Epilogue
One year later
Sidney Enys was panting slightly when he burst through the door to the Pomeroy House library.
“Mail!” he gasped. “Here’s your mail. All of it. Just delivered.”
The beetle Alice had been sketching toppled off the end of his stick and landed upside down, legs waving in mild dismay. She righted him, placed him carefully in his nest of leaves, and then looked up to where Tamsin had already risen from the sofa to greet Sidney.
“I’ll take the letters,” Tamsin said.
Sidney didn’t seem to hear her. He crossed to Alice’s desk, blanched at the sight of the large iridescent green beetle, and then deposited the letters as far from Alice’s glass enclosure as possible. “Here you go, Lady Alice.”
“Thank you, Sidney,” she said. “You don’t have to come all the way up to the house, you know. We can retrieve our correspondence in the village.”
“I know,” he said enthusiastically. “I don’t mind, though.”
“Well.” She smiled at him. “Thank you, then.”
He blushed scarlet, then stood motionless for several long moments until Tamsin cleared her throat. He jumped, spun back toward the door, and departed with a final parting wave over his shoulder to Alice.
“Dearest,” Tamsin said as she crossed to retrieve the letters, “that boy is one extended glance away from dropping to his knees and proposing.”
“Tam! He’s only fifteen.”
“I believe he’s asked Eugénie to forge his birth records on the off chance you’ll have him.”
Alice laughed, though her heart wasn’t in it. She’d finished flipping hastily through the letters and had set them back down unopened.
“No reply?” Tam asked gently.
Alice bit her lip and shook her head, then reached down and ruffled Vanessa’s velvety ears.
Alice had once been the first female member of the Aurelian Society. But as a woman, her place in the group had always been tenuous; after her father’s disgrace, she’d been cast out.
When they’d visited the Aurelian Society’s estate in Surrey, she’d spoken to Professor Joyce about her possible readmission, now that the scandal around her father had mostly died down.
He’d told her he’d bring the matter before the society’s leadership, and she—perhaps foolishly—had nursed a small and futile hope that she might be one of them again.
She’d written to Professor Joyce three times in the last year. He’d yet to respond.
Tamsin picked up the letters and frowned down at them. “Fools,” she muttered. “I hate them, Alice. Start your own bloody bug association.”
She gave Tamsin a grateful smile, then picked up her beetle and delicately placed him back on his twig. She thought this one was a male—as a general rule, the male musk beetle grew longer antennae than did the female—though she had not yet witnessed the creature’s mating posture to be certain.
Tam settled herself back down and began to sort through the correspondence. Vanessa jumped up beside her—she was almost the size of the entire sofa now—and placed her black head in Tamsin’s lap.
After Captain Archer had told Princess Serafina the truth of his and his crew’s circumstances, the princess had agreed to hire Archer, Wall, Eugénie, Gerry, and Lamentation in a permanent capacity.
They had no need to smuggle any longer, a fact that seemed to both relieve and alarm Captain Archer.
He’d been forced to devise increasingly onerous household tasks for Lamentation in particular, lest the young man grow bored and invent more fictional sea monsters.
Alice and Tamsin had found themselves somewhat at loose ends.
The princess had been rather pleased and amused by the prospect of maintaining a trio of court ladies in Cornwall, but the notion had been deferred when she’d returned to Monfalcone shortly after her testimony at Jack Penney’s court-martial.
Her departure had left Tamsin gloomy and irritable for weeks—a fact that Tamsin would have denied vigorously had Alice been imprudent enough to point it out.
They’d spent some time visiting Tamsin’s Aunt Frankie at her estate, and then, to their mutual satisfaction, they’d received word from Ruby that their presence was once more required at Pomeroy House.
Ruby, it seemed, had concocted a new scheme—and she needed their help.
At her request, Captain Archer had put her into contact with the Dorset sculptor who’d produced Gravesmuir’s fake marbles.
Ruby had enthusiastically taught the woman a far better technique for mimicking aging on the sculptures’ stone surface.
And then Ruby had had the notion of selling them.
