Bonus Epilogue
Rome
Professor Alderton was, as advertised, the foremost living expert on the Palatine Hill.
He was also seventy-three years old, approximately five feet tall, and possessed an enthusiasm for first-century Roman domestic architecture that bordered on the evangelical. He had been talking for two hours without any discernible diminishment of energy and showed no signs of stopping.
Tristan found him entirely excellent.
"—and here, you see, is where the triclinium would have sat, facing the garden, which was the preferred orientation for the dining room of any household with pretensions to—" Professor Alderton paused, turned, and peered over the rims of his spectacles at the small, very round person currently suspended from Tristan's chest.
They had learned of these contraptions shortly before leaving for their trip.
The baby was wrapped in what Tristan suspected was yards of fabric that criss-crossed and tied, allowing his son to be secure and forward-facing so as to not miss any of the sights.
Flynn had taken one look at and described, with considerable feeling, as the most undignified thing I have ever seen a duke do in public.
Tristan had not disagreed. He also had not removed it. And now he found he quite enjoyed wearing it.
The baby—Edward Harrington Somerset, known to the household as Harry, known to his mother as my darling and to his father as precisely what I was not expecting—regarded Professor Alderton with the focused, ancient solemnity of a four-month-old who had recently discovered that faces were interesting.
Professor Alderton regarded him back.
"Is he—" The professor adjusted his spectacles. "Is he following what I'm saying?"
"He follows everything," Imogen said, from where she stood a few feet away with her sketchbook open, her pencil moving. She did not look up. "He is exceptionally gifted. Most assuredly his father's son."
"He is four months old," Tristan said.
"Yes," Imogen said. "And already he has opinions about breakfast and strong feelings about punctuality. He is entirely your fault."
Professor Alderton made a sound of delighted amusement and turned back to the ruins with the air of a man who had found his audience entirely satisfactory.
It was a perfect Roman morning—the kind that April occasionally produced as though in apology for everything March had done, warm and clear and golden, the light falling across the ancient stones at an angle that made them look less like ruins and more like something simply resting, waiting patiently in the sun to be rediscovered.
Swallows arced over the Forum below. Somewhere distant, bells were ringing.
Imogen had stopped walking. She stood at the edge of the terrace overlooking the valley, her sketchbook in one hand and her pencil in the other, and she was not drawing anymore. She was simply looking.
Tristan came to stand beside her.
Harry, between them, made a small and contemplative sound.
"Well?" Tristan said.
She was quiet for a moment. It was not an absence of words, but instead her quest for finding the right ones.
"It's exactly as I imagined," she said. "Which almost never happens. Things you have imagined for years are usually either better or worse. This is—" She paused. "Exactly."
He looked out at it. The sweep of it, the age of it, the extraordinary stubborn persistence of it through two thousand years of everything the world had managed to throw at it.
He had not, before this morning, had strong feelings about Rome.
He had been here once before, on a grand tour, and had found it impressive in the way that things of significant historical weight were impressive—intellectually, at a slight distance.
This morning it was different. He was watching his wife look at it.
That was the difference.
He had discovered, over the past year, that this was how he experienced a great many things now—refracted through her, made more vivid by her response to them, as though she were a prism, and the world, the light passing through her.
He had mentioned this to Flynn, who had told him he was becoming insufferable. He had not been able to disagree. But had told his friend, in no uncertain terms, that his day was coming and he would understand it all then.
"Your father would have liked this," Tristan said.
She turned to look at him. A brief, unguarded expression crossed her face—something soft and a little pained, but entirely genuine—and then she smiled. "Yes," she said. "He would have. He would have had seventeen things to say about the aqueduct before we'd even made it through the gate."
"I look forward to telling Harry about him," Tristan said. "When he is old enough to listen."
She looked at him for a moment. Then she reached over, without ceremony, and took his free hand.
He closed his fingers around hers.
Behind them, Professor Alderton had resumed his account of the triclinium, addressing himself now to a French couple who had wandered within range and were unable to escape.
Harry had fallen asleep against Tristan's chest with the total, boneless commitment that only babies could achieve.
The bells were still ringing somewhere in the city below.
"Greece in two weeks," she said.
"Greece in two weeks," he confirmed.
"You've already written to the scholar in Athens."
"Two weeks ago."
She made a sound of amusement. "Of course you have." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Tristan."
"Yes."
"I want you to know," she said, "that this—" She gestured with her pencil at the ruins, the sky, the morning, the general improbable expanse of it.
"—is not too much. I want you to know that I know the difference now.
Between kindness, and—" She paused. "And love that has too much in it to stay still. "
He was quiet.
"I just wanted you to know," she said. "That I know."
He pressed his mouth to the top of her head. Harry sighed in his sleep, a small, satisfied sound, the sound of someone whose entire world was present and accounted for and in its correct location.
"Good," Tristan said.
They stood together in the April sunshine, looking out over two thousand years of human persistence, while their son slept between them and the swallows arced overhead.
Professor Alderton continued to explain the triclinium to the increasingly resigned French couple, and the city went about its ancient, indifferent, magnificent business below.
It was, Tristan thought, precisely enough.
It was, in point of fact, everything.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Tristan and Imogen’s story.