Epilogue #2
Sophia’s eyes were very bright. She did not speak for a moment. Then she said, “Thank you. That cannot have been easy to say.”
“It was excruciating,” Beatrice said. “I may require a glass of sherry.”
Sophia laughed, and the sound was warm and unguarded, and Beatrice understood, with a clarity that felt almost like relief, that she had been forgiven.
The guests drifted toward the adjoining room, where a small supper had been laid. Alistair caught Sophia’s hand as she moved to follow, drawing her back toward the window. Beatrice watched them for a moment, then turned away. Some conversations were not meant for witnesses.
The window faced west, toward the sea. The light had begun its slow descent toward the horizon, staining the water in bands of rose and gold. Sophia leaned her shoulder against the frame and looked out at the coastline, at the curve of the shore and the white flecks of gulls above the waves.
“I used to stand at the window in our sitting room on Marine Parade,” she said, “and watch the Channel. I thought of it as a kind of boundary. The edge of the world I was permitted to inhabit. Everything beyond it was impossible.”
Alistair stood beside her, close enough that his sleeve brushed her arm. “And now?”
“Now I think it is only water. Deep and cold and full of fish, but not a boundary. Not anymore.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he reached into his coat and withdrew a small leather case. “I have something for you.”
Sophia turned. Her expression shifted from curiosity to something more guarded. “Alistair, we agreed. No extravagant gifts.”
“This is not extravagant. It is practical.” He opened the case. Inside was a key, small and brass, attached to a ribbon of deep blue silk. “It opens the writing desk in the study. The one by the south window, with the view of the garden.”
She stared at the key. “The writing desk.”
“I had it commissioned. The wood is English oak, and the surface is angled precisely for long hours of work, and the drawers are deep enough to hold a great many essays.” He took the key from the case and pressed it into her palm.
“It is yours. Not a gift from a husband to a wife, but a gift from a patron to an author. The patron happens to be the husband. The distinction matters.”
Sophia closed her fingers around the key. Her hand was trembling slightly. “You are giving me a room of my own.”
“I am giving you a desk. The room was already yours. The house is yours. The library, the gardens, the view of the sea, the coffee in the mornings and the fire in the evenings and every argument we will have about politics and art and the proper way to brew tea.” He cupped her face in his hands, and his thumbs brushed the corners of her eyes, where the tears had begun to gather.
“I am giving you a life in which you never have to hide what you are. That is not a gift. That is the bare minimum of what you deserve.”
She kissed him then, not gently, and he caught her against him, and the key pressed between their palms, and outside the window the gulls wheeled and cried and the tide continued its patient work upon the shore.
When they drew apart, Sophia was laughing and crying at once, and Alistair was smiling in a way that made him look ten years younger, and the last of the afternoon light caught the brass key where it lay against her palm.
“Brighton, then,” she said.
“Brighton,” he agreed. “And London in the autumn, when Parliament sits, and Derbyshire at Christmas, if you can bear my mother’s company for more than three days at a stretch.”
“I can bear your mother’s company. I am not certain she can bear mine.”
“She will learn. She is learning already.” He took her hand, the one holding the key, and raised it to his lips.
“We will host dinners where people argue about books. We will attend assemblies and then come home and dissect them over brandy. You will write essays that make the ton uncomfortable, and I will fund their publication, and we will scandalise Lady Hargrave at least twice a Season.”
“Only twice?”
“Three times, if you are feeling ambitious.”
Sophia laughed. The sound filled the quiet room, and Alistair watched her with an expression of such uncomplicated joy that it seemed to rearrange the angles of his face.
The rake was gone. The cynic was gone. What remained was a man who had found, against all expectation, exactly what he had stopped believing existed.
She turned back to the window. The sun had dropped lower, and the sea was turning from gold to copper, and the first stars were beginning to prick the eastern sky. Alistair stood behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders, and together they watched the light change over the water.
“I used to think,” Sophia said quietly, “that love was a kind of cage. That to marry was to disappear. To become someone’s wife and cease to be oneself.”
“And now?”
“Now I think I was only afraid of the wrong kind of marriage.” She leaned back against him, and his arms came around her. “This is not a cage. This is a door.”
She looked down at the key in her hand. The brass caught the last of the light, warm and bright, and she turned it over once, feeling the weight of it, the small, solid promise of it, before closing her fingers around it again.