Epilogue
BENNET HALL, SURREY - JUNE 4, 1820
LEE
Watching the sunset by the lake had been peaceful once. No company but the dragonflies dragging the water and the bees hard at work among the flowers.
Peaceful was certainly not a word for this evening. Not with Henry Grayson and Leo chasing after Sophie Wayland with a toad they’d found lord only knew where.
And I couldn’t be happier about the change.
Emma and Georgiana Hudson, Lizzie Wayland, and my second son, Charles, were a little more subdued, sharing tea with dolls, wooden horses, tin soldiers, and anything else they could find. They even had Rose Grayson propped against a pile of blankets, happily gumming a biscuit—only slightly more animated than the toys.
“Leo…” Charlotte called with a warning in her tone. She was propped against me. Her belly, growing once more, often caused her back to ache.
My eldest son trotted over, looking sheepish, leaving the young Grayson heir to taunt his younger cousin with the amphibian alone.
Neither the Wayland nor the Grayson families seemed overly inclined to intervene. Living so close to one another and so near a creek, I suspected toad wars weren’t an uncommon occurrence.
“Yes, Mama?”
“You must be kind to our guests.”
“But Henry start?—”
I cut him off with a cleared throat and a raised brow.
Suitably chastened, he wandered over to the eldest Wayland twin to apologize.
With dark hair and eyes, there was nothing to call mine in Leo’s physical appearance, but when he helped a tripped Sophie to her feet with a sincere apology and an offer to help her find a toad of her own—one she eagerly accepted—I saw something of myself in his actions.
Henry Grayson, without anyone to chase or be chased by, set the frog beside the lake and sulked back over to the blanket and his mother.
He whined something to Kate, who answered entirely without sympathy. “Well then, you shouldn’t be teasing. No one will want to play with you if you do.”
Cass, sensing a vulnerable amphibian, stalked through the reeds. She lined up her pounce and waited for precisely the right moment—a moment she missed by half a second when she landed with two paws on the empty rock.
Not having anticipated failure, she slipped and slid off the rock and into the lake.
I was laughing too hard when she escaped the watery torture and angrily chirped her way over to me, to pull my hand away before she clamped it between her teeth. The bite didn’t have the slightest impact on my chuckles as she strode off with all the fury her diminutive size could convey.
Delighted by the incident, the Grayson boy settled on the blanket with a giggle.
No sooner had he reached for a handful of biscuits than three forms appeared over the hill. Will, Celine, and Hugh, their arms laden with lengthy sticks, returned to our picnic.
“Who wants to learn to fence?” Cee called.
The eldest rapscallions all shot to their feet, leaving only those too small to walk to our care. Just Rose and Charles. Sweet Charles, barely over a year old and already the vision of perfection. His blonde curls were just beginning to come in. His eyes were the same honey brown as his mother’s.
The Ainsley children, Emma and Georgiana, were by far the most sensible of the heathens running amok in our gardens, with Lizzie Wayland displaying some decorum.
But my little lion, Henry Grayson, and Sophie Wayland were overly energetic menaces to society, and allowing them to beat each other with sticks was likely the only way to achieve a modicum of peace when they explored the stars that night.
With a sigh, I leaned back on a palm. “I should go set up the observatory so they don’t have to wait for me after supper.” I stood, stretching out my aging back. “Try to keep them from killing each other,” I directed toward Ainsley and his wife—the only ones capable of such a feat.
“I make no promises,” Ainsley called after me.
“Your best effort is all anyone could ask of you.”
When I stepped inside the observatory, silence and darkness enveloped me. I waited for a moment for familiar relief to come.
But there was nothing.
If anything the solitude irked more than soothed. If I could tell the Lee of five years ago what I knew now, how much better life could be…
A sliver of light poured in from the cracked door, expanding as it opened before disappearing entirely.
The delicate scent of lavender and peppermint washed over me at the same time that delicate arms banded about my waist.
Charlotte pressed against my back with a pleased hum.
“Well, hello there,” I greeted, wrapping my arms around hers.
“Your son is thrashing the Grayson boy. I think Lord Grayson may have a fit.”
“Quite right. What did you do with Charlie?”
“Jules wanted a few minutes of cuddling.”
I hummed, turning in her arms and throwing one of my own around her shoulder.
“We do not get much time in here any longer, do we?” she asked.
“No, we don’t.”
“Do you miss it?”
“No, not really. It turns out, wives and children are better company than stars.”
She smiled and pulled out of my arms to circle the room. “Not too chaotic?”
“Precisely the right amount of chaotic.” She dragged her finger along equipment she was now intimately familiar with. The movement was exploratory, as it had been in the first days of our marriage. “I’ll need to polish one of the mirrors, they’ll be tarnished.”
“Beyond use?” she asked.
“No, just not as they ought to be.”
“Hmm, what if you… didn’t.” A suggestive note filled her voice that had my interest thoroughly peaked.
“And what would I do instead?”
She finished her circuit and returned to face me. One interested hand caught my cravat, and the other caught my scarred cheek. Gently she tugged me down, down, down until only an inch remained between our lips.
“You could show me the stars.”
“But it’s daytime,” I teased.
“Lee?”
“Yes, Charlotte?”
“More kissing and less talking, if you please.”
“Yes, dearest wife.”
No force in the world could have stopped the gravitational pull between our lips.
The End