will make you feel better.”
Abigail accepted the glass. “Even your famous spa water won’t cure what ails me. I said yes, Jess. Me.”
She looked up to find her friend smiling. “You. It happens to the best of us. He’s a fine man.”
Abigail turned the glass in her hand. “I want to believe that. I must believe that. But how did you know, Jess, that Lark was the right one for you? He left you behind once. What made you trust him again?”
Jess cocked her head as if remembering. “I didn’t trust him, not at first. He hadn’t been content to stay before. Why would I think he would stay now? I was born in Grace-by-the-Sea. I didn’t know anything beyond its borders. I had to look inside my heart and realize I could love him—here, there, wherever he went, so long as we were together.”
Abigail nodded. “You took a chance on him.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to risking all for love.” She drank deep of the warm, effervescent waters, then set down the glass. “Oh, but I don’t know how you suffer this every day.”
Jess laughed. “I don’t. I just fill glasses so others can drink.”
Linus came out of the examining room then. Meeting Abigail’s gaze, he smiled, and something far better than mineral water bubbled up inside her. He crossed to her side.
“More water, I see,” he said with a nod to the empty glass. “Everything all right?”
“Everything is perfect,” she assured him.
Jess excused herself with a smile. Abigail shook her head. What, did her friend think they would exchange words of love in the middle of the spa?
Where nearly everyone was now watching.
She turned her back on the guests. “Is your day going well?”
“Well enough,” he said. “I sent a note by post this morning. A friend of my father is serving in India. I asked him to look up your brother, encourage him to write home.”
Tears threatened. “Oh, Linus. How thoughtful.”
He took her hand, pressed a kiss against the back. “Do not thank me yet. India is a vast nation. Doctor Petry may not be where I last heard from him. He may not be able to find your brother.”
“It is far more than we had,” she said, clinging to his hand a moment. Mrs. Rand trotted past, surprisingly spry after yesterday. In fact, she made a show of heading for the examining room. Abigail released him so he could attend to his duties.
“I cannot focus on anything,” she told Eva when her friend came to congratulate her as she was working in the shop later that afternoon. She didn’t ask how Eva knew. The story was obviously flying all over the village.
“I remember,” Eva commiserated, leaning against the counter. “I’ve only been married a month, after all, and two of those weeks James was in London. I’d be delighted to help, whatever you need.”
They strategized details between customers, and Abigail had a better idea of what might suit her and Linus by the time she closed the shop that evening. She even had a list of questions to ask him. Did he prefer beef or fish? Dancing or merely fellowship? It generally fell on the lady’s family to organize a wedding, but she and Linus were to be partners, after all.
On the way back down the corridor, she stopped in her studio. The painting she’d started for him sat on its easel, waiting.
She eyed it. As a youth, she’d started painting the sea because it was big and complicated, and its many moods matched the tumult inside her. Seascapes had been so popular with their visitors that she’d continued to paint them. She rarely included people in the scene. Someone might look like someone, and they wouldn’t be flattered. Or someone else might be hurt that she hadn’t chosen them as her subject instead. But there, in the foreground of this painting, she could almost picture people, gazing toward the horizon and the future. She reached for her smock.
Her mother found her there a short time later. “I expect Linus here any moment. Don’t you want to see him?”
Linus. Even her mother felt comfortable using his first name now. Abigail smiled as she stepped back. Three people—a man, a woman, and a boy—gazed into the blue. “Certainly I want to see him. I’ll just be a bit longer.”
Her mother didn’t move.
Abigail turned to find her face slumped, tears gathering. She set down her brush and pallet. “What’s wrong?”
Her mother’s voice trembled. “You blame me, for