Lucien arrived at the crime scene, unsure of what he was to find. It was an ordinary house on an ordinary street in Ballarat. This one just happened to have police cars all around it.

"Ah, Blake, glad you made it. A cause of death and time of death, if you could," Frank Carlyle said, not wasting time on small talk.

He led the doctor inside the house. The sound of a baby crying echoed through the hall. Lucien immediately felt tense. "Is that child alright?" he asked with concern.

"We think so. The mother is with him now. The deceased is the nanny. Mother and father were both out all day and came home to a crying baby and this." The chief superintendent moved aside in the nursery, revealing the body of a young woman. Lucien's first thought was that she looked a bit like Mattie. Pale skin, auburn hair.

"What's her name?" Lucien asked, his tone gravely serious.

"Melinda Larkin."

Lucien got onto the ground to begin his initial examination of the body. "She's been here a while. Alice will have to do some tests to be sure, but I'd say she was killed at least a few hours ago." He continued his inspection. "Ah, yes, here, the bruising on the neck is starting to show."

"She was strangled?"

But Lucien barely heard what Frank was saying. The sound of the baby's cries was boring into his head, consuming his mind. His vision began to tunnel on the faint bruises on the nanny's neck.

"Dr. Blake? Lucien!"

Frank's sharp tone snapped him out of it. "Y-yes. She was strangled. You can transport her to the morgue now. Alice can do the autopsy."

Without another word, Lucien stood up and walked hastily out of the house. The baby was still crying. Even after he'd gotten back in his car, he still heard the sound. He turned on the engine and began to drive.

He kept on driving. He didn't know where he was going or what he was doing. He just focused on the roar of the engine. Anything to drown out that baby's cries.

Eventually the noise in his head quieted down. Lucien realized he'd driven quite a ways out of town, and the sun was dipping low in the sky. Jean would be wondering where he was. He needed to get home to his family.

"I didn't know if you would be home for dinner or not," Jean said, going to greet him as he came in the front door. She leaned up to kiss his cheek, but he caught her on the lips, hard. She pulled away with surprise. "Oh. Goodness. I've kept a plate warm for you."

"Where's Valerie?" he asked, not answering anything she said to him.

"In the nursery. It's past her bedtime. Though I doubt she's fallen asleep yet."

He took the stairs two at a time going up to see his daughter. She was laying in the bassinet, her bright blue eyes shining up at him. Lucien had hoped that seeing her would calm him down. It had the opposite effect. A sick feeling gripped his insides. And all he wanted to do was drown it.

Jean hadn't rushed coming upstairs. Though it seemed she should have. Lucien was leaving the nursery. He had a vacant, distant expression and brushed past her, barely noticing. Jean watched him rush off again, a concerned frown on her face. Instead of going after him again, she continued to Valerie's room.

Even after moving into Lucien's room—their room—Jean still felt a sense of calm and comfort going into her old bedroom. After all, she'd lived there for so long. It was the only place she had of her very own. And as happy as she was to have a marital bed with her husband, it was still nice to remember having her own space. But now it belonged to their Valerie. Jean was glad she'd insisted on waiting to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl before they painted the room. She was glad to keep the pink walls. They felt happy, even in the dark.

Leaning over the bassinet, Jean whispered, "Your father is a wonderful man but he is rather infuriating most of the time. But just remember, Valerie, that even when he gets a little lost, he'll always come back to us. Because he might not always know how, but he loves us so very much. More than anything. He'll always be here for me and for you. He'll make sure of it."

As Jean gazed into the baby's eyes, she noticed, not for the first time, that Valerie had inherited Lucien's eyes. She was glad. If such a thing were possible, it felt like she loved Valerie just a little more because she could look at her and see that bit of Lucien. Christopher and Jack had both grown into their father's personality, albeit in different ways; she never saw their father in them as blatantly as she saw Lucien in Valerie. Though Christopher and Jack were small so very long ago. Time plays such strange tricks on the memory.

She watched the baby begin to drift off to sleep for a few minutes longer. That was one thing that hadn't changed about motherhood. Jean could just watch her children forever. Tiny little miracles, all of them.

Downstairs, Lucien had tried to escape his anxiety in the best way he could. He went out to the garage, removed his waistcoat and shirt, haphazardly wrapped up his hands, and began incessantly hitting the punching bag he'd hung in the corner.

As soon as he'd found out Jean was pregnant, he had immediately tried to stop drinking. Not that he had been drinking very heavily after they'd gotten married, but he didn't want to be in that state at all when they had a child in the house. Jean hadn't said much about his decision. She did, however, point out that he needed some way to relieve stress in the way the whiskey had functioned when he'd really needed it. Boxing seemed the next best thing. Instead of getting drunk until he passed out, he would box until he was so exhausted, his mind wouldn't even function.

And so here he was. He felt the heat of his own body. He felt the sweat drip from his forehead and soak his vest. But he kept going. Until the sickness in his stomach was dulled by the exertion of his body.

Jean had known instinctively that he'd gone to the garage. She hadn't even bothered looking anywhere else. If he was at the point where he needed this, something had happened to really upset him. She knew he would tell her eventually, and if he didn't, she would ask. But just for now, she understood that this was what he needed.

And seeing him in the dim light, sweat glistening off the thick, rippling muscles of his back and arms, Jean couldn't look away. The old scars on his back peeked out of the sides of his singlet. Jean could practically feel the texture beneath her fingers. He made a visceral grunting noise, and her breath caught in her throat. When he changed his stance, her eyes followed the curve of his trousers. She unconsciously licked her lips and swallowed hard.

