Epilogue
EPILOGUE
“ A re you sure this is what you want?”
Xander knew that he’d erred the moment the words were out of his mouth. Xander might be the head of the family, the one who held the most of the family’s stubbornness and determination… But conviction wasn’t a famed Lightholder quality for nothing.
He saw that surety overcome his brother’s face.
“Of course I’m certain, Xander,” Jason said, a hint of annoyance in his tone. “Do you think I’d come to you if I wasn’t?”
Xander leaned back in his desk chair, surveying Jason. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, his brother. He’d become a man fully grown.
Damn, he made Xander feel old some days. He would have to spend some time with his wife to rectify the feeling. She made him feel as hopeful and happy as someone in the first bloom of youth.
But first, duty.
He had more balance in his life these days between the things he wished to do and the things he was obliged to do. This balance, he found, was both easier and harder to maintain than it had been before his marriage, though in different ways.
On the one hand, he found that letting these two parts of his life intersect made his duties more enjoyable in themselves. He’d taken more risks in Parliament and had acted according to the dictates of his heart rather than based on fear of what people would say.
And, to his surprise, he found that people said good things, by and large. He’d even found himself perilously close to making friends with some of his new political allies.
On the other hand, he had never faced a greater temptation to throw his work into the fire grate than the one that was posed daily by his wife. If he had ever thought he might be able to keep her at arm’s length or wondered if the bloom of marriage would quickly wear thin, he’d been catastrophically, idiotically wrong.
He wanted her more with each passing day. He wanted her when she ceded sweetly to his demands, wanted her when she grew rebellious and bullheaded—because she, too, was a Lightholder now.
But before he could track down his precious little rabbit and see how many times he could make her moan his name in pleasure, he had to attend to his little brother.
“I do not doubt you,” he told Jason. “But you are still rather young for such matters, so it is my duty as an elder brother to ask.”
Jason’s ire melted slightly, though the iron certainty in his posture did not waver.
“I understand. But, if I were a woman, one and twenty would be considered a perfectly acceptable age to marry—on the older side, even. Why should things be different because I am a man?”
How intriguing to hear his wife’s words come out of his brother’s mouth! This meant that Helen had been keeping secrets. Marvelous. He had at least a dozen suitable torments in mind that would even the score. He’d merely been waiting for an opportunity to enact them.
“I take it you’ve been talking to my wife,” he said dryly.
Jason flushed slightly but remained steadfast.
They held gazes for a moment, and then Xander sighed.
“You’ve already spoken to her?” he asked.
“I have,” Jason confirmed.
“And she is amenable?”
He didn’t really need to ask. Helen and Catherine both would be out for Jason’s blood if he hadn’t behaved with anything other than perfect gentlemanliness.
“She is,” Jason said.
Xander sighed again.
“Oh, very well, then. Yes, in my capacity as her legal guardian, I grant you my permission to marry Miss Patricia Fletcher. We’ll have the papers drawn and the banns posted. Congratulations on your happy union.”
On the day of Patricia’s wedding, Helen watched over proceedings like a hawk.
“Are you plotting a war, little rabbit?”
She did not take her eyes off the proceedings, not even when her husband came up behind her.
“I am preparing my defenses,” she informed him. “If you recall, I was besieged en masse by the Lightholders at large on our wedding day. It was intimidating. I shan’t allow Patricia to suffer the same fate.”
He settled an arm around her waist, the touch a bit too intimate for a public gathering like this one, though Xander had shown time and again these past several months that he didn’t care about such things. He was true to his word. He was showing the world how deeply he cared for his wife.
“Catherine has fallen on her sword and is distracting Mother,” he told her. “She was nearly as fierce in her defense of Patricia as you were.”
The Lightholders—or at least the four siblings that lived at Oldhill House—had embraced Helen and Patricia both with more warmth than Helen would have ever dared to hope for. Catherine, in particular, had become a very determined mother hen to Patricia; she seemed to see it as her simultaneous duty and pleasure to ensure that Patricia and Ariadne enjoyed the most successful first Season possible.
