Epilogue
“Hold still or I’ll accidentally prune you along with the roses.”
Lillian laughed and danced away from Isadora’s shears, pale blue skirts catching spring sunlight. “You wouldn’t dare. Uncle Edmund would never forgive you.”
“Uncle Edmund has learned not to interfere when his duchess is armed.”
Isadora looked up, shading her eyes. Edmund stood at the terrace balustrade, shirtsleeves rolled despite the early hour, ink stains on his fingers. He’d abandoned his ledgers to watch them work.
“Coward,” she accused.
“Wise man.” He descended the steps. “I’ve seen what you do to rosebushes that displease you.”
The garden had been neglected for years—tangled, diseased, more thorn than bloom. She’d spent winter carefully pruning away dead wood. Now the plants rewarded her patience with new growth. Tender shoots pushing through soil still cool from winter’s grip.
Rather like the household itself.
Edmund crossed the lawn and settled beside her on the grass, perfectly pressed trousers be damned. “You’ve dirt on your nose.”
“Then you’re sitting beside a woman who works for her beauty rather than arranging it.”
“Shocking.” His hand found hers. Warm. Solid. Real. “Along with teaching my ward philosophy and playing Mozart loud enough to wake the dead.”
“Someone had to breathe life into this mausoleum.”
Edmund lifted her hand—dirt-stained, nail-broken—and pressed it to his lips. The gesture was deliberate. Tender. His mouth lingered against her knuckles.
“You’ve given this house a heart again,” he murmured.
“And you’ve finally let yourself have one.” She squeezed his fingers. “A heart, I mean. Rather than that cold stone you’d convinced yourself was sufficient.”
He smiled. Genuine, reaching his eyes. The scar along his jaw caught sunlight—no longer shame, simply part of him.
“You’re a terrible influence.”
“The worst.”
From across the garden, Lillian’s voice carried on the breeze. “Are you two going to sit there being sickeningly devoted all morning, or might we finish before luncheon?”
Edmund laughed. “Tyrannical child. When did you become such a demanding taskmaster?”
“When my guardians decided gardening was educational.” Lillian grinned. “Though watching you two does provide certain lessons about marriage.”
“Lillian!” Heat climbed Isadora’s cheeks.
Edmund rose, pulling Isadora up with him. His hands lingered at her waist. “Come. Before our ward decides we’re hopeless.”
Our ward.
No. Their daughter. In every way that mattered.
They returned to work—scattered across beds that would soon burst with color. Lillian hummed something off-key. Edmund offered commentary on pruning techniques. Isadora listened and felt something settle in her chest that had been restless since childhood.
Peace.
Spring sunshine warmed her neck. Soil pressed cool against her knees. Edmund’s hand found hers across the roses.
“I’m glad I stayed,” she said quietly.
His fingers tightened. “I’m glad you gave me another chance.”
“Only one more. After that, you’re on your own.”
“Then I’d better not waste it.” He pressed another kiss to her knuckles. “I love you, Isadora Ravensleigh. Every impossible, dirt-covered inch of you.”
She grinned up at him. “Good. Because you’re rather stuck with me now.”
“For better,” Edmund said firmly. “Always for better.”
Lillian’s voice carried across the garden. “These roses won’t prune themselves. And I’m told we have a birthday to prepare for.”
Edmund’s expression shifted. “One month until you turn sixteen.”
“One month until my debut.” Excitement and nervousness warred in the girl’s voice. “Assuming society hasn’t rejected me.”
“They won’t.” Isadora’s voice was steel. “Your uncle made certain of that.”
Edmund had spent months rebuilding his reputation—not through silence, but brutal honesty about the duel. About James. About the guilt he’d carried.
Society had been shocked. Then sympathetic.
The Dangerous Duke had become the grieving friend.
“I’m terrified,” Lillian admitted.
Edmund crossed to her. Pulled her into an embrace. “You won’t face it alone. We’ll be there. Every moment you need us.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” His voice roughened. “You’re my daughter. And I will not let them destroy what we’ve built.”
Isadora joined them. Wrapped her arms around them both.
Three people who’d found each other through scandal and fear. Learning what family meant.
Not perfection.
Simply love. Real and difficult and worth every struggle.
The roses around them budded. Promising beauty despite damage.
Rather like them.
“You cannot possibly mean to read that drivel.”
