Epilogue
brIGHTON, FEbrUARY
“She’s going to scream,” Edward said.
“She is not going to scream,” Beatrice countered.
“Beatrice, I watched her scream at the vicar last Sunday, and he was simply walking past.”
“That was a different kind of scream. This will be–” Beatrice paused and looked at her daughter, who was sitting in Cecily’s arms in the front pew, looking at the baptismal font. “Actually, that might also be the same.”
“Eloise,” Edward said, crouching to her level. “We talked about this.”
Eloise looked at him.
“We agreed,” he said carefully, “that you would be quiet.”
“You are four years old,” Beatrice added. “You are the eldest, and you are setting an example for–”She looked at the baby in Cecily’s arms. “–for your cousin, who is very small and watching everything you do.”
Eloise looked at the baby seriously. The baby looked back. A negotiation that required no words seemed to pass between them.
The vicar was brief and sensible, which Cecily appreciated. The baby cried when the water touched her head and then calmed against the vicar’s arm.
“Eleanor,” the vicar said, “we receive thee.”
Eleanor.
Cecily had not told William why she chose that name until last week, while sitting in the library with the violet notebook in her lap—the one with the tiny stamped covers, the one that had traveled from her mother’s house to Brighton to Blackmoor and back again.
She had opened it to the page with her fourteen-year-old self’s handwriting.
“Eleanor,” she had said, “was the heroine of the first novel I was not supposed to read. She refused three suitors and chose the right one, and I decided at fourteen that she was exactly who I intended to be.”
He had looked at the name. Then at her.
“Yes,” he had said simply.
Eleanor, now in the vicar’s arms, looked at William. He looked back with a smile, which she appeared to find satisfactory. She grabbed his finger.
The reception was being held at Edward and Beatrice’s house—warmer than a church hall and better supplied, as Letitia noted, which was why Beatrice had insisted on it.
Mrs. Peel came, which Cecily had not expected, and which moved her more than she let on. She stood with her for a long time near the window while Beatrice managed Eloise’s investigation of the refreshments table with tactical diplomacy.
“She’s well?” Mrs. Peel asked, looking at Eleanor across the room, where Isadora was burping her on her shoulder.
“Very well,” Cecily replied. “She is–” She stopped, because the word still did something to her chest. “She is entirely herself. She always has been.”
Mrs. Peel looked at her. “I wanted you to know, Your Grace, that what you found in those accounts, what you did with it, changed lives. Twelve requests. Thirty-one children this winter who have warmth that they would not otherwise have had.” She paused to let that sink in. “I wanted you to know that.”
Cecily smiled. “I just did what I thought was right.”
“And we thank you for it,” Mrs. Peel said, then moved to speak with Edward.
Cecily turned and found William by the window, watching her with a look that was only hers. He tilted his head slightly, toward the door.
She said something to Beatrice about a breath of fresh air. Beatrice looked between them and smiled.
The shore was February cold. They walked side by side with no particular urgency, his arm wrapped around her waist, her shoulder pressed against his. She was aware of the warmth of him despite the cold air.
“Here,” she said, slowing down.
He stopped.
She looked at the waterline. At the stretch of pale sand she had walked through in September, when the season was still in full swing and she had needed fifteen minutes of not being talked to. The tide was different now, but the shore was the same. The same long, cold reach of it.
“This is the spot where you found me?” William asked.
“Yes. I remember it clearly,” she replied. “You were face down in the tide.”
“I was not face down.”
“You were considerably face down.”
He chuckled, which was a concession.
“I came down that morning to escape a conversation about a suitor, which Beatrice had been navigating toward for three days and which I intended to redirect indefinitely.” She looked along the water.
“I walked farther than I meant to.” She paused.
“And then there was a shape in the sand that was wrong.”
“For one moment, I thought that you might be dead.” She laughed.
“I remember it very clearly, the water coming in and going out, and I thought, He might be dead. Then I pressed two fingers to your throat, and you weren’t, and I felt…
” She looked at him. “I felt the most extraordinary relief. For a complete stranger. I have thought about that ever since. What that relief meant.”
He was watching her with an open expression.
“Then you said, ‘You’re real. That’s fortunate.’” She raised an eyebrow. “You had been knocked unconscious, and you make an observation about my existence.”
“I maintain that was a reasonable priority.”
“You were dreadful,” she said fondly. “You were charming and injured and dreadful. I walked back to Edward’s house and thought, This is a man I am going to have to be very careful with.”
“And were you?” he asked. “Careful?”
She looked at the water. “For approximately six weeks. Then you held Eleanor in a corridor on Granger Street and looked at her like she was the most important thing in the building, and I was entirely done being careful.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said gently, “Come here.”
She turned. He was holding out his arm, and she went into his side.
“I never expected to be saved,” he murmured.
“From the tide?”
“From all of it.” His arm was steady around her. “From the version of myself that had organized everything correctly and decided that was sufficient. From the house full of careful quiet.” He looked out at the sea. “In more ways than one.”
She looked at the ring on her left hand. She had been carrying a secret for nine days. She had almost blurted it at breakfast on Thursday, when he had looked up and smiled at her.
She had almost revealed it in the nursery last Tuesday, when Eleanor had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and he had stood very still so as not to wake her, one hand on her back, and looked over at Cecily with an expression so full it had no room for anything else.
There was no better moment than this one.
She took his hand. Turned it in her gloved ones. Then placed it flat on her stomach, warm through layers of winter wool.
She watched his face.
She watched understanding dawn on him. The stillness that moved through him, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.
“Cecily.” His voice was strained.
“Yes,” she said. “We are having a baby.”
He did not move his hand. He looked at it. Then at her face. Then at his hand again, as though he needed to verify the accuracy of what he was seeing.
His other hand came up to her face.
“A baby,” he breathed.
“Our baby.” She looked at him steadily. “Are you all right?”
“No,” he said. “Yes.” He exhaled. “I don’t know. Both.” He looked at her face. “I love you.”
“I know,” she chuckled.
He kissed her. Right there on the shore, with both hands framing her face and the cold air all around them, he kissed her, saying things that didn’t need words. She rose on her tiptoes and held onto his lapels.
The tide came in and went out and paid them no attention whatsoever.
He pulled back and looked at her, his forehead resting against hers. “Eleanor’s going to be a sister soon,” he rasped.
“She will be the best.” Cecily beamed.
“Indubitably.”
She laughed.
He watched her laugh. He brought his other hand up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with the unhurried, proprietary ease of a man who had decided he was never going to stop doing that and had made peace with it.
“I love you,” she murmured.
“I love you,” he returned.
He kissed her again, and then he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and held it there, her fingers warm in his.
They stood at the edge of the same shore that had started everything and looked at the sea together.
The Brighton shore. The grey February sea. The rest of their lives.
The End?