"I know it's not possible," said a dear, familiar voice, "but I would swear she has your eyes."
"And I'd swear she has your nose," said Shelagh, her eyes sparkling, as her husband winced in mock pain.
"Never curse our girl with that!" Tenderly, with all the practiced, instinctive gentleness of a doctor, his finger brushed baby Angela's downy cheek.
"It's no curse, Patrick! I love your nose."
His eyes caught hers, something sweeter and more serious glowing there. "Among other things?"
"Among so many, many other things," she breathed, and his mouth found hers, softly, but with the quiet intensity that had always been his hallmark. She kissed him back, trembled a little and revelled once again in the miracle of love.
"Oh, Shelagh," he murmured at last, cupping her cheek in one hand. "I know we've had our troubles these last months, but I have always been completely certain."
She tilted her cheek into his hand and closed her eyes. "And so have I. 'For better or for worse.'" Blinking up at him, she rested her head on his shoulder. "I do love you, Patrick. And I love our girl, too."
The truth in her voice was undeniable, but he knew her so well that he couldn't miss the shadow.
"But?"
"But I worry," she admitted, and felt his arm tighten around her. "That someday love might not be enough. That she might resent…"
"Oh, Shelagh," he said, and felt his heart break a little. "Even after Timothy?"
"Timothy's different, Patrick, and you know it. He had his mother. He knew her. He knew she loved him. I love him as if he were my own, but he'll never have to wonder."
Slowly he nodded, brushing a kiss to her shining hair. "Shelagh, darling, I can't answer your questions. I can't give you the reassurance you need. But I know someone who can."
"Hello, Shelagh."
"Sister Julienne!" She sprang from the couch, Angela still in her arms, and smiled as Julienne's embrace enfolded them both. "But I don't understand. Are you who Patrick sent for?"
"Yes," Julienne admitted. "And I will tell you why, I promise."
"Thank you for coming, Sister." Patrick reached out to clasp Julienne's hand in his, then sent Shelagh a look of pure devotion and slipped out the door. "I'll be doing paperwork in my office if you need me."
The door closed behind him, and they moved of one accord to the sofa.
"I'm always happy to see you, Sister," said Shelagh, "but I admit I don't quite understand why you're here. Did you know someone in similar circumstances?"
Silently, Julienne closed her eyes and prayed for strength. "Yes, I did," she said at last. "Me."
"I beg your pardon?" The shock in Shelagh's voice was unmistakable, and Julienne steeled herself to speak of a past that no one knew about save those who had lived it with her.
"A very long time ago, I had hope for love and a family of my own." Shelagh's small hand curled around hers, and Julienne held it tight. "That hope died in the mud of Passchendaele."
The pain still cut through her like a knife, even decades later, as she remembered laughing green eyes and a smile that lit up the sky like shooting stars.
"The first World War," Shelagh whispered, and Julienne nodded.
"Yes. He was a doctor, an Army doctor, and I loved him. When the war was over I fled to Chichester, to the mother house. And there I stayed, all my hopes in ashes. I turned to God because I could turn to no one else."
"I understand that," Shelagh murmured, and Julienne smiled.
"Yes, you would, wouldn't you? But many years later, a young woman came to me, barely out of the schoolroom, frightened and lonely and determined to heal. And I fell in love for the first time in twenty-five years."
Beside her, Shelagh gasped.
"A different kind of love, perhaps, but love nonetheless," continued Julienne, her eyes welling. "I had to wait a quarter of a century, but at last God sent me the daughter I had wanted all my life. And because He did, I learned to love again." Now she turned so her gaze met Shelagh's directly. "So you see, my dear, the only thing that truly matters is love." Her hand tightening around Shelagh's, Julienne drew a shaking breath. "You are mine because of love, Shelagh, never mind whether you were born to me or not. It is love that makes families, nothing else. Remember, 'the blood of the Covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.' You will hold her when she cries, bathe her forehead when she is sick, feel her every heartbreak as if it were your own. And that, my love, is what makes you her mother. Just as it made me yours."
"Oh, God," said Shelagh, and they clung to each other, the baby between them, holding on as over a decade of unspoken love burst its dam at last.
When Patrick came home, some hours later, he gently gathered Angela into his arms, kissed his wife's forehead, and left them there, holding each other, for a very long time.