Page 65 of The Mister I Married

“Well, I certainly will be after this walk.” She glanced over at him. “Just where are we going, anyway?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

She arched one brow, shifting the quilt in her arms. “Are we almost there, at least?”

“Have patience, my lady,” he said, battling a smile. “Enjoy this beautiful day.”

She huffed out a little sigh. “Patience is not one of my strong suits.”

“Then think of this as an opportunity for self-improvement.”

The look she gave him made him laugh out loud, and he was still chuckling a few moments later when they crested a gentle slope, and the pond finally came into view.

“Oh, how lovely,” Emmy murmured, pausing to take in the sight.

Alex nodded his agreement. He’d seen this view a thousand times before, but it still brought him pleasure—the wide expanse of deep blue water sparkling beneath the sun, cradled by wild grasses and lush weeping willows.

“I thought we could have our picnic here,” he said, leading her to a cozy spot nestled between two willows, their canopy providing both shade and privacy.

“Yes,” Emmy said. “This will do nicely.”

Alex set the basket down and the two of them spread the quilt out on the grass.

Emmy sat, curling her legs beneath her skirts while Alex collected the basket and joined her.

He began unpacking the food, a veritable feast of ham and cheese, sliced bread, apples and oranges, boiled eggs, pickled beets and a jug of lemonade.

Emmy stacked a slice of ham and a wedge of cheddar between two bread slices and ate a hearty bite. “Delicious,” she said after she’d swallowed. “I’m glad I let you drag me outside today, even if it is only for an hour. I’m starving, and this is such a lovely spot.”

Alex smiled, her words doing much to quell his worry that she would regret agreeing to the outing. “My father would bring me here sometimes when I was a boy,” he said, handing her a glass of lemonade. “To fish or work on my Latin or simply to talk.”

Emmy smiled her thanks then drank from the glass before saying, “Your father is a kind man. I like him.”

“He is kind, yes.” Alex drained his glass of lemonade then set it aside and went to work making himself a sandwich. “After my mother left, even in his grief and heartache, he never once said an unkind word about her. He always tried his best with me and Tess, though it could not have been easy. Most men in his place would have sent us away to be cared for by someone else, but he didn’t. He kept us together.”

And for that he would always be grateful. His father was far from perfect, he knew, but he was a loving man with a good heart, and he’d done his best for his family.

“He’s a good father,” Emmy said. “And he obviously loves you and Tess very much.”

Alex chewed a bite of his sandwich in silence, the salty ham and tangy cheese delighting his tongue as his thoughts turned to his wife’s upbringing and all the details he still did not know. She was a little girl of three or four when her father died, and her mother had raised her and her brother alone, but that was all she had shared of her childhood, and Alex wanted more.

“Do you remember your father?” he asked, shifting on the quilt until he was sitting cross-legged.

Emmy shook her head and set her glass of lemonade on the grass beside her. “My brother remembers him, and he and my mother talk of him often. By all accounts, he was a wonderful man, but”—she shrugged—“I have no memory of him.”

It was the same for Tess. She did not remember their mother. Alex wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.

“I remember my mother, vaguely,” he said, a hazy image of her drifting through his mind. “Her hair was long and curly, and she smelled like roses.”

Even now, after all this time, the scent still made him think of her.

“My mother smells like roses, too,” Emmy said, before claiming an apple from the basket and biting into it.

“Must be compulsory for mothers,” he replied with a smile.

“Must be.” She smiled back at him around her bite of apple, and a comfortable silence settled between them, broken only by the occasional rustling of the willows in the breeze.

“I hope I’m a good father,” Alex mused, the words slipping from his tongue almost the instant he thought them. He ate a hearty bite of his sandwich and chewed it slowly lest another rogue thought should try to escape.

“You will be,” Emmy said simply.

He appreciated the vote of confidence, and the kind assurance in her smile. He only wished he could be so certain.

“I hope you’re right,” he replied after he’d swallowed his bite. “Though I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”