Page 1 of The Way We Were

Chapter One

Brighton, England, 1851

Where is he?

Though the train ride from London had been stuffy and hot, and the hansom cab had left her two blocks away from regimental headquarters under a glaring sun, Lucy Lawton was determined to find her husband, Captain Reginald Lawton.

Putting up her parasol, clutching her portmanteau, she began to walk. It might have been a mistake leaving her maid in London, she admitted to herself, but it was only going to be overnight. She’d thought Reggie was returning to London from India in two weeks, but she had it on good authority—in fact every sympathetic friend she had—that he’d arrived in Brighton early.

And he hadn’t contacted her.

Lucy swallowed down her anger and kept marching. The sun had a beachside shimmer that reminded her of the seaside holidays of her youth, but that seemed a long time ago. She was a mature woman emerging back into the world after a year of mourning. Her youth was just a nostalgic memory compared to the grief that had made her feel old before her time.

And then suddenly she saw her husband, Reggie, picking him easily out of a crowd, his dark curly hair difficult to hide even beneath his tall black military cap.

Lucy came to stop so suddenly that someone jostled her elbow trying to move past her. She barely noticed.

Reggie wore his red uniform with the gold epaulettes at the shoulders, and to her surprise, he set her heart racing just as he had the day she’d met him at her best friend Lady Elizabeth Cabot’s wedding five years ago. She didn’t like having this reaction, not after they’d been apart for a year. She thought when she saw him again she’d feel like so many other couples she knew, married but distant, living separate lives.

After all, many of her friends made it look easy. They hadn’t married for love, but family duty or security. Lucy had been far more foolish, marrying for a sudden passion she might have mistaken for love. That’s what she was beginning to tell herself every day since Reggie had abandoned her.

She reined in her harsh thoughts. He’d been ordered to India at the worst possible moment of their lives, and had done his duty, leaving her because his commanding officer had said no one else could do the complicated negotiation between the British army and the East India Company, which controlled much of the country.

She’d thought her life might be easier with him gone, but it hadn’t been until she learned to put him out of her mind and get on with each day, one hour at a time.

His letters hadn’t helped, so very dry and matter-of-fact, nothing like the romantic man he’d been when courting her. She looked at his face in the near distance and almost let herself feel the dreamy sensation that his regard, his focus, his whispers of love, used to instill in her.

And then suddenly Reggie reached out his arm, and a lovely young woman put her hand delicately on his sleeve.

Lucy stiffened as every rumor she’d heard seemed confirmed. When Reggie smiled down at the woman, something inside Lucy twisted with anger and humiliation. Lady Dundas had been telling the truth about Reggie being seen with an attractive young woman. Lucy’s friends had all looked at her with such pity, even as she insisted it couldn’t be true. He would never shame her like that.

But here he was, with a strange woman. She’d always thought him an honorable man, but now she had to question even that. The grief she’d been so good at hiding threatened to swamp her again, but she held her ground. She’d survived too much to let this overtake the wall of her emotional control.

“Captain Lawton, that woman is staring at us. Do you know who she is?”

Startled, Reggie looked up from Madeleine Fournier and saw his wife standing stock still, her fair brows lowered over her blazing green eyes, a parasol dangling upside down from her hand. He’d last seen Lucy robed in black, but now she wore a blue day dress with a line of buttons from the lace of her high-necked bodice all the way to her hemline. A bonnet hid her blond hair, but for some drooping curls at her temples. He thought she looked just as beautiful as the day they’d met.

He inhaled deeply, the loneliness of the last year fading away at the sight of her. “My wife,” he murmured, so overcome with tenderness and longing that he had to swallow.

“She doesn’t look very happy,” Madeleine said, her hand dropping away from his arm.

And then he really looked at Lucy’s expression. “I will make her happy again.”

It was what had sustained him throughout their long separation. Every day apart made him more and more convinced that he would do anything to make her happy again.

He hadn’t been able to capture his feelings in letters, hadn’t wanted to hurt her any more than she was already hurting. Guilt threatened to surface again, but he was so relieved to see her that glad thoughts pushed away the sad.

A mask of politeness seemed to settle on Lucy’s face as she walked toward him. She snapped the parasol back up as if the shade would shield her from her emotions. But he could always read the thoughts she tried to hide. She was full of anger and disappointment, and he realized how it might look to her, him accompanying a strange woman.

But he would explain, and she would understand. They would find a way back to the happy marriage they’d once had.

He smiled at her as she approached. “Lucy,” he murmured, reaching for her gloved hand before bending over and bringing it to his lips.

She momentarily resisted, but he ignored it.

When he straightened, he said, “Lucy, may I present Miss Madeleine Fournier, daughter of my late commander. Miss Fournier, my wife, Mrs. Lawton. Lucy, this is Miss Selwyn, Miss Fournier’s maid.”

Lucy felt her veil of anger momentarily lift, and she was surprised that she hadn’t seen the second woman standing a few steps behind, spectacles perched on her nose, her clothing neat but unobtrusive.