Epilogue
As Kate drove the sheep out to pasture in the early hours of the morning, just as the first flickers of the rising sun began to bloom over the hill, Kate caught sight of a familiar figure lying in the grass.
Sheep ambled past as she attempted to nudge them around the sleeping form, and Kate heaved a sigh, lifting her shepherd’s crook in one hand.
“Elliot,” she said in exasperation as she jabbed her sleeping husband in the ribs. “You are going to be stepped on.”
The warning had come a fraction of a second too late. A tiny lamb gamboled and pranced across the open land, performing a jaunty and exuberant leap, only to land directly on Elliot’s midsection.
“Oof,” he grunted, rudely yanked from a sound sleep.
Reflexively his arms caught the small, squirming creature as he lurched upright, coming awake with a massive yawn.
The little lamb bleated square in Elliot’s face.
“Ah. It’s that time, then,” he said as he hefted the lamb up to examine it. “Which one is this?”
“I’ve named her Daisy,” Kate said as she braced herself with her crook and dropped onto the grassy earth beside him.
The lamb had been born shortly before their return to Northampton, and was now just two weeks old.
The new spring additions had brought Kate’s flock up to a respectable twenty, and come the next shearing, they would produce a significant amount of fine wool. “You do have to let her go,” she said.
“But she’s so precious,” Elliot argued with a petulant pout, as Daisy settled into the crook of his arm. He stroked his fingers through her soft, fuzzy fleece, reluctant to surrender the animal.
“Her mother thinks so, too, and she will happily run you down for the return of her lamb.” Kate nodded toward the ewe standing none too patiently in the distance, her head lowered as she considered whether or not to demand the return of her baby forcefully.
She gave a low bleat of warning, suggesting her patience was swiftly wearing thin.
“Oh.” Elliot swallowed hard. “Well, then. If she insists.” With a last fond stroke of the lamb in his arms, Elliot set Daisy back upon the grass and watched her go prancing away toward her mother, who gave a dismissive sniff and prodded her baby toward the grazing pasture.
As Elliot smothered another massive yawn in his hand, Kate nudged his shoulder with her own.
“You are permitted to sleep in, you know,” she said.
“I know you’re not accustomed to rising quite so early.
” Certainly not for a daily chore like driving the sheep out to pasture.
And yet, that had not stopped him from coming anyway.
Though most days he was still several minutes behind her to rise and dress, and their paths usually crossed on her walk back…
in a manner of speaking, when one considered that most often she found him sprawled across the grass, having given up the ghost halfway through the walk only to doze off in the field with the certainty that she’d be along sooner or later to wake him.
Usually with the tip of her shepherd’s crook in a pointed nudge to his ribs.
Today, however, had been an unusual departure from their established pattern. Elliot had been up and out before she had even woken, and he’d made it nearly the entirety of the long walk on his own. To the top of the hill upon which they had watched hundreds of sunsets.
“I miss you when you’re gone,” he said sheepishly as she tucked her head against his shoulder. “Besides, I had to get here early enough to show you.”
“Show me what?” Kate asked.
Elliot ran his fingers through the grass at his side in search of something.
“Where is it?” he muttered to himself. “I know I had it—” A faint crinkle of paper.
“Ah. Must’ve rolled over on it in my sleep.
” He held aloft a slightly squashed-looking roll of paper.
“I only received it yesterday,” he explained.
“But I wanted to show you rather than only tell you.”
“But what?” Kate insisted as he began to carefully unfurl the paper in his hands. Still too dark just yet to read, but each moment the sun drifted higher in the sky and brought with it more light, painting the sky behind them in the first peachy colors of dawn.
“Yesterday,” he said, “I went up to Longthorpe Manor to sign the last of the papers. And Devon had this waiting for me. For us, really. A wedding gift of sorts.”
“The last of the—” Kate’s breath caught. “It’s done, then?”
“Yes. As of now, all of this is ours. And this is our first sunrise over our land.” He let fall one side of the paper to gesture to the land that stretched out before them.
“From our hill, all the way past the pond. It’s all ours.
And this,” he said, as he caught up the edge of the paper once again and shook the wrinkles from it to hold it up to the dawning light, “is our house.”
In the early morning light, the shape of the house was revealed upon the paper.
Rooms outlined in thick black ink, carefully labeled.
Not nearly so grand as Longthorpe Manor, of course, for they had no need of such an ostentatious home—but one large enough to accommodate the family they wished to have, and to play host to friends on occasion.
A few bedrooms, a nursery, and, of particular importance, a library.
A proper shelter for Kate’s flock of sheep, and stables for a few horses. A modest country home of their own.
“Devon had it done up from our sketches,” Elliot confessed. “What do you think?”
“It’s perfect,” Kate said. Indeed, it was everything they had talked about, everything they had planned. The dream home they had concocted together rendered now upon this page, and masterfully so.
“Good,” Elliot said with a sigh of relief. “Because Devon is so damned eager to have us into a home of our own and out of his hair that he’s paying for it. He’s hired the builders already, and construction will begin in a few days.”
“Really? So soon?”
Elliot cast her a wry grin. “I fear you are underestimating just how eager, exactly, Devon is not to have to play host to newlyweds. Probably, if we had had a proper engagement, he would have begun construction upon it the instant you’d agreed to marry me.”
But, of course, they hadn’t had anything of the sort.
“I thought we’d been rather respectful, actually,” Kate said.
They had for the past two weeks split their time between Longthorpe Manor and the cottage.
But a small cottage shared with Mama was hardly the ideal place for newlyweds, and Longthorpe Manor was quite a distance from Kate’s flock, which required daily tending.
“We have been,” Elliot said. And then, with a sigh, admitted begrudgingly, “For the most part.”
Kate winced, turning her cheek against his shoulder. “Except for that time—”
“We couldn’t have known he’d choose to visit the library at such an hour,” Elliot said, as he wrapped one arm about her and squeezed in reassurance.
“Or when—”
“Oh, come now. We had no reason to suspect he’d take a midnight stroll in the garden that particular evening. Still,” he conceded, “some privacy would not go amiss, I think.”
“How long, do you think, until we have got a home of our own?” Kate asked as she toyed with the buttons of Elliot’s waistcoat, slipping one free of its mooring.
“A home of this size? Ordinarily, I’d say a year at least,” Elliot said.
“Though with Devon’s impatience to see us gone, I suspect he’ll go to whichever lengths it might take to see it done faster.
Possibly only a few months.” He picked loose the ribbon binding her plait and shook her dark locks free.
“Probably it will still feel like an eternity to Devon, however.”
Kate swallowed back a rueful laugh as he brushed his lips over hers. “I might know of something that could well change his tune,” she said, planting one hand upon his chest to push him back down into the grass. “Did I happen to mention that I had a letter from Miss Applegate yesterday?”
“You did not,” he said as his fingers sifted through her loosed hair.
“She wrote to congratulate us on our marriage,” Kate said casually as she let her fingers wander over his chest and plucked free another button of his waistcoat, “And to give us a gift. As it happens, Miss Applegate’s cook is the best of friends with Lady Havisham’s cook.”
“Is she?” Elliot’s fingers paused in the process of stroking through her loosed hair, and his eyes widened. “Do you mean to say—”
“Oh, yes. We now find ourselves in possession of what is perhaps the most closely-guarded recipe in London. I could recreate Lady Havisham’s cake for you this very day if you wish.”
“You glorious, wonderful, perfect woman,” Elliot enthused as his hands seized her hips and dragged her over him. “Could you, really?”
Kate nodded. “But you will have to share with Devon,” she said. “It really is only fair, considering how much torment we have inflicted upon him of late.”
Elliot heaved a sigh of regret, as if already mourning the slices of cake which would be sacrificed to his brother in the hopes of sweetening his sour temperament. “If I must,” he allowed as his fingers curled around the nape of her neck.
“You know,” Kate said, pitching her voice to a sultry murmur as she flicked free another button upon his waistcoat. “We do own quite a bit of land, now. Perhaps we could make use of it.”
“Our own bit of Northampton,” he agreed as he pulled her down for a kiss. “Just for the two of us. And far enough away from anyone else that we needn’t worry about—”
“For Christ’s sake!” The exasperated bellow split the early morning silence, accompanied by the soft plod of hooves on earth approaching.
“Oh, no,” Kate murmured, wilting into a slump over Elliot in abject embarrassment. “Tell me it isn’t Devon.”
With one hand curved soothingly over the back of her head, Elliot craned his head back to take a glance. “Well,” he said. “I’d hate to lie.”
Kate buried a groan into his shoulder, unable to bring herself to look her brother-in-law in the eye as he brought his horse closer.
In a clipped, annoyed voice, Devon asked, “Would it be too much to request just a little decorum? For God’s sake, you are on a hillside where anyone might see you!”
“Our hillside, thank you,” Elliot said. “And you haven’t the slightest right to complain of what you might witness while you are trespassing!”
“I’m your damned brother.”
“You’re a damned menace, is what you are,” Elliot said. “And I’ll thank you to give us a few hours of privacy—unless you’d prefer we take ourselves back to Longthorpe Manor sooner than planned.”
“God, no,” Devon choked out in horror. “One can stomach only so much cloying sentimentality at such an hour, and I don’t care to be subjected to the two of you pawing at one another any more than is absolutely necessary.”
“Then get you gone,” Elliot advised with patently false pleasantness. “Or pawing will soon be the least of your concerns.”
With a shake of his head and scornful sound, Devon spurred his horse into a gallop, racing off and away, no doubt in an effort to remove himself from their vicinity as swiftly as possible.
As Devon disappeared into the distance, they both burst into exuberant—if vaguely mortified—laughter. “That poor man,” Kate said. “Probably he thinks our home cannot be built soon enough.”
“One of these days,” Elliot said with sigh, as he turned Kate to her back once more and slid one hand beneath the rumpled hem of her skirts, “Devon is going to do his duty and marry. And, if he is very lucky…he’ll finally understand us.
” A roguish wink, in that jovial spirit Kate so adored.
“But, Lord, I do hope the woman leads him a merry chase first.”