Chapter 30
Hope was nervous as she waited for Charles’s friends to arrive, but from the moment she walked into the hallway to greet them, she realised she needn’t have worried—she’d never felt such warmth from strangers before.
‘This is her?’ asked a woman with silver-grey hair piled on top of her head.
‘Well, unless there are any other gorgeous young women joining us, I’d say it’s a fair assumption,’ a handsome older man said, laughing as he held out his hand to Hope.
‘Yes, this is indeed my niece,’ Charles said, coming to stand beside her as the other man kissed her hand. ‘Everyone, this is Hope.’
‘I’m Peter,’ he said, his eyes as warm as his smile as they met hers. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
Hope laughed as the woman elbowed Peter out of the way and reached forward to clasp Hope’s hand.
‘Elizabeth! Always so impatient,’ Peter muttered, flashing Hope a good-natured smile.
‘Hope, it’s so wonderful to meet you, and look at you!’ Elizabeth said, glancing at her stomach, her smile wide. ‘Absolutely stunning, just as Charles described.’
‘I, well—’ Hope stuttered, not quite sure what to say in response.
‘Hope, we’re a collection of misfits and society outsiders,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Please don’t give your pregnancy or lack of a husband a second thought, because we certainly won’t.’ Her smile told Hope that her words were said with kindness.
‘One of the reasons we’re such good friends is that we come together for fun, not judgement,’ Peter said, leaning in as someone else burst through the front door with a bottle of champagne in hand. ‘You’ll come to love us once you know us, although it could be said that we’re an acquired taste.’
‘We’re an eclectic mix of spinsters and old bachelors,’ Elizabeth said with a laugh, as Charles left Hope’s side to greet the new guest, with kisses to each cheek. ‘I’ve never wanted to get married, but I found this lot to be myself with.’
‘The truth is that I never wanted to marry, either,’ Hope told her. ‘Until I met Gus.’
Elizabeth linked her arm through Hope’s and they walked slowly through to the dining room.
‘The difference, my dear, is that you chose your Gus. I imagine before that you were being told who you were supposed to marry.’ One eyebrow rose in question as she seemed to study Hope’s face.
Hope nodded in reply. How right she was.
‘It’s all in the choosing,’ Elizabeth sighed after she spoke. ‘But we shall meet your Gus soon enough, I should hope?’
‘I hope you will, too,’ she murmured. ‘Charles has been so kind to me, but—’
‘Is she worrying about being an imposition again?’ It was Charles who interrupted her.
‘Yes, my darling, I fear she is. She has no idea what a joy it is to have someone new join our little dinner party.’
Before she could reply, Hope found herself blushing when the new arrival announced himself as Michael and clapped his hand to his heart.
‘Well, you could have at least warned us that she was so beautiful,’ he said, as Charles began to pour champagne and pass around the glasses.
Everyone began talking to one another then, the room eventually full of six guests, and Hope stood by the wall and smiled as she watched them all chat and laugh and tease as they sipped from their champagne flutes.
She couldn’t help but think how much they seemed like a family; an eclectic, unexpected mix of people who looked so at ease with one another.
And it struck her that, despite her obvious predicament, not one of them seemed to care about her bulging stomach and lack of husband. Which only made the decision she was wrestling with all the more difficult.
Later that night, long after everyone had gone and Hope and Charles were sitting with mugs of hot chocolate after finishing the washing-up, she finally said what she’d been thinking.
‘Charles, your friends were so accepting of me,’ she started, trying to find the right words. ‘I loved them, each and every one of them.’
‘They’re the closest I’ve had to family in a very long time, and they’ve been so looking forward to meeting you,’ he said. ‘Nothing makes me happier than knowing that you enjoyed their company.’
‘I just keep wondering about them. Have they all been cast aside by their birth families? Are you all one another has?’
His smile was small, but it was there. ‘It took us all a long while to accept our fate, but the truth is, we’re each of us very different from our families, and sometimes it’s easier to carve out a new life. With a found family.’
Hope nodded. She understood what he was saying more than many would, even if the reasons they were estranged were different.
‘Hope, many years ago, I was very much in love. It was one of the reasons I left France, and I suppose it’s also the reason I never returned.’
She swallowed, listening to him carefully, feeling that he was about to tell her something that would only make her care for him all the more.
‘Your family knew about this person?’
‘They suspected who I was, even though I was so careful to keep my feelings hidden,’ he said, setting down his still-steaming mug.
‘We were young and believed that we could run away and start a life somewhere else, that things could be different, but the world wasn’t ready for us.
And it turned out that George wasn’t prepared to live his life as an outcast with me. ’
Hope nodded, understanding what he was telling her. ‘Did he return to his family?’
Tears glistened in Charles’s eyes. ‘He did, and he married a nice woman and went on to have four children with her. He chose to return to the life he was supposed to have, not the one he wanted.’
Hope’s own eyes prickled then, feeling the pain in her uncle’s words.
‘For a long time, he sent me a Christmas card every year. Once I even saw him, here in London,’ Charles said. ‘We stopped and stared, and for a moment I thought he might have introduced me to his wife, but instead he ushered her past me and pretended he hadn’t even seen me.’
‘Oh, Charles, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, imagining his heartache—imagining if that had been her Gus doing the same.
‘I’ve been alone ever since,’ he told her. ‘It hasn’t been all bad, and I’ve had a wonderful career and made brilliant friends, but it’s never quite the same as sharing one’s life with a partner.’
‘No,’ she said, wrapping her palm more tightly around the warm mug she held. ‘No, Charles, it’s not. I wish the world was more accepting.’ Of you, of me, of the things we cannot change.
‘My dear, so do I,’ he said with a long sigh. ‘But sometimes the world surprises us and does the right thing. It brought me you, after all.’
Hope rose and placed a hand on her uncle’s shoulder, before bending low and pressing a kiss to his cheek. ‘You’re a good man, Charles,’ she murmured. ‘The very best, if you ask me.’
His smile was warm, and when his palm closed over her hand, their eyes met. Not so long ago he’d been a distant relative, but now he was the closest family member she had, and she loved him more than he’d probably ever realise.
‘There’s a reason my friends loved you so much tonight, Hope,’ he said, just as she was lifting her hand.
Her eyebrows tugged together. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you accepted them as readily as they accepted you,’ he said. ‘Your smile touched each and every one of them.’
‘It wasn’t so hard to smile, not in a room full of your friends.’ Friends who hadn’t once seemed to judge her because of her circumstances.
‘I’ve never been so proud to call someone family as I was of you tonight, Hope.’
Charles might have been the teary-eyed one at first, but as she walked back to the kitchen to rinse their empty mugs, it was her eyes that burned fiercely with unshed emotion. Because he had no idea how much his words meant to her. Or maybe, given everything else he’d just said, he did.