s true.”
Liam had no trouble believing her. He’d felt the same way about Victoria. “Go on.”
“We were married by the chaplain at the base. I hadn’t heard from Jacob for over a year. I wanted to tell him about Cecil before the wedding, but I had no address. I wasn’t even sure he was still alive. Two months after our wedding, Cecil’s father found him. I was nearly bowled over when I heard Cecil was going to be an earl someday and owned country estates in Cumbria! I thought he was just some bloke from London.”
“Not with that high-brow accent of his, Gran,” Liam teased her.
“Well, I didn’t know about accents then, Liam. It took a few months, but your grandfather gradually regained his memory.
“I was afraid he’d regret marrying me, when he could have had just about any girl in England, but he didn’t. His parents—your great-grandparents—were a little floored at first, but they learned to accept me, too. I’ve been very happy with your grandfather, Liam. But my heart ached for Jacob….”
“What happened to Jacob?”
“He was injured in the war, too. Sent home in ’44 with injuries to his back and both legs. For awhile no one thought he would walk again. I hear he still limps.”
“And when he found out about you and Grandfather?”
“By the time Jacob heard about it, the townspeople had decided that I’d dumped Jacob—a war hero with a Purple Heart—to marry a rich English lord. My parents said he took it hard, drank like a fish for awhile, but he was always a stubborn one. He swore off liquor, then worked hard till he could walk again, then he went on to medical school and came back to Annabella to be the best GP they’d had in these parts…or so I’ve been told. He married Allie’s grandmother, Althea Rutherford, and they had one child, a boy they named James. James married another Annabella ‘belle’ named Lisa, and they had four children. Two boys and two girls. I think you played with the boys that summer you briefly visited, Liam….”
“Oh?”
“Yes, but the boys moved away, as did their parents, but Allie and Kayla, the two sisters, still live in Annabella.”
“Is this Dr. Lockwood still alive and living in Annabella?”
“Oh yes. He’s retired, as I told you, but he didn’t move away. I don’t expect Jacob would ever leave Annabella.”
“How about his wife?”
“Althea died several years ago.”
“Ah, so he’s a widower.”
Mary’s eyes narrowed. “So?”
“You’ve come here every year for twenty years, but you never go to town. You just go through it when you’re coming from, or going to, the airport. You send Ribchester and Mrs. Preedy to do the shopping. It might have been an easy thing to manage when you used to come for only two weeks at a time, but now that Grandfather’s gone and you spend months here, I imagine it’s pretty difficult to keep away from the only bit of civilization there is around here. What keeps you away, Gran? And why doesn’t anyone come to see you? Surely the townspeople don’t still hold a grudge?”
“I don’t know whether they do or not,” Mary replied with an unconvincing show of unconcern. “They probably don’t. I’m sure they’ve had better things to do over the past half-century than harbor resentment against me.” She paused, then added wistfully, “Even for Jacob’s sake…”
Presently she said, in a firmer tone, “Besides, the town has grown and changed. There’s still people I know, but their grandchildren probably haven’t even heard of Mary Hayes McAllister.”
Remembering Sheriff Doug Renshaw’s reaction from the day before, Liam wasn’t so sure that was true. If Doug had heard of him, he’d heard of his grandmother, too.
“So the bottom line here, Gran, is that you’re not that worried about facing the townspeople. It’s Dr. Lockwood you’re worried about running into in the produce department of the grocery store. Right?”
Mary nodded grudgingly. “I admit it, Liam. It’s Jacob I’m avoiding. I don’t know why, but I still can’t face him.”
“People don’t plan on falling out of love with someone and in love with someone else,” Liam reasoned. “It just happens. You weren’t married to him. He wouldn’t hold a grudge against you after all these years if he’s the great guy you say he is…or