23 December 1960
"Honestly, Lucien," Agnes was saying as she rose from the chair across from him, holding her handbag defensively, the way some men held cricket bats. "I would have thought you would have more important things to do today."
"You rang me, Agnes," he pointed out, smiling. Though she could be irascible and stubborn and judgmental, Agnes Clasby remained his single favorite patient, for she never hesitated to say precisely what she thought, and he knew that beneath her gruff exterior there lurked a kind heart, one that cared for him as much as he did for her. "And besides, all the arrangements are in place. There's nothing left for me to do now but show up."
"Sober," Agnes added, and Lucien laughed aloud. "I'll say it now, since I doubt you'll have much time for me at the reception tomorrow. Congratulations, Lucien."
He reached across the desk, offered her his hand to shake, and she took it. For an older lady she certainly had a firm grip, that Agnes Clasby. "And pass my regards along to that fiance of yours, as well," she continued. "Between you and me, she's the best thing that ever happened to your practice. You be sure to treat her well, Lucien."
"I do," he said, "and I will."
"Good, then." Without another word Agnes turned and departed, clutching the new prescription Lucien had written out for her against her chest.
There were no more patients on the schedule today; there had in fact been none on the schedule at all, but Agnes had rung him, and at Jean's urging Lucien had agreed to see her. He had rather hoped, before now, to spend this entire day alone with Jean, but in the end he found that the half-hour he'd spent with Agnes had not cost him so very dearly, and it had left him in high spirits. She always seemed to have that effect on him, did Agnes, even when she was admonishing him for misbehaving.
Whistling softly to himself, then, Lucien went out in search of his beloved.
It wasn't very difficult to determine where she'd gone; it was a beautiful, warm summer day, and he found her, just as he had suspected, sitting on the low sofa in the sunroom. For a moment he leaned against the doorway, watching her, smiling.
What a picture she made, his Jean, in this sun-dappled kingdom that was now entirely her own. Though Jean had been for the last eleven months living in a neat little cottage in Brown Hill she had spent her fair share of time in Lucien's abode as well, and everywhere he looked he saw her fingerprints, and was glad of it. The sunroom was perhaps the most dramatic example; before Jean it had been dry and dusty and desolate, utterly bare save for an ancient wicker sofa. With her own funds - funds Lucien was fairly certain had been supplied by Derek Alderton, though he did not dare question her on the matter - Jean had purchased a nice sofa and two matching armchairs, and then she had set to work. The tables groaned beneath an array of terracotta pots, holding begonias and orchids and strange little flowers whose names Lucien could never hope to learn. Soft, pink-petaled blooms climbed up the trellis set in one corner, and in another a sprawling tomato plant leaned precariously to the side, its vines heavy with fruit. They taste better if you grow them at home, Jean had told him, and Lucien - being fond of a tomato on his sandwich, and even more fond of his fiance - had not attempted to dissuade her. Beyond the polished glass windows of the sunroom the garden itself was a sight to behold; the grass was neat and even, now, a few of Lucien's shirts fluttering on a line Jean had strung up herself, the flowerbeds planted round the perimeter of the fence redolent with bright, growing things. A rose bush climbed up the windows of the sunroom, and beside it there bloomed a strange, spiky plant that had made Jean weep when she planted it there, though she had offered no explanation for her tears or the origin of that strange bush, nor had Lucien asked for one.
Her apron hung on a hook just inside the kitchen now, and her knitting sat in a basket beside his sofa. The rest of her things would come in time; books and clothes and bottles of perfume and boxes of photographs and memories aplenty, but in his heart she dwelled within that house already, had already begun to make it a home.
Which was not to say the process had been entirely easy; the last year had been full of tumult, as much sorrow as joy. When Jean moved into her little cottage she had begun to talk of finding some employment for herself, needing a way to fill her days and determined not to let Lucien pay for everything she needed himself. Lucien, seeing an opportunity to both provide her with a paycheck and spend more time with her in the bargain, had offered her the position of his receptionist. Mrs. Penny was a perfectly nice lady, but she was getting on in years, and her organizational skills left something to be desired. Jean had run her own business for over a decade, and was possessed of a quick and clever mind, and a mother's intuition when it came to minor medical conditions. It was Lucien's thought that Jean would be a perfect fit for such a position.
But then it turned out Jean had been cross with him for even suggesting it, thinking he meant to control her purse strings, and then when he tried to discuss the situation with Mrs. Penny she had, to his utter shock, up and quit, and said several unkind things about Jean on her way out the door. Jean thought that was a sign of worse to come; people don't want to see me in your house, Lucien. They don't want to hear my voice on the phone. They won't trust me. You'll lose your practice, and then what will you do?
The practice can hang, Lucien had told her.
Lucien suspected it was his rather cavalier disregard of his professional future that forced Jean's hand; she had always cared more for his reputation than he did. Seeking to save him from himself, then, she had reluctantly agreed, but after a single day she had settled into the job quite comfortably, ordering him about, reorganizing his filing system, taking over the bookkeeping and the patient scheduling. Yes, a small handful of patients had taken their business elsewhere, when they saw Mrs. Beazley sitting behind the desk in reception. Most of them, however, did not want to confess precisely how they had come to know about her history, and in an effort to preserve their own dignity carried on as if nothing were amiss. And after a few weeks, it all seemed...quite normal, actually.
