Epilogue
“You must be the best judge of your own happiness.”
Jane Austen
He always said always.
And for the first time, the word gave Marigold comfort instead of itchy feet.
“You’ve let him go?” Isabella sat waiting with the sherry in the upholstered reading chair in Marigold’s sitting room. Almost as if she anticipated the need for the fortified wine.
“I could hardly bring a young man upstairs to my sitting room after the sun has gone down, Isabella. Even you should understand how that is against the rules.”
“I suppose.” Isabella conceded gracefully.
“I myself don’t hold with rules. I’ll hold out hope that you asked him to dinner—which I am also hoping you will take with me, at my inn, instead of denigrating my palate with dining hall food.
” Her face brightened. “Which brings me to another thought I think you’ll like—I’ve come to a wonderful final agreement with your marvelous Lucy Dove.
While I could not convince her to become my personal chef—not enough exposure, we decided—she has accepted my proposal to be my partner in a tearoom here in Wellesley.
” Isabella beamed. “The final documents for the lease were signed today.”
Marigold hardly knew what to say. She had too many questions.
So she asked them all. “What do you mean? When did this happen?”
“When? When you had such marvelous things to say about her, and I wrote Daisy to find me some of her recipes that she had submitted to Tad Endicott and Collier’s so I could try them out—or rather my chef could.
And they were marvelous—and I told Tad that, naturally, because I thought he might like to have an unbiased opinion.
And after Lucy contracted with Collier’s, I wrote her a note of congratulations, and she wrote me back—exquisite handwriting, and you know I like that.
So, when I found she was here in Wellesley, naturally, I arranged to meet her. ”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally,” Isabella said emphatically. “One likes to help out where one can, and one likes to have new ventures to think about. It helps spark creativity.” She shook her finger at Marigold. “I told you I had a new business venture that Cab was drawing up the papers for.”
“You did indeed.” After she got over the shock, Marigold found she was delighted. “You have my hearty congratulations. How marvelous for you both. Let us have dinner with her tonight to drink to your success!” She held up her sherry glass in preliminary toast.
Isabella raised her glass in response. “Thank you, darling.”
“And thank you.” Marigold sat, more weary than she had ever been.
“Thank you for your extraordinary friendship. The fact that you are even here”—she gestured to the snug little dormitory suite—“when you could be seated in luxury and comfort at your inn, or in your own home, is testament to what a wonderful friend you are. I’m lucky to have you. ”
“Darling, the true luxury in this life is having friends worth being with.” Isabella held her own glass high. “One of these days, you and Cab are going to realize that.”
“Isabella,” Marigold began in a tone that would hopefully tell Isabella that she was done with this discussion. “I have plans—good, logical, well-thought-out plans—that of a necessity don’t involve Cab.”
Isabella sighed in frustration. “I don’t see why not.”
“Isabella, I have explained about academic institutions requiring women—”
“Your president, Julia Irvine, is Mrs. Irvine, I note. If there is an exception for her—”
“She is a widow,” Marigold reminded her.
“Ah.” Isabella, who was also a widow, nodded in understanding. “And is therefore allowed a different sort of freedom. I see.” She took a restorative sip of her sherry. “But it is so unfair,” she groused. “You belong with Cab.”
Marigold tried one more time, though the words were heavy on her heart. “Isabella, I belong with myself, doing what I have always wanted to do. What I have studied and prepared myself for. Why can you not see that?”
“I do see that, darling.” Isabella reached out to take Marigold’s hand.
“I really do. But I also see something else—that you are most yourself in all your brilliant, proud, determined glory, when you are with Cab, in a way that you are not with anyone else. Not even me. You are the most yourself when you are with him. Except also, dare I say it, a little bit happier and more relaxed.”
This was a truth that Marigold was not prepared to admit. Not today. Not after she had so recently spent just such relaxed, happy moments with him.
She rose and went to the window to watch the very last of the afternoon’s light leach out of the sky over the lake, casting the water into inky obscurity. “Perhaps,” she finally allowed.
Perhaps she was feeling nostalgic for a time in her life when all the things that she wanted had seemed possible. But she understood now that choices and compromises always had to be made. That something or someone was always going to be left out.
“Yes,” Isabella murmured behind her. “Perhaps now is just not the right time.”
“Yes,” Marigold finally agreed with her friend, and found the strange tension in her chest ease, just a bit. “Not the right time.”
But who knew if it would ever be the right time.
Although the easing in her chest told her that she still hoped that somehow, someday it would be. But in the meantime—
“I do hope you are going to turn this latest episode into—what did you call them?” Isabella queried. “Spondulicks? The Argosy would no doubt like another installment of your murdery tales and should pay you even more handsomely for them. You should call it ‘The Wellesley Strangler.’ ”
“I don’t think the college would appreciate the notoriety.”
“Then call it ‘The College Strangler’ and set it somewhere else—Radcliffe or Vassar. They’ll be glad of the attention up there in the hinterlands.”
“Isabella, you are incorrigible.”
“Naturally,” Isabella agreed cordially. “Just as I aim to be. And so should you if you’re bent on being independent. Incorrigibility is a wonderful characteristic in an independent woman.”
And so was persistence.
Marigold took a deep draught of the sherry and let the fortified wine lend her eloquence. “Then what do you think of this for a beginning?”
What was it about hats that always seemed to catch my eye?
THE END