My One True Love Read online

  Table of Contents

  She was beginning to see why...

  OTHER TITLES BY DEBORAH SMALL

  My One True Love | Book III | Dear One Series | DEBORAH | SMALL

  My One True Love

  Prologue | Ghosts Past and Present

  Chapter 1 | Sugar Hill

  Chapter 2 | All Hers

  Chapter 3 | Wolfish

  Chapter 4 | I Will. I Am. I Can So.

  Chapter 5 | Relief and Respect

  Chapter 6 | The Archive

  Chapter 7 | Ashes of a Ruined Heart

  Chapter 8 | Complicated Family

  Chapter 9 | Whose Inheritance?

  Chapter 10 | Complicated Correspondence

  Chapter 11 | People Past

  Chapter 12 | A Request

  Chapter 13 | Red-Headed Black Widow

  Chapter 14 | Of Letters and Legalities

  Chapter 15 | Need

  Chapter 16 | Pain as Gramophone

  Chapter 17 | Are You Certain?

  Chapter 18 | Last Will and Testament

  Chapter 19 | Between Scylla and Charybdis

  Chapter 20 | Better to Give Than to Receive

  Chapter 21 | No Thought, No Reason

  Chapter 22 | Education and Transformation

  Chapter 23 | Dare Me Do

  Chapter 24 | That Way Madness Lies

  Chapter 25 | Foolish Pride

  Chapter 26 | Be Strong. Be Brave.

  Chapter 27 | Pain Relief

  Chapter 28 | Time and Reason

  Chapter 29 | Simmy

  Chapter 30 | A Job Well Done

  Chapter 31 | Unexpected Visitors

  Chapter 32 | Revelry and Reminiscence

  Chapter 33 | Welcome Back

  Chapter 34 | No Time for Regret

  Chapter 35 | Whitey

  Chapter 36 | Nowhere to Hide

  Chapter 37 | End the Confusion

  Chapter 38 | Affirming

  Chapter 39 | Mr. and Mrs.

  Chapter 40 | My One True Love

  Epilogue | Forever Family

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  She was beginning to see why...

  MR. BANNER HAD DIVED in from shore and remained near the middle of the pond where it was deep enough for him to tread water without stirring up the pond’s bottom.

  Maybe it would be wiser for her to turn around now, grab up her belongings, and head for the manor, pausing partway along the path in the sheltering screen of shrubbery to put herself back to order as best she could without aid of a mirror, or soap to cleanse her feet of detritus picked up along the way.

  Better yet, why didn’t you leave your dress on in the first place and return home when he tried to run you off with his blatant dare?

  And that was why.

  She’d told him she’d not be run off. Even by him.

  OTHER TITLES BY DEBORAH SMALL

  DEAR ONE SERIES

  My Dear One

  My Own

  Three Wishes: A Dear One Christmas Novella

  HONOURABLE HEARTS SERIES

  A Darling for a Duke

  My One True Love

  Book III

  Dear One Series

  DEBORAH

  SMALL

  My One True Love Copyright © 2021 by Deborah Small. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Victoria Cooper and DSB Creative

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Deborah Small

  www.deborahsmall.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: January 2021

  DelphinuS Books

  PRINT ISBN-978-1-7753173-5-7

  EBOOK ISBN-978-1-7753173-4-0

  To my BFFs,

  In Margaret exists a little of each of you—

  your daring, your courage, your conviction, your compassion...

  your love.

  Thank you for being my friends.

  My One True Love

  Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

  We must cultivate our garden.

  —CANDIDE, VOLTAIRE

  Prologue

  Ghosts Past and Present

  BELLAIRE, FL

  March 1915

  THE STARS WERE AS HARD, and the moon as bright, as the last time she had faced the ocean at night, though the air was not nearly as bitterly cold. Still, she hugged her shawl tight around her shoulders as waves pounded the sand, steady and persistent, like the ghost who’d driven her from her bed.

  “Go, Margaret. You must go now. There’s no time left to waste.”

  “I won’t. I won’t leave you—”

  “You will. You must leave me. Now. This is one of the last lifeboats. Now get in—”

  “Margaret? Dearest?”

  She swiped her cheeks with her palms and turned around. “George. What are you doing out here?”

  Light from the Belleview Hotel behind him glowed off his white shirt as he stepped off the lawn and started down the sandy slope towards her.

  “I think that was my line, love.”

  “Oh.” She willed a smile. “I...couldn’t sleep.”

  “Nor could I, once I awoke to find you gone.” He stopped in front of her, his smile fading as he raised a hand to thumb the dampness on her cheek. She closed her eyes, guilt slicing through her with each wave that carved the shore.

  Facing the Gulf of Mexico, she drew his arms around her from behind and blinked back fresh tears as he braced his chin on the top of her head. Easing out a shaky breath, she said, “The sound and smell of the ocean, it—”

  “Say no more, love,” he said. “I should have realised.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” she whispered, watching moonlight skate along the crests of waves. “How could you, when I didn’t know how being here would affect me?”

