Epilogue
“You have rearranged the flowers again.”
Frances shifted away from the sideboard, a sprig of white jasmine still grasped between her fingers. “I rearranged them just this morning. You have been observing me.”
“I have been watching the dining room transform into a hothouse over the course of six months.” Alexander leaned against the doorframe. “There was a time one could see the wallpaper.”
“The wallpaper is hideous.”
“It is Georgian silk.”
“Hideously Georgian silk.” She tucked the jasmine into the arrangement and stepped back to assess her work. “There. Perfect.”
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“Twenty minutes ago, it was nearly perfect. Now, it is actually perfect.” She brushed her hands against her skirt and crossed to him. Her fingers found his lapel, smoothed an invisible crease. “You look well.”
“I look the same as I did this morning.”
“You looked well this morning too.” Her mouth curved. That particular curve that still made his chest do something inconvenient after six months of marriage that had finally become a marriage in truth.
He caught her hand. Pressed his lips to her knuckles. “Our guests will arrive within the hour.”
“Then stop distracting me.”
“I am standing in a doorway.”
“Distractingly.”
He smiled. The house had changed. He noticed it every day: the way light moved differently through rooms that held fresh flowers and open curtains and the particular warmth of a home that was lived in rather than maintained.
Whitestone House had been immaculate for a decade. Now, it was better. It was full.
“Alexander.” His mother’s voice carried from the landing above. “I am ready.”
He let go of Frances’s hand and headed towards the staircase. Margaret was waiting at the top, appearing healthier than she had in months with color returning to her cheeks and a steadiness in her posture. The doctors attributed her improvement to the mild winter.
Alexander attributed it to Frances, who had spent hours in his mother’s sitting room reading aloud, encouraging her to go into the garden on nice days, and filling the house with a warmth that healing medicine could not achieve.
He offered his arm. She took it. Her grip was firm.
“Slowly,” he said.
“I am not an invalid.” But she let him set the pace, one step at a time.
Frances waited at the bottom. Margaret released Alexander’s arm and reached for her daughter-in-law with both hands.
“My dear girl.” She pulled Frances into an embrace. “The house looks beautiful.”
“The flowers are hiding the wallpaper,” Alexander said.
“Good,” Margaret said. “I have always hated that wallpaper.”
Frances shot him a look of pure triumph. He raised one eyebrow. She grinned.
Graves appeared. The door swung open, and Eleanor swept in with Malcolm beside her—her cheeks flushed from the evening air, her hand firmly tucked through her husband’s arm, her smile wide enough to light up the entrance hall.
“We are not late,” she announced. “I made Malcolm drive faster.”
“You made the coachman drive faster,” Malcolm corrected. “I had no part in it.”
“You did not object.”
“I was reading.”
Eleanor released his arm and crossed to Alexander. She reached up, her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek. Then she hugged him. The way a sister hugged a brother she loved and was not afraid of.
Six months ago, she would not have dared.
He pressed his hand to her back. “You look well, Ellie.”
“Married life agrees with me.”
“Clearly.” He looked over her head at Malcolm, who stood with his hat in his hands and that particular expression of quiet contentment that Alexander had come to recognize as the permanent state of a man who had married Eleanor Moonwell and survived. “Frazer.”
“Alexander.” Malcolm inclined his head. The use of his Christian name had been a negotiation—three months of careful progress from “Your Grace” to “Whitestone” to, finally, the name itself. Malcolm had earned it.
More arrivals. The door opened again, and Tristan entered with Lavinia on his arm. Behind them, Sophia slipped through the door with the careful grace of a girl who had spent a year learning to navigate rooms exactly like this one.
“Frances!” Sophia’s composure lasted approximately three seconds before Emily appeared at the foot of the stairs.
The two girls found each other like magnets—hands clasping, heads bending together, voices rising in the particular excited murmur of children who had not seen each other in a fortnight and had a fortnight’s worth of news to share.
“She has been counting the days,” Alexander told Tristan.
“As has mine.” Tristan shook his hand. “Your house looks remarkably alive, Whitestone. I barely recognized it.”
“That is entirely Frances’s doing.”
“Naturally.” Lavinia kissed her sister’s cheek and drew back to look at her. Something passed between them, and Lavinia’s mouth curved. “You are glowing.”
“It is the candles,” Frances said.
“It is not the candles.”
Frances squeezed her sister’s hand and turned the conversation to coats and shawls and the question of drinks before dinner.
Alexander guided the party toward the drawing room. The fire was lit. The decanters stood ready. Margaret settled into hers, and Eleanor immediately claimed the seat beside her, taking her mother’s hand with the affection of a daughter making up for lost time.
Frances appeared at Alexander’s elbow. “I have a question.”
“You always have a question.”
“Henry. He has not arrived.”
Alexander reached into his coat and produced a letter that had been delivered that afternoon. “His regrets. Urgent business in Scotland. He departed yesterday.”
