Epilogue #2
Edmund tightened his hand briefly around William’s arm. “Take care of one another.”
Not take care of her.
William noticed the distinction. “I intend to.”
Lady Eastmere found him shortly afterward and dabbed at her eyes before informing him that she had always known he and Rosalind would end up together.
William stared at her.
Lady Eastmere stared back.
Neither of them mentioned the fact that only weeks earlier Rosalind had convinced her mother that William had used a false courtship to gain access to their family.
“I am glad one of us knew,” he said solemnly.
Lady Eastmere narrowed her eyes, and William kissed her cheek before she could reprimand him.
Even Lady Sophronia, to everyone’s surprise, had sent her congratulations. William suspected Rosalind had been more surprised than anyone, though she had accepted them graciously.
Gabriel found William shortly before the ceremony and announced, with the confidence of a man who had not yet actually proposed, that he expected to be married before the year was out.
“If Isabella will have you,” William reminded him.
“She has permitted me to court her, which I consider excellent progress. Unfortunately, she has also decided my Latin is appalling.”
“Your Latin is appalling.”
Gabriel looked offended. “Whose side are you on?”
“In this case, Isabella’s.”
They both turned.
Isabella was approaching from across the room, wearing a gown for once, though the familiar confidence in her stride made William suspect the skirts had done very little to tame her. Gabriel, predictably, forgot whatever defense he had been preparing.
“You look beautiful.”
“I am aware.”
William coughed to disguise a laugh.
Isabella glanced at him. “Rosalind is nearly ready.”
That was enough to tighten something in his chest, a reaction Gabriel noticed immediately.
“Nervous?”
“No.”
“You look nervous.”
“I am surrounded by irritating people. There is a difference.”
Isabella ignored them both. “I have decided where I want the school.”
Gabriel’s attention returned immediately to her. “Have you?”
“There is a property outside London that might suit. I intend to make inquiries once all of this is over.”
“You have been busy.”
“I have been planning this for years.” Isabella hesitated before lifting her chin slightly. “And before you ask, I intend to fund it whether I marry or not.”
For once, Gabriel did not answer with a joke. “I know.”
Isabella studied him.
Gabriel shrugged. “It is your school. I would never ask you to give it up.”
Something in her expression softened. “And if I spend most of my time there?”
“Then I suppose I shall spend a great deal of time at a school for young ladies.”
“You may find yourself terribly outnumbered.”
“I expect I shall survive.”
“I make no promises.”
Gabriel smiled. “Neither would I expect you to.”
Isabella’s mouth twitched before she turned back to William. “I should return to Rosalind before she decides I have abandoned her.”
“Tell her I am waiting patiently.”
“I will tell her you are waiting.”
“That is not quite the same thing.”
“No,” Isabella agreed. “It is considerably more believable.”
She walked away before William could answer.
Gabriel watched her go with an expression William had begun to recognize. “I am going to marry that woman.”
William glanced at him. “If she lets you.”
“She will.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am an optimist.”
“You are a fool.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.”
William clapped him on the shoulder. “On that, we agree.”
Before Gabriel could answer, Nelly appeared and pressed a small sprig of greenery into William’s hand.
“For luck, Your Grace.”
William examined it. “Do I require luck?”
Nelly gave him a pointed look. “With Lady Rosalind?”
“An excellent point.”
He tucked the sprig carefully into his coat, and her expression softened.
“Mind my lady.”
The words brought back Edmund’s parting advice from earlier that morning.
Take care of one another.
“I will,” William promised. “Though I expect she will do a fair amount of minding me in return.”
Nelly snorted. “Someone ought to.”
William was still smiling when the first notes of music drifted through the room.
Everything else fell away.
Conversation faded as people turned toward the aisle, and William took his place with the peculiar sensation that the entire morning had suddenly narrowed to this one moment. Sunlight streamed through the windows, spilling across the aisle and warming the faces gathered on either side.
Then Rosalind appeared at the far end.
For one absurd instant, William remembered the first night they had truly spoken outside White’s. She had stood before him in the darkness, demanding answers about her father and accusing William of knowing more than he admitted. He had thought her impossible. She had thought him suspicious.
Neither of them had been entirely wrong.
Now she stood in the sunlight with the father she had crossed half the country to bring home, and when her gaze found William’s, she smiled.
He forgot how to breathe.
It was the same smile he had imagined beneath that impossible peach-colored sky at Bryn Hir, when he had dreamed of an endless road and awakened to understand that he did not want to walk it alone.
Rosalind was waiting for him.
Just as she had promised.
Edmund walked beside her until they reached the front, then bent to say something William could not hear, but Rosalind answered with a smile and kissed her father’s cheek before stepping toward William and taking his hand herself.
He closed his fingers around hers.
“Hello,” she whispered.
“You came.”
Her brows rose. “Were you expecting otherwise?”
“With you, I have learned never to assume anything.”
“Very wise.”
The ceremony began, and William heard most of it. Probably.
He knew he made the appropriate promises because Rosalind’s eyes grew suspiciously bright while he spoke them, and when she made hers, his own vision blurred enough that he briefly lost sight of everyone beyond her.
Then the final words were spoken, and somehow, after all his years of avoiding precisely this fate, Rosalind Carlisle became his wife.
William waited for the feeling he had always imagined would accompany marriage. The closing of a door. The uncomfortable realization that some part of his life no longer belonged entirely to him.
It never came.
Instead, he looked at Rosalind and saw gardens and arguments, long journeys and ridiculous games of battledore.
He saw mornings spent disagreeing over breakfast and evenings when she would undoubtedly tell him exactly where he had gone wrong. He saw a woman who would challenge him, infuriate him, make him laugh, and never allow him to confuse loving her with deciding what was best for her.
And suddenly, William understood something he should perhaps have realized long ago.
Marriage had not taken anything from him.
For years, he had imagined it as a narrowing of his life. A promise that would close doors, limit choices, and bind him to expectations he had spent most of his adulthood avoiding.
Yet standing beside Rosalind, he felt none of that.
She had never asked him to become less himself in order to deserve her love. If anything, she had demanded the opposite. She challenged him when he was wrong, laughed at him when he deserved it, and expected him to offer her the same honesty in return.
Perhaps that was the difference.
His father had believed love gave him the right to decide the shape of other people’s lives.
William wanted to spend his own discovering what shape theirs might take together.
Rosalind’s smile turned suspicious. “You are thinking too much.”
“I have been told I do that occasionally.”
“By whom?”
“My wife.”
Her expression changed at the word, softening for just a moment before her smile widened.
William immediately decided he would like to say it several thousand more times. “May I kiss you?”
Rosalind gave the question exaggerated consideration. “Is that in the manual?”
“I believe we have reached the chapter where improvisation is encouraged.”
“In that case, I suppose you may.”
William kissed her.
Warm sunlight fell across them, and somewhere nearby Gabriel cheered before a muffled sound suggested Isabella had elbowed him into silence. Rosalind laughed against William’s mouth, and William found he could not resist kissing her again.
He had spent years believing the surest way to remain himself was to belong to no one.
Yet with Rosalind’s hand in his and her laughter still warm against his lips, William had never felt more entirely himself.
And whatever came next, they would meet it together.
THE END