Page 103 of Forget Me Not

When Lucas left for Lampton Park, Julia found herself, for the first time since her flight from Brier Hill, reluctant to see him go. She had very nearly asked him to stay longer, but the caution she’d learned over the years reared its head. She knew she had ample reason for caution.

His necklace hung around her neck. She ran her fingers over the beautiful blue stone. “I want to believe in him,” she whispered to her empty bedchamber. “I almost—almost—think I do.”

That day alone, she had inched ever closer to letting go of her uncertainties. The many wonderful moments they’d had at Brier Hill added to it. His attentiveness and affection. His kind and compassionate heart. A lifetime of connections.

If only her mind and heart could feel some certainty that she could, indeed, trust the promises he was making. Her thoughts spun in dozens of directions. As she flipped through memories of that day, she paused on the five letters she’d received from the Gents. She’d kept the sealed missives in her coat pocket, not wanting to read them with Lucas in case the contents were embarrassing or uncomfortable. But she was alone now, and the letters were still waiting.

She crossed to the wardrobe and fished in her coat pocket for the letters. Each was addressed the same way but in different handwriting. They truly had all five written to her.

Each letter began identically.

Our Julia,

Lucas loves you.

Then their letters went on to share reminiscences of Lucas over the years, moments all tied to her.

“When we were at Eton, Lucas received a letter from his mother with tales of home,” Niles wrote. “You, he was informed, had chased off a would-be thief from the dry goods shop by throwing plums at him. Lucas was so proud of his fiery little Julia that he told anyone and everyone.”

Aldric shared recollections from Cambridge and the years that had followed. “I suspect the only phrase we heard more often than ‘Who would like to climb to the top of that mountain?’ was ‘I hope Julia will undertake a few larks when I next see her. I miss her.’ You have always been important to him, though he clearly struggled to show you just how much.”

Digby had known Lucas since their first year at Eton. He wrote of those early years and one difficult time in particular. “I was at his side when word arrived of your twin sister, Charlotte’s, death. He was devastated by her passing but could not be consoled because your fate had not been communicated and he feared you too had been lost. He wept inconsolably for his ‘dear, sweet Julia.’ We all knew he was fond of you, but that was the moment we came to understand how much he treasured you.”

“He worked ceaselessly to convince his parents to allow him to halt his studies for a time after your mother’s passing,” Henri’s letter said. “His grief was focused on you. You never left his thoughts or his heart.”

“He spoke of you with greater frequency than even Stanley did,” Kes wrote. “That was not an easy feat.”

Sweet Stanley.

“I sat with Lucas at Lampton Park the day of your brother’s funeral,” Digby wrote. “He said very little, all of it about you: his pain on your behalf and his worry for you. My dear friend, you have seldom left his thoughts, and the place you claim in his heart is permanent. He loved you then. He loves you now. He will always love you.”

Tears trickled from her eyes as she read testament after testament that she had never been forgotten as she had so long feared.

“He is not one to overlook even those who feel invisible,” Niles wrote. “He doesn’t always know how to show it, but he sees, and he cares.”

“There is a reason we call you ‘Our Julia,’” Aldric wrote in the last letter in the pile. “No one who knows Lucas as well as we do could possibly not know you too. You have ever been an inseverable part of who he is. You are not merely held in his heart; you hold his heart. He loves you, Julia. We have known it for years. He, however, was caught unawares.”

She brushed her fingers over the tears on her cheeks.

“He has stumbled his way through the past months, I have no doubt,” Aldric continued. “But all of us will attest that his devotion to you is real and deep and abiding. Trust in that.”

“Trust that he loves you.”

Trust.

She wanted to trust him. She wanted to know her growing faith in him, in his loyalty and promises, was well-founded and safe. There had been indications the past months that he was the same loving and dependable Lucas she’d trusted with her whole soul when she was little, but those moments had been clouded by worry and fear.

The years of silent separation had placed a chasm of pain between them. She’d focused so wholly on the potential danger of that rift that she’d not even realized they’d been building a bridge.

Were the Gents’ reassurances, in tandem with all she’d seen in him lately, enough for her to have faith enough to cross it?

“Lucas loves you.”

She let her gaze wander to the miniature of herself and Charlotte, wishing her sister were here. Her eyes, however, focused on something else on the bedside table, something she’d not noticed lying there before.

A book.

Chapter Thirty-Six

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