Epilogue
The ever after.
Arabella published an advertisement in a London paper and quickly found a teacher—a wiry, brilliant spinster named Miss Finley—and sent her up to Dunburn to take over the school.
Arabella told Alasdair she was not at all surprised a year later when Miss Finley accepted Mr. Cormack’s offer of marriage.
Arabella then promptly hired another teacher and sent her up to Dunburn.
She wondered aloud if this teacher would be seduced by a Highlander, too.
Really, she would not blame her if that happened.
Maggie Gunn returned to Dunburn to take care of Miss Finley and all the school teachers who came after her. Maggie’s sister’s husband was never heard from again, and Maggie reported via letter that her sister felt well shut of him and had moved back home to Dunburn with her children.
Ewen MacEwen never lost his freckles, but he did eventually hold fifteen patents, all related to steam locomotives. Paterson met a nice Lowlander girl in Edinburgh and stopped driving coaches long distances and took up driving a hack so as to stay close to his lass, who eventually became his wife.
Within the next year, the butler Andrews took a brief holiday from service to travel to Caithness County and found that his great-grandfather was brother to Alasdair’s great-great-grandfather, which made Alasdair his third cousin, once removed. Alasdair was glad to have found more family.
Lady Rebecca Dalrymple did find happiness. That is a story for another book.
Lady Colborne found motherhood, with a son born six months after the snowstorm, but she never settled happily into her marriage. That is not a story for any book.
Nurse Gaskell was prosecuted for poisoning Lady Morpeth and sentenced to seven years in a prison. Alasdair had to travel back to Northumberland for the trial. His appraisal of Lady Morpeth in the courtroom showed her appearance and her health were much improved, despite being eight months pregnant.
Alasdair never had any knowledge of how the unusual situation between the recovered Lord Morpeth, Lady Morpeth, and Lady Lyndmouth played out, and he was glad of it. How wonderful it was to be bound to his Arabella, his one and only woman, now and forever.
Harry and Thomas’ third child was born healthy and well the day before Arabella’s twenty-first birthday. As Harry had predicted, the baby was a girl. She was named Jane after Thomas’ beloved late sister.
Mary and David had three more children, including twin girls and one more son. The question of which of the twin boys—Morgan or Owen—was the heir to the Tregaron isiarliaeth was settled eventually. Yes, in yet another book.
Catherine and James had no more children, but Sebastian Cavendish, Marquess of Daventry, was a handful and kept them busy enough.
The young doctor who had taken over Alasdair’s patients had settled in very well, so the two of them divided the practice between them, with Dr. Jasper doing the bulk of the work and taking the bulk of the fees.
After all, Dr. Andrews did not need the income, not after Dr. Murray’s estate was settled.
And Arabella had spent a mere fraction of her fortune on the school she still endowed.
But Alasdair could not imagine not being a physician. “I must keep my hand in,” he told Arabella. “’Tis how I was happy before ye, and I dinnae want to forget what I owe the profession and Dr. Murray.”
Arabella said she was grateful the arrangement Alasdair made with the young doctor kept her young doctor in her bed more nights than not.
And the arrangement allowed the couple some freedom to travel away from Sommerleigh.
Alasdair and Arabella came to enjoy Augusts in Dunburn, where they built a third cottage near the sea, and September in Edinburgh at the Murray house.
And there were children, of course, who traveled with them. Arabella did not waste the nights she had Alasdair to herself.
The children were numbered eight, with the first one coming exactly nine months after the wedding, to the day.
Margaret, like the brothers and sisters who followed, was delivered by her father, and so she was welcomed into the world with nothing but pure love and devotion.
All eight children were red-haired, in shades ranging from the darkest of auburns to the most blond of strawberry blonds.
Four were green-eyed and four were blue-eyed, but Alasdair held out hope that someday number nine might have one blue eye and one green eye.
Alasdair called his children his bunch of carrots and underwent a complete change of his own opinion about red hair.
After all, Arabella loved his, and he loved it on his children, who were the delight of his life.
Their wedding night was the last time Arabella was ever in the lead.
Alasdair kept the points and made sure of that.
He was very much aware he had made his Arabella wait for him, and because he could not apologize with words any longer, he would make it up to her in other ways.
Wicked ways that permitted the Not-Stupid to bed and wed and continue to bed the Dauntless for the rest of their lives.