Epilogue
The bells began before the carriage turned the corner into the square.
Their sound rolled over the thatched roofs and cobbled lanes of Duxworth like sunlight, bright, pealing, and insistent.
Every note seemed to tumble against her chest and bounce back again, dizzy with joy.
Christine could hardly breathe for it. She had been through this ceremony before, but now it would be done properly. Tristan would accept nothing less.
The morning mist was lifting, revealing the church spire newly gilded by spring.
The air smelled of hawthorn and woodsmoke, of rain promised but not yet fallen.
Children stood on the low wall by the lychgate tossing petals from their aprons, and old Mrs. Cleverley waved her handkerchief as if repelling an invading army.
Lord Ernald Thynne sat opposite her in the carriage, his genial face glowing red with pride and exertion.
“You’ve filled the whole county with commotion,” he said cheerfully, adjusting his cuffs, “even the vicar’s wife forgot her hat in her haste to ring the bells. I told Tristan he was marrying a legend.”
Christine smiled, nerves fluttering like captive wings in her chest. “Then I hope the legend behaves with dignity.”
“Dignity is overrated,” Ernald said, “happiness will do.”
She looked down at her gloved hands folded in her lap. A letter rested there, folded neatly but worn soft at the edges. The seal had been broken that morning at sunrise. She had read it three times before breakfast, twice since, and still the words seemed to echo through her like a hymn.
Dearest Sister,
By the time you read this, I will have torn up your husband’s note and placed myself before the magistrate in Edinburgh.
I cannot spend another hour living on your mercy.
You showed me courage, and I will not waste it.
Whatever the law decides, I will make myself into something honest if life permits me that chance. You were right about everything.
Charles
Tears had welled, but they were different tears than before—no longer grief but a gentler kind of mourning, one that held the possibility of peace.
“Are you all right?” Ernald asked.
“Yes,” she refolded the letter carefully and slipped it into her reticule, “I am, at last.”
“I have not had the opportunity to ask. How on earth did you persuade that ghastly lady to agree to the marriage?” Thynne said, straightening his coat and preparing, in Charles’s absence, for his role in giving Christine away.
Christine smiled; that had been her brother’s last gift and the appendix to his letter.
It was a signed affidavit stating her date of birth and swearing it to be so. A year before she was actually born.
“It seems that at some point I have lost a year,” Christine said, “I am a year older than I thought.”
Thynne guffawed. “The Lord and Fortune move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform. Lady Gillray must be spitting nails.”
The carriage jolted to a stop. Outside, the churchyard gleamed with garlands of white blossom tied to every gatepost. Duxworth’s people had outdone themselves, and even the gravestones looked newly polished.
When Ernald stepped down and offered his arm, she took it.
The warmth of his hand was steady, fatherly.
“Come along, my dear,” he said softly, “you’ve a duke waiting.”
The great wooden doors opened before them. The scent of beeswax, flowers, and rain-damp stone greeted her like a memory of sanctuary. Inside, sunlight poured through the high windows, scattering color over the flagstones, ruby, gold, and sapphire. At the far end of the aisle stood Tristan.
He was dressed simply, in a black coat, a white cravat, and no jewels save a small pin. But she had never seen him look more like a man and less like a wolf. When their eyes met, every whisper in the church vanished. Lord Ernald cleared his throat and said, “Come, child,” and she moved.
The music began, the parish musicians, earnest and slightly off-key, and the long walk seemed both endless and too short.
At the front pews, she glimpsed familiar faces, Elizabeth Thynne dabbing at her eyes, Flora and Louisa in pale green gowns holding their baskets of wildflowers like sacred offerings.
Beside them, Jane and Constance waited as maids of honor, radiant with nerves and pride.
Even Mrs. Fogarty had been permitted a seat near the aisle, hat adorned with a feather that would have put a peacock to shame. James, stiff with importance, stood by the doorway in his best livery, clutching his gloves as though they might escape. And there, Tristan’s hand, extended toward her.
When Ernald placed hers into it, her pulse steadied. She heard the vicar’s voice, familiar and kind, but the words blurred into a rhythm that felt older than language. Promise, vow, breath.
“…to have and to hold, from this day forward.”
Tristan’s thumb brushed over her fingers, a small reassurance that she was not dreaming.
“I will,” he said.
Then it was her turn, and the words came easily. “I will.”
When the vicar declared them man and wife, the church erupted in applause that rattled the rafters. Tristan leaned toward her, and for one suspended heartbeat, she forgot propriety, audience, and even breath. His kiss was not tentative. It was a claim freely given; a vow made flesh.
She felt the world steady around it, the years of fear, of hunger, of being small and unseen, all dissolving in the heat of his mouth on hers. The bells began again, and the congregation rose like a tide. Outside, the village threw itself into celebration.
Children danced, music spilled into the green, barrels of ale rolled from the inn. Tristan lifted her into the carriage while the crowd cheered and threw petals that clung to her hair and gown. He leaned close as the horses started forward, his voice low and rough with awe.
“You’re mine now.”
“And you are finally tame,” she teased.
He smiled against her temple and growled softly. The carriage carried them back to Duskwood through lanes newly green, the scent of lilac following like a benediction. The house waited in twilight, quiet, its windows glowing softly.
Later, when the candles were lit and the last toast drunk, he led her to their chamber.
The nervous laughter between them faded into silence.
He undressed her slowly, reverently, as though unwrapping the years of doubt and distance.
When he touched her, she felt the certainty she had never known.
Not conquest, not obligation, only belonging.
“I love you,” he whispered against her skin, the words no longer hesitant but inevitable.
“And I you,” she answered.
The bed welcomed her. It was soft and warm.
Tristan’s body above her was hard and hot.
He lowered himself to her, still constrained by his clothes.
Her hands came to rest on his chest, fingers splayed and enjoying the feel of his powerful, almost rippling muscles.
She clutched, gathering the material of his shirt in her grip, pulling it tight.
His lips found hers, and she closed her eyes, giving herself to a world of sensation.
Without sight, she breathed him in, felt her way to the ties that kept his shirt closed.
They came undone beneath her fingers as if by magic, her mind occupied with the feelings erupting within her.
The wanting that was more powerful than a man starved for weeks.
The thirst that would rival the yearning of a desert for a single drop of water.
Christine was rewarded with the feel of the soft hair upon his chest. Widened the laces, touched, dragged her nails across the steely muscle.
Then her impatience got the better of her.
She reached for the bottom of the shirt, hauling it out of his breeches and upward, over his head.
He helped her, tossing the garment aside.
He had not been idle. Besides kissing her, his hands had been lifting her skirt, caressing her legs.
Now he seized her stockings by the toe and pulled.
The material stretched, then tore. Christine squealed a laughing protest as he ripped the fabric from her flesh and then replaced its close touch with that of his mouth. He consumed her, knee, thigh, loins.
She fumbled at the catches that held her dress at the back, lifting herself even as his actions robbed her of coordination.
They came undone or they broke with her increasingly frantic movements.
Tristan lifted his head and pulled the dress down from her shoulders.
Christine wanted nothing more than to push him back down where he had been.
They rolled, writhed, laughed, and fumbled until they were naked.
Their bodies became entwined. Christine straddled him, feeling as though her delicate body contained him, controlled him.
As though she rode a wolf, in fact. Moments later, the wolf was mounting her.
Warmth became heat. Heat became a pleasure so intense that Christine cried out, consumed by the most delicious agony she had ever experienced.
Outside, the night spread wide and starlit.
Within, their bodies met in perfect recognition, no masks left, no lies.
When at last they lay entwined, the world beyond the bed ceased to exist. The Duke and Duchess of Duskwood, Tristan and Christine, were no longer rumor, nor bargain, nor scandal.
They were simply two souls who had found each other in a house that had once been all shadow and now, at last, was full of light.
The End?