Epilogue
A mere eight months later, Verbena found herself at the writing desk in the front sitting room of the cottage.
It fit perfectly beneath the window so that she could look out over Miles’s fields and watch the dots of shaggy cows while she wrote.
The scent of honeysuckle, which grew in thick vines around all the lower windows, wrapped her in its embrace. Verbena inhaled it deeply.
When she’d first occupied the cottage with Willa, Verbena had insisted that the desk was merely for her correspondence.
While it was true that she maintained a robust flurry of letters back and forth with her friends in London, Wales, and abroad, she had, eventually, begun scribbling out some amusing bits of prose.
They were not novels, exactly, nor were they etiquette guides for young ladies.
They could possibly be called memoirs; Verbena’s writing was a sort of compendium of her life’s work, which was collecting the most delectable tidbits of gossip and well-founded rumors.
Her goal was to put down in writing every speck of dirt that she had ever uncovered on members of the ton.
As their number was finite, and everyone was in some way related to everyone else, it became increasingly clear that anyone could be blackmailed by such a comprehensive accounting. Which was quite gratifying.
When Willa had read the first passage Verbena completed, she’d sat up in their cheery, warm bed with her toes tucked under Verbena’s ankles, her mouth hanging open.
“Darling, do you mean to print this?”
“Shouldn’t I?” Verbena asked, snuggling closer. Willa always smelled wonderful in the early morning, skin warm and soft all over.
“You mention everyone by name! It’s all so very…”
“Scandalous, yes.” Verbena put her head on Willa’s slight shoulder, where it fit so well as to have been made for her.
“I do not intend to publish it, not yet. Once it is all finished, I will make several copies for safekeeping. And if anyone should ever attempt to disturb our little enclave here, I will be ready.”
Willa shivered against her. “You will ruin lives if this goes to print, you know.”
“Only if anyone tries to ruin ours,” Verbena said.
“My beautiful Boudica.” Willa bussed her on the top of her head. “My warrior queen. But when you say ‘anyone’…”
Verbena hummed in agreement. “It will take some time, I expect, to amass information on every single lord and lady. I am only recently arrived in Scotland, after all, and must familiarize myself with a whole new cast of characters. Every lady needs a hobby, though.”
“I am so glad that you love me,” Willa said. “Otherwise you would be quite terrifying.”
Verbena raised a knowing brow in her direction. “I don’t terrify you now? This must be rectified.” And with Willa’s happy yelp, Verbena tackled her into a more pleasing position.
Verbena smiled at the memory while at her tiny writing desk, then banished all thoughts from her head save the ones regarding Lord Dulwich and his extensive gambling debts. She completed the final paragraph of that entry before sitting back in her chair to stretch her arms luxuriously.
To her right was the fireplace, and above it on the mantel sat a fat tabby cat named Sappho.
The animal had appeared at the back door of the cottage, mewling for attention.
Verbena and Willa had obliged with a saucer of cream.
Naturally, he—for they had named him before making a thorough investigation of his feline form, and once that was done, the name had already stuck—opted to stay indefinitely.
Currently Sappho was doing what he did best, which was nothing at all.
He lay sprawled on the mantel with his tail swishing sleepily back and forth.
Verbena followed its movements, a pleased smile on her lips.
The smile only grew when Willa came down the stairs, his Hessian boots tapping out a smart beat on the weathered boards.
No doubt her dear heart had also been hard at work that morning at his own writing desk, which occupied much of the second bedroom upstairs.
Willa had balked at dragging a “man’s” desk up the stairs for his use, saying he would be content with a model like the one Verbena owned, but Verbena had rightly pointed out that Willa’s desk needed to be properly large.
It was, after all, servicing two writers—Flora Witcombe’s poems were stored in the right-hand drawers while William Forsyth’s gothic novels in progress were housed on the left.
Willa was even contemplating releasing some work under his own name, but had not yet decided what form it might take.
“I might try my hand at joining the Romantics,” he’d said just the night prior while cooking their simple dinner of chicken and vegetables stewed in wine.
(Verbena was not as adept in the kitchen as Willa, but she could slice potatoes well enough.)
“Poetry?” Verbena had asked, cutting her potatoes into precise rounds.
“Novels, perhaps. Love stories, certainly.” Willa’s tiny smile had curved upward. It was startlingly similar to the one Sappho wore after he feasted on minced fish. “Now that I consider myself an expert on the subject.”
Verbena fell a little more in love with him then.
She fell a little more in love every day, actually, and for the smallest reasons. The way he stood on the last stair, frowning at the letter in his hands, for instance, as he was doing right now. The sight of his inky wrist and wild curls. Every moment was cause to love him even more.
“I have to go down to London tomorrow,” Willa announced with a sigh. “Some issue with the printers.”
“Oh dear.” It wouldn’t be the first time they’d been apart, but it didn’t make it any more palatable.
She liked Willa in her bed and in this house.
She liked it very much. Still, business was business.
“Will you be traveling as Flora this time?” she asked.
If so, they’d need to arrange for étienne to accompany him.
Willa’s “husband” was normally very accommodating, as he enjoyed visiting London every few months to peruse the latest textiles, all brought directly to the Bloomsbury house by the best drapers.
