Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
"You are cheating!" Clara shrieked, her voice skimming over the snow-covered lawn.
"I am not!" Henry countered, his small legs springing as he charged for the safety of the garden path.
Oscar, discarding all pretense of dignity, loped after them with arms outstretched, his shirt-sleeves rolled and the knees of his breeches grass-stained from prior skirmishes.
The chase ended as most did: with Henry swept off his feet and upside-down in Oscar’s grip, while Clara circled like a hawk, shrieking with glee and plotting her brother’s rescue.
Nancy watched from beneath the great oak at the garden's edge, her back pressed to the trunk, her fingers tracing the uneven rise of her belly.
Five months had advanced her from "slightly round" to "patently expectant," and she found the vantage point afforded by the tree rather to her liking.
From here, she could survey the whole of her small kingdom: the children, the house, the man who had once seemed the least probable of all these joys.
She marveled again at how Oscar had changed. He was still unmistakably himself—commanding, sharp-witted, a force that bent the world to its purpose—but the edges had softened.
Laughter sat more easily on him now. He wore happiness the way he wore his shirts—reliable, and with no regard for how it scandalized the household staff.
Henry, wriggling, declared, "Unhand me, villain!" and Oscar, obliging, dropped him gently to the grass. Clara darted in at once, shouting, "Reinforcements have arrived!" and attached herself to Oscar’s leg with all the ferocity of a barnacle.
"Mercy!" Oscar said, falling to one knee in dramatic defeat.
Both children swarmed him, hands full of grass and dirt and the wildflowers they had plundered from Nancy's borders.
He submitted to their tickle assault with the stoicism of a martyr, but when he saw Nancy watching, he stilled, and for a heartbeat the world shrank to just the two of them.
He smiled, and she felt the answering warmth all the way to her toes.
This was the part she had never expected: that after so much loss and fury and struggle, the hardest thing to accept would be peace.
She shifted her weight and pulled the edges of her winter cloak tighter, watching as Oscar levered himself up, both twins clinging to him. "If you do not release me," he warned, "I shall be forced to deploy my ultimate weapon."
Clara's eyes widened. "The Tickling of Doom?"
"The very same." Oscar nodded, solemn.
Henry, who feared nothing except the Tickling of Doom, released his hold at once and retreated to Nancy’s side. Clara, made of sterner stuff, held fast and prepared herself for battle.
Nancy snorted. "Do not come here for refuge, Henry," she said, as the boy collapsed in her lap. "If you choose to wage war against the Duke, you must accept the consequences."
Henry peered up, green eyes bright. "But you are the Duchess. You outrank him."
"Do not bet on it," Nancy said, smoothing his hair. "I have been losing battles to him since the day we met."
Henry seemed to consider this, then shrugged and burrowed closer, his head resting against her side.
She looked over at Oscar, now prostrate on the snow while Clara perched atop his back, braiding weeds into his hair.
She was saying something—Nancy could not hear, but the words seemed important and very secret, for Clara kept glancing at her and then back at Oscar, as if to confirm they were unobserved.
Nancy smiled to herself, then let her thoughts turn to the fate of Miss Mercer. The former governess had not lasted the month after her exposure as Lord Eastmere’s accomplice.
The tale, relayed in detail by her mother and embellished further by London’s rumor mill, involved a carriage chase through the streets, a shouting match at a tea-room, and the public humiliation of both Eastmere and Miss Mercer before a tribunal of appalled matrons.
Edith Mercer found herself blacklisted by every household; last anyone heard, she had taken up a post at a minor outpost in Yorkshire, teaching the children of sheep farmers how to curtsy.
This knowledge still pleased Nancy more than she would admit. She supposed it was uncharitable to gloat over another woman’s fall, but then again, Miss Mercer had never troubled herself with charity on her end.
As for Lord Eastmere, his disgrace was legendary, even by the standards of a peerage addicted to scandal.
He had been hauled before the courts, where a very severe judge pronounced exile as the only fitting end to his “entropic mischief.” Adrian fled the country by the next mail packet, and rumor had it that he had taken up residence in Italy, where he could prey upon the credulity of lesser dukes and marquesses.
All this was, in the main, irrelevant to Nancy, but she allowed herself a quiet, satisfied sigh whenever her thoughts strayed in that direction.
She tried to imagine what the future might look like for them.
The twins would start proper lessons in a month, if they could be convinced to sit still.
The new baby was due in the Spring. Her own mother was planning to visit for the birth, bringing with her a retinue of Scottish cousins and more tartan than the island could possibly sustain.
For the first time in her life, the prospect of such chaos did not alarm her.
Clara, sensing Nancy's attention, hopped off Oscar’s back and ran to the oak. "We defeated the Duke, Aunt Nancy! He is conquered!"
Oscar, still sprawled on the lawn, called out, "Duchess, I require immediate medical assistance. I fear I may never rise again."
Nancy gave Clara a conspiratorial smile. "You’d best go check on him. Make sure he is not malingering."
Clara saluted and charged back across the grass.
Nancy leaned her head against the tree and shut her eyes for a moment. She might have dozed, but the shadow of Oscar blocked the sun that was attempting to shine through the gray clouds. She opened her eyes to find him standing over her, arms crossed, a snowflake sticking out of his hair.
"You are very quiet, Duchess," he said, sinking to the snow beside her.
She regarded him, smothering a smile at his state. "You are a mess, Duke. Clara has taken to styling your hair as if you were a prize sheep."
"She is a prodigy," he said. "I intend to employ her as my personal valet as soon as she can tie a proper cravat."
Henry, now returned to the fray, announced, "She said she is going to cut your hair off in your sleep."
Oscar raised an eyebrow. "That is a step up from setting it on fire, which was her last threat."
Nancy reached over and brushed a few snowflakes from his hair. "You look very handsome with white hair, you know."
He tipped his head. "I doubt I could convince the House of Lords to accept a duke in homespun and dusted in snow. You are determined to destroy my reputation entirely, aren’t you?"
"Your reputation can stand a bit of destruction," Nancy replied. "It is your pride I am interested in."
He studied her, face open and unguarded. "You are happy?" he asked, and though it was not a question he often voiced, she knew it mattered to him, even more now than it had before.
"Immensely." She nodded, and meant it.
Oscar took her hand. "I wish I could say I never doubted we would end up here," he said, glancing at the twins, "but there were moments when I feared—"
She squeezed his fingers. "I know. I was not always easy to love."
He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. "You were always impossible not to."
She almost laughed, but the warmth in his eyes stole her words. Instead, she reached for his hand and pressed it to her stomach. The baby, as if in on the moment, delivered a well-timed kick.
Oscar started, then grinned. "He is impatient. Like his mother."
"Or she is hungry. Like her father."
They sat together in the quiet, watching the twins pluck handfuls of dandelions from the grass and arrange them in a lopsided bouquet.
Nancy let her head rest on Oscar’s shoulder. "Peter would be proud of you.”
“I truly hope he is.” He turned to her. “None of this would have been possible without you. You are everything I want, Nancy. I hope you know that."
She did.
A shout from the far end of the garden interrupted them. Henry, now covered in snow, ran toward them, waving a stick. "There’s a fish beneath the ice in the pond!" he cried. "Come see!"
Nancy laughed, struggled to her feet, and took Oscar’s arm for support. They ambled after the twins, slow and content.
This was her family. This was her life. And she intended to live every minute of it.
“Aunt Nancy, Clara is tossing a pea at me!”
The cry rose above the clamor of the Christmas table, where Henry sat as the perfect target for his twin’s artillery. Green ammunition rolled across the expanse of linen, followed by Clara’s war-whoop and the collapse of a crystal goblet.
It was the eve of Christmas, and Nancy could not stop grinning. So much so that she did not care that the children were tossing peas at each other.
“Clara,” Moira said without looking up from her goose, “if you pelt your brother again, you shall spend New Year’s Day sorting peas from pebbles in the scullery.” She spooned gravy with the calm of a woman who had refereed a thousand such skirmishes.
“I am defending myself,” Clara objected, but she lowered her fork and set her hands in her lap, angelic in all but the wild gleam in her eyes.
From the head of the table, Oscar arched a brow. “Henry, retaliate only if victory is assured. Otherwise, appeal to the Duchess.” He looked over at Nancy, who sat at the other end, his lips twitching. “You are the supreme court, after all.”
Nancy regarded the battlefield, considered for one judicial moment, then pronounced: “No further hostilities until after pudding. The penalty for infraction is a month’s worth of arithmetic.”
Henry grinned at Clara, the glee of enforced peace far sweeter than any victory.