Frances took the letter. Read it. Her brows drew together. “Scotland. What business could possibly be urgent enough to—”
“He does not say.”
“That is unlike him.”
“It is very unlike him.”
Eleanor had drifted closer. “Henry is not coming?”
“Apparently, Scotland requires his immediate presence,” Frances said.
“How mysterious.” Eleanor’s eyes brightened with the particular interest of a woman who found mysteries irresistible. “What sort of business?”
“The sort he declined to specify,” Alexander said.
“That makes it more mysterious, not less.”
“Everything is mysterious to you, Ellie.”
“Only the things worth knowing about.” She took Malcolm’s arm. “We shall have to investigate.”
“We shall do no such thing,” Malcolm said with the resignation of a man who knew he would be investigating by Tuesday.
Dinner was announced. They moved to the dining room. Alexander took his place at the head of the table, Frances at the foot. Between them, both families merged and mingled, talking over each other in the way families did when they had stopped being polite and started being real.
Emily sat beside Sophia, her posture straight, her face animated in a way that still caught Alexander off guard after all these months. She was talking enthusiastically about her lessons. About her arithmetic. About the pony.
“His name is Jupiter,” Emily told Sophia, “and he is exactly the right size, and Alexander says I may ride him every morning if I finish my lessons first.”
“Every morning?”
“Every single one.”
“Is he very fast?”
“He is the fastest pony in England.” Emily’s chin lifted with the absolute conviction of an eight-year-old who had tested this claim against no evidence whatsoever.
Sophia leaned closer. “Faster than Papa’s horses?”
“Much faster.”
Alexander caught Frances’ eye across the table. She was watching the girls with that expression that made his chest tight in the best possible way. Her hand rested on the tablecloth. Her fingers moved, and he knew she was thinking what he was thinking.
Soon.
After the main course, Alexander stood.
The table quieted, heads turned, and conversation faded into expectant silence.
He observed them all: his mother with her bright, steady gray eyes, Eleanor and Malcolm, shoulder to shoulder, Lavinia and Tristan, Sophia and Emily, quietly whispering behind their napkins, and Frances at the far end of the table, her blue eyes meeting his with a warmth that extended across the white linen, crystal, and candlelight.
“I wished to thank you all for being here this evening,” he said. “This house has not always been what it should have been. For many years, it was a place of duty. Of silence.” He stopped. “It was a house. Now, it is a home.”
His gaze moved to Frances.
“That is entirely because of you,” he said. “All of you. But most especially…”
Frances rose and moved to his side of the table. Her fingers threaded through his.
She looked at the table. At the faces turned toward them.
“We are expecting a child,” she said.
For one breath, the room was perfectly still.
Then Emily shrieked.
“A baby!” She was on her feet, her napkin sailing off her lap. “Frances! A real baby?”
“A real baby,” Frances confirmed, laughing.
“When? When is it coming? Will it be a girl? Can I hold it?”
Sophia was beside her, gripping her arm, both girls bouncing on their feet with identical expressions of uncontained joy. “A baby! Emily, a baby!”
Eleanor’s chair scraped back. Tears were streaming down her face as she rounded the table and threw her arms around Frances. “Oh, I knew it. I knew it. When you said you were glowing—”
“That was Lavinia who said that.”
“Lavinia is always right.” Eleanor pulled back, her hands on Frances’ shoulders, her face wet and beaming. “Oh, Frances. Oh, I am so happy.”
Lavinia was there then. She did not cry. She took Frances’s face in her hands and looked at her with the expression of an older sister who had spent a lifetime worrying and had finally been given reason to stop.
“Well done,” she said. And then she pulled Frances close and held her.
Margaret had risen from her chair. Slowly and carefully. She reached Frances and took both her hands.
“I have prayed for this day.” Her voice was low. Just for Frances. Just for Alexander, standing close enough to hear. “Every single night.”
Frances’ eyes were bright. She squeezed Margaret’s hands. “Thank you, Mama.”
Mama.
Alexander’s chest tightened. Frances had started calling his mother that three months ago—tentatively at first then with growing ease—and every time, it struck him somewhere deep and unprotected.
A hand clapped his shoulder. Tristan.
“Congratulations, Whitestone.” The Duke of Evermere gripped his hand firmly. “You deserve this.”
“Thank you.”
Malcolm was next. His handshake was quieter but no less sincere. “A child. Alexander. That is wonderful news.”
Alexander looked at his brother-in-law. At the man who had once been a threat and was now, improbably, family. “It is.”
Emily tugged at his coat. He looked down. She stared up at him with those wide brown eyes that were eager and certain.
“Will the baby call me sister?”
He crouched. Took her small hand in his. “If you wish it.”
“I wish it.” She nodded. “I shall teach it everything. How to read maps. How to ride Jupiter. Everything.”
“I have no doubt.”
He straightened. Frances found him through the crowd and slid her hand into his, lacing her fingers through his and squeezing.
He squeezed back.
This was home.
The End?