“Not as the real thing,” she’d explained, looking earnestly at Alice and Tamsin as she outlined her proposition. “As replicas. As excellent replicas. They’re all the rage, you know. You recall Penney’s house. The more decoration the better, some seem to think.”
“I should like to point out,” Tamsin had said, “that I do not, in fact, recall Penney’s house. Because I was trapped in a hayrick with an Italian hell-demon.”
Alice had patted her ankle. “We were very worried about you, though.”
“Yes, I’m sure. So worried that you planned an entire wedding in my absence.”
“I would not say ‘planned,’” Ruby had protested, and Tam had laughed.
Over the next several months, Ruby, Alice, and Tamsin had crafted a strategy to anonymously transact the sale of the replicas.
They’d filled an auction house on Bond Street with the statues, put notices in every paper, and then arranged for Ruby’s sister—and a number of Monfalcone loyalists hand-selected by Signor Neri—to buy the marbles in a frenzy of heated bidding.
Within a handful of weeks, the replicas were all the rage in Mayfair. The Earl of Hangleton, who had no notion of his elder daughter’s involvement in the scheme, had bought almost two dozen.
Now Ruby managed the replica production. Tamsin arranged the logistical details with their London man of business. And Alice . . .
Well. Once, she would have endorsed the fashionable statues in every ballroom in London, but that time had long since passed. She tried very hard not to miss it.
The musk beetle, who’d once again reached the end of his twig, plummeted off for a second time.
Male, Alice thought. Most assuredly.
Tamsin’s voice broke into Alice’s entomological reverie. “This is an interesting letter.”
Alice rescued the beetle again, then looked across the desk at Tamsin. “What does it say?”
Tamsin was gazing down at the ink-covered sheet, her left hand absently stroking Vanessa’s ear.
“It’s from a group of painters. The Baring Brotherhood of Naturists.
It says they’ve received a special dispensation from Princess Serafina to spend the summer here at Pomeroy House.
It says they are ‘in search of pacific vistas of rural splendor to instantiate a Platonic union of reason and soul.’”
Alice pondered the current state of Pomeroy House, which was home to eight dogs, seventy-nine captive beetles, and approximately five hundred faux Greek sculptures in various stages of completion. “I would not describe the conditions as pacific, exactly.”
“I fear they’re in for something of a shock when they arrive in”—Tamsin squinted at the narrow handwriting—“about forty-four hours, apparently. Have you ever heard of the Baring Brotherhood of Naturists?”
“I can’t say that I have.” She gazed at Tamsin. “Are you . . . entirely certain they’re painters?”
Tamsin’s brows drew together. “It does sound rather . . .” She glanced back down at the letter. “Perhaps I’ve misread.”
“Maybe Ruby will have heard of them.”
Tamsin folded the sheet of paper and attempted to find somewhere on the sofa to place it that wasn’t occupied by Vanessa. “Let us hope. Have you seen Ruby this afternoon?”
Alice considered Ruby: her oldest, dearest friend, so radiantly happy these days that Alice’s heart squeezed to think of her.
“I believe,” she said, “that Captain and Mrs. Archer are spending the afternoon in their cove.”
* * *
There was sand all over them: their entangled legs, their arms, their clothes. Somehow, there was a smear of the stuff directly across Ruby’s cheek, and Archer pondered whether there was any chance he could brush it away without leaving an even larger trail in its wake.
No, he decided. Not a chance.
He wrapped his arms around her waist instead and pulled her even closer, rubbing his chin against the top of her head. He breathed her in: amber and cedar, brandied fruit and a fortune of gold.
“This,” she murmured, “is my favorite place.”
He grinned. “This cove?”
The view was superlative—the sun was setting, and the sea was the exact blue-gray of Ruby’s eyes. From here, he could just see the harbor at St. Petroc’s; if he squinted, he thought perhaps he could make out the Delphinium.
It was a miracle beyond anything he could ever have dreamed of: to travel to London together in his ship, Ruby’s replicas lovingly crated on the decks and Gerry and Lamentation manning the sails.
