Epilogue
“I can assure you, little fellow, you’ve got the very best uncle in all the world.” The blond baby in Charlie Price’s arms gave a skeptical coo. “Don’t believe me? Well, I have sparkling references. I just watched my niece write a very nice one up for me right on the nursery wall in pink chalk: ‘Uncle Charlie is great.’ Her parents weren’t thrilled, but her enthusiasm really couldn’t be confined to paper...”
Jo watched him with reluctant respect from her spot on the counter. It was getting on evening and the shop—back in her hands and safe at last—had just closed for the day, but it was more full of life than she could ever remember. Paul and Vanessa had brought baby Peter over from their new—very safe, very anonymous—place in Victoria to properly meet a couple members of his odd, not-so-little-anymore family: the shopkeep Alma Merriweather; the gruff Miles Montague, one of Paul’s writers and friends; and Jo’s very dear, very baby-loving old chum Charlie, who had been more excited about this development than anyone but Paul and Vanessa themselves.
There was still someone missing, though not for long, Jo hoped. Someone she suspected might be as happily greeted by the little one as she would be by Jo herself. Jo loved Emily, and that was profound in itself, but to Peter Whittaker—Jo got to keep the Smith, though the others had not—Emily was the first pair of hands to hold him, the one who’d revived his mum when things looked grim, who’d been the keeper of his first home and a face he’d seen daily until he and Vanessa were strong and safe enough to return to London, where they’d started their life...well...not anew, but afresh.
“Are you ever going to give him back to his mum?” Jo asked Charlie, pretending she wasn’t straining her eyes and her ears as she spoke, hoping to catch the sight of a particularly straight spine among the foot traffic outside, or the severe clack of a harsh heel on the threshold.
“Oh yes, I’ll give him back!” Charlie rubbed his nose against Peter’s tiny one until he’d gotten a smile. “Just as soon as he cries or soils himself or does anything remotely unpleasant, she’ll have him back straightaway, I promise.”
“You always say that’s the fun of being an uncle,” Miles muttered, half mocking, half affectionate.
“Exactly,” said Charlie. “Here, you try!”
Charlie pushed the little one into his lover’s arms. Miles looked stunned for a moment, but seemed to settle into the situation surprisingly quickly for such a large, rumpled fellow. Within moments, he was walking the lad around the shop, showing him the new books and the old newspaper clippings on the wall that held the place’s history.
Jo shook her head, pinching a bite off one of the Bradigan raisin cakes Alma had brought over along with an assortment of proper supper foods. They all chatted and ate and passed the baby around until Jo nearly found herself tempted to complain about the lateness of the trains these days like some old curmudgeon...
That curmudgeonliness was cut short, thankfully, by the sound of knocking on the locked shop door.
“Bello!” Noah shouted through the keyhole. “Your lover and darling sisters have arrived!”
Alma let them in, Noah first, sweeping around the room to pester everyone with European kisses while Emily and David came in behind him with Emily’s trunk. Paul tried to take Emily’s side of it, an act of chivalry that was met with a glare until Paul nodded across the room to where Jo was just slipping down off the counter to greet her properly. Emily conceded her half of the trunk so she could scramble into Jo’s arms.
“Couple more bags out there,” David said with a grunt as they dropped the trunk at the foot of the stairs. “Not much, though. She packs light.”
“Light?” said Paul, eyeing the luggage. “How long is she staying for?”
Emily turned, still clutching Jo’s waist with one arm. “I’m irrevocably confirmed with Miss Withers through the summer, at least. Hopefully, the hospital will want me that long.”
“Don’t be modest,” Jo scolded. “The Soho Women’s Hospital asked for her specially. And she was good enough to say yes.”
“For now,” Emily said very deliberately. “I am going to give it a go. They’ll be paying me, at least, and seeing as I have a most cordial old friend to keep me company in the city—”
“As all the best female physicians do,” said Noah with a little wink.
“Stop that, it’s presumptuous and impolite,” Emily scolded. “Anyway, I have a cordial old friend here, so I’m going to see whether it’s a good fit. No harm in it. If it doesn’t suit, I suppose I’ll either head home or...” She smiled and fiddled with one of the more innocently located and solidly stitched of Jo’s waistcoat buttons. “Or maybe I’ll start mixing up rouges and sell them as a witch in the streets of London. Who’s to say?”
“What of your dear old father?” said Vanessa with a warm concerned look. “All on his own in that house. Will he be alright?”
Emily caught Noah’s eye across the room. Her brother did not look entirely happy about what he was going to say next, but he took a breath and managed:
“David and I will be spending the summer with him,” he said. “It’s close enough that I can get to London when I need to, and it’s clear that David could use a little fresh air. So off to the quiet hills and streets we go, while Warren and the rest have their fun running the club into the ground without us.”
David patted him on the back. “He’s very excited, as you can see.”
“It’s well past time I took my turn for a bit.”
“And after?” Vanessa asked a bit sharply. She and Phillip had become good friends while she was recovering at the Clarke cottage and she had clearly become a little protective.
David’s eye gave that sort of horrible twinkle that came before a good matchmaking. “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll make sure he has suitable company in the form of a particular Frenchwoman well before we come back to London. After all, seems I can set anyone up.”
He was eyeing Jo and Emily like he’d done all the real work of bringing this about in the first place.
Jo met Emily’s eye. She rolled hers, clearly thinking along the same lines as Jo: that David’s impact had been minimal, but that they ought to let him have it.
After a bit more chatter and hellos, Emily turned to coo at little Peter, who did seem to recognize her from his earliest weeks of life. Then she came back to Jo, her now-familiar smile so beautiful that it was almost hard to think about how such an expression had once seemed impossible on her lovely face.
“Either way, I’ve decided that the next phase of my life—our lives—” Emily added, with a sweet nudge “—will be carried out right here. Together.”