Epilogue
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Isabella was knocked from her thoughtful, happy reverie by a hand on her shoulder.
She turned to look at Oscar, who sat next to her at the pianoforte in the music room.
“You are happy,” he murmured, leaning into her so the comment was just for them.
In the early afternoon light, he looked so handsome, and part of her still wondered how she had the honor of waking up to him every morning, of falling asleep in his arms every night.
He had recently cut his hair a little shorter, and his beard had been trimmed.
It was still there, and Isabella still adored raking her fingers softly through it, but he did not look like the unkempt, devastated man who had turned up at Hermia’s townhouse begging for her to come home four months ago.
“I am,” she answered, turning to look out at the music room.
Around her, Hermia and Charles sat with their new arrival, Samuel, on Charles’s lap.
Phoebe was crouched on the floor near them, her hands toying with Morris’s floppy ears. Her giggles filled the room whenever Morris shook his head, but she continued to go back to him for more.
Next to her, Sibyl had her face tilted downward into sheet music, deciphering a melody she intended to use to impress her next favorite suitor. For her, music still remained a gift and a joy, and Isabella swore to protect that from their mother’s calculations of qualities in her daughters.
“Are you?” Isabella asked, and Oscar answered with a breathy laugh as he wrapped an arm around her waist.
He took his other hand and grasped hers, shaping a chord on the pianoforte. He guided them to play it, and the room stopped for a moment before continuing.
“I have a wife whom I adore,” he told her, “and I have a home that is now filled with more warmth than I ever thought possible. You have opened both my heart and eyes to this world, Isabella. How could I ever not be happy?”
And she could see it: how light did indeed linger in those green eyes that held her own with so much love.
“I am just happy that you let me decorate your study a little more,” she teased.
“Ah, yes, the painting of the sweet shop,” he chuckled. “It entices me endlessly. You are a tease, my beloved.”
He had begun calling her that not long after he had proclaimed his love to her, kneeling on the street.
Beloved.
No, not just that: my beloved. Because she was his, as he was hers, Isabella had never known what it was like to be kept in one’s heart until Oscar.
“Then I shall take you to every sweet shop you desire,” Isabella laughed. “My husband shall have his sweet tooth fulfilled.”
“Indeed, but first, I did once promise to show you my secrets.” Still holding her gaze, he smirked at her as he played several chords with their hands overlapped. “As I said, I am not the most proficient by any means, but I do enjoy it.”
For a moment, as Isabella’s hand was guided over a melody she didn’t know, she marveled at the change in this man, who had once been full of impenetrable darkness yet now smiled a lot easier than he ever had.
She leaned in to rest her head against his shoulder as she lifted her other hand to play alongside their chords.
“Heavens, I forgot you played the pianoforte,” Edmund said from across the room.
He sat opposite Hermia and Charles on a settee.
At his side, Mary was pink-faced and full of the love she had found in the marquess.
Isabella had noticed, of course. There had been enough knowing looks between the two of them throughout the last several months, but they were now married and freshly returned from their honeymoon.
“Perhaps you should forget again.” Oscar grinned. “Especially when I sit next to a very skilled player.”
“No,” Edmund retorted, smiling gently. “No, I think I shall remember this for a very long time, for I can see how content you are.”
Oscar just ducked his head, flushing, and Isabella was quite delighted.
“Isabella,” her husband said a moment later, lowering his voice as conversation around them filled the music room.
“The days that we fought… I—” he cut himself off for a moment before continuing.
“I was outside the music room listening to you play the pianoforte. It was the first time I had heard it, and I remember hearing so much anger in what you played. Something stirred within me. I was in such a dark, cold place, and yet hearing you play so vigorously, perhaps a note for every word I had prevented you from saying to me, it… it moved me.”
“I ran after you,” she told him.
The old wounds of that argument had long been paved over with morning kisses and dancing on every balcony they could after candlelit dinners.
It had been mended through open discussions and Isabella being there through Oscar’s fading night terrors, and he had mended his own damage with assurances that Isabella was always enough.
“I made sure to be quick.” He laughed, shaking his head.