  “Do you want to talk about him?”

  “No.” It felt wrong to even think about him now she was remarried, not that George discouraged her. Until tonight, he had never encouraged her either. William existed between them as part of her history neither acknowledged nor disavowed.

  His arms tightened around her. “You know it’s not your fault, what happened to him. Smith knew there were icebergs in the area. He shouldn’t have been racing that ship through the night—”

  “Please, George, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry.” He kissed her neck, just below her ear. “As long as you know—”

  “I know.”

  He fell silent, and they spooned standing up while waves rolled and broke and stars twinkled as sharp as the pinpoints of pain sparking inside her.

  The sound and smell of the gulf might have roused William’s ghost, but her sleeplessness took root in something she had yet to find courage to discuss with George. She had barely found the courage to acknowledge the truth herself.

  She inhaled. “I was thinking—”

  “That we could adopt?”

  “What?” She twisted to face him.

  He grasped her hand when she started to draw away, and said softly, “I know that you and William had planned to adopt Dianna’s child—”

  “No.” She wrested her hand free and took a step backwards. “Please, George, no. I can’t discuss it. I won’t.”

/>   “But—”

  “No.” She whirled and started walking, grateful for the shifting sand that explained her wobbly gait as she struggled against a maelstrom of emotion.

  It had taken an interminable amount of time to come to terms with all she had lost along with William. Not just him and their six-year marriage, but the dream. The dream she had built on the promise of adopting another woman’s child. A woman who was now one of her dearest friends and the best mother a little boy could hope for. A dream she had been forced to abandon after the Titanic dragged William and their life savings to the bottom of the Atlantic. A dream she had put to rest when she’d accepted George’s proposal, along with his assurance that her barrenness was not a barrier to their happiness.

  “I’m sorry, Margaret, if I got it wrong,” he called. “Truly, I am. Please, tell me what you were thinking.”

  She stopped and, drawing a deep breath, turned around to face him.

  He was about ten yards away, the hotel on the rise behind him like a ship with square portholes, run aground.

  Gritting her teeth against an irrational surge of fear and a stronger urge to incite a row to disperse it, she returned to stand before him, meeting his worried gaze.

  “Teaching, George,” she rasped. “That’s what I was thinking. That I’d like to teach again. I miss it. I miss my students. I don’t need a child of my own,” she added in a less aggrieved tone, “but I would desperately, desperately love to teach again.”

  “Teach?” he repeated, as though she had announced a mad desire to fly to the moon on the back of an albatross.

  “Yes. Teach.”

  He cleared his throat. “You know—you knew...” He cleared his throat again. “Travel is a necessary part of what I do, Margaret. You know that. I design blueprints and oversee builds and expansions for clients all over the country. You assured me you understood that. Understood that you’d have to give up teaching if you married me. Now, I can give you one child, but a classroom full? No, I—”

  “I’m not asking, George.”

  “What?” He scowled. “Not asking? Then, what?” He took a step back. “You want a divorce? To go back to Texas—”

  “No. George—” She reached for him and managed to grab his wrist before he stepped further back. “I’m saying that I want to tutor. In whatever city or town we’re in, for however long we’re there.”

  “Tutor?” There was only slightly less incredulity in his voice.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “Tutor.”

  She couldn’t fault his confusion. She had convinced herself that she could resume the genteel life of a pampered wife like the one she’d enjoyed with William in England before they’d decided to emigrate to America. She thought she could. And for the first few months after she’d resigned her position, it had been easy. She’d been too busy, helping friends and loved ones after a tornado tore their world apart, to miss teaching. But they were all back on their feet now, homes rebuilt, families reunited, and futures renewed. Her and George’s help was no longer needed. So here they were in Florida, the first of many of George’s work sites she would accompany him to, with nothing more than talk of the war in Europe and its effect on trade with America to distract her after three years caught in a perpetual beehive of activity, surrounded by her late husband’s family and a schoolroom full of children. She flinched when George stepped up and cupped her face in his hands, but relaxed when he smiled.

  “Whatever you want, Margaret,” he said softly. “Whatever you need. I’ll help you. Your happiness is all that matters to me.”

  “You mean it?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Yes, Margaret, I do.”

  Blinking tears, she smiled. “Oh, George, thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “No.” His lips were warm and tender as he brushed them across hers. “Thank you. You made me the happiest man in the world the day you agreed to marry me. And I’m going to make it my life’s work to ensure that you can say the same about me.”

  Chapter 1

  Sugar Hill

  MAY 30TH, 1916

  Bellman County, Georgia

  THE AIR WAS AS DENSE and moist as steam from a kettle.

