Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [121]
Her expression was so bleak he couldn’t bear to see it. ‘You should have told me,’ he said as he leaned over her and scooped her into his arms. ‘I love you, Beth, I know I don’t always show you, but you shouldn’t have kept this from me.’
‘They said I nearly died,’ she sobbed against his chest. ‘I wish I had, Theo. What is there for me in the future without ever having a child to love?’
‘We don’t know for certain that’s true,’ Theo said, and tears ran down his cheeks too. ‘We’ll see another doctor, we’ll make it come right.’
‘There are some things that can’t be made right,’ she said, her voice muffled against his chest.
Instinct told Theo that she felt she had been punished for having sexual relations with a man she wasn’t married to. ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you, and when you’re well again, everything will look different, you’ll see. We’ll get married one day and we’ll go home to England to see Molly. Even if we can’t have another baby, we’ll still have each other.’
She just cried against his chest, and he felt powerless to ease her pain. What could he say? He’d never hungered to have a child, he doubted any man did. He could understand Beth’s grief and disappointment, but he couldn’t presume to know how it felt.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry that I haven’t taken better care of you. Sorry that I didn’t tell you often enough that I love you. And I’m so very sorry we lost our baby. But don’t give up on me, Beth. Things may look bleak now, but they’ll get better. I promise you that much.’
Chapter Twenty-four
June 1897
‘Break out of it, sis, I’m sick of seeing that sad face!’
Beth blushed with embarrassment, for Sam’s voice seemed to boom around the railway carriage.
‘Why don’t you shout a little louder?’ she retorted sarcastically. ‘I’m sure that the people right at the back would like to hear too.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking abashed. ‘I didn’t realize I was shouting. But it seems like years since I heard you laugh or even sound excited about anything. We’ve come clean across Canada and seen so much; we’ll be in Vancouver tonight, so can’t you just perk up?’
‘Scrubbing floors, washing up and waiting on tables were hardly things to get excited about,’ she said waspishly. ‘If you can guarantee Vancouver will be better, then I might start laughing again.’
‘Maybe you’ll get a chance to play your fiddle there.’ Beth forced herself to smile. ‘Maybe, but excuse me if I don’t count on it.’
It was four months since she lost her baby, and physically she had recovered from it within a week. But hearing she would never have another child left her totally dispirited. Sometimes she stayed in bed all day, she didn’t care if the room was dirty or untidy, and when she did venture out, she avoided speaking to anyone.
Theo couldn’t have been kinder in those first three or four weeks. He brought her home delicacies, tonics, fresh fruit and chocolates, he took her out on a horse-drawn sleigh up on Mount Royal, and bought her a new dress from one of the best shops in Sherbrooke Street. Many evenings he stayed at home with her, and but for that she might have lapsed into permanent melancholy.
She was glad when the boys suggested moving on. She felt as soon as she was seeing new scenery and meeting new people that her old spirit would return.
They left Montreal by train in late March, when it was still very cold and the rivers still frozen, but spring was on its way. Theo’s theory was that the new railway running all the way across Canada to Vancouver would have created some boom towns along the route. He was right in as much as small towns had sprung up wherever the train stopped, but they weren’t the kind to yield the kind of opportunities Theo had hoped for.
A saloon, usually doubling as a hotel, dried goods, clothing and hardware shops, a timber yard, stabling and a blacksmith were about all most of these towns had to offer. The immigrants who had bought farmland in these remote places were sober, diligent and staid, not the kind to gamble with hard-earned money. Beth thought the only