Epilogue #3
“Hush, or I shall find my letter opener,” Lavinia teased, and the sisters fell about laughing, holding onto each other tightly.
As the evening came to a close, the noise of the celebration settled into the comfortable murmur of guests too happy and too well-fed to hurry away; Lavinia slipped quietly out onto the terrace, alone.
The night was clear and cold; the sky scattered with more stars than she could ever remember seeing above Briarwood Hall before. She wrapped her arms around herself and breathed in the sharp autumn air, feeling something settle deep in her chest.
It was not the racing drive for independence that had become her norm. Nor was it the defensive walls she had had to build and repair so many times over her years of life. No. It was something quieter. Peaceful. She clasped her hands together in prayer and closed her eyes.
I do not understand how you work but thank you.. Thank you for keeping me safe and loved. Thank you for allowing me to have a real marriage. Thank you for being with me through all the turmoil.
When she opened her eyes, the stars seemed to be just that much brighter. Lavinia turned around. Behind her, through the tall windows, she could see the great hall still lit with gold, tiny figures turning in the last dance of the evening.
It struck her, standing there, how different Briarwood Hall looked from the grim afternoon she had first arrived. No longer was it a place of fear. Nor was it the middle of a warzone between two angry people. It was simply home.
The duke approached behind her. She heard his footsteps before he spoke, unhurried and familiar.
“Hiding from your own wedding celebration, Duchess?” he asked, standing beside her at the stone railing.
“I needed a moment,” she admitted, leaning into his warmth as he settled beside her. “It has been a rather long journey to get here.”
He was quiet for a moment, considering that, his eyes on the dark line of the hills beyond the garden.
“I would make that journey a hundred times over,” he said at last. “If I knew it would lead me to you again at the end of it.”
Lavinia turned her head to rest against his shoulder, smiling despite herself.
“That is dangerously close to poetry, Your Grace.”
He laughed softly, the sound warm in the cold night air.
“Do not worry. I fully intend to ruin the moment shortly by saying something deeply unromantic about drainage on the east fields, or the tenant cottages that require new roofing before winter.”
“I would expect nothing less,” she said, and felt his arm around her, steady and sure. She let herself lean fully into it. “Practical,” she repeated, tipping her head to look up at him. “Go on, then. Say it. I am bracing myself.”
“Very well.” He considered the fields beyond the garden wall with exaggerated gravity.
“The east tenant cottages require new roofing before the frost sets in properly, and I have half a mind to send Mr. Pike out to survey the damage this week rather than waiting for spring, whatever the estate agent says about the cost of it.”
“That,” Lavinia said, “was truly dreadful. Thoroughly unromantic. You lived up to the promise of the moment, that is for certain. I am very proud of you.”
“I told you I would manage it.” he chuckled as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She felt him smiling against her hair. “Someone has to keep the roof over the tenants' heads while the Duchess of Alderwick is off being toasted by the entire county.”
“The Duchess of Alderwick,” she repeated. “I thought I had heard the last of anyone calling me that. Just as I had gotten used to being called Miss Devereux.”
“You could always go by Mrs. Vale,” he offered with a chuckle.
“I could,” Lavinia sighed. “But then how would anyone know that I am the one who has been keeping this household together?”
“I believe they will discover that within a very short time of you opening your mouth,” he said teasingly. She smacked his arm playfully, causing him to burst out in laughter.
They stood together at the railing for a long while, the sounds of celebration drifting faintly from the great hall behind them.
The quiet, star-scattered night spread out before them, gently illuminating the fields where, no doubt, the newlyweds would be riding at dawn, even the day after their marriage.
It was the kind of stability that Lavinia had not known could coexist with freedom and independence.
Having found it, she did not wish to trade it for anything else in the world.
For the first time in her life, the very first time she could remember, in all the years of careful watchfulness and hard-won survival, Lavinia found she was not afraid of what came next.
THE END