Of course, Willa and étienne were not actually married, nor were Verbena and Miles, but outside of the estate, no one knew that.
And Miles had paid the local magistrate a judicious sum never to divulge it.
Willa shook his head. “This is a job for William, I’m afraid.
Paper prices, negotiations. As Flora’s patron, they should know I am very displeased.
” He rolled his eyes. It was tiresome, Verbena knew, but necessary.
He hopped off the step and drew close to press a kiss to the top of Verbena’s head. “I will return as soon as I am able.”
“Whilst you’re there, you may as well look in on my parents,” Verbena said.
Willa drew back, wide-eyed. “Are you serious?”
A few months into their stay at the McDonald estate, the two of them had dined with étienne and Miles in the main house—a succulent dish of pheasant.
Miles had brought up the subject of Mr. and Mrs. Montrose, who had apparently written to him, demanding to know what had become of their daughter and, more pressing in their estimation, how exactly Mr. McDonald proposed to compensate them for this outrageous breach of decorum.
“I could have my solicitor send them a strongly worded letter,” he’d suggested.
Verbena had only laughed. “That would not deter them. The only thing they care about is money.” She’d placed a hand on Willa’s bouncing knee beneath the table, calming her nervous movements.
“Offer them an annuity of—what do you think is fair? Twenty pounds? And tell them they shall receive this generous gift from you, a man who has received no dowry, by the way, only if they agree to never write or attempt to see us again.”
“Twenty pounds is not very much,” said étienne. “It would not keep a respectable lady in comfort, let alone a couple.”
“It is twice what I was given in a year as pin money, when I was given any at all,” Verbena countered. “Therefore, it should suffice for their purposes.”
Willa’s knee bounced once more under her hand.
“Oh, but Lovely,” he said (he often called her Lovely), “would they really accept such a small sum in return for never again seeing their only child?” His big, dark eyes gazed at her with something like heartache.
“I cannot imagine anyone allowing that, not at any price.”
Verbena smiled and squeezed his knee. “You forget, my parents do not share your excellent taste. They will accept it,” she said.
And she was proven correct. Mr. Montrose’s response to Miles’s proposal arrived swiftly, and the payment for his continued silence was dispatched with the same alacrity. Verbena was easy in the knowledge that she was free of her parents forever.
Willa’s family was another matter entirely.
As far as the Forsyths were aware, their brother William had absconded to the Continent with a new bride and was happily settled in an obscure Italian village.
His letters arrived as if from a packet ship, with a few coins slipped to the local postmaster to protect the ruse.
Verbena had worried that Willa would be bereft without his family, but he had assured her that it was a relief to no longer be expected to visit with his boisterous brothers except when he wished; his visits to London were his to manage.
As for étienne, he had quickly become enamored of Highland dress and established a small but thriving shop of his own in town, which he staffed with trusted apprentices who shared his nature.
His brothers thought him well situated with his new wife, and as long as no one told them otherwise, all was well.
Furthermore, there was no real danger of the brothers Charbonneau—or anyone else of their acquaintance—discovering the actual shape of their lives.
The staff at Peeblewick respected Miles far too much to gossip about his affairs, not because he was a decent employer (though he was) but because he consistently opened his doors to anyone who sought safe harbor.
Word must have spread through the secret channels that have always existed among certain populations, for the needful arrived with terrible regularity.
Verbena had seen with her own eyes the queer sorts that came to their little enclave.
It was Plas Tan on a grander scale, a place where those of their disposition could get back on their feet or find a home, far from the strictures of the outside world.
It was not a perfect haven; nothing was. Which was why Verbena had focused her energies on her memoir. Call it insurance, call it blackmail—she had no qualms in wielding this, her chosen weapon. Not if her preferred family was ever at risk.
“Lovely?” Willa’s voice brought Verbena out of her reverie. “I said, are you serious? I would rather not pay your parents a visit, as I do not think I would be a welcome guest. Do they even know William?”
Verbena turned in her desk chair to smile up at him.
“No, of course not. I only meant, perhaps you could stroll by their new address.” An address in a less grand, though perfectly serviceable, part of town, as befit their reduced circumstances.
“I want to make sure they are where they say they are. Always a good idea to know the locations of the pieces on the board.”
“If my own heart sends me, I shall go,” Willa said with a teasing glint in his eye.
“Well, I am not sending you away just now.” Verbena hooked her fingers in Willa’s skirts and tugged until he bent to meet her lips. “We have until tomorrow.”
“I should pack a trunk.” Willa kissed her, slow and sweet. “I should do a great many things.”
Verbena opened her thighs in a wide V, the obscene movement made more so by the trousers she now favored. “You should have a seat here, I think,” she told Willa quite seriously, “and relax a moment. Don’t you agree?”
With a shy smile, Willa clambered into Verbena’s lap, his skirts flowing over her legs. “How can I not,” he said, “when you are the most agreeable?” He leaned down and gifted Verbena a kiss to her forehead. “The most lovely.” Her nose. “The most—everything.”
Verbena smiled up at him, her hand making its own journey up his leg. “Why, Willa,” she said, “what poetry.”