“But your song sounded like a fight. Like… I do not know how to explain it, but I felt transported back to the battlefield in a way that stunned me. Because for once it was not guilt that sent me back there, nor regret, but a reminder of who I was. I was a fighter—one who had been fighting for the wrong thing. It took me too long to be able to realize how to truly and finally approach you. But I heard you, Isabella. I heard your anguish in that song.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, still idly playing.
“My point is that I want you to play something different with me now,” he went on. “Play a ballad with me. Play a song to be performed by lovers reaching for one another on a balcony. Play a song that could be a first dance at a wedding ball. No more battles, Isabella.”
Taking her hands off the pianoforte, Isabella embraced her husband and buried her face in his neck briefly.
She breathed him in. She clung to him and everything he was, and was so overwhelmed with how vulnerable he was being with her.
He had been trying, had stuck to his word of working with her every day to make up for the pain of those weeks.
“All right, will there be any more music played?” Alicia asked loudly, sighing as though truly exasperated. “I am nauseated by how much love there is in this room. It makes me shudder, honestly.”
“Oh, Alicia,” Hermia laughed. “One day you will think differently.”
“I shall never,” Alicia swore with a huff. “Heaven forbid I become like Sibyl.”
At that, Sibyl scowled at her, and Alicia grinned, mouthing an apology. It was not said harshly, but Alicia was so fiercely stubborn in her independence and need to be outside of the ton’s strict guidelines that she sometimes spoke before she thought through her words entirely.
Isabella looked at her youngest sister, trying to imagine what sort of suitor would make her happy, would honor her personality and spirit. He needed to be the most special of men to be worthy of a lady like Alicia.
For a while, Isabella and Oscar played a soft melody to fill the happy room, and all the time her eyes swept over her sisters. She adored them. For every petty argument they had over the years, she knew she would do anything for them, as they would for her.
When the music stopped, the group retreated to the parlor, where wine was served, but, peculiarly, Mary refused politely.
Isabella’s eyes widened as she herself discreetly refused her own glass when Oscar was not looking. She was saving her news for later, when they were alone. Mary looked at her, and she looked back at her friend, and they embraced one another quickly.
Tears pricked Isabella’s eyes as she pulled back. “Together, we will support one another. Congratulations, Mary. Does Edmund know yet?”
Mary nodded eagerly, glancing at where Edmund and Oscar were speaking by the window. “He wanted to tell Oscar in private, so I imagine that is what is happening. Although we both asked for it not to be public just yet. How about you?”
“I am telling Oscar tonight.” Isabella giggled happily, hugging her friend once more, and then everybody settled in.
“I was reading the gossip papers the other day,” Sibyl mentioned as she began digging into the plate of macarons that had been served.
“That awful Lord Stanton left England some months ago. Apparently, he was in quite a lot of debt, and an anonymous benefactor paid it off but demanded that he leave, so he has, and nobody has seen anything of him since.”
Oscar coughed into his fist, glancing at Isabella. She cocked a brow in confused question, but he only looked away, giving her an innocent smile. Her heart fluttered.
“I say good riddance,” Mary announced. “He was horrid. So very… sly and oily.”
“I am just glad he is finally out of my life and that there is no threat of our mother trying to match you with him,” Isabella sighed. “We are all safe from his persistence.”
“What we are not safe from is the smell coming off my baby brother,” Phoebe complained. “He always smells. Hermia, you told me that Papa smells nice, so when do men start doing that?”
At the abrupt outburst—an innocent interruption of a conversation Phoebe didn’t have anything to contribute to, so spoke of her own thoughts—the room erupted into laughter.
“Your father does smell nice,” Hermia laughed, “and I am certain Samuel will when he grows up, but for now, he needs a lot of care, and sometimes there are smells, and that lets us know to attend to him.”
Phoebe wrinkled her nose but bounced Samuel on her knee, carefully watched over by Charles, who had one hand on Phoebe’s shoulder and the other casually draped around Hermia.
“Well, he must hurry up. I love him very much, but my nose does not,” the little girl said.
Isabella fought the urge to ghost a hand over her stomach, especially when Oscar’s gaze rested heavily on her. He had always noticed that she watched Hermia’s family with envy.