There was still a long tramp through the forest to the inlet overhung by trees, and he hadn’t slept in two days. But Olivia’s whispers gave him strength, and everything she told him, even the silliest of limericks, really meant only one thing. She loved him, that cold and unemotional man whom Evangeline had declared unlovable.
When they reached the rowboat, Grooper was asleep on the riverbank, Lucy curled up under his arm. And the world—Quin’s world—was in place, and would be for the rest of his life.
When their carriage drew up at Littlebourne, followed by another, which was hung with black and carried Rupert’s body, the household poured out to greet them.
The Duke of Canterwick—still unsteady from his bout of unconsciousness—clung to their hands, thanked them over and over for bringing his boy home, and then left, a broken man.
The Dowager Duchess of Sconce broke her most cherished commandment as regards a lady’s composure and burst into tears in plain sight of the entire household.
Miss Georgiana Lytton screamed, grabbed her sister, and shook her. It hardly need be said that an outburst of sobbing, happy hysteria indicates that a person has (if only momentarily) cast aside precepts such as “Your demeanor should ever augment your honor.” It was a good thing that Georgie and Olivia’s parents were not there to see the general laws of the universe dispensed with (at least, to Mrs. Lytton’s mind).
Poor Mrs. Lytton would have been even more shocked if she had overheard the conversation between her daughters later in the day.
“But you cannot bear Lady Cecily for more than a half hour! You’ll be driven mad by within a week. Don’t you remember the trip here, when you and I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Georgiana said firmly. “Lady Cecily’s nephew is an Oxford don, Olivia. A don!”
Olivia put down her teacup and eyed her sister. “Being a don must be a good thing.”
Georgiana ignored that; she was bubbling with excitement in a very un-Georgie-like fashion. “Mr. Holmes begins a series of lectures on Laplace’s Mecanique Céleste and Newton’s Principia next week. Women are not allowed to attend such lectures, but he obviously cannot deny his own aunt!”
“And her companion. But Georgie, are you quite certain you can endure it? Remember, lecturing seems to be a family trait: you’re facing hours of Lady Cecily’s opinions regarding digestive processes.”
“Lady Cecily is very kind, Olivia. Just think; she’s going to sit through those lectures for my sake.”
“She’s going to do exactly what I would do in that situation, and sleep through.”
“If I had to be a companion to a murderer in order to go to those lectures, I would,” Georgiana said with conviction.
“You raise an interesting question,” Olivia said mischievously. “Could it be that the sainted Mr. Bumtrinket, late husband of Lady Cecily herself, died a questionable death, perhaps from a potion bought from a Venetian quack?”
“Olivia!” Georgiana said, shocked as always.
“Worse! What if you are driven to homicide?”
“Stop that! You are being quite improper.”
“There was a talkative old woman named Bumtrinket, Who nattered day and night like a cricket,” Olivia laughed, dancing out of the way as her sister made a grab at her sleeve. “Her tongue never ceasing, Was vastly displeasing, Until her companion smacked her bum with a picket!”
“You reprobate!” The perfect princess actually chased the imperfect princess clear around the library settee before she remembered that dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing precluded bodily assault.
Olivia’s world, like Quin’s, was firmly in place. Georgie might be going off to Oxford and eschewing the life of a duchess, but the tattered shreds of the duchification program clung to her. And Olivia was about to fulfill her mother’s dearest hope . . . although it could be said that her success was directly tied to the failures of the very same program.
Quin and Olivia walked behind the Duke of Canterwick when Rupert was buried with honors: not in the family tomb, but in Westminster Abbey, as befitted an English hero who trailed clouds of glory. His place was marked by a very simple marble tablet engraved with his name and a fragment of an odd poem.
A few years later, a young poet named Keats stood puzzling over the inscription one long afternoon. Sometime after that, a middle-aged poet named Auden found himself fascinated by it for a whole week. Fifty years later, an erudite dissertation discussed the complexities of fragmentation . . . but that was all in the future, a puzzle that lay ahead for those interested in twists of language.
For Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce, complicated words never had the same incantatory force as they had before his second marriage. He never worried if he couldn’t find just the right ones.
There were only three that truly mattered, and they bore repeating: “I love you; I love you; I love you.”
“I love you.”
Epilogue
Thirteen years later
The young girl had ebony hair with a shock of white over her brow. Lady Penelope Brook-Chatfield didn’t know it yet—although at age twelve, she was beginning to guess—but she was the most beautiful lady of her age between Kent and London and even beyond. Cherry lips, high cheekbones, and the scream of an Amazon.
“It all adds up,” Quin mumbled. “She’s going to be a terror. They’ll line up begging to marry her, and then we’ll have to give her poor husband hardship pay.”
“Pish,” Olivia said lazily, enjoying the way the summer heat hung in the air even in the shade of their favorite elm tree, the one at the end of Ladybird Ridge. Small white butterflies danced below its lowest branches.
Penelope ran by, chasing one of her cousins with a shriek that reminded one of the new steam engines. “My papa is too!” she screamed. “My papa is fierce!”
“You don’t look fierce,” Olivia said, twining her hands into Quin’s hair. He lay on the quilt next to her, whispering things into the tummy that rose in the air between them.
“I’m being nice to the new baby,” he said, dropping a kiss in the appropriate place. “I’m saving all my ferocity for Penelope’s first suitors.”
A scrambling noise could be heard in the tree above them. “Be careful,” Quin called. “Mama is here and you must be particularly careful these days, you know.”
“I know.” There had been lots of rain this summer, and the tree was thick with dark leaves. Thin legs emerged from the canopy and waved for a moment, until Quin got to his feet, took hold of their owner, and placed his son safely on the ground.
“Papa!” Penelope screeched, running back toward them, her hair streaming in the wind. She must have lost another ribbon. “Aunt Georgie says that you haven’t killed any pirates, so come and tell her that you do it all the time!”
“You really must give her a better understanding of what a local militia can and cannot do,” Olivia murmured.
Quin put his hands on his hips and shouted, “Tell Georgiana that it’s Uncle Justin who is good at rounding up pirates.”
Penelope arrived in a flurry of long legs and silky hair. She grabbed his hand. “That’s absurd, Papa. You know that Uncle Justin is too busy singing. If you wished to kill a pirate, you could do it before breakfast. Come tell Aunt Georgie that.” And she dragged him away.