must have fallen asleep because she remembered nothing more. She turned to look at him, his head on the pillow next to hers, the masculine angles of his face and jaw shadowed in edges of moonlight that shone through the window. He opened his eyes.
"It's Christmas," he said.
"I believe it is." She smiled at him. This was their future and the most profound sense of peace settled over her, like nothing Idalie had ever felt before.
Ed rolled over and reached into his coat, which was on the floor. He was in his shirt sleeves and trousers, his feet bare, his shirt open. When rolled back he had a small box in his hand. "Merry Christmas, my love."
She untied the ribbon and opened the box. There was ring box inside with a small card written in a masculine scrawl,
You are more valuable to me than all the diamonds in the world, my love.
Edward
The ring was platinum, set with a large pale, pale blue stone, a multiple karat blue diamond at the center, surrounded by smaller cut diamonds. She slid it on her finger. "It's beautiful, Edward. I don't know what to say. "Thank you."
He laughed. "Just say 'I do' when the time comes. Soon."
"Soon."
"Tomorrow," he said.
"It's Christmas. Who would marry us? I want my family there."
"Okay. Two days." He laughed.
"New Year's Eve,' she said firmly, and she melted into his arms, into him, on that night when they became man and wife, when he possessed her completely, body, heart and soul. And she understood that peacefulness, that calm that had swept over her, that dream come true, and that she would never be alone again.
Epilogue
Four years later, the Lowell house was bustling and noisy and perfect, as Penny played the piano in the wrong notes, with Pirate curled in her lap, as little Josie crawled across the carpet. Miss Clement was nurse to all the children in the house, even little Harry, who was two months old and upstairs sleep in his bassinet.
Edward had built some of the tallest buildings in the city and Lowell & Green was still building. Aunt Martha returned to her native England often, but came over twice year. Ed had mastered activating yeast and the extra rise time, the unwritten secret to Aunt Martha's Cinnamon Buns. Idalie had quit her job. She made dolls for Hummingbird--the line had six dolls now, though the Josephine doll was still the bestseller, followed closely by My Lucky Penny, a beautiful doll with coppery red hair and a lucky penny in her pocket.
But Idalie had another project, something as dear to her heart as her family. That little clapboard house on Barrow Street was still there, still squeezed between two large apartment buildings. But it was not a quiet, narrow home for a lonely woman; it was much more well known, especially by the little girls of the city, the their mothers, because it was an original, the first of its kind, the Josephine Everdeane Doll Hospital.
Preview: My Something Wonderful
Book 1, The Sisters of Scotland
At a time when kings fought for the right to rule, some won, some lost, and the women who loved them paid the price….
He took her from all she had ever known, asked her to trust him when she most needed someone to trust, and she followed with her heart, unaware he carried a dark secret that could tear them apart.
Turn the page to
READ AN EXCERPT OF GLENNA’S STORY
Chapter 1
The Western Isles
Under the rare glare of an extremely warm sun, Glenna Gordon ran across the moors toward the brutal cliffs of the coast, her wild black hair as free as the seabirds calling and wheeling in the cloudless blue sky beyond. A great brown beastie of a dog the size of a pony loped by her side, leaving only to romp and bark at the queeping plovers flushed out from the heath. Even in summer, such overly hot weather was rare; its warmth and intensity had burned away whatever morning dew spotted the wild pansies on the heath, and the barbaric heat of previous two days had turned clusters of weeds dry enough to crack beneath her feet.
During this time of year, only a few hours of darkness befell the island and the night before had been short, the air still as stone, and warm. The promise of another eternal summer day, one of scorched air and sweaty skin, sent her to one of the island’s few beach coves.
Standing near the rocks below the cliffs, the