He had told Princess Serafina the truth about himself and his crew right there in Surrey. It had been difficult, that raw vulnerability. It went against the habit of a lifetime to put himself—his people—in someone else’s power.
But it had been the right thing to do. And with Ruby at his side, nothing felt impossible. Not anymore.
The princess had taken in his revelations with a slow, cool nod. And when Archer had ended by asking for posts at Pomeroy House for all five of them, the princess had granted his request with a wave of her small hand.
Signor Neri had followed later with the paperwork.
The princess had been considerably more pleased by Gill Oliphant’s mercenary enthusiasm as her personal pirate.
As promised, House di Sangro had given Oliphant a minor fortune to hunt down Verdura, though Oliphant had not thus far proven successful.
The duke, it seemed, was devilishly slippery, on top of being a murderous, grasping coward.
Archer suspected that Oliphant might have a very long future ahead of him as a Monfalcone privateer.
And while Archer had not taken any of the princess’s ransom money, he had willingly accepted a go-between fee from Oliphant, in exchange for putting Oliphant up for the job.
Archer’s choice of payment had been the return of his own Delphinium.
The notion had been Ruby’s. His wife, he thought smugly, had considerable promise as a pirate queen.
“Not the cove,” she said. She leaned up and planted a kiss along his throat, then made a little humming noise as she rubbed her nose against his unshaven jaw. “Though I like that too. But no, I meant”—she wriggled in demonstration—“here. In your embrace.”
“Keep squirming like that,” he muttered, “and you’ll be in for something else.”
She grinned, and his heart leapt. It always did when she smiled at him like that. “Heavens,” she murmured. “Threats from the captain. Shall I be forced to walk the plank?”
“Bound to the mainmast, more like.”
“Goodness. Immobilized by a column of erected wood.” Her cheeks were pink with sunset, and her mouth was all mischief. “You sailors are positively depraved.”
He rolled her over in one swift move, and she laughed and pushed her fingers into his hair.
He kissed her hard and thoroughly, though it was difficult—no matter how much he wanted her—to make himself stop smiling.
When he finally came up for air, Ruby’s face was a trifle more flushed than it had been. Her breath came quickly, and her skirts were rucked up high enough that he had a hand on her bare thigh.
She was so delicious—so warm and edible and pretty, all painted with sunset oranges and lavenders—that he lost his breath for a moment, looking at her.
There was something about the sight of her here in the cove that never failed to make his blood run hot.
It had been in the cove that he’d told her he’d got the Delphinium back—and here too that she’d broken the news that her replicas had been featured in the Royal Archaeological Journal for their exceptional attention to historical detail.
He kept the memory of Ruby’s expression that day like an engraving in his heart: all stunned gratification and slow-blossoming smile. He thought of it whenever they were parted and resolved to make her smile like that again—always—for the rest of his life.
He was startled from his daydream by Ruby’s squeak of alarm.
“What?” he demanded. “What is it?”
He rolled off Ruby, ready to throw himself to his feet at any indication of the missing Verdura or marauding seals. When he landed, however, he was promptly made aware of what had caused Ruby’s surprise as his arse met half an inch of frigid ocean water.
“I believe,” Ruby said, rather primly for someone whose skirts were soaked and sandy, “that the tide is coming in.”
“Do you know,” he said, “I think you might be right.”
She was laughing again as he pulled her up to standing, as he dragged her deep into the shadows of the cove where he’d once stripped off her gloves and kissed her senseless.
He did it again. He kissed her until she was breathless, until the sun dipped below the horizon and the water splashed around their ankles.
“We should go back,” she murmured against his lips. “A few more minutes and we’ll be cut off from the house.”
He wrapped his arms tight around her. His heart was full of her too—overflowing with sweet, raw tenderness. She was the ocean and the tides, the moon and all the comets.
There was, in the end, one star that bound him fast—that held him steady at the wheel.
His Ruby. His truth north.
“Good,” he said. “Let the tide come. Everything I want is here.”