The two younger girls had become fast friends and rarely attended a social event without one another, while the elder two had admitted (to each other, and only once, after a few more glasses of sherry than was strictly advisable) that sharing eldest-sister burdens made them much lighter than those obligations had felt while bearing them alone.
The way the two Lightholder sisters had embraced Patricia had been open and evident. Helen had been admittedly surprised, however, when her sister came to her, blushing, and said she intended to marry Jason.
“You are doing so out of…marital affection, correct?” Helen had asked, blushing herself. Jason had become the little brother she’d never had, and thinking of him in any capacity beyond the familial was mortifying, even if it wasn’t on her own behalf.
Patricia had grown very interested in the pattern of the carpet. “I, um, yes,” she said. “Indeed.”
“Because you know that you are no longer required to marry this Season, correct?” Helen had pressed. She’d eventually confessed everything about George’s scheming to Patricia. Patricia had called her a ninny for keeping it to herself, then smacked Helen over the head with a pillow.
“No, I know that,” Patricia hastened to assure her. “But I think I might be required to marry Jason specifically—for my happiness!” she added when Helen’s eyes went wide and alarmed. “Not for any, uh, reasons of, erm, reputation?”
“Oh, God, stop, stop!” Helen insisted, waving her hands. She did not want to think of anything that might require her to utter the word compromised , not when it came to her little sister and her little brother by marriage. Absolutely not. “I don’t want to know any of this. Just tell me: do you love him?”
And Patricia had beamed, bright as the sun.
“I do,” she said.
She wore that same beaming expression now, resplendent in her wedding finery, her new husband’s hand clasped in hers. Jason, for his part, was clearly attempting to look like a serious, staid married man, but his own thrilled smile kept breaking through the facade.
“Kitty is a dear,” Helen murmured, making a mental note to buy Catherine some of her favorite chocolates as thanks. Agreeing to spend time with Dinah Lightholder was no small sacrifice, especially for Catherine, who was the favorite subject of her mother’s exhortations toward matrimony.
“But there are still nigh on a dozen other family members that I plan to keep an eye on.” She looked up at her husband accusingly. “I don’t know why you Lightholders need to be so numerous .”
Xander held up his hands in a gesture of innocence, though the twinkle in his eye was more impish than anything.
“I suggest you pose that question to the previous generation,” he said. “I had naught to do with it.”
“Hm,” she said. That seemed logical, but it often seemed as though Xander was capable of managing everything that happened in the world.
“And besides,” he continued, “most of them are harmless. Not to mention that Jason won’t let anything happen to Patricia. Nor would the rest of them, frankly; she’s a Lightholder now.”
Helen liked that her sister was now so firmly knitted into the family that had adopted them so affectionately—but she was not about to be distracted by Xander’s clear nonsense.
“It is patently untrue that most of them are harmless,” she insisted. She glanced around for examples. “I mean, do you truly think Ezra is harmless?”
“He’s a schemer,” Xander allowed, “but he’s more likely to play at matchmaking than anything else, and Patricia is already?—”
Helen interrupted him, locking on a better target.
“And Hugh ?” she asked incredulously. “Not for all the money in the world could you find one single person who thinks that Hugh Blackwood, the Duke of Nighthall, is harmless .”
Xander winced infinitesimally.
His cousin was…well, there really wasn’t any word for it but glowering . Hugh had never exactly been the most lighthearted of people, but he’d grown a bit more somber since his younger brother had died. Xander wished he knew a better way to help his cousin, but he couldn’t summon one to mind. Every time he thought about it, all he could do was collapse in the nearest chair in gratitude that all his siblings were still hearty and hale, not to mention safe under Xander’s roof.
Today, though, Hugh was in rare form—or perhaps it was just the contrast between his attitude and the general joviality of the day. His posture was so stiff and foreboding that several young women had taken one look at him and quickly turned in the other direction. Even their young cousin, Clio, was edging away from the dark aura that practically radiated off Hugh.
“Oh, very well,” he admitted. “Perhaps not Hugh.”
“Hmph!” said Helen in a victorious sort of way.
“You are being remarkably eloquent with your grunts today,” he observed.
“Thank you,” she said, all demure grace. “Several months of breakfasts with the Lightholders and I am fluent.”