Of course Mrs. Penny's departure had left Lucien without a housekeeper, and that presented a whole host of new complications. He did his best to carry on for a few days, but it was Jean, as ever, who recognized the problem, and sought to correct it.
"Lucien," she'd said to him quietly one evening as they sat together enjoying a simple meal Jean had prepared for them in the kitchen of her cottage. "I've been thinking."
Lucien had hummed, curious, and she had looked him in the eye, seemingly strangely nervous, though her back was ramrod straight. "I don't think you ought to hire a new housekeeper."
"Oh?" he'd asked, surprised by the suggestion. He would have expected to her say precisely the opposite; he could not wash his own clothes, or cook his own meals, and when it came to the dusting and the sweeping and the vacuuming of the rugs he was utterly lost. Besides, a bachelor keeping his own house raised eyebrows in the town, particularly one of his means; he had thought, before now, that Jean would insist on his bringing on someone new.
"I'd quite like to keep my own house," she'd told him, a sweet crimson blush creeping slowly across her cheeks. "I don't think I could bear paying someone else to do it."
That was the night he'd decided the time was right for him to propose to her, properly, for that was the first time Jean had admitted, however obliquely, that when she thought of the future she saw the pair of them, together. The reason she had given for Lucien not hiring a housekeeper had relied entirely on the assumption of her presence in his home; she had made up her mind already, and nothing could have made him happier.
And so they had carried on, over the course of the year. He had proposed, she had accepted, the invitations had been mailed, and a strangely relieved looking Father Morton had agreed to oversee the service. Flowers had been purchased, suits tailored, food and drink enough to feed an army had been laid aside for them at the Colonists'. Young Christopher's wife was expecting again and was in no condition to travel, but she had rung Jean herself to confirm that the lad would be in attendance, on the day, and would stay to celebrate Christmas with his mother for the first time in a decade. Presents had been purchased, then, for all their friends and loved ones, and a fine roast had been laid in the refrigerator for a Christmas luncheon, attended by their nearest and dearest, the day after the wedding. Train tickets had been purchased for the following Monday, to take them to Melbourne, and passage had been booked for a ship to bear them off to a honeymoon in Paris. Everything was in place; Jean had taken to looking after his house, taken to looking after him, and he had, in his own way, taken to looking after her. He danced with her laughing through the sitting room, and tried his best to be considerate of her needs, gave to her every piece of himself, and in the giving sought to bring them both to a place of happiness, together. All of it, every moment, every stolen kiss, every short-lived argument, every awkward false step and every contrite apology, every sidelong glance from a stranger in the street, every meal they'd shared with Matthew and Alice, all of it had been building to now, to this. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve; tomorrow, he would marry her at last.
"I can feel you staring," Jean said archly, taking a sip of her tea, though she did not look at him. It was an art she had perfected, watching him without giving any obvious evidence of her interest, and it delighted him.
"Can you blame me?" he asked. "I have quite the most beautiful fiance any man could dream of. I was admiring the view."
"Come and sit with me," Jean said, and so he did at once, rushed to join her there on the sofa. He slung his arm easily around her shoulders, and she leaned against him, and they both sighed in bliss.
"I keep thinking I've forgotten something," she murmured.
Lucien laughed and pressed a gentle kiss against her hair. "It's all been sorted, my darling," he reassured her. "Young Christopher's train gets in this afternoon, and we'll go and fetch him together. He'll come with Matthew and I to the Club tonight, and they'll make sure I behave myself without you there to watch over me."
Jean smoothed her hand over his thigh, and he tried not to shiver at her touch. How long had it been, since last they lay stretched out naked in a bed together? No more than a week, he thought, but too long, entirely too long.
"You will go and stay with Maureen, and in the morning, Alice will come and join you."
The most remarkable transformation of the last year, to Lucien's mind, was the change the Lock and Key had undergone. The moment ownership of the pub passed into her hands Maureen had ended the sale of sex beneath her roof. Some of the girls had left, seeking to do their business elsewhere, but a few had stayed, found decent jobs in the town and tried to make an honest go of it. She'd opened up the rooms upstairs for rent to honest travelers seeking less expensive accommodations than the Royal Cross, and her kitchen opened at lunchtime, now. There was a proper ladies' lounge and everything; the Lock and Key had become just another pub, and the fact that it was a favorite of the local police helped to keep any hints of trouble to a minimum. Jean's wedding dress even now was stored in her old suite upstairs, a suite Maureen had taken as her own, and Jean would spend one last night in that place before donning her dress and making her way to the church.
"And then, my darling, I'm going to marry you."
Jean lifted her chin, looking up at him with eyes as blue and as bright and as wide as the sea, and then she smiled.
In that smile he saw it all, every challenge, every obstacle, every grief and every joy they had faced together, from the moment they met until this one. Lucien had taken one look at her face and fallen headfirst into a wild, madly spinning love, but he had landed, safe and warm, in precisely the place he felt he was always meant to be. His home was full of love, and joy, and the warm scent of flowers, and Jean was safe, and well, and happy, and he was happy, for he had never known another woman like her, and the life they had built together was so full of friends and family and hope for the future that he had almost forgotten that man he had been before, gloomy and lonesome, staring out into the darkness. She was the sun, his Jean, and in her radiant light his heart had burst into bloom.