Epilogue
“I do believe the girls are noisier than the boys,” Cam said, selecting a cinnamon biscuit from the tray on the low table.
He and Alice had box seats on the terrace overlooking the pitch, though they were spoiling their nooning by snitching biscuits.
“I would not have thought such a thing possible.”
Mary’s bat connected with the ball and sent it flying halfway across the park.
Golden leaves littered the grass, and the sheep were sporting fluffier coats than they’d worn all summer.
The day was mild, but Thaddeus Singleton predicted frost in the next fortnight.
He was coming over for the picnic and would doubtless be inveigled into telling a story or two.
“The noise is happy,” Alice replied, “regardless of its source. St. Didier makes a fine pitcher.”
He challenged the older children while throwing easy hits to the younger. Mary’s solid performance resulted in much cheering as she sprinted away from the wickets. St. Didier pretended to scowl, hands on hips, at his detractors.
“Has Gabriella made a decision yet?” Cam did not entirely approve of leaving the choice of dwelling in Gabriella’s hands, but most decisions could be revisited if need be.
“She is hesitant to say what she wants, but I’m almost certain she’d like everybody here, together at the Hall.”
Cam studied his baroness, while trying to keep his own expression merely interested. “What do you want, Alice?” Cam knew precisely which outcome he favored, but he had forbidden himself from arguing for it.
Let the Hall, with its countless climbing trees, stables, vast library, and enormous park speak for him. Let Thaddeus, Mrs. Shorer, and Beaglemore, with their stories, humor, and endless patience, speak for him.
Let Alice, with her bottomless heart and great good sense, speak for him.
He could have no more devoted or articulate advocates than his home, his friends, or his beloved baroness.
“The boys have not once mentioned returning to Town,” Cam said. “That nigh astonishes me.” Of course, Cook had come along with the boys and had insisted on cooking for her wee lads. She was also happy to cook for the girls on their weekly visits to the Hall.
“You ask what I want, and part of me is delighted simply to be asked, Cam. Another part of me is new to this business of organizing my own affairs, much less those of anybody else.”
Alice had no hesitation at all about stating her needs as they related to the more intimate blessings of matrimony, much to Cam’s delight.
“Whatever you and Gabriella decide, the agreement will likely need refinements,” Cam said.
“If the children all come here, what’s to be done with the orphanage?
Do we make it available to former soldiers out of work?
Do we make it over into a widow’s retreat?
Do we sell the place and good riddance? Do we keep it for a year to guard against second thoughts? ”
Years in business had taught him to hold even signed and sealed deals loosely, to be on the alert for changes in circumstances that required changes in terms. Commerce had been an unlikely but useful preparation for the sort of marriage he hoped to have with Alice.
The sort of family he hoped they’d have.
“I want us to be happy,” Alice said. “All of us, including you. You sent Bernard to London when I know you’d rather have gone yourself.”
This clearly worried her. Remiss of Cam, not to see that sooner.
“I do not, as it happens, want to be in London, Alice. If I went to Town, I could call on Kettering, I suppose, or drop around to look in on some of my competitors, but that never made London home. Bernard pens his dispatches, and from all indications, he’s taking to the job like Mary has taken to playing cricket. He relishes the challenge.”
“So do you.”
“So did I, and that was fine when I had something to prove to the world, and especially to my father’s ghost, and to myself. I am proud of those accomplishments, but the challenges I relish now are all right here at Lorne Hall.”
Alice studied the tray of biscuits. Once the inning was over, that tray, and nearly every plate and bowl on the buffet the footmen were setting out, would be empty. Not a crumb for the sparrows, and Cook would be in alt.
“Grandpapa wants the children here,” Alice said. “He claims it’s a sin against nature for a dwelling this size to be all but empty of children. He, who had the one son.”
“He wants the children here for Mrs. Shorer.” Though at some point, Cam might get used to referring to his housekeeper as Mrs. Singleton.
Alice had quietly informed her grandpapa that he was a great-grandpapa, and this had inspired two days of Thaddeus stomping about the fields and lanes, forgetting to light his pipe, and glowering at Cam when their paths crossed.
Thaddeus had surprised Cam and Alice thoroughly by announcing that Alice had a step-grandmama.
Thaddeus and Eunice had quietly married some years past and said nothing about it, lest Eunice lose her post, or Thaddeus be forced into retirement, or a Certain Party undertook to use the news to otherwise bedevil a couple who had no need of bedevilment.
