Epilogue
Five Months Later
Wolverton had been noisy since dawn, full of flowers, misplaced ribbons, servants crossing one another in corridors, and Elise announcing to anyone who would listen that she had been entrusted with a responsibility of enormous importance.
“You are dropping them too quickly.”
Elise looked over her shoulder at Adelaide with grave offense, one fist still buried in the small basket hanging from her arm.
“I am practicing.”
“You have practiced across half the terrace.”
“That is why I am good now.”
Eric, standing beside Adelaide near the garden aisle, looked down at the trail of pale petals extending from the terrace doors to the fountain.
“I see no flaw in her reasoning.”
Adelaide turned on him. “You are encouraging her.”
“I am her uncle. It is one of my privileges.”
“You discovered that title five months ago and have abused it ever since.”
Eric smiled.
Elise emptied another fistful directly onto his boots.
“There.”
Eric looked down.
Adelaide covered her mouth.
Elise appeared pleased with herself. “Now Uncle Eric is decorated too.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She skipped away before anyone could stop her, leaving petals trapped against the polished leather of his shoes.
Adelaide bent to pluck one away.
“You’re going to stand at the front looking like a garden path.”
“I have endured worse.”
“I know.”
Her hand lingered briefly against his.
That happened often now.
Nothing remarkable. Nothing anyone else would notice. A hand against his sleeve. Her knee touching his beneath the breakfast table. Her fingers finding his when they walked.
Small proofs.
Eric had once thought love announced itself through catastrophe because catastrophe was the only form of feeling he understood.
He had been wrong.
Most days, love looked like Adelaide stealing his coffee because hers had gone cold.
He glanced toward the assembled guests.
Theodore’s family had taken one side of the garden. Wolverton relations and neighbors occupied the other, though the division had already become meaningless as everyone wandered between chairs.
Lord Talbot sat near the front beneath a wide canvas shade, one hand resting on his cane and an expression of enormous satisfaction on his face.
The winter had been kind to him.
Fresh air, Adelaide’s relentless supervision, and a physician who had finally persuaded him that rest was not a moral failing had restored more color to his face than Eric had seen when they first met.
The earl still tired easily, but this morning he had insisted on walking from the terrace without assistance.
He caught Eric looking and lifted his cane slightly. “I can see you worrying from here.”
Eric called back, “I learned it from your daughter.”
Lord Talbot laughed.
Adelaide narrowed her eyes. “Traitor.”
“Entirely.”
Theodore appeared at the front of the aisle, and Eric almost did not recognize him because he was standing still.
Theodore had spent the entire morning moving. Checking the chairs. Aski ng whether Olivia had eaten. Asking whether Elise knew which direction she was meant to walk. Asking Eric, twice, whether weddings always felt as though something catastrophic might occur immediately before them.
Now he stopped. His gaze fixed on the terrace doors, and Eric followed it.
Nothing yet.
Theodore breathed out. “Is she coming?”
Eric looked at him. “You asked me that thirty seconds ago.”
“Thirty seconds is an extraordinary amount of time today.”
“You’re becoming tiresome.”
“I am getting married. I am entitled to be tiresome.”
“You were tiresome before.”
Theodore glanced at him. “Your affection is overwhelming.”
Eric almost answered, but the music began and everyone turned.
Elise appeared first.
Her careful rehearsal vanished immediately.
She walked three steps with appropriate solemnity, then apparently decided there were insufficient flowers on the ground and began scattering them with both hands. Petals flew over the aisle, onto chairs, over one elderly gentleman’s knee.
Elise grinned.
“She has emptied half the basket.”
Adelaide whispered, “Do not interfere.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You looked as though you might.”
“She is throwing them at people.”
“She is five.”
“That seems unrelated.”
Elise reached the front and tipped the remainder of the basket directly onto the grass.
“Finished.”
A ripple of laughter passed through the guests.
Then she scampered toward Lord Talbot, who caught her around the waist and settled her beside him.
Theodore was still smiling when the terrace doors opened again, and the smile disappeared.
Violet stood there.
No.
Olivia.
Eric had spent months learning to think the name without pain.
She wore ivory silk without excessive ornament, her dark hair arranged simply beneath a short veil. There was nothing of the maid in her now, but neither was she the nineteen-year-old girl from the portrait gallery.
She was both.
And neither.
Olivia Sullyard had returned to Wolverton in fragments.
A name first.
Then a sister.
Then a daughter of the house again.
Some guests had taken longer than others to accept the impossible story. Society had done what society always did: talked, speculated, invented, exaggerated.
Olivia had endured it, and then altogether stopped caring. Now she stood at the terrace threshold wearing her own name.
Eric went to her, and for a moment neither spoke.
They did not need to.
Five months ago, he might have understood the gesture as fear.
Now he did not.
Not a punishment.
Not proof that he had failed her.
Wind moved through the distant grass and disappeared toward the sea.
Olivia looked back at him.
Eric offered his arm, and she took it. Her fingers tightened around his sleeve, and he covered them once with his hand..
Olivia swallowed and Eric leaned closer. “If you cry, Adelaide will blame me.”
That earned him a shaky smile. “She probably will anyway.”
