Epilogue
ROWEN
Almost a year later, Georgina had completed their family portrait.
Ordering the removal of his father’s full-length portrait with his hunting dogs to another hall in the house, Rowen had theirs hung in the centre of Tidesfar’s vast great hall.
Holding his son in his arms, Rowen studied the lavishly framed canvas. In her brushstrokes, the colours she chose, her composition, Georgina had captured the dignity and warmth of their family without the rigid formality so often expected in portraits of great houses.
The Duke and Duchess stood on the steps of Hawk’s Crown, young Nathaniel at his father’s side, his small hand enclosed in Rowen’s.
Georgina had begun her first sketches when Nathaniel was still an infant; by the time she’d completed the painting, he could stand holding his father’s hand, just as she’d always intended to paint the heir of Oakley.
Father and son were dressed alike in dark tones. Beyond them, the rich green slope of land fell away toward the River Severn, a gleaming ribbon of silver.
At Cassandra’s side rose the great oak tree whose branches reached out to shelter them. She wore the Prussian blue gown and canary diamond necklace, and in her hand she held a single bluebell just as she had when Rowen first saw her. Rowen had requested that detail be included.
Pointing at the painting, at his family, Nathaniel rocked his body in his father’s firm hold, letting out a short laugh.
“What do you think, Nathaniel?” Rowen asked him, and his son’s response was to grip his father’s collar and grin.
“If you look closely, just up at the top, our Greywick hawks are circling above the river.” Rowen pointed them out, and Nathaniel followed his father’s gaze. “And in the far left, beyond the forest, you see the dark red manor house? That’s Redthorne, where Mama was born.”
A reminder that two wounded houses were no longer in ruins, no longer ruled by the past, but now faced the world together. Bound forever.
Nathaniel pressed his face into Rowen’s shoulder, his hand gripping his father’s fingers firmly.
“There you are,” Cassandra slid her arms around her husband and son. “It is magnificent, and perfectly placed.”
Rowen stood silent and still, as though the image had settled something in him that words could not.
He and Cassandra had chosen each other. They had chosen the child. They had chosen what the house of Oakley would become, and he knew it was that spirit that would shape their son more surely than blood or title ever could.
“Yes, my love. Magnificent,” Rowen murmured and pressed his lips to his son’s forehead.
“We did this,” Cassandra whispered, her warm breath fanning his cheek, her body pressing against his. “We made this, together.”
In the painting, the three of them stood under a wide gold and violet sky, not as inheritors of a great dynasty, but as a family forged by will, tested by loss, held by devotion, and strengthened by love.
A life measured by love.
Rowen let out a rough exhale, his grip on their son tightening. “As far as the tide should run,” he declared the ancient Oakley vow.
Cassandra answered, “As far as the tide should run.”
No matter the swell of the waters.
Thank you for reading Tidesfar.