  Margaret leaned against the coach’s burgundy, velvet-lined seat and resisted the urge to loosen the buttons at her throat, rip off her gown, and gasp for air. She could strip naked and it would make no difference. There was no breeze but that generated by the horses’ ponderous pace, and it was too hot to ask the poor beasts to do more than plod.

  She checked her timepiece to discover barely five minutes had passed since they’d turned off the main road onto a long, meandering uphill drive dominated, at its entrance, by a white-painted iron arch scrolled with two words: SUGAR HILL.

  What am I doing here?

  But of course, she knew the answer. It was folded neatly in the envelope inside her portmanteau.

  Dear Mrs. Sweeney,

  As Mr. George Sweeney’s personal attorney and friend, it is my duty to inform you that his will was read today, and he has bequeathed to you the entirety of his estate, including SUGAR HILL, the Sweeney family plantation in Georgia. It’s been in the family since...

  She’d stopped reading at that point, letting the letter slip from her fingers and flutter to the floor. Her dear friend Dianna had picked it up, in the same way she had retrieved her from the Belleview Hotel and taken her home to Texas with her after George had plummeted from the bridge build he’d designed and had been overseeing. An instantaneous death, his foreman, the police, and the coroner had all assured her in low sympathetic tones as they patted her hand, as if George’s lack of suffering was supposed to ease her agony. It didn’t. It only incensed her, knowing he was at peace while she was once again left to pick up the pieces.

  Closing her eyes, she fought a rise of anger, something she found increasingly necessary as the melancholic fog she’d existed in for so many months dissipated in wispy degrees.

  She snapped her eyes open when the darkness behind her closed lids abruptly grew darker and the temperature inside the coach grew moderately cooler.

  Huge, moss-tufted tree trunks slid past the windows. Shifting closer to the right-side window, she looked out.

  The moss-draped and leafy branches of massive oaks arced up and over the drive, tangling with their kin reaching from the other side and forming a natural, shaded archway. Her throat tightened.

  She and William had ridden under similar natural arches in the English countryside.

  But this wasn’t England. And she was most definitely not taking a trip down memory lane.

  Shoving all vestiges of sentiment deep inside her where they belonged, she straightened and glanced down when her boot caught on something: her portmanteau of legal documents that had precipitated her journey down an unfamiliar yet uncomfortably familiar laneway in an unfamiliar coach manned by a complete stranger. Nudging the soft-sided bag under her seat with her heel, she firmed her jaw.

  She’d made her decision. Now she would have to make the best of what George had given her.

  She had no choice. It was this, or live off of the generosity of her former in-laws, whom she considered family. But she would not do that, no matter their assurance she was welcome to stay as long as she wished. Cousin Jake and Dianna had their hands full with four children and Dianna’s youngest sister Elizabeth. Nor would she accept Aunt Eleanor’s generous offer that Margaret could stay with her—forever if she wished.

  She’d lived with William’s aunt for six months immediately following his death. And though Eleanor was a lovely, lovely woman who never stuck her nose anywhere it wasn’t invited, Margaret could not awaken every morning to a living and breathing reminder of William and, more importantly, of her dependency on his family. She needed something of her own. Something for herself. Something besides other people’s charity.

  Given she would never marry again, and there were relatively few other ways she could afford a home of her own short of selling her soul—among other
parts of herself—she had reluctantly concluded that the best way to mark the one-year anniversary of George’s death was to uproot herself one final time and embrace what he’d wanted her to have: Sugar Hill.

  As though to shine a spotlight on her decision, sunlight flooded into the coach as it broke out of the archway of trees and curved around a keyhole drive.

  She clenched her black-gloved hands as what little moisture existed in her mouth evaporated, taking with it her resolve and bravado.

  How might they receive her? The telegraph she’d sent from Atlanta the evening before provided little warning of her impending arrival, though that had been by design.

  On the advice of Mr. Lyons, whom she’d met in Florida when he’d come to take receipt of the casket containing George’s body, she’d left Sugar Hill’s management to its tenured overseer, Mr. Banner, for the past year. It had not been a huge risk on her part. He’d managed the estate on George’s behalf for close to a decade before it had so unceremoniously landed in her lap—and quite competently, too, if the records she’d received from him monthly were accurate.

  Still, it never hurt to show up unannounced. Or at least on short notice. Time limits and the unexpected had a way of exposing cracks in efficacy and character.

  The coach creaked to a halt, and a heartbeat later, the door opened. A Negro man of average height and above-average deference, dressed in the familiar uniform of a butler, stepped back to bow his grizzled head as he raised a white-gloved hand to aid her exit. She remained seated, staring at the grouping of coloured people lined up in neat rows on the lawn and, behind them, the massive, white-columned house.

  It was larger than anything she had conjured in her imagination. Almost as large as the country house she and William had once owned in Devon.

  Swallowing the dryness in her throat, she brought her gaze back to the people.