EPILOGUE #3
"He's destroying your dress," Clara said, moving to retrieve him.
"Let him. I have other dresses. I don't have other great-nephews."
"You don't like children," Gabriel pointed out.
"I don't like badly behaved children. This one is interestingly behaved, which is different."
"He's feral," Edmund supplied helpfully.
"All the best people are," Lady Agatha said, which made everyone stare at her. "What? You think I was born this proper? I once put a frog in my governess's bed."
"You did not," Gabriel said.
"I did. She was insufferable and needed humbling."
"What happened?"
"She screamed, quit, and I got a better governess who appreciated amphibian-based rebellion."
James, as if understanding he'd found a kindred spirit, settled more firmly in her lap and began playing with her massive amethyst brooch.
"Don't eat that," Lady Agatha told him. "It's worth more than a small estate."
"No!" James agreed cheerfully.
"His vocabulary is extensive," she observed dryly.
"He knows other words," Clara defended. "He just prefers efficiency."
"Like his mother, who efficiently conquered a dukedom through strategic wall-climbing."
"I didn't conquer anything."
"You conquered my nephew's well-maintained defenses, which multiple London beauties failed to breach."
"They didn't have stolen boots and desperation."
"Borrowed boots," Gabriel corrected automatically.
"Still on about that, are we?" Lady Agatha asked. "It's been two years."
"It's the principle of the thing."
"The principle being that your wife is too proud to admit to theft but practical enough to commit it?"
"Exactly."
Lady Agatha studied them both, then said, "You're happy."
It wasn't a question, but Clara answered anyway. "Yes."
“They appear possessed of a vulgar degree of contentment, by my estimation.”
"Also yes."
"And you're breeding again?"
Clara's hand went to her stomach. "Possibly."
"Definitely," Gabriel said. "She has the look."
"There's no look!"
"There's absolutely a look," Lady Agatha said. "Same look your mother had when she was carrying you.
A trifle unseasoned, I observe, yet possessed of a quite insufferable self-satisfaction.”
“I confess to no such unbecoming vanity.”
“You hold a degree of self-congratulation that is scarcely modest, I should say”
James, bored with the adult conversation, slid off Lady Agatha's lap and toddled back to his frog-training activities, leaving muddy footprints across her skirt.
"I suppose," Lady Agatha said, watching him go, "I should make provisions for him in my will."
“Your purse is not required for our current purposes.” Gabriel said immediately.
“I did not mean money. I have property. Books. That ridiculous collection of purple garnets that someone should inherit, if only to sell them and buy something sensible."
"Purple garnets aren't sensible?"
"Nothing purple is sensible. It's aggressive and impractical, which is why I wear it. But your son might appreciate aggressive and impractical things, given his parentage."
"That's almost a compliment," Clara observed.
"Don't get used to it. I'm only being nice because the child shared his frog and I'm too old to maintain proper antagonism."
"How old are you?" Edmund asked, then immediately looked like he regretted it.
"Old enough to remember when asking a lady's age resulted in dueling, young man."
"I apologise."
"You should. Now, someone explain this communist farming situation before I decide to be offended by it."
Clara explained their cooperative arrangement while Gabriel interjected defensive comments and Edmund added color commentary. Lady Agatha listened with surprising attention, occasionally asking sharp questions that showed she understood more about estate management than her purple silk suggested.
"It's not the worst idea," she finally concluded. "Though it will never catch on broadly."
"Why not?" Clara asked.
"Because it requires aristocrats to treat tenants as partners rather than property, and most of my peers would rather lose money than lose superiority."
"That's depressing."
"That's accurate."
James returned, now wearing his toga as a cape, dragging Margaret's daughter Sophie by the hand. They stood before Lady Agatha and performed what might have been a bow but looked more like synchronised falling.
"Are they broken?" Lady Agatha asked with concern.
"They're attempting manners," Margaret explained.
"Ah. Well, points for effort, minimal though it may be."
James beamed and offered Lady Agatha a slightly squashed biscuit from his pocket.
"He's sharing his pocket biscuit," Clara said. "That's unprecedented."
Lady Agatha accepted the biscuit with the gravity of someone receiving a state honor. "Thank you, young man."
"Biscuit!" James declared.
"Yes, I can see that. It's a very... compressed biscuit."
"It's been in his pocket for three days," Gabriel supplied helpfully.
"Ah. Aged to perfection then."
She took a small bite, chewed thoughtfully, and said, "I've had worse at court dinners."
James beamed and toddled off, apparently satisfied that his great-aunt was acceptable.
"You didn't have to eat it," Clara said.
"When a small tyrant offers you pocket biscuit, you eat it. It's basic diplomacy."
"Since when are you diplomatic?"
"Since I realised fighting you two was like fighting the tide, exhausting and ultimately pointless."
As the afternoon wore on, Clara watched Lady Agatha slowly thaw, eventually even helping James with his frog-training efforts and teaching the twins a card game that was definitely not appropriate for children but which they loved anyway.
"She's not so terrible," Clara said to Gabriel as they watched Lady Agatha demonstrate the proper way to hold a frog for maximum jumping potential.
"She's terrible in different ways now."
"Growth?"
"Exhaustion. She's too tired to maintain proper terribleness."
"She accepted us."
"She accepted defeat. There's a difference."
"Not mutually…"
“Complete that sentence and I shall insist upon a permanent separation.”
"You can’t separate from me. I'm carrying your theoretical second child."
"Definite second child."
"Theoretical until proven."
"You're impossible."
"I'm your impossible duchess who conquered you with stolen boots."
"Borrowed boots!"
"I'm never admitting they were stolen, am I?"
"Never."
"And you're never stopping saying they were borrowed?"
"Never."
"We're going to have this argument forever."
"Probably. Our children will inherit it. James will tell his children about their grandmother's borrowed boots."
"Theoretical children."
"Definite children… an army, all very feral.” Loads of them. All feral."
Clara looked around the garden, at their wild son training frogs, at Lady Agatha covered in mud and seeming surprisingly content about it, at their found family of friends and servants all mingled together without proper hierarchy, at Gabriel beside her, scarred and beautiful and hers.
"I love you," she said quietly.
"I love you too," he replied, then louder, "I love my wife who conquered me with stolen boots!"
"BORROWED BOOTS!" Clara shouted back.
"Mama and Papa." James announced clearly, his second complete sentence.
Everyone stared at him.
"Did he just…" Edmund started.
"He did," Gabriel said proudly. "Our son just achieved complex critical analysis."
"He called you insane," Lady Agatha pointed out.
"Accurately," Gabriel agreed. "We're raising a genius."
"You're raising a small barbarian who happens to have good vocabulary," Lady Agatha corrected, but she was smiling.
As the sun began to set, painting the wild garden in shades of gold and pink, Clara thought about how nothing had gone according to plan.
She hadn't meant to fall in love with Gabriel as a child, hadn't meant to return to him in desperation, and hadn’t meant to become a duchess or a mother or the center of this beautiful, chaotic, impossible life.
But here she was, watching her naked son teach a frog to jump through hoops while her husband argued with his aunt about the proper pronunciation of "borrowing" and their friends placed bets on which child would destroy something first.
It was perfect in its imperfection, wild in its love, impossible in its existence.
Just like their rose, growing against all odds.
Just like them.
"What are you thinking?" Gabriel asked, pulling her closer.
"That I'm glad I borrowed those boots."
"STOLE!"
"Never admitting it."
"Forever?"
"Forever."
James looked up from his frog and pronounced with perfect clarity: "My parents are very loud."
And they were.
Their contentment, it was plain, would prove an enduring possession, everlasting and expressed with the utmost ardour.
The End