24 December 1960
At Jean's insistence - and, though he would never say such a thing aloud, to his own very great relief - Lucien had whiled away an hour or two lying in their grand bed in the studio. He was not yet fully recovered from the stabbing, his lung still healing, and he needed the rest, no matter what his ego might have to say on the subject. You promised me you'd look after yourself, Jean had told him in that soft, faintly disappointed way she had, and he could deny her nothing. As lovely as it was having family and friends beneath their roof he found he tired easily, and would sometimes find himself gasping for breath, even when he was doing nothing strenuous at all. An hour or two was no great sacrifice, in the grand scheme of things, and it gave him time to close his eyes and lose himself in warm thoughts of their family, their future, the happiness that had so changed his life. And so he had stretched himself out upon the bed and thought of Little Blake - who had a name now, in his mind, though he would not share it with anyone - thought of how it might feel to lie in this bed with his child resting on his chest, his wife beside him, his whole world contained in that one room beneath his mother's gently sparkling flecks of gold. It was strange, really, how his life had begun in that house, how his fondest memories of childhood were made in that room, how after so many years, so many struggles, so many losses he had made his way back there at last. Strange, how his life had come full circle, how his child would be raised beneath the same roof. It was strange, but it was right, too, and the thought delighted him in a way he never could have imagined when he was a young man so determined to distance himself from his father's legacy.
When he felt that he had lingered long enough in the studio - their bedroom, now, though they still referred to it as the studio more often than not, and likely always would - he rose to his feet, tidied his hair as best he could and buttoned himself back into the shirt he'd left hanging in the wardrobe so as not to wrinkle it while he was abed. Satisfied that his appearance was smart enough to meet with Jean's approval he made his way out, following the quiet sound of his wife's laughter to the kitchen where she was holding court as she prepared their dinner.
She was a vision, his Jean, wrapped in a soft blue dress that was rather more form-fitting than most expectant mothers preferred; she'd always had a penchant for tight skirts and well-tailored blouses, his Jean, and she did not mind showing off the swell of her belly now, even if her appearance did raise a few eyebrows in town. For his part Lucien adored it, the confidence she'd found once she'd laid her burdens at his feet, and he very much appreciated the view of her now, the shine of her dark curls, the brilliance of her smile.
Matthew and Alice were there, and young Christopher as well, the four of them chatting animatedly, but before Lucien made his presence known he took stock of the situation, concern overtaking him as he realized that there were two very important ladies missing from their number. Ruby and Amelia were nowhere in sight, and this troubled him somewhat as since their arrival Ruby had seemed to him to be rather more quiet and withdrawn than a woman her age ought to have been, particularly in the presence of her own family.
"Jean, my darling," he said, stepping into the room, stopping to clap young Christopher on the shoulder as he passed.
"Oh, Lucien!" she beamed at him, everything about her disposition so bright and cheerful that even his worries for Ruby paled in comparison to the sheer luminescence of his beautiful wife.
"Are you feeling all right?" she asked him as he approached and dropped a gentle kiss against her cheek.
"Fit as a fiddle," he answered, smiling. Strange, how everyone else in the room seemed to vanish when he was looking into Jean's eyes, strange how nothing else seemed to matter when she was by his side. "Is there any tea about?"
Jean assured him that indeed there was, and in a moment he was cradling a cup in his hands.
"Better make that two," he murmured to her softly while Matthew and Alice kept Christopher entertained in the background.
Jean seemed to understand at once, fetching down another cup and filling it, adding a single sugar cube.
"Sunroom," she whispered to him conspiratorially.
He kissed her again, grateful as ever for that keen intuition so characteristic of his darling wife, and then he was stepping from the kitchen with a cup in each hand, maneuvering the door with his foot.
She was right, as ever, for when Lucien made his way into the sunroom it was to find Ruby sitting on the little sofa with Amelia on her lap. Ruby looked up sharply at the sound of his footfalls, but when she realized who had intruded upon her solitude she relaxed - albeit only very slightly.
