Epilogue
Exactly twenty-nine days later
Henry’s heart beat a harried rhythm in his chest as he listened to the vicar drone on and on. The wait had been interminable, but the ceremony was drawing to a close at last, and then—Grace would be his wife.
At last.
She had never looked more beautiful than she did at this moment, as she recited her vows in a clear, sweet voice, those glorious green eyes shining with joy.
In her gown of shimmering gold silk with her lustrous hair pinned in artful curls, she glowed like a star, incandescent and sparkling.
Vivid in a way that only she would ever be to him.
The whole of his happiness was personified in her, and she held his heart within the cup of her small hands.
As she turned to face him, he was struck dumb anew with the realization that his magnificent, beautiful, compassionate woman would soon be his forevermore. His wife, his countess…his Grace. Just his.
“The ring,” the vicar hissed beneath his breath, making a gesture of the hand he had extended, open-palmed, to Henry. Henry jolted as he realized abruptly that he had missed his cue by some moments.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, yes. The ring.” He plucked the ring—an heirloom chosen from amongst the estate jewelry; emerald, to match Grace’s eyes—from the vicar’s palm and held it aloft. “With this ring—”
A familiar whizzing sound. A dried pea struck the back of his head.
Grace’s eyes widened. Her jaw tensed, flexed. Her cheeks hollowed as she strove valiantly to hold back the laughter that shook her shoulders. Silent, for the moment. But that would not last long.
Henry raced through the remainder of his vows and slid the ring onto the fourth finger of Grace’s left hand.
“Which one of the little devils was that?” he whispered to her, sotto voce, as the vicar directed them to kneel and began to drone on once more, reciting the prayers over them which would, hopefully, conclude the ceremony.
“Probably you won’t believe this,” she whispered back, “but it wasn’t any of them. It was your sister.”
“Eliza!” Henry said in surprise, and in his shock he’d forgotten to modulate his voice. It soared around the ceiling, breaking over the church, and dragging out a great number of chuckles from the people who had come to see them be wed.
Grace had valiantly attempted to stifle her amusement with the tips of her fingers, but a snort slipped through anyway.
The vicar was unamused. Probably, given the depths of the lines which bracketed his mouth as his lips sagged into a frown, he had never once been amused in the whole of his life. “If you are quite finished,” he intoned, the muscles beneath his right eye twitching.
“Yes, Father. My apologies.” Henry strove to look appropriately chastened. His wedding day had been nearly a whole month in coming, and if the vicar decided they were not treating the occasion with the solemnity it merited, they might well have to wait longer for it still.
Solemn. Henry bowed his head in an effort to disguise the twitch of his lips.
He was meant to be solemn and serious and earnest. He was earnest—it just wasn’t the sort of earnestness that came with a sober demeanor and a flat expression.
It was the sort of earnestness that had his gaze sliding toward Grace’s hand, where she wore his ring upon her finger.
The sort of earnestness that had his fingers flexing at his sides in eager anticipation of the moment when he would be permitted to take her hand in his once more.
At last. At last. At last. The words resounded in his head, drowning out everything else as the vicar droned on and on, until—a burst of applause.
The vicar, still unamused, gave a resentful little harrumph at the expression of such joviality within his church.
Henry’s heart beat out a rapid tattoo against the cage of his ribs. “Is that it?” he asked Grace in a whisper. “Are we—”
“Yes.” Her lips twitched with the advent of mirth. “Didn’t you hear?”
He hadn’t. At some point in the last few minutes, the vicar had pronounced them man and wife, and he had missed it entirely. But it didn’t matter, because they were man and wife at last.
Henry shot to his feet and extended his hands to help Grace rise, and the moment she rose he swept her into his arms and kissed her—his wife. At last.
The vicar gave a disdainful snort.
A burst of Grace’s laughter puffed against his lips. “Henry,” she said, her voice slightly muffled. “We have still got to sign the register.”
Right. The register. And then they would be obligated to accept congratulations from those who had attended the ceremony, and then it would be off to the wedding breakfast. Damn. He’d not have her to himself for hours, yet.
Not until nightfall at the earliest. Her things were being packed even now, made ready to be delivered across the street.
And tonight—tonight would be the first she would not have to rise from his bed at an obnoxious hour to make it back into her own before the dawn.