Charlotte’s voice cut through the morning quiet of her townhouse drawing room, sharp with protective fury that only a true friend could muster.
But Isadora didn’t look up from the scandal sheet spread across her lap, simply continued reading words that felt like knife wounds, each line cutting deeper than the last.
The Dangerous Duke’s Latest Victim: Sources close to Rothwell Abbey report the new Duchess has fled her husband’s estate after mere weeks of marriage. One can only wonder what horrors transpired behind those ancient walls to drive a gently bred lady to such desperate measures...
“Isadora.” Charlotte moved closer, silk morning gown rustling with agitation. “Put it down. You’re only torturing yourself.”
“I should know what they’re saying.” Her voice came out flat, stripped of emotion through careful practice since arriving at Charlotte’s door three nights ago—pale, trembling, barely holding back tears that had threatened to consume her during the endless carriage ride from Yorkshire.
“I should understand precisely how thoroughly my reputation has been destroyed.”
She turned the page with hands that wanted to shake but refused the weakness. More poison awaited in careful print, each word selected to cause maximum damage.
Sources suggest the Duke’s ward, Miss Lillian Gray, may be connected to the scandal that has haunted Rothwell for a decade.
Whispers speak of illegitimacy, of secrets best left buried.
One must question what sort of household the new Duchess found herself thrust into, and whether her hasty departure speaks to dangers we can only imagine. ..
Isadora’s hands tightened on the delicate newsprint, crushing it slightly.
They were targeting Lillian now. A fifteen-year-old girl whose only crime was being born to circumstances beyond her control.
The injustice of it made her chest tight with anger that had nowhere to go except inward, where it joined the grief and humiliation already consuming her.
“That’s enough.” Charlotte snatched the scandal sheet from her grasp with uncharacteristic force, crossed to the fireplace and threw it in where flames consumed lies and half-truths with equal efficiency. “You’ll drive yourself mad reading that poison, and I won’t stand by and watch it happen.”
“Too late.” Isadora rose from her chair, moved to the window overlooking the street where London bustled below—carriages passing, servants running errands, life continuing as though her world hadn’t shattered into pieces so small she’d never find them all.
“I’m already quite mad. Why else would I have married him? ”
The question hung rhetorical and bitter in the air between them, impossible to answer because there were too many answers and none of them made sense anymore.
Outside, Christmas decorations adorned every townhouse she could see—wreaths on doors, candles in windows, festive cheer that mocked the hollowness spreading through her chest like frost.
She’d been in London for three days, which felt like three years.
Three days of hiding in Charlotte’s guest chambers while gossip spread like wildfire through society’s drawing rooms. Three days of reading scandal sheets and society columns until the words blurred together, watching her reputation burn while Edmund remained silent at Rothwell Abbey, apparently content to let her suffer alone for sins she hadn’t committed.
He hadn’t written. Hadn’t sent word. Hadn’t done anything to suggest her absence mattered in the slightest beyond the inconvenience it might cause to his carefully ordered life.
Nothing more than convenience.
His words echoed constantly, haunted her dreams when sleep finally came in the dark hours before dawn. Made her chest tight with humiliation and grief that refused to fade no matter how many times she told herself she should be angry instead of heartbroken.
“You married him because you’re brave,” Charlotte said softly, coming to stand beside her at the window with the sort of gentle insistence that characterized their friendship.
“Because you saw a girl who needed protection and a man who needed saving, even from himself. Because you have a generous heart that sees potential where others see only danger.”
“I was a fool.” Isadora pressed her forehead against cold glass, welcomed the slight ache it caused because physical discomfort was easier to bear than emotional devastation.
“I thought I could help. Thought if I just pushed hard enough, cared deeply enough, loved honestly enough—” She stopped abruptly, couldn’t finish the sentence because finishing it meant admitting the truth she’d been avoiding for three days.
The confession she hadn’t dared speak aloud even to Charlotte, who knew her better than anyone.
She loved him. Foolishly.
Loved Edmund Ravensleigh with the sort of devastating completeness that made his rejection feel like dying slowly.
Loved him despite his walls and his coldness and his absolute refusal to let himself feel anything resembling joy.
Loved him enough that nothing more than convenience had struck like a physical blow, left her gasping for air while the world tilted sideways.
And he’d meant it. Had looked her in the eyes and delivered those four words with enough conviction to shatter every foolish hope she’d harbored.