Athos had had a hard time sleeping. His thoughts refused to settle throughout the night. What if the judge sided with the dreadful Mrs. Lyon and the Bonnevilles? What if his dear, sweet, amazing children were taken away permanently, split up, and placed in institutions, or worse, with families who didn’t love them? What if he truly was a failure as a father? “It will be all right,” Elspeth spoke out of the blue as the first rays of morning sunlight peeked through the curtains. “Everything will go our way, I’m certain.” “Are you?” He lay on his back, but turned to face her now, holding her close against him. That skin-to-skin contact was the only thing keeping him sane right then. Elspeth smiled. He could only just see it in the dim light, but it ignited his soul all the same. “Yes, I’m certain. The more I’ve come to know your friends here in Haskell, the more I’m seeing that if you hadn’t just married me, if they didn’t think it would be grand for the two of us to have some sort of a honeymoon, they all would have moved heaven and earth to make sure the children were back under this roof after one night.”
