Epilogue the Second
Two Years Later
Annabelle
Most wealthy Londoners want to spend Christmas far from town.
But I am not one of them.
Do not be mistaken. I have come to love Trescott. We went back, in fact, for the birth of our daughter, Adeline, feeling that it was good luck to have Mrs. Ludlow attend me. And we spent most of our daughter’s first year there.
That time transformed Trescott for me.
It is no longer a place of sad, difficult memories.
It is where Addy first smiled, where she laughed for the first time, where she first crawled, and took her first steps. It is where Alfred held her all day long when she was a tiny babe and wouldn’t countenance being put down. And where I nursed her from a skinny newborn into a plump little child.
It is also where she had her first fit of childish pique (for better or worse, my daughter has inherited my spirit) and threw a carving of a woodland creature into the glass of an antique grandfather clock.
But I have learned in the past eighteen months that there is no reason why such an occurrence—which in my childhood would have had me proclaimed by my father a devil—must yield a bad memory.
No, in fact, it doesn’t. Not when you have a father like Alfred de Lacey, né Saintsbury, who merely scoops you up, thereby saving you from your own audacity, and sees to the mess, carefully explaining to you why glass and sturdy woodland creatures do not mix.
Not to mention a mother who proclaims that the clock has always been an ugly thing in the first place—and that, after all, accidents are bound to happen when one is so small and only just learning about the world.
I have warmed to some of the people there, too. We now welcome Mr. Perry and his family to the Abbey as friends. And Mr. Thompson has moved away to Somerset—in bitterness, I expect, at our continued refusal to install his son as vicar.
Upon Addy’s birth, we received a visit from Alfred’s father and his wife.
The man expressed his gratitude to me for marrying his son.
And he apologized to Alfred for being too hard on him in his youth.
To my surprise, upon Adeline’s birth, Alfred resigned the living at Trescott and it was given in full to Mr. Peabody.
When I expressed my worry about him giving up his profession, he shook his head.
“I feel my relationship to God in other things,” he said, looking at Adeline and then at me. “And I have other endeavors which mean more to me than the role I was trained for.”
This decision put an end to all hostility between Trescott Abbey and the village.
When we first returned, the village had already softened considerably to me.
The gifts that I planned before our departure to London did their work.
The men who were angry with me, who menaced me, would not do so now.
Not when their wives would scold them for it and remind them of the food sent by the Abbey.
And when they are no longer supposed to look up to a man who gave into his passions as their vicar, many are even willing to be happy for us.
But even though Trescott has become a different place to me, I still long for London.
And after an exquisite fall under the trees at the Abbey, I could wait no longer to see it again.
I missed the counting house—which I had not seen since a brief trip to town a few months after Addy’s birth—and the lively streets and the sense that, even we, the notorious and powerful de Laceys, can have something like anonymity.
Thus, now, we are back in London, and we have just come from a Christmas Eve party hosted by the Honourable Mr. Henry Bertram and his new wife, the Honourable Mrs. Henry Bertram.
What happened between those two who seemed so different was quite the surprise to everyone when it came to light.
But now their marriage is already a year old.
And as it so happened, Alfred’s new endeavor, the one that he forfeited being a vicar to pursue, involves the newlyweds.
It is all because of an accident.
When I was still pregnant with Adeline and we were still in London, Alfred finished his first manuscript, the first he ever wrote, and which told the story of our love.
He titled it and presented it to me when he was done.
The Seduction of Mr. Alfred Saintsbury, it read across the top.
And a thick manuscript it was too.
I read the entire thing in an afternoon. And declared it sinful and wonderful.
“You should publish it,” I told my husband. “It is as good as anything in the bookstores here. Even the backroom at Willoughby’s.”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “This book is only for us. But the next one perhaps—well, we will see.”
I objected, but he insisted. And I thought no one would ever read it.
But I had forgotten that Evie Colley does not always knock.
One day, I came into my study—or lumbered, as I had become quite with child—and saw Evie sitting at my desk.
She was reading Alfred’s manuscript.
I opened my mouth to scold her, but when she looked up at me she was weeping.
“Evie!” I exclaimed.
“I am sorry, Annabelle,” she said. “I shouldn’t have read it.”
Many things happened soon after that conversation—but it was months before she spoke to Alfred about it. It was after, in fact, she became the Honourable Mrs. Henry Bertram.
Evie, as usual, had a scheme.
She wanted Alfred to write the love story of her and Henry. In the same style in which he wrote ours.
To my shock, Alfred agreed.
And now he has finished it.
“It is done,” he says, bringing the manuscript to where I lie in bed. “I gave Evie her copy tonight.”
“The Corruption of the Honourable Henry Bertram,” I say, reading the title across the top. “And Evie wants to sell it?”
“Yes. She wants to split the profits. Of course we don’t need the money, so I convinced her to take a larger cut.
They want the money for their campaign next year and I can’t think of a better cause.
