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not releasing the pain of her mother’s abandonment had hurt both her and her father.
    “I don’t want you angry,” she said to her father, placing a hand on his arm. “My care and devotion for you is as strong as ever, but William is my husband. I chose him, and I beg you to consider him like a son.”
    For a moment, she thought her father would soften. In the end, he turned and walked out the door.
    Pippa took a step after him and then stopped. She turned to William.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “He doesn’t understand yet that a heart can hold love for more than one person. He’s shut that part of him off.”
    “Do you want me to talk to him?” he asked. “I will, for you.”
    Her William, always so ready to take up a cause. “It would be of little use. I just pray you don’t hold this against him. I do want him in my life.”
    “As he should be.”
    William made the arrangements for her then. He booked passage for her and Lilly to England and prepared a letter introducing her to his family.
    Their parting was the worst moment of Pippa’s life. She didn’t want to let him go.
    She also knew he had to go to battle. It was what a soldier did.
    J UST AS W ILLIAM had predicted, his family welcomed her with open arms. Pippa and his mother became great friends. Mrs. Duroy was more outspoken than any woman Pippa had ever met, and she adored her.
    She also liked his father, brothers, and their wives.
    What was interesting was that she discovered that the women in her own family—such as her aunt, Lady Romley--were more caring of her than she had originally imagined. Pippa wondered if her father’s distrust had carried over to her, so she didn’t see other women as they really were.
    One thing she did not like about her new life was making the trip after major battles to the center of York to read the rolls of the dead posted on the Cathedral door. And every time William’s name was not on the list, she went into the church and knelt in prayer.
    She wrote him every day. He wrote her when he could, and she valued every connection to him.
    She also wrote her father at least twice month. There was no response.
    It was during this time when books once again became her allies. Reading was not a way to stave off living, but to help blunt the edges. True to his word, William had seen that her library left behind at Wellington’s headquarters was sent to her. She hated to think how much transporting them had cost him.
    And then one day, William returned. Colonel William Duroy.
    Pippa was so proud of him. In a very private service, and with a special license, Pippa and William married in the Church of England. That very night, they conceived their first child.
    William had to return to the fight, but he promised he would be home for his son’s birth—and he was.
    Holding her baby in her arms for the first time, Pippa felt a sense of completeness she had not known could exist. And in that moment, she pitied her mother. The woman who had abandoned her husband and her child had given up so much. Pippa could not, and would never be able to understand her.
    Her only sadness was the loss of her father.
    Christian Nelson Duroy was christened on the third Sunday of October.
    The sky was clear and blue, the wind brisk. The church was filled with the Duroy family, all proud to welcome this newest member to their number.
    As the priest began the ceremony, William leaned over and whispered, “Look in the back of the church.”
    Pippa turned, and there was her father. He looked older, sadder.
    And she was glad he was there.
    Afterward, father and daughter didn’t waste time discussing the past. To Pippa, all that mattered was the present, the here and now. A soldier’s wife learned to think that way.
    Yes, William would be leaving again. There would be many times she would fear for his life, but now she understood how full and encompassing love was. It defied the simple explanations of poets, and no novelist could ever give it