Epilogue #2
Yes. Yes, it would. Tea time always was.
But she thought he’d grown to like it, even if the sheer size of her family was daunting.
Because it was his, now, too, and he’d found a place for himself there.
And so had Rose, and Alicia, and Eliza. Welcomed with open arms into their fold, with all of the madness it entailed.
And somehow, they all fit just perfectly.
“Another few minutes,” Grace sighed, and she closed her eyes and settled down into the softness of the new dawn and the warmth of Henry’s arms.
The whole world could wait just another few minutes.
∞∞∞
Four hours later, after tea
Grace laid down her cards, revealing a winning hand. “Where have your husbands taken mine?” she asked of her sisters as they groaned in unison, slapping their own cards down upon the table.
“Off to the club, most likely,” Felicity said. “The very moment you brought out the cards. Ian swore off playing against you years ago, if you recall.”
Grace snickered to herself. “It wasn’t very sportsmanlike of him,” she said. “We weren’t even playing for money.”
“No, but I think his pride is a bit battered that he’s never been able to figure out how you do it,” Felicity said.
Grace widened her eyes in an expression of faux innocence. “Do what?”
“Cheat, you wretched little sneak,” Mercy said on a laugh as she downed the last of her tea. “You always cheat!”
“Of course I always cheat. And what’s more, I always win.”
“That’s it,” Charity said as she scraped the cards into her hands and tapped the deck into order once more. “I’m imposing a new rule. Grace is no longer permitted to deal cards.”
“What!” Grace slapped her hands on the table, pursing her lips into a pout. “That’s hardly fair!”
“Call it evening the odds,” Charity said, with a supercilious tilt of her nose toward the ceiling.
“I’m fairly certain,” Felicity said grimly, “that she could still manage to cheat without even touching them.”
She could, of course. Not for nothing had she secreted away a spare deck of the same design within her pocket. But her hands were so quick and light, they would never know.
“I think the gentlemen have got it right,” Mercy said. “The wisest course of action is to simply leave the house. There is no winning against you.”
“If they deliver Henry back to me in his cups again—”
“The one time!” Charity said, throwing up her hands. “Besides, they had a grand time together.”
“Henry didn’t. That is to say, he did—at the time.
” Because it had marked forgiveness for his earlier transgressions, so long as he continued to make good on his promise to make her happy.
“But afterward, I mean to say, when he was casting up his accounts in the garden. That, we all could have done without.” And the following day had been none too pleasant for him, either.
“Probably they have all learned better,” Mercy suggested. “And the men must be allowed to enjoy one another’s company while they can.”
Grace sobered abruptly at the thought. Charity might reside, more or less permanently, right across the street—but Mercy preferred the countryside in Kent, where she and her family lived most of the year. And Felicity ran a girls’ school in Brighton, where she and her family were soon to return.
She wouldn’t have them much longer. A week, maybe, on the outside, if she were lucky. This had been the first Season in years in which they had all been together, and Grace—
Grace was going to miss them desperately.
“Oh!” Charity said, as she let the deck of cards fall from her hands. “I nearly forgot,” she said to Grace. “Your wedding present arrived yesterday.”
“My wedding present? But that was a month ago, and you gave us—”
“No, no,” Charity said. “This one is just for you. Actually, I had it commissioned some time ago, but a wedding seemed a fine occasion for it.” She drew herself up from her seat at the tea table. “It’s just in the drawing room,” she said, beckoning for them to follow as she headed for the stairs.
Within the drawing room, a large rectangular object rested against one wall, wrapped in brown paper.
“I haven’t seen it yet, myself,” Charity confessed as she searched for the edge of the paper in the service of removing it.
“But I’ve seen the artist’s work before, and it is simply glorious.
I have no doubt—” The paper tore, and brilliant shining oils rendered upon canvas peeked through.
“Ah, there,” Charity said as she stripped the last of the paper away.
“Oh, it turned out just beautifully, don’t you think? ”
A portrait. The four of them, arm in arm.
The artist had captured the merriment in Grace’s eyes; the sincerity of Felicity’s.
The saucy tilt of Charity’s smile and the mischievous cant of Mercy’s head.
Grace could almost hear the laughter ringing still in the air about them, feel the movement about to erupt, as if they might leap straight from the canvas at any moment.
A portrait done in such perfect, lifelike precision that it would be—
It would be like they were with her, always. Wherever else they happened to be.
“I scrounged up every portrait of us I could,” Charity explained, “so that the artist could use them for reference. Something of this size would have taken weeks to sit for this otherwise, and I think we all know Mercy could never have managed it. But I think—I think the likeness is wonderful.”
“It is,” Grace said, with a sniffle. “It’s perfect. Just perfect.”
“It’s just so you know that even when we’re not together,” Charity said, “we always will be again soon enough.”
Yes, she thought, as she linked her arm through Felicity’s and Charity’s. She gave a little laugh as she realized they had unconsciously echoed the exact reflection of the painting. As if they were staring now into a mirror, seeing a future that had not yet come to pass.
But Grace knew it would. That happiness painted in glowing oils was an inevitability, as if the painting itself were a premonition; a vision snatched straight from the years yet to come.
“Oh, look,” Mercy said, squinting at the bottom of the frame. “There’s a plaque. Has it got a title, then?”
“I suppose it must,” Charity said. “How curious. I didn’t request one. The artist must have decided to bestow one anyway.”
“Well?” Felicity nudged Grace’s shoulder. “It’s yours. What does it say?”
Grace stepped forward to, bending at the waist to read the little brass plaque affixed to the frame. A laugh bubbled up in her chest as she righted herself once more, swiping at her eyes. “It says Four Forever,” she said as she reclaimed her place there amongst her sisters.
And they would be that. Nightingale, Fletcher, Cabot, and Seymour, linked arm in arm in an unbreakable chain, bound not only by the blood they shared, but by the family they had created.
Four sisters, forever.