Epilogue
“Everyone is staring at me!” whispered Lucy.
“Of course they are,” replied Jack. “It’s your engagement ball. And you’re dancing a very scandalous waltz.”
She glanced up, smiling as they twirled together around the ballroom. “You’re not supposed to be looking at me.”
“Oh yes I am.” He let a purr of meaning into his voice, love and lust both together, and he felt the answering tremble in her body.
Smiling, because of course she’d hidden her eyes from him again, he said, “Besides, they’re only looking because you’re dancing with the most handsome man in London.”
She laughed. “No, Jack. Surely they are looking at me because I’m one of the most talked about young painters in London?”
“That’s what happens when you get commissioned by duchesses, Min. If you didn’t want the attention, you shouldn’t have gone charming the Duchess of Cumbria.”
“All I did was speak to her!”
“That’s enough.”
She smiled up at him. “Anyway. It was Caroline’s doing. She introduced us at Mr Thornton’s exhibition. She really does know everyone in London, doesn’t she?”
“It seems so.”
The dance separated them for a moment. Jack ran his eyes over the crowd.
His mother was fanning herself at the side of the ballroom, watching the dancers with avid enjoyment.
Ashburton stood resolutely by her side, Nell ignoring him and chatting to one of her friends.
Several couples further up the dance, George danced with Nora.
Jack bit his lip, trying not to laugh, but the look of resigned duty on George’s face was almost as comical as Nora’s disgruntlement.
To Nora, Jack knew, even George’s fortune couldn’t make up for his many crimes.
First, he’d been witness to her disgrace.
Second, he was provokingly censorious about it and refused to forget it like any true gentleman ought—these were Nora’s own words—and instead insisted on keeping a hawk-eyed watch on her every time they met, which was far too often for her liking.
And third, and worst of all, he was so stuffily ungallant and boringly proper, and hardly fashionable at all, for all his wealth.
“Has Caroline heard from her brother?” Jack asked once Lucy was back in his arms. Caroline had remained mostly in Derbyshire, only visiting town infrequently after her brother’s conduct.
No one knew of it, not openly, but she seemed to prefer to keep a low profile.
Or as low a profile as Caroline was capable of.
“Yes, though not in much detail. Her last letter said he was in Spain. The fighting is very heavy. I look at the casualty lists in the papers, Jack. I know I shouldn’t care, but…”
“I understand. I only hope this might be the making of him.”
“Yes,” agreed Lucy sadly. “For Caroline’s sake, I wish it.”
“Stranger things have happened,” said Jack with a smile, bowing as the dance ended.
He led Lucy from the dance. Spying Mr Thornton among the guests, he headed that way.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” said Mr Thornton. “What a dance! If I were only ten years younger, I’d try it myself.”
“Nonsense,” said Lucy. “You are not too old at all.”
“Maybe I lack the right partner, then.”
“I doubt that too,” said Lucy with a significant smile across the room to where a tall, refined-looking gentleman stood in quiet conversation. “It is the wrong audience. That is all.”
Mr Thornton smiled. “Speaking of audiences…”
Lucy took a sharp breath. “You showed it?”
“I did.”
“And?” she squeaked.
“They’d like to see your oil painting of the piece, but the pastel drew much interest and appreciation. I think it likely that your finished work will be chosen for exhibition next year.”
Jack smiled at Lucy’s ecstatic face. To have a piece at the Royal Academy exhibition had been her dream for years.
“A very interesting interpretation,” said Mr Thornton. He smiled at Jack. “And the model reminds me of someone.”
Jack coughed. “Lord Byron?”
“No… I’m not quite sure that’s it…”
Lucy laughed. “I reveal no secrets, Mr Thornton! And besides, I thought I changed him quite significantly.”
“Oh, you did, you did. He’s significantly improved. Far more heroic.” He slapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder, laughing at his disgruntled expression. “In real life, my boy! I meant the model is far more heroic-looking in real life! Whoever he is.”
And with a wink, he left them, Lucy giggling at Jack’s side.
Lucy paced her bedroom, waiting for Jack to make his nightly appearance.
She still lived at Caroline’s, though Caroline herself was seldom there, but her elderly female relative remained, lending respectability to Lucy’s living arrangements.
The old woman slept as much as ever, took no notice of Lucy whatsoever, and paid no attention at all to Jack’s comings and goings.
He didn’t even have to climb the drainpipe anymore, although he sometimes still did, just to surprise her.
Tonight was one of those nights, the knock coming at her window and almost making her drop the document in her hand.
She hurried over to pull up the sash, and he climbed in, grinning, cupping her jaw in his hands and kissing her.
The delicious slide of his tongue drove everything from her mind for a moment.
“You looked so beautiful tonight,” Jack breathed, lips grazing her cheek. “I like you in green satin. I like you in this disgraceful old robe. Most of all, I like you in nothing at all.”
It was all very distracting, she had to admit, especially when Jack’s fingers began to toy with the collar of her robe, running under it where it lay over her chest. But…
“What’s that?” he paused to ask, nodding at the folded document she held.
“It came, Jack! Finally. While we were at the ball. It was here waiting for me.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “The final decision?”
“Yes. There is to be a meeting soon to discuss it all, but my solicitor says only one decision is possible.”
“Tell me,” Jack breathed, leading Lucy over to the end of the bed.
They sat down side by side. Lucy paused. She didn’t know what to feel. Ever since her aunt’s death, she’d mostly wished the whole issue would go away.
Jack had travelled with her that same day he woke up in the hotel room, protesting both Lucy’s and the doctor’s objections to him moving at all.
But Jack insisted, knowing the urgency of Lucy’s journey, and so he put up with the agony of being jolted over roads with broken ribs and a broken arm and bruises everywhere.
He drank a lot, it was true—brandy for medicinal purposes, he said.
And was often pale and sweating with pain.
But he never complained, instead cheering her up when her spirits sank at the thought of her journey’s end.
They got there only hours before her aunt passed.
And it had been horrible, and sad, as death always must be, but at least Jack had been with her, slowly recuperating for the week they stayed, going to the funeral, sitting with her afterwards.
That should have been an end to it. One last look around the cold, unfriendly house.
An hour packing up her room—attempting to hide certain notebooks from Jack, then blushing as she failed, followed by a great deal of laughter as she watched his face while he turned the pages.
He’d swallowed, running a finger under the tight necktie at his throat.
“These,” he’d said. “We’ll definitely keep these. ”
So Jack made her laugh, even in that dim, shuttered house, among the ghosts and shadows of the lonely bedroom where once she’d mourned him. He kissed her there too, making her sigh, and the lonely girl who’d loved him from afar seemed to smile.
And there she would have left it, a happy end to a long story. All but for the matter of her aunt’s will.
Every relative, every person her aunt had ever known, all those people who’d visited the house and so annoyed the woman, each and every one of them contested the will.
They laid their claim, found letters that seemed to promise one thing, got solicitors to write to other solicitors, each letter more complicated than the last. It’d taken a month for all the claims to be quashed and her aunt’s will to be allowed to stand.
And now she held the final decision in her hands.
“Jack…it says…” She started to smile, then laugh, Jack half frowning, half laughing with her, though not quite understanding her hilarity. “Jack…I have some very bad news.”
“Oh?”
“I’m only half the heiress you thought me. The other half…the other half of my aunt’s fortune…” Lucy could hardly talk for laughing. “Oh, Jack! She has left it to the dog!”