“Yes.”
They began down the aisle toward Theodore, who had not moved, and Eric watched him watch Olivia.
His chest tightened when he heard two guests whisper as they passed. “Trial begins next month, I heard.”
“His cousin?”
“Yes. The forged documents alone would ruin him, never mind the duchess.”
“The abduction is worse.”
“And the wife?”
“Gone to relatives in Ireland. Apparently, nobody in London will receive her.”
Eric heard it all without turning. The Crown would decide what happened to Atlas. Lawyers would dismantle the fraud. Witnesses would testify. Loretta would live with the consequences of what she had chosen to assist.
Eric had stopped caring about the details before breakfast most days.
They reached Theodore moments later, and Olivia turned toward him. For not even one second did she look frightened of the moment.
Eric took her hand from his arm, and gently placed it into Theodore’s, who closed his fingers around hers immediately.
Olivia looked down at their joined hands, then up.
Theodore’s eyes had gone suspiciously bright. “You’re staring.”
“I know.”
“Everyone can see you.”
“I don’t care.”
Her mouth curved. “You may later.”
Eric stepped back and moved toward Adelaide. She reached for his hand before he reached her.
Elise whispered loudly from Lord Talbot’s chair, “Is it happening now?”
Lord Talbot murmured, “I believe so.”
“Good.”
Eric looked at Adelaide, who was laughing silently as the minister began.
Theodore answered too quickly the first time he was asked anything, causing another ripple of amusement among the guests. Olivia glanced at him, smiling, and his thumb moved once over the back of her hand.
Eric watched his sister.
Then Adelaide rested her head briefly against his shoulder, and Eric looked toward the sea once more.
The cliffs remained in the distance.
Beautiful.
Ordinary.
***
By late afternoon, the wedding had softened into the pleasant disorder of a celebration nearing its end.
Music still drifted from the garden, but the crowd had thinned, and Eric found Adelaide beyond the terrace beneath the budding branches of an old beech, watching Elise attempt to convince Theodore that a bridegroom was still obligated to play hide-and-seek.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
Adelaide turned. “For perhaps twelve minutes.”
“Seventeen.”
“You counted?”
“I am a devoted husband.”
“You are an irritating husband.”
Eric came beside her, slipping one hand around her waist. “You have been strange all day.”
“I have not.”
“You cried when Olivia came down.”
“So did you.”
“I did not.” Adelaide looked at him, and Eric reconsidered. “That is irrelevant.”
“You also cried when Theodore said his vows.”
“I had something in my eye.”
“Both eyes?”
“An unusually aggressive piece of dust.”
Adelaide laughed, but something remained beneath it. He had noticed it since breakfast. A secret satisfaction she kept swallowing whenever he caught her watching him.
Eric turned her toward him.
“What is it?”
Her expression softened. “I’ve been waiting until we were alone.”
Alarm arrived immediately, and he hated how quickly it did. “Has something happened?”
“Yes.”
His hand tightened at her waist. Adelaide covered it. “Nothing bad.”
“Then you should begin with that.”
“I just did.”
“Adelaide.”
She smiled, and then her courage seemed to falter.
“Tell me.”
She took his hand from her waist and held it between both of hers.
“I saw the physician three days ago.”
Eric’s stomach dropped. “Why?”
“Because I suspected something.”
“What?”
Adelaide looked down at their hands.
When she lifted her eyes again, they were shining.
“I am with child.”
The garden seemed to go completely silent as Eric stared at her. “With… child?”
“Yes…”
He continued staring and her smile wavered. “Eric?”
“How certain are you?”
“Quite.”
He looked down at her waist. Nothing and everything had changed all at once in that moment. His hand moved almost without permission, settling carefully against her stomach.
“Our child?”
Adelaide laughed through sudden tears.
“No, I think is it Theodore’s actually.”
Eri c looked up sharply, and she laughed harder. “That was cruel.”
“You deserved it.”
“I am having difficulty thinking.”
“I noticed.”
Eric looked down again.
For years he had arranged his life specifically to prevent this moment. No wife. No children. No one close enough that losing them might destroy him. Then Adelaide had walked into his study without knocking.
Now his sister was laughing somewhere behind them on her wedding day, his niece was throwing flower petals at guests, his wife stood in his arms, and beneath his palm was a future he had once been certain he would never allow himself to have.
Eric gathered Adelaide against him as they waited their turn to leave back to the house. She tucked herself beneath his chin, laughing softly when he held her too tightly and then refusing to let him loosen his arms.
Behind them, the music continued.
Someone called for Theodore. Elise shrieked with laughter. Olivia’s voice followed.
Eric rested his hand over Adelaide’s stomach again.
For years he had believed love was merely grief waiting for its turn, and perhaps it was. But also, he was learning, that loving anyone meant accepting that terror.
Standing beneath the spring branches with Adelaide in his arms and their child quietly, impossibly beginning between them, Eric understood something he should have learned long ago.
Fear of losing a life was no reason not to live it.
THE END
(After reading the Extended Epilogue, turn the page to read the first chapters from “The Grieving Duke’s Unlikely Romance”, my Amazon Best-Selling novel!)