To say nothing of how upset Alice might have been at yet another upheaval in her life.
“And that child is my great-granddaughter,” Thaddeus had said. “Try to pretend otherwise, and I will disown you, Alice. Same goes for you, my lord. Not a body in the shire will judge the child for the frolics of her parents. Not a body in the shire will dare judge you either, my girl.”
The shire was speculating that Gabriella was actually Cam’s daughter, which made for a fine Gothic novel, but was not, alas, true in the biological sense.
Which to Cam mattered little.
“What do you want for yourself, Alice?”
She set her biscuit back on the tray, uneaten. “I have everything I want and more. I want the people I love to be happy. I want all of creation to be as happy as I am, though, of course, that’s not possible.”
What she did not say, as Cam well knew, was that Lady Josephine might remain miserable with no objection from the present assemblage. Her ladyship was on her way to Rio de Janeiro, en route to the Antipodes.
The denizens of a penal colony would deal as well with her as anybody, and Cam wished them the joy of that challenge. At Alice’s suggestion, he had sent a letter to the governor by a fast merchantman, as both a warning and an apology.
“Shall I tell you what I want, Alice?” Making that offer had been more difficult than Cam would have supposed. “What I really and truly want, even though, like you, I am abundantly happy with the present situation?” Unspeakably happy. Grin-for-no-reason happy.
“Tell me.”
“I want them all, every one of those children, with Cook, Mrs. Dumfries, Archibald, and the old guard. I want them here at the Hall, making noise, getting into spats and scrapes, getting stuck in trees, and sliding down the banister. I want them excelling at their studies to the best of their abilities—we’ll need some tutors and assistants to aid Mrs. Dumfries—and I want us to help the children find the situations in the world that suit them best. Peruvian bark is a fine place to start, but to truly do the world a power of good, I want to raise these children with you. ”
“Mrs. Dumfries would approve of that plan. I cannot speak for Archibald.”
Cam could speak for Archibald, because he’d had a few discussions with the old fellow. Winter at the Hall rather than in the drafty quarters over the orphanage stable loomed as a promised land for Archibald’s chilblains.
“Speak for yourself, Alice.”
St. Didier’s next pitch sent the wickets crashing and ended the innings. A raucous cheer went up, and the stampede for the buffet took off.
“I want them too,” Alice said. “I want them here, with us, with Grandpapa and the rest of our people. I cannot be certain, but I strongly, strongly suspect that Gabriella wants the same thing, though she is hesitant to ask for it.”
“We can offer our preferred solution to her in the simplest terms and let her think it over.”
“Let’s do. Here they come.” Alice rose hand in hand with Cam and, simply by her presence, brought the surge of sweaty, laughing, boisterous children to a halt on the steps.
“Basins and towels are by the door,” Alice said, “and the child who pushes and shoves now that the stirring athletic display is over will go to the end of the buffet line.”
A general groan sufficed to express the sentiments of the athletes, but they went to their ablutions in good spirits nonetheless. They also fell upon the buffet like the proverbial locusts and were soon busy consuming their tucker.
Cam bent near to Gabriella as she was finishing up her shortcake with peaches and cream. “Might you indulge your mother and me in a short constitutional around the garden?”
“Yes,” Gabriella said, putting her spoon in her empty bowl. “Mrs. Dumfries says no seconds, and that means we aren’t to wheedle or whine, or we will get extra verses.”
Cam held out his hand, and Gabriella took him in a firm grip. “Mrs. Dumfries is very stern, isn’t she?” he asked.
“Not really, but she doesn’t make many exceptions. Did you ever wheedle and whine when you were a boy?”
“Of course, and I got extra verses most of the time too. I was so contrary at the time that I would memorize even more extra verses just to vex my tutors.”
“I am not that contrary,” Gabriella said. “Mary might be. Mrs. Dumfries says Mary is a natural-born teacher. She’s good at cricket too.”
Alice was particularly fond of Mary, while the girl’s fierceness impressed Cam.
“I was a natural-born reader,” Cam said. “I read everything and asked for more.”
“I read too. Does my mama read everything?”
A large part of Cam’s conversations with Gabriella consisted of this covert intelligence gathering. Does my mama…? Did my mama ever…? What does my mama think about…?