"Doctor Blake," she greeted him in a tired little voice.
Amelia's eyes went wide and she let forth a shrill sound of glee at his approach; there was a very nervous moment as Lucien sat down beside Ruby and Amelia tried to scramble into his lap and he very nearly upended both cups of tea right then and there, but they made it through, somehow, and Amelia settled on his lap, reaching up to pat his bearded cheek with one soft little hand while Ruby took the tea cup he offered her with a quiet word of thanks.
There were many things Lucien wanted to say to his young daughter-in-law, but he had no idea how to even begin a conversation with her, and so for a moment he focused his attention on Amelia, a bright-eyed, curious child who seemed most enamored with her grandfather's beard. Having been born and raised on an army base Lucien knew she likely hadn't seen a single bearded face in all her young life, and he indulged her, even when she caught her little fingers in the short strands and tugged, babbling gleefully all the while.
"She adores you, you know," Ruby told him in a soft voice.
"She's a delightful child," Lucien answered, trying to hide his wince. "It's lovely having you all here."
Carefully he sat Amelia on her feet, watched her totter off to explore the sunroom, though she kept close enough to the sofa to set her mother's mind at rest. It seemed that Ruby had made an overture of sorts, and so Lucien resolved himself to carry on the conversation, to determine the cause of Ruby's discontent.
"My daughter Li is just about your age, you know," he told her. "Amelia reminds me of her, in some ways."
Ruby regarded him cautiously over the rim of her teacup; though she was somewhat reticent she was in truth a beautiful young woman, with her huge, trusting doe's eyes, her soft, honey-brown hair. She was a tiny thing, of a height with Jean but waifish and retiring. Though he had shared a few meals with her in Adelaide he found he knew almost nothing about her, her family, her interests, her general outlook on the world, only that Jean had described her as highly-strung in a disapproving tone of voice. How Ruby and Christopher had met, how they had courted, how they had come to be wed was something else Lucien had missed, another piece of their family puzzle that had until now been hidden from his view.
"Where is she? Your daughter?" Ruby asked him, turning those brown eyes his way, her expression full of concern.
"Shanghai, with her family," Lucien explained. "We were separated during the war, you see. Her mother was killed and I was captured, and she was taken in by a Chinese couple. It took me seventeen years to find her."
"Oh, how dreadful," she sighed, and in her tone, in her face, he saw a depth of empathy he had not quite expected from one so young. It would seem that while Christopher was as self-controlled and reserved as his mother Ruby wore her very heart on her sleeve, and a sudden smile came to Lucien, as he thought how well Ruby must compliment her husband, how Jean herself had settled down with a man more ruled by his emotions than she. There was a sort of symmetry in their circumstances that he rather approved of.
"It was dreadful," he conceded, "being separated from her. But we've reconnected now. I traveled there to see her, and I got to meet my granddaughter."
"Oh, that's wonderful, Doctor Blake," she told him, true joy replacing her concern so quickly it left Lucien feeling a bit dizzy.
"Please," he said with a smile, "call me Lucien. And yes, it was rather wonderful. My little granddaughter Yu is only a few months older than Amelia."
"Oh, I do so hope they'll get to meet one day," Ruby said, a bit wistfully, and there it was again, a sudden, sharp change in her tone, in the lines of her face, as if with each passing second the course of her shifted and turned, unpredictably. "They should know their cousins."
He stared at her, momentarily stunned by the way she had so easily accepted him, and by extension his daughter and granddaughter, as part of the family.
"And Christopher's little brother should get to know his nieces," she added, though her smile had faded somewhat. And wasn't that a curious thing, he thought, that Yu should so delight her, while Little Blake seemed to cause her concern?
"I see Jean's gotten to you then," he said in an attempt at forced joviality. "She's convinced the baby is going to be a boy."