With one final right hook, Lucien ceased. He finally put his arms down as he panted to catch his breath. He was starting to come back to his body, wading through the cloud of stress and panic. And he had the strangest feeling that he was being watched. He turned and saw Jean in the doorway. There was a look in her eyes he knew quite well now, after almost three years of marriage. It was a hunger only he could satisfy.

As if to confirm his thoughts, Jean lightly bit her lower lip. Her pulse was beginning to quicken as her whole body began to vibrate with lust and anticipation.

They didn't utter a single word. They silently took steps toward the center of the room, each meeting the other in the middle. For a single moment, they stood there, staring into each other's eyes with the most intense yearning.

Neither could be sure who made the first move, but the next thing they knew, they had begun kissing fervidly. Lips and tongues moved together, teeth grazing skin and nipping with unbridled passion. Lucien's hands were shaking as he unbuttoned Jean's blouse, pushing it off her as quickly as he could. She had tried to undo his trousers but couldn't seem to connect her brain to her hands, especially not after his mouth descended upon her chest. Her knees were too weak to keep her upright. But he held her tight, carefully leading them both to the dusty garage floor.

His hands seemed to be everywhere. Rough but gentle, as always. The harsh scratch of his beard contrasted with the warm softness of his tongue as his mouth made its way all around her body. He practically ripped her skirt and foundation garments off her before rolling them over so she lay on top of him. She recaptured his lips with hers while he reached between them, unzipping his trousers and ridding himself of his remaining clothes.

From where she sat on him, straddling his stomach, he could already feel that she was ready for him. He had to break their kiss to lift her up and guide himself into her. Jean gasped, shifting her hips to accommodate him. Lucien moaned loudly. She silenced him with a kiss as she began to move on him.

Somewhere in the distant reality of her mind, Jean felt some pain from having her knees on the cold, hard ground. She slowed to a stop, trying to readjust. Lucien sat up so she could wrap her legs around his waist. Feeling much more comfortable, she gyrated against him and rocked back and forth, clutching wildly at his shoulders and back.

As the pressure built within her, her movements became more erratic. She bit down on the bulging muscle of his shoulder to keep from screaming out in ecstasy.

Lucien almost laughed. Of all the things he'd anticipated in their marriage, their love life had been the most unexpected, wondrous thing. She'd been enthusiastic from the beginning, if a bit inhibited. It hadn't taken long for her to trust him to bring her pleasure. And very quickly, he'd found that her proper façade melted away to this unhinged passion. Every time, Lucien didn't know he could love her any more, but every time he found that he did.

When they were both finally spent, they continued to clutch each other, breathing heavily and slowly returning to a normal heart rate.

Jean was the first to regain the power of speech. "Here, let me get off you. This can't be comfortable."

But he just wrapped his arms around her lithe body, still rounder than usual from the pregnancy and breastfeeding. "Don't you dare move," he murmured, placing hot open-mouthed kisses on her neck and shoulders.

"Just lie down," she softly insisted. He gradually loosened his hold on her and leaned back until his sweat-covered back lay flat on the cold ground.

Jean extricated herself from him and began looking for all her clothes. She only needed enough to go into the house and to the bedroom for a bath before bed. She stood and zipped up her skirt with nothing underneath. Lucien watched her dress with a smile on his face.

"Feeling better?" she asked with a smirk.

"Oh yes, much," he replied with a laugh. "I do love you."

She gave a curt nod in response, but couldn't fully suppress her smile. As she found the sleeves of her blouse, she asked, "What were you doing out so late? Whatever it was brought you out here."

Lucien finally sat up, running his hands down his face, remembering what was waiting for him outside the safe comfort of their home. "A nanny was brutally strangled. The baby was left unharmed, but it was hours before anyone came home and found the poor girl. And that baby wouldn't stop crying," he told her.

Jean consciously chose to avoid the personal aspect of what he had said, for now at least. "What did the autopsy reveal?" she asked.

"I don't know. I didn't go to the morgue. I…I couldn't. I couldn't get that crying out of my head. I drove until I couldn't hear it anymore. Then I came home. And here we are."

She leaned down, trailing her hand from his hair and down his face and beard to rest on his jaw. "Lucien, that wasn't Valerie. Valerie doesn't have a nanny. Nor will she ever. No one will ever leave her alone like that," Jean vowed.

He tried to smile, to reassure her that he understood her words. But he couldn't seem to manage it. "Jean, if anything ever happened to you or to me…I can't leave her. I can't leave my daughter. Not again. Not this time."

Jean could see he was going to get overwhelmed if he kept this up. She took his face in both her hands and force him to look into her eyes. "Lucien, we're in Ballarat. Safe, boring Ballarat. Nothing can happen to us here."

"It happened to Melinda Larkin."

"And that is a tragedy. But that isn't going to happen to us. I'm with Valerie all day, every day. And I will die before I let any harm come to our daughter."

"I don't want harm to come to you, either."

"Our family isn't like Melinda Larkin," Jean told him firmly.

"How do you know?"

"Well, we don't know yet. But you'll never know if you don't get down to that morgue and do the autopsy. You aren't going to be able to rest until you figure out what happened to her. So go do it. And I don't want you back in this house until you've found something." With that, Jean wrapped her blouse tightly around her, not bothering to button it up, and carried the rest of her clothes into the house.

Lucien stood up almost immediately. He redressed himself with newfound determination. Jean was right. He had work to do.