Epilogue
Six weeks after Baron Lockwood’s death on the Great North Road, London society had found new scandals to occupy its attention.
The official account—that the baron had been killed while resisting arrest for the killing of two women—had been accepted without question.
The Duke of Blackstone’s word carried sufficient weight that no magistrate dared question his account of self-defense, and the transportation sentences handed down to Briggs and Murphy had closed the matter definitively.
What society didn’t know, and never would, was the detail that a small gathering in the Earl of Danvers’ library had sworn to keep secret—the truth about Ava-Marie’s birth.
Lucien stood by the window, watching his daughter play in the garden with Lauren while the adults conducted their serious business inside.
The decision had been unanimous—the secret would remain within the family circle for now, but if it ever came to light, they would face it together rather than allow anyone to use it as a weapon against them.
“It’s decided then,” the Marquess of Lorne said, his authoritative voice bringing the meeting to a close. “The truth remains among us, but we won’t live in fear of its discovery. If it comes out, we weather the storm together.”
Tarquin nodded his agreement. “Better to control the narrative ourselves than let others twist it against us.”
Farah, seated beside Rockwell on the settee, spoke up. “Ava-Marie deserves to know the truth when she’s old enough to understand it. But that’s years away yet.”
“She’ll know,” Lucien assured them, his voice firm. “But she’ll also know that her legitimacy in the eyes of society matters far less than her legitimacy in the eyes of those who love her.”
The meeting dispersed with embraces and promises of continued support. As the families prepared to leave, Courtney approached Lucien at the window, slipping her hand into his.
“Tomorrow,” she said softly, “we’ll be married.”
He turned to face her, marveling as he did each day at the miracle of her presence in his life once again. “Tomorrow, you’ll become my wife in truth, not just in my heart.”
“I’ve been yours in truth for so many years,” she replied, reaching up to straighten his cravat. “Tomorrow is simply making it official.”
Their wedding at Westminster Abbey the following morning was a magnificent affair that drew half of London society.
Courtney walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, radiant in ivory silk and her grandmother’s pearls, while Lucien waited at the altar with Ava-Marie beside him as a flower girl, her dark curls crowned with a wreath of roses.
The archbishop’s voice echoed through the ancient stones as he pronounced them husband and wife, and when Lucien kissed his bride, the assembled guests erupted in applause that seemed to shake the very rafters.
But it was the reception that evening at Blackstone House that would be remembered long after the wedding itself had faded from memory.
The Duke of Blackstone had insisted on hosting the wedding ball, claiming it was his honor for his friend. What he hadn’t admitted was that the elaborate celebration was also his way of trying to forget he’d lost Kitty. A woman who he shouldn’t have loved, but had.
Blackstone House glittered like a jewel in the London night, every window blazing with candlelight, the gardens transformed into a fairy wonderland with thousands of paper lanterns strung between the trees.
The ballroom overflowed with the cream of society, all eager to celebrate the romantic conclusion to what many considered the most dramatic courtship of the season.
A wedding that should have occurred five years ago.
Lucien and Courtney moved through their first dance as husband and wife with perfect synchronization, lost in each other’s eyes despite the hundreds of guests watching their every move.
“No regrets?” Lucien murmured as he spun her through a turn.
“Only that we lost so much time,” she replied, her amber eyes sparkling with happiness. “But we have the rest of our lives to make up for it.”
Ava-Marie, resplendent in a miniature version of her new stepmother’s gown, watched from the sidelines with barely contained excitement. Neither of them cared that it really wasn’t appropriate for Ava-Marie to be there. Society had best get used to Lucien’s ways.
When the dance ended, she rushed forward to claim her turn with her father, causing the assembled guests to “aww” collectively as Lucien swept his daughter into his arms for an impromptu waltz.
As the evening progressed, the Duke of Blackstone made his way steadily through what appeared to be several bottles of his finest brandy.
His grief for Kitty, carefully hidden behind aristocratic composure during the day, seemed to manifest itself in increasingly reckless drinking as the night wore on.
