Epilogue
Robin View House
Just outside of London
Once, Dominic had not believed in hope. He’d believed it to be a folly, a danger.
Now, he lived in a house that symbolized hope.
And after almost fifteen years of agony, disappointments, and working himself, and sometimes his family, to the bone, hope had finally been rewarded.
The house he had built was more than just a name.
When Celia had insisted on calling the brand-new home, built with materials made only by free peoples and those recently liberated from slavery, Robin View House, he had been skeptical.
But she had insisted that the robin was the perfect symbol.
For it represented hope and renewal. The location he’d chosen had proven perfect.
For the berry-bearing trees were beloved by robins, and every spring, the robins flocked to the property.
And like those robins that sang with every spring, not giving up hope, they had managed to pass the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.
It had been a day of tears and joy. Tears for all those who had not lived to see it and who had suffered in bondage through the Empire and died under such brutality, and those who had labored for their freedom but had never seen it.
Joy had reigned for all those who could now legally not be enslaved in any part of the Empire too.
It had only been the beginning, for true freedom had not arrived until this year.
For the apprenticeships that the slaves had been forced to fulfill had at last come to an end this year.
The work was just beginning to help those who were freed.
While slavery still existed in the United States of America, he prayed it would end there too.
He would never stop writing letters to the Americans across the water, begging them to stop, just as the Marquis de Lafayette had done.
The marquis himself had lived long enough to know the Slavery Abolition Act had been passed by the English, but he died before it had truly freed people in the English Empire.
Dominic’s own father?
Somehow, he felt now that the robins had always been his father, coming to visit him, to tell him to keep going and to never give in. To always do the thing he had so resisted…to hope.
He didn’t know why he was so certain, but he was, and it had given him a measure a peace.
And it was Celia and her family who had taught him to listen for those signs.
Now, as they sat out on the lawn, watching their children play amongst the trees that led down to the mighty River Thames, a river that had known generations of people of different kingdoms and different ideas and would know countless more, he was so proud.
Proud of the three boys who would grow up and continue to fight for people.
And for Michael Baker, who sat at his side now, working on a speech to give in the House of Commons.
Michael had won a seat with his backing.
It had not been easy, but when one was a duke, one could manipulate a great many things.
And Micheal was far better suited for the House of Commons than most of the people there.
Dominic had paid the fees for Michael to attend school and then Oxford. He’d kept the boy close, for he had, in many ways, changed his life with one conversation. Dominic was determined to repay him. He never could.
So, since he couldn’t repay one boy, he’d decide to help many.
He had created a fund, and he and Celia had sent hundreds of boys to further schooling and university.
One child at a time would bring about a better world.
Through healing, through love, through knowledge.
The universities would not accept the girls.
Not yet, but they also had started a fund for the girls to learn, to have opportunities.
Not everyone could be helped. And that was a bitter pain he swallowed every day. He knew Celia did too.
Maybe they would never do enough. Maybe the world would always be full of pain, cruelty, wars, suffering, but as Locke had once essentially decreed, the only way for evil to truly flourish was if good men did nothing.
And he refused to do nothing. His wife refused to do nothing. His children would refuse to do nothing. And somehow, that made the bitterness bearable.
There would always be a fight. There would always be those who chose to hurt others… But there would always be the Briarwoods of this world. And that made the difference. It always had. It always would.
As he took Celia’s hand in his and they watched the life that they had created in the play of their children, and their dear friend Michael, he knew he would never regret the decision he had made. The decision to live.