Epilogue
“I publish the banns of marriage between Mr. Gabriel Marchand of St. James’s Parish, London, and the Honorable Miss Guinevere
Woodville of Balcombe Parish, West Sussex. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be
joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is the third and final time of asking.”
A gasp soughed through the church at the first reading of the banns.
Gabriel had been cautious about the notion of being married in Ginny’s parish church, simply because he had more than an inkling
of how controversial their match might be viewed. But Ginny wanted to make a bold, unequivocal public declaration. She wanted
the people she loved, most particularly Gabriel, and the people who had watched her grow to womanhood to know how proud, how
happy, how grateful, how staggeringly lucky she felt to be marrying him. How blessed she felt to have found her heart’s true
mate. She wanted Gabriel Marchand to feel irrevocably chosen.
But unease and uncertainty had rustled through the church after the first reading of the Banns.
The haste of this astonishing engagement struck many as unseemly; most didn’t know Marchand’s name and the few who did were aghast. The Honorable Francis Balfort was known and well-liked and it had long been assumed that Ginny would marry him.
It would have been the most appropriate match imaginable.
Ginny and Gabriel kept their heads high and their expressions peaceful.
After church on the first reading of the banns, Guinevere introduced him to the townspeople only as the chancellor of the
Marchand Academy, but no one had ever heard of the institution (though it would only be a matter of time before all of England
had heard of it). Marchand looked for the most part exactly like what he was, which was someone who had met untold difficult
challenges head-on and had perhaps conquered a lot of them by fighting dirty. They found it impossible to fault his manners,
however. And many of them found it impossible to look away from him once they’d gotten that first look.
And the man was clearly besotted with Ginny.
It was admittedly very difficult not to thaw in the presence of a besotted man.
So in the weeks between the three consecutive Sundays upon which the banns were read, Marchand did what he did best: He charmed and beguiled and impressed.
He traveled between London and Sussex, but he spent most of his time in Sussex.
He went to the village pub and bought rounds and played darts.
He learned and remembered the names of local families and all their family members and servants and even their pets.
He held babies and played with children.
He asked for advice about raising sheep, which the Woodville family intended to do at the estate they had inherited, and about a horse he intended to buy.
He laid the groundwork for being the perfect husband for Guinevere Woodville with the thoroughness he’d laid the groundwork for becoming a lord of the demimonde.
And then there was her brother, the Earl of Highgrove’s steadfast, quiet, stubborn, unflagging support of their match. “I
know of no better man,” Hogarth told everyone at every opportunity.
Her sisters had postponed their own wedding trips to attend Ginny and Gabriel’s ceremony. Their husbands were at first wary
of and cold, even disdainful to Marchand, which Ginny found painful. They had grown up with Francis and were loyal to him
(who had gone off on a long, soul-searching trip to the Continent). They were, in fact, quite stunned at this turn of events.
They soon found themselves slowly, reluctantly, drawn in by Marchand’s charisma and his obvious good intentions, which had
nothing of obsequiousness to them. “I understand how you feel and I don’t expect you to love me,” he told them frankly. “But
I love Guinevere, and I would do anything for her family. And that includes you, from now on. I do hope we will one day become
friends. And if the notion of that remains unpalatable, then I hope we will abide in mutual respect, as allies. For you can
count on me in that regard, in all things.” It was difficult to deny that he looked like the sort of man one wanted on one’s
side, rather than the opposite.
By the third and final time the banns were read, all the faces of the churchgoers were nearly as radiant as the bride-to-be’s.
Everyone was impressed (and, they told themselves, not surprised) with Miss Woodville’s wherewithal in finding the perfect partner.
She’d always had such a level head, that girl!
After all, everyone loved a good transformation story.
The following Sunday, Guinevere Woodville and Gabriel Marchand became husband and wife in the village church. They were surrounded
by Ginny’s family and all of their new friends, and it was as joyous an occasion as her town had ever seen.
Mr. and Mrs. Marchand were going to be very busy in London. So off they went.