Lady Ashley Ware noticed his condition when she stepped onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air, needing respite from the crowded ballroom and the pitying looks that still followed her wherever she went in society.
Her own scandal from three years past had never quite been forgotten, and events like this reminded her acutely of her diminished status.
She’d never seen His Grace drunk. Had never seen him with a hair out of place or showing any weakness.
Perhaps he was human after all. When she heard His Grace stumble and curse, followed by a loud crash, she knew she should simply get one of the stuffy duke’s servants, but Courtney had told her of Kitty’s death.
Being a kind person, she realized the duke was hurting.
That was why the normally composed and correct man was drunk. She decided to help him.
Moving further into the garden, she found the duke slumped on a stone bench in a secluded corner, his usually immaculate appearance disheveled, his dark hair falling across his forehead. In the moonlight, he looked younger somehow, more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him.
“Your Grace?” she approached cautiously, concerned despite their history of mutual dislike.
Due to her scandal, the duke considered her a bad influence on his sister Farah.
Before her marriage to Rockwell, Farah had never been allowed to enter their house, for example.
And he’d barely acknowledged her presence if they were in the same room. “Are you quite well?”
He looked up at her with eyes that held a grief so profound it took her breath away. “Lady Ashley,” he said, his voice slurred but still recognizably aristocratic. “Come to witness the mighty fall?”
“I came for air,” she replied honestly, studying his face with growing concern. “But I can see you’re…unwell. Perhaps I should call for someone—”
“No.” The word came out sharper than he’d intended, and he visibly struggled to moderate his tone. “No one else. They’ve all seen enough of my…weakness.”
Ashley had intended only to check on the duke’s welfare—a simple act of kindness from one wounded soul to another. But as she sat beside him on the stone bench, listening to his raw confession of grief, something fundamental shifted between them.
“Everything is about her,” Blackstone whispered, his usual aristocratic reserve stripped away by brandy and anguish. “Every breath, every heartbeat, every waking moment. She’s gone, and I… I don’t know how to exist without her.”
The naked pain in his voice struck something deep in Ashley’s chest. For three years, she had been defined by her scandal, reduced to a cautionary tale whispered about in drawing rooms. But here was the Duke of Blackstone—the man who had cut her dead at countless social events, who had looked through her as if she were invisible—revealing himself to be as broken as she was.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, her anger at his past treatment of her dissolving in the face of his genuine anguish. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”
“Do you?” He turned to look at her properly for the first time, taking in her face in the moonlight. Without his usual mask of aristocratic disdain, he looked younger, more vulnerable. “I’d forgotten…your scandal. A love affair gone wrong.”
The familiar sting of that assumption—that she had been some naive girl seduced and abandoned—rose in her throat. But tonight, with grief hanging between them like morning mist, the old defensive anger seemed pointless.
“It wasn’t quite what everyone believes,” she said carefully. “But the consequences were…severe.”
His jaw tightened with unexpected anger on her behalf. “Society is cruel to women who dare to feel, to want, to love. You deserved better than their judgment.”
“Did I?” Ashley’s laugh held three years of accumulated bitterness. “I’ve been a cautionary tale for so long, I’ve almost forgotten what it felt like to be anything else.”
“You were nineteen,” he said, leaning closer. In the moonlight, his dark eyes held something she’d never seen before—compassion, understanding, recognition of shared pain. “Nineteen and caught up in circumstances beyond your control. What crime is that?”
The gentleness in his voice, so at odds with the cold disapproval she’d grown accustomed to from him, cracked something inside her chest. When he reached out to touch her cheek, she didn’t pull away.
“You’re not alone,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to carry this burden alone anymore.”
Three years of careful composure of maintaining dignity in the face of whispers and snubs, suddenly crumbled. The tears came without warning, great gulping sobs that she tried desperately to muffle against his shoulder as his arms came around her.
“Shh,” he murmured, his voice infinitely gentle. “Let it out. You’re safe here.”
Safe. When was the last time anyone had made her feel safe? When was the last time someone had held her without judgment, without calculation of what association with her might cost them?