And I think that she has hopes that the publicity will help too.
She reasons they are already scandalous. And that people love a love story.”
“And Henry agrees?”
He smiles. “You know Henry takes a different view of such matters now.”
“Yes, when he married Evie he had to.”
“He is devoted to her. More than devoted.”
“Yes, he’ll do anything Evie wants.”
“Precisely.”
I page through the manuscript and see that it definitely belongs in the backroom at Willoughby’s.
“And this is all taken from life?”
Alfred nods.
“Largely,” he says, with a smirk. “To hear Evie and Henry tell it, at least. Of course, the best stories contain embellishment.”
“I struggle to believe that Henry told you about—” I point to a passage because, truly, describing it aloud is rather difficult.
Alfred laughs.
“No, it is Evie who gave me that detail. I didn’t know Henry could blush so much.”
“You are all mad. But I look forward to reading it. Although I fear I’ll never look at our friends the same way again.”
“Well, you forget that Evie read our story.”
“After she snuck into my study! It serves her right if it haunts her.”
“She found it very beautiful, as she always tells me.”
“Will you publish it under your own name?”
He shakes his head.
“It will be anonymous.”
“I would support it, you know. If you wanted it under your name.”
“Our name you mean?”
I smile. “Yes, our name.”
But he shakes his head again.
“No, it is freer this way. I prefer it. This way, I can write anything. And that’s what I want to do. I want to write anything that I want to write.”
I nod, not quite understanding the ways of artists, but accepting his preference.
And, truth be told, while I am amused by Henry and Evie’s wild love story, I am more interested in my own at the moment.
Right now, more than anything, I want to bed my husband.
I have endured an entire evening of watching him look so pretty, so handsome, in his evening wear, without being able to really touch him.
Thankfully, the fears that almost led me to throw away the love of the best man in the world were unfounded. He has not tired of me. He loves me just the same when I am too tired or foul-humored (from being with child or anything else) or ill to bed him.
And the desire that I struggled to feel, the absence of which made me feel so foreign to myself, months ago returned with full force.
During my pregnancy it was there in fits and starts, and then afterwards came back bit by bit.
Now, we are often just as we were during our honeymoon at Trescott—in fact, we are often even better.
Because our relationship has deepened. It deepens, it turns out, all the time.
“I hope I was not too taciturn with everyone tonight,” I say, endeavoring to change the topic.
He takes my hand.
“You were not taciturn in the slightest. In fact, it amuses me that you think of yourself that way. Yes, you don’t chatter as Evie does—but you are hardly quiet.”
“I can be. I am sure I offended Theo when I mentioned the snobbery of doctors. And Bram when I spoke slightingly of the navy.”
“Bram isn’t in the navy any longer for many of the reasons you detailed,” Alfred retorts. “And Theo agrees with you in regards to doctors.”
I run my fingers down his forearm.
“Perhaps. Sometimes, I think I have forgotten how to attend a respectable entertainment.”
Alfred laughed. “I don’t think Evie and Henry qualify as respectable.”
“Well, Henry was respectable once. And you were. Bram, Theo, Daniel, and Peter still are. I never was.”
I draw circles on his arm and then travel to his chest. I touch the bare patch of skin exposed by his robe.
“No,” Alfred says. “You weren’t.”
Our eyes meet.
A smile curls onto his face.
“You were much better than respectable. You were the woman who exceeded even my wildest dreams. My wildest hopes did not touch the hem of you, Annabelle.”
“And am I still?” I say, knowing the answer.
My hand has found its way down to his smalls.
“I will have to find a way to answer that,” he says. “That conveys the depth of my feeling on the subject.”
Internally I glow. But on the outside, I merely look at him as if I am not impressed.
“And how will you achieve that?”
“To begin, the night rail,” he says, gesturing at it. “I want it off.”
“And what if I do not obey?”
He grins—and then rolls on top of me, pinning my wrists to the bed.
“Then I’ll have my way with you all the same.”
He kisses me deeply, still not relinquishing my wrists, even though I give no sign of struggling. I can’t even pretend to resist him. Not tonight.
Alfred moves downwards until his tongue finds my nipple. He sucks on one and then another through the flimsy, sheer fabric of the night rail. Since I am still nursing Addy, milk leaks from his ministrations. But his touch feels too good for me to care—and he enjoys the taste.
He moves his hand between my legs where I am wet and open for him, and he murmurs in approval.
But I have had enough of letting him lead. Sometimes, I want him to consume me—but right now I am the hungry one.
I push him back on the bed and straddle him.
“Are you prepared, husband?” I say, splaying my hands on his chest.
“Always,” he replies, his dark hair curling over his forehead, his strong hands gripping my thighs.
I reach into the bed clothes and pull out my pocket watch.
“Then I expect you to prepare for defeat.”
I mount him—and his chuckles become moans.
I set about seducing him in the way that we both love best.
THE END