The dormitories of the Marchand Academy would be decorated very like the rooms at the Grand Palace on the Thames, they decided
together. A home should feel like a home for the children. The common areas, too. The days after their wedding were full of plans and preparations, exhilarating progress,
laughter, and enjoyable clashes of will they always sorted with more laughter or passionate kisses.
Their nights were torrid.
Together they learned to play with the elasticity of desire. To master everything from a long, slow build to shattering crescendos
to swift ferocious bonfires of lust. Every curve, angle, and slope of their bodies was explored, claimed, and savored with
fingers and palms and tongues and lips. They reveled in the infinite ways in which sex was a language to express every gradation
of their love for each other.
Ginny was quite surprised and delighted to learn that a variety of positions could be employed.
This was very useful in the instances she wanted to be taken swiftly and immediately, skirts hiked, her bare arse pressed against a wall, her husband thrusting expertly as he murmured filthy endearments in her ear.
And during occasions when they found themselves with a few minutes to spare, she would surprise him by dragging him into an empty room at the former Lucifer’s Fall, lock the door, reach for the fall of his trousers to tug it open, and drop to her knees before him.
With her mouth and hands she would make him moan.
“God, Ginny, just like that, don’t stop. ”
Sometimes they sprawled nude on Marchand’s comfortable bed on a velvet counterpane like a pair of pashas and simply luxuriated.
He never did do anything with ropes. But now and again they liked to do fancy things with a cravat.
The lust, like the love, only seemed to replenish a thousandfold.
Six months after they were married, she discovered she was pregnant.
They were ecstatic. But as the months went on and her belly swelled and the baby thumped about in there, Marchand grew quieter,
beset with a sleepless, nervy tension and an almost overwhelming possessive protectiveness.
And she knew old fears had him in their grip.
“Listen to me,” she whispered to him, stroking his forehead one night. “I am never, ever leaving you. Ever. And neither will
the baby.”
But they both knew love itself was no protection. Just look at Apollo and Eros and Daphne.
On the most harrowing and miraculous night of their lives, Gabriel St. James Michael Marchand arrived.
He was named for his father, for the place where Gabriel had found a heart-shaped stone to give to Ginny, and for the brother he would never have a chance to meet.
He was a staggeringly perfect baby, probably the best one ever born.
And he proved to be a funny, enchanting, willful, mischievous child.
Marchand held his baby and his wife and wept at the miracle that allowed him to love and protect them for the rest of his
days.
Gabriel soon had another brother. And then a sister, and then another sister.
And they eventually had lots of cousins, too.
Hogarth’s sensitivity, intelligence, and kindness turned out to be precisely what a vivacious, beautiful, very confident,
and very wealthy American heiress yearned for. He married her four years after Ginny married Marchand. Hogarth blossomed in
his wife’s company; the new Countess of Highgrove melted in his.
And after years of torturous uncertainty, the Woodville finances not only recovered, but became positively robust, and would
remain that way for generations to come.
Politicians. Printers. Poets. Blacksmiths. Farmers. Silversmiths. Sailors. Teachers. Scientists. Doctors. Explorers. Shopkeepers.
Husbands. Wives. Artists. Factory owners. Bankers.
Over the next several decades, many of them began storied careers and happy lives at the Marchand Academy. There was also
one highwayman, but the people he robbed always remarked that he was very well spoken and possessed considerable dash.
Children at the Marchand Academy were taught to read and write English, French, and Latin.
They were taught manners and deportment and etiquette, and to think critically and to debate effectively.
Fed, clothed, housed, protected, and respected, they flourished.
They were given opportunities to learn trades and to meet people who would help them prosper far, far away from places like St. Giles.
Though many returned to extend a hand to others there, too.
Where Gabriel had once imagined a gaming hell on every corner, within a decade, there were three Marchand Academies in England
rescuing children from workhouses and funneling dazzling little citizens into English society. Gabriel and Ginny presided
over all of them. Mr. Ogden became a beloved headmaster of one of them. The Earl of Highgrove remained a fencing and mathematics
tutor many years after his debt was paid, because he was good at it and the children loved him.