From tonight on, she would be his entirely. As he was hers.
Grace lifted herself onto the tips of her toes to whisper at his ear, “I have a wedding gift for you.”
“Have you?” he asked as he secured one arm about her waist. The vicar could think what he liked; there was only the signing of the register left.
“A proper welcome to the family,” she said, and she thrust one hand into a concealed pocket within her gown, withdrew a small object, and placed it into his hand.
A peashooter. A laugh caught somewhere in his throat. “And have you also got—”
“Hundreds,” she whispered. “My pockets are stuffed full of dried peas. I’m surprised you couldn’t hear them rattling around. I promise you, the children aren’t half so well-armed as we.”
We. Henry loved the sound of it. The two of them, together, forever after.
As they waited for the vicar to secure the implements needed to sign the register and officially bring the wedding to a close, Grace slipped a dried pea into the cup of his hand.
No time like the present to learn, and with the attendees preparing to depart for the wedding breakfast, there was precisely the right amount of chaos about.
And Eliza was close enough, he thought, to hit. He slipped the pea into the end of the shooter, raised it surreptitiously to his lips, and blew.
Missed Eliza completely. Struck Mr. Moore, instead.
“Oh, no,” Henry whispered in horror, as Grace let out a bark of laughter that earned her a reproving glare from the vicar.
“He’s going to throw me into the Thames after all,” Henry said as he straightened his cravat and did his damnedest to pretend that he’d done nothing at all—but he could feel Mr. Moore’s hard stare right at the back of his head.
“Probably,” Grace acknowledged, as she tipped her cheek against his shoulder with a sigh. “But for me, he’ll make it a shallow spot.”
Lord. It was going to be a wedding breakfast to remember.
∞∞∞
One month later
Grace hadn’t made it more than a few inches in her slide toward the edge of the bed before Henry’s hand curled around her wrist.
“Just a few more minutes,” he said in a sleepy rumble, as he did every morning. He turned to his side to face her, dislodging Tansy, who had been dozing upon his chest. His nose twitched as she whisked her tail in his face in full feline offense.
As she did every morning, Grace slid back toward him, settling herself in the crook of his arm as he made a place for her there, tucking her head against his shoulder.
These were the moments of marriage she liked best—the early morning quiet, where there was just the mingled sound of their breathing, just the strong beat of his heart beneath her palm.
These soft, warm moments before the rest of the world had awakened, before the day began in earnest.
A little world of peace and sanctuary and love, built just for the two of them.
Well, and Tansy, of course, who had found the point of Henry’s elbow and had begun to gnaw upon it.
“Settle down, you little monster,” Henry grumbled as he stroked the tips of his fingers along the arch of Tansy’s back. With a twitch of her great fluffy tail, at last Tansy draped herself over Henry’s knees.
“Probably,” Grace said, as she dropped a kiss against the underside of Henry’s chin, “she wants to go and play with Taffeta.”
“Probably,” Henry posited dryly, “she wants to teach Taffeta how most effectively to shred curtains.”
Taffeta had been Aunt Alicia’s welcome-home gift on the day she’d officially moved into their household; a tiny white kitten whose whisper-soft fur stuck out as if she’d been struck by lightning.
Tansy had held onto her keen dislike of the new addition for approximately four hours, at which point she had decided that the kitten posed no threat to her supremacy, and had promptly taken Taffeta beneath her wing, so to speak.
Betwixt the two of them, they’d torn several rooms to shreds and had made Henry’s mother’s preferred upholsterer quite a lot of money.
But when they were not causing chaos within the house, the two of them could most frequently be found outside in the garden rolling about in the profusion of catmint, beneath Aunt Alicia’s watchful eye.
Aunt Alicia had settled in well. Although her husband’s perceived defection and flight from England had resulted in a scandal, she had come through it with the sympathy of society; just one more victim of an unscrupulous man.
And the house was so much livelier with her. They had weathered so much together, but the grief and hardship and strife they had endured had bonded them more closely than ever. They had all earned this hard-won peace they now enjoyed.
“Tea today,” Grace whispered as she snuggled her cheek against Henry’s shoulder. “I really must get dressed soon.”
He draped his arm over her waist, weighing her down. “Another few minutes,” he murmured. “It’ll be chaos soon enough.”