And his response was often the same. “You should ask her.” In fact, Alice was eager to discuss any and all topics with her daughter, but they were so considerate of each other, so new to the joy of having each other, that all discussions proceeded by cautious, polite, tentative steps.
“My lady.” Cam kissed Alice’s cheek when they joined her in the sunken garden. “I can report that our Gabriella is fond of shortcake with peaches and cream.”
“So am I.” Alice held out a hand, and Gabriella took it, meaning she had an adult on each side.
Cam was ambushed, not for the first time, by a sense of sweetness.
Of all coming right and patience rewarded.
He would never have predicted that what he’d needed was to leave London, delegate the business workings to a relative tyro, fall in love, and fill his days with estate business and children, but the evidence of his own heart could not be denied.
“I like a quiet stroll through the garden,” Cam said when they’d gone the length of the lavender border in silence, “but I suspect my favorite ladies in the whole world are too shy to mention what’s on their minds.”
“Camden. I am giving Gabriella a chance to digest… Oh feathers. I am not shy.”
Gabriella peered up at her mother. “What aren’t you mentioning?”
They were out of earshot of the terrace. Cam gestured to a shady bench bookended by yellow chrysanthemums. “Let’s sit, shall we?”
They arranged themselves with Gabriella between the adults. She wiggled, she squirmed, and then she settled and sighed.
“I like the Hall,” she said. “The other girls say I should come live here.”
Alice rose to the occasion, as Cam had known she would. “What do you say?”
“Friends were all I had. I can’t leave them now, but I only have one mama, and we’ve missed… a lot.” Gabriella stared hard at the crushed-shell walk. “My friends like it here too.”
“You want both, then?” Alice asked, tucking an arm around Gabriella’s shoulders. “Your mama and friends, all together?”
Gabriella nodded. Cam discreetly fished for his handkerchief.
“B-but you are married to him, and he lives here, and he has all those boys. Mrs. Dumfries says it’s complicated.”
Alice hauled Gabriella onto her lap and wrapped her arms around her daughter. “It’s not complicated. We love you, and your friends are welcome here, and we can all be together, even the boys. Not complicated at all.”
By the time agreement to that proposition had been expressed all around, Cam’s everyday handkerchief and his formal handkerchief had both been pressed into use. The ladies fell to making plans, while Cam mentally rehearsed a similar conversation he and Alice would have with the boys.
Ideally minus the handkerchiefs.
“I want to go tell Mrs. Dumfries,” Gabriella said, scrambling off her mother’s lap a quarter hour later. “She can come, too, right?”
“Of course,” Alice said, “as can Archibald.”
“And Jezebel?”
Alice’s smile faltered. “Who is Jezebel?”
“His donkey. She can come too?”
“Of course, and the pantry mouser. The sheep won’t want to leave their home pastures, though, so don’t ask. Away with you, child, and mind you don’t trip on the steps.”
Gabriella was off like a March hare but did an about-face at the foot of the steps, pelted back to the bench, hugged Alice, hugged Cam, and then disappeared onto the terrace.
“Has a lot of energy,” Cam remarked. “This won’t be simple, you know. A dozen children, all of them rambunctious and loud, all of them in a new home.”
Alice leaned against him. “I’m in a new home, too, don’t forget.”
He kissed her cheek. “Right. So am I. Very taxing. We will need a lot of naps. I prefer napping to reading to myself, for the record.”
“We will need abundant stamina,” Alice said, “and good help, and lots and lots of love.”
“We have all three. I wasn’t speaking entirely in jest about the nap, Alice.”
“You weren’t jesting about the stamina either. Lucky me.”
They remained on the bench in a pleasant fog of affection until the bell sounded for a return to the field of play. The girls beat the boys, very probably on the strength of high spirits alone, because Jeanine had overheard Gabriella’s conversation with Mrs. Dumfries, with inevitable results.
The boys were somewhat cast down at supper, until Cam and Alice explained to them that the Hall was also large enough to house the very best collection of junior clerks in the history of commerce, though some of the clerking tasks might have to go by the wayside for a few years.
The whole undertaking was in one regard complicated. A dozen children had that effect on even the best-run households. In the most pertinent particulars, however enlarging the family at Lorne Hall was very simple indeed.
All it took was lots and lots of love, and of that Cam, Alice, and their family had a vast, wonderful abundance!