"Jean says a mother always knows," Ruby answered morosely, ducking her gaze to stare down at her tea cup. "I didn't have any idea, with Amelia. I didn't have any idea whether she would be a boy or a girl, and I didn't know what to do with her and I…" she caught herself before she could finish that thought, swallowing down her words with a sip of tea. She had said enough, however, to reveal her own insecurities, to shed some light onto the nature of the tension between herself and Jean.
"Jean has her own reasons for believing what she does," he told her carefully, as kindly as he could manage. He could never, would never dream of betraying the trust Jean had placed in him, sharing her secrets with her daughter-in-law, but it suddenly seemed very important that he talk to Ruby about it, that he try to assuage her obvious concerns about her own skills as a mother. "But she has no more insight than you or I do, really. There could be two of them in there for all we know."
Ruby offered him a weak little smile. "Still, though. I'm sure Jean's right. Jean's right about everything."
Lucien had spoken those same words himself more times than he could count, had ruefully confessed that Jean was smarter than him - and likely anyone he knew - but somehow coming from Ruby it didn't quite seem like praise.
"Ruby-"
"She doesn't like me," the girl confessed, and at last it all became quite clear to Lucien. He spared a glance for Amelia, who was staring longingly through the glass towards the garden beyond, but the child was behaving herself and in no immediate danger of harm, and so he returned his attentions once more to her mother. It seemed that Ruby had just given him the reasoning behind her silences, her apparent melancholy. So far he had gathered that she was a thoughtful, emotional sort of girl, and that Jean's approval - an approval Ruby felt she had not earned - was very important to her. And Lucien knew Jean would be devastated to think that she had wounded Ruby in such a way, that regardless of any fault Jean might have found in her it would have been Jean's preference for them all to get along.
"I'm sure that's not true," he demurred, but then Ruby turned those hopeless eyes on him and protested at once.
"Everything I do is wrong," she said, somewhat desperately. "When we brought Amelia home all she did was cry and I didn't know how to fasten her nappies and I couldn't keep up with the laundry and then Jean came and she was perfect at everything and Amelia loved her, and…"
Once more it seemed that Ruby realized too late how much she had divulged and hasten to quiet herself, but Lucien was grateful for her candor. Yes, he supposed that to a young mother just learning how to manage her first child Jean would seem perfect, given how adept she was at managing a household, performing a dozen different tasks at once, all without a single strand of hair out of place. But Jean was much older, had looked after a farm and her boys and then Thomas Blake and then his irascible son, had followed a meandering path all her own that had brought her through so many different phases of life, none of which Ruby had experienced for herself.
"Oh, Ruby," he murmured. "You must remember, Jean's had rather a lot of practice at this. She had two babies of her own, and she already learned all those lessons. And she has to keep up with me, and I can tell you, that's no easy feat."
Ruby offered him a watery smile, her lower lip trembling as she tried so very hard not to cry.
"You and Jean are very different," he continued, and though his companion's face fell he soldiered on, determined to speak his piece. "But then you and Christopher are very different, aren't you? And he loves you very much."
"Chris is the best thing that's ever happened to me," Ruby told him, and her voice was so very earnest he knew those words must have been true.
"Jean and Christopher are very much alike," he reminded her, grateful to finally reach the crux of his position on the matter. "They're both very practical, and they do what needs doing, but they aren't used to discussing...personal matters. Feelings. I'm sure Jean never meant to hurt you, Ruby, she just wanted to help. That's how she shows her affection to the ones she loves, by looking after them. You needed help, and she went all the way to Adelaide to be there for you." And she had left him in the process, nearly broken his heart in two, but of course he didn't think Ruby needed to know about the entirety of the circumstances surrounding Jean's departure and subsequent return.
"Everything I did with Amelia was wrong," Ruby interjected then.
"Did Jean tell you that you were making a mistake?" he asked shrewdly. No, Lucien had not been there to witness their every interaction, but he knew his Jean, and he was certain now that whatever had transpired between the two women had been no more than a miscommunication caused by their wildly different natures.
"No," Ruby answered slowly.
"Did she make suggestions? Offer to teach you a different way?"
Ruby nodded dumbly, the light of comprehension dawning in her eyes.
"Jean had to look after Jack and young Christopher all by herself, for a very long while. And I can promise you that when she was your age, when the boys were little like Amelia is now, she made her fair share of mistakes. But she learned, and maybe she wants to help you, so you don't have to struggle the same way she did."
With a soft sound of distress Ruby placed her teacup on the low table in front of them and buried her face in her hands, and Lucien just watched her, somewhat aghast and completely unprepared to deal with a crying woman in his sunroom.
"I've made a right mess of things," she told him thickly, the shaking of her shoulders giving evidence of her tears.
"It's hardly your fault, Ruby," he told her firmly. "It's difficult sometimes for us to understand one another, even the people we love. But I know Jean wants you to be happy, and you've made her so happy, coming to stay with us."
It seemed that little Amelia had taken note of her mother's distress for she toddled over to them on unsteady legs, reaching for her mother's hand with a curious expression on her face. Ruby scooped her up at once, cradling her child close as she took a deep, steadying breath.
"Thank you, Doctor - Lucien," she said then, catching his eye over Amelia's head. "I hadn't thought about it like that. Christopher doesn't talk about it much, what things were like when he was little."
"Maybe you should ask him sometime," Lucien suggested. It had done him a world of good, learning more about Jean, her history, the many experiences that had shaped her into the woman that he loved, all the little moments he had missed that knitted themselves together to form the truth of her.
"I think you'll make a wonderful father," Ruby told him. "You've helped me so much, and you've only been sitting here a few minutes."
It was Lucien's turn to offer her a sad smile; he had been a wonderful father once, when Li was small, but those days were so far behind him, and he worried, sometimes, about what would happen when Little Blake arrived. He was far too old to be starting over, had been far too long without his child by his side, and his memories of her early days were cloaked in a golden haze, treasured but distorted by grief and the passage of time. How he would fare in the future remained to be seen, and he had his doubts.
"We all just do the best we can," he told her.
For that was what he intended to do himself. Little Blake would be joining them in two months' time, and by then it wouldn't really matter what Lucien thought or feared about himself. He would have his child to hold, to protect, to guide, to cherish, and he was determined to do for her what he never could for her sister, to be there for her, every minute, for as long as he was able. And he would love her, as he loved them all, his darling girls. Even Ruby, who now counted among their number.
"Right then," he said, gathering himself and rising somewhat creakily to his feet. "Let's see about dinner, shall we?"
Ruby smiled and followed his lead, holding Amelia on her hip while Lucien juggled their teacups and they went back into the kitchen, together. The scene that greeted them was much the same as the one Lucien had left behind, all these people he loved gathered into one room with glasses in their hands and smiles upon their faces, laughing and talking to one another while the wireless played softly in the background.
"There you are," Matthew grumbled, but Jean just smiled, catching Lucien's gaze and lifting a single eyebrow in question. He gave a subtle shake of his head, as if to tell her we'll discuss it later, and she seemed to accept that.
"Is it nice out, Ruby?" Jean asked softly as Lucien approached his wife, carefully depositing the teacups in the sink before allowing his hand to come to rest at the small of her back, leaning over to catch a whiff of the meal she was preparing.
"It's a lovely evening," Ruby answered, making her way towards her husband, a lightness to her step and a clarity to her voice that had not been there before. "And dinner smells wonderful."
"Oh!" Jean seemed genuinely delighted by the praise. "Well, thank you, Ruby. Why don't you have a seat, and I'll get you something to drink?"
And just like that they slid into place, all six of them - well, seven, counting little Amelia, who soon became the absolute center of attention - content with one another on a beautiful Christmas Eve.