“That’s only because you’re so clever,” Xander said as the musicians began to strike up their instruments.
She cut him a sideways look. It wasn’t as though her husband never complimented her. Indeed, ever since he’d decided that having emotions did not compromise his ability to perform his duties, he’d been rather delighted by every opportunity to show his more affectionate side.
But affectionate though he might be, he was still very sneaky. This felt a great deal like sneaking.
“Are you hoping to flatter me out of keeping my watch?” she accused.
“Very much I am,” he agreed, entirely unrepentant. “I think you should forget about all of them and dance with your poor, neglected husband instead.”
He tried to give her a piteous look, which was so in contrast with his character that it failed utterly. Nobody had ever or would ever feel pity when looking at the handsome, capable, wonderful Duke of Godwin.
She snorted. Before, her doing something so unladylike in public would have turned her husband into a statue of disapproval. Now, however, he grinned down at her.
“Dance with me, Helen,” he said. This time, there was no pleading or attempts for sympathy. This was the predator, the commander.
Normally, Helen was completely helpless before this version of Xander, and she very nearly gave in to his order. The only thing that stopped her, however, was a rush of tiredness.
She’d been feeling these with increasing regularity these past weeks, and her suspicions about what this meant were getting more and more determined as time went on.
Perhaps it was time to let her husband in on her suspicions, though. Today was a happy occasion, after all.
“I would,” she said, trying to sound neutral, struggling against the smile that threatened to spread across her face. “But I find myself too tired, I’m afraid.”
All at once, the teasing light vanished from Xander’s eyes, replaced by an intense look as if he could determine and extinguish the source of her exhaustion by sheer force of will alone.
“Why?” he demanded. “What’s wrong? Are you ill? I know you slept well last night.”
This was true enough; she’d slept as soundly in his arms the night prior as she did every other night. In fact, she was no longer certain she could sleep without him, not after all these months without a single night apart.
“I slept marvelously,” she confirmed. “And I’m not ill, I don’t believe. I’m told that feeling a bit more tired than usual is a common symptom of women in my condition.”
“In your—” His impatient repetition cut short as awareness lighted in his eyes. His voice lowered. “In your condition? Helen, are you…?”
She stopped fighting her smile.
“I suspect so,” she said. “It’s too early to know for sure, but the signs are there.”
The signs were becoming rather insistently there, as a matter of fact. Not only had she missed her courses for the past several months, but if this hadn’t been enough to alert her, the way she had to bolt for the chamber pot with a hand over her mouth several mornings recently would have given her an unmistakable clue.
Xander looked down at her, beaming like she had hung the moon, the stars, and the sun all at once.
“Helen,” he breathed. “A baby.”
“A baby,” she confirmed.
He gazed down at her stomach in awe, though there was nothing yet to see. Even someone whip-thin would be able to conceal a pregnancy behind her skirts at this stage, and Helen suspected her curves would make the increase of her waistline stay secret for longer than was typical.
Then Xander blinked, and wonder turned to determination. He put an arm around her and began to steer her away from where the couples were arranging in long lines for the first dance.
“Right,” he said, ushering her toward the front of the house, away from the wedding breakfast festivities. “We shall return to our chambers, in that case.”
She tried to wriggle free from his embrace, but he held firm.
“Xander!” she protested. “I’m not injured . I can attend a party.”
He reached for her hands and used them to tug her to a stop.
“I know you can,” he said, reaching up to tuck a curl behind her ear. “But you said you were tired.”
“Just too tired to dance, not to converse.”
“Ah,” he said, and there was the man she’d first met, the duke, the rake—and more, the man she loved with all of her being. “But if you have a limited supply of energy, I can think of much better ways to use it up. After all, it seems we have much to celebrate.”
The wicked twinkle in his eye left no doubt as to his intentions. Helen immediately stopped trying to return to the party. Patricia would be fine. Xander was right. The Lightholders looked after their own, and she was one of their own now.
Instead, she moved around him, using the grip he still had on her hands to tug her after him.
“Come along, Xander,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”
And then she raced away, laughter echoing behind her as her love gave chase.
The End?