Epilogue
“Mama,” said Maeve, smiling, laughing. A girl who was always smiling and laughing. “You can stop fussing.”
Saskia released the hem of the white lace gown and stepped back. Had she been fussing? She supposed she had.
In truth, she was a fussy sort of mother.
She hadn’t seen that coming.
Her throat went tight at the sight of her daughter bedecked in her wedding-day finery—her auburn curly hair a gift from her namesake grandmother…
her gold-flecked green eyes from her father…
her daring spirit she inherited from Liam, too.
Yet Saskia caught something of herself in her beautiful daughter.
A willingness to see life unflinchingly and meet it directly.
“You’re absolutely radiant, daughter.”
Maeve reached for the bouquet of roses that she would carry down the aisle. Roses were her reason for deciding upon a June wedding, so they would be in full bloom.
There was so much a mother wanted to say to her daughter on her wedding day—too much. Advice for the marriage…advice for the wedding night. Maeve had put a firm stop to the latter discussion. Her Aunt Viveca had already given her a detailed account of what to expect.
Detailed was the exact word Maeve had used.
Detailed from Viveca, well, Saskia could only imagine.
So, here Saskia found herself alone with her daughter in the narthex of St. Paul’s Cathedral just before Maeve was to walk down the aisle and pledge her troth to her beloved Philip.
“Mama?”
A note sounded in Maeve’s voice. A note both familiar and welcome, for Saskia knew what her daughter was about to ask. “Yes?”
“What was the best birthday you ever had?”
Maeve had been four years old the first time she’d asked this question, making it the first occasion of many that Saskia told the story over the years. Through her childhood, it had been Maeve’s favorite story about her mother.
Today, on Maeve’s wedding day, however, Saskia would tell the story a bit differently, for she had too much to say and only a moment to say it.
She reached out and took her daughter’s hand.
“Thirty-five years ago, your father and I fell in love and decided to spend the rest of our lives together. We had so many dreams and plans for that future, and many of them came true. I wrote more books. Your father involved himself in the reform of horse racing, not to mention the running of the earldom. We were fulfilled by those vocations through the years. But some of our dreams didn’t go to plan exactly as we’d hoped. ”
Maeve stepped closer in that sweet way she always did when she sensed suffering in another.
“I’d always dreamed,” Saskia continued, “of having a large family with somewhere between four and ten children.”
Maeve’s brow lifted toward the ceiling. “Ten?”
Saskia chuckled. “I hadn’t really thought it through.
But I’d fully expected to find myself with child within months of the wedding.
” She swallowed past disappointment down.
“Months turned into years, and still, I had no children. I passed my thirtieth year, then my thirty-fifth, and I wasn’t a mother.
I confess that by then I’d accepted I never would be. ”
“Then on your thirty-sixth birthday…” Maeve’s eyes sparkled.
“Then on my thirty-sixth birthday, I felt nauseous. Nausea unlike any I’d ever experienced in my life and I knew—I just knew—I was with child.
You. And not just you, but you and Jacob.
” The wonder she experienced then, all these twenty-three years later, still resonated through her.
“That will always be my favorite birthday. But today, on your wedding day, I would like to tell you what I learned in those years before you and your brother entered my life.” She squeezed her daughter’s white-gloved hand.
“I learned that if you’re waiting for life to give you perfection, you’ll always be unhappy.
There is no perfect life waiting ahead, just around the bend.
Find happiness in the life you have, my sweet.
All those years we were childless, your father and I were happy, for, you see, happily ever after isn’t a state of being.
Happily ever after is a state of mind. It’s a state of the heart.
As long as you carry that belief within you, you will lead a fulfilled life, daughter. ”
Saskia felt the swift, unrelenting tick-tock of time, and yet she had more to say… “And here’s another thing I learned: some things matter in life.”
An amused line formed between Maeve’s eyebrows. “Were you a secret anarchist, Mama?”
Saskia smiled. “It wasn’t that I felt nothing mattered, but I’d never actively considered that some things did.”
“Oh, you’re such a philosopher.”
Together, they shared a laugh. The children were always teasing her thus. But she’d never learned the knack for small talk, and now that she was approaching her sixtieth year, it was too late to learn.
“I would like to tell you some of the things that matter.” She cleared her throat.
“Hope matters. As does faith. Never forget to be kind. And daring, Maeve. Daring matters, but you’ve known that from the moment your tiny lungs first filled with air and released an indignant yowl informing the heavens of your displeasure at having been born.
But, Maeve,” she continued, “it’s love that matters most. It’s from love that every other feeling that matters flows—love for oneself and love for others. ”
Unshed tears pooled in her eyes, Maeve nodded. “You’re the best mother anyone could wish for.”
“Second best,” said Saskia, reflexively. All these years later, it was still a firm fact in her mind that Tessa was the best.
Maeve shook her head. “First best.”
Saskia swiped away a tear that had broken free. “We still have some work to do on your grammar.”
Maeve shook her head with a laugh. As Saskia wiped a few renegade tears from her daughter’s cheeks, Jacob strode into the narthex.
Sometimes, just for the split of a second, Saskia took him for his father.
Well, his father from thirty-five years ago.
“What did I miss?” he asked, his eyes bright with the excitement of the day.
Maeve accepted a brotherly kiss on the cheek. “Mother was just imparting her wisdom to me,” she informed him.
“That so?”
“But you’ll just have to wait until your wedding day.”
He flashed the charming smile he’d inherited from his father. The cheekiness was all Jacob. “Then I suppose I’ll be waiting quite some time to be blessed with motherly wisdom.”
Indeed, it had been a surprise when Saskia had become with child in her thirty-sixth year, but having twins had a been a marvel. Twins. Of course, Liam was a twin. But she hadn’t allowed herself to hope for as much until she’d held one babe in each arm.
And, truly, what a wonder it had been watching them grow and flourish into the people they were today. Maeve with her daring and beauty; Jacob, a future earl, yes, but also involved in the running of Sirens.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this marriage business, my girl?” he asked his sister. “It’s not too late if you want to leg it.”
Maeve was playfully swatting her brother when Liam entered the room.
His hair, once deep auburn, was now salted with gray.
Which did nothing to diminish his handsomeness.
If anything, he’d only grown more handsome with age.
To this day, every hero she’d ever written paled in comparison to the flesh-and-blood reality of this man—her man.
Before he took Maeve’s arm in preparation to walk her down the aisle, he reached for Saskia. “Can you believe it?” he asked, low, for her ears only.
It—all that had come after they’d spoken their first I love you.
She couldn’t believe it—and she could.
“Yes, my love, I believe it.”
He angled and kissed her within one blink of the eye and the next, over in an instant. But it lingered inside her, as Liam’s kisses tended to do. “Now,” he said, “go and take your seat. I have our lass from here.”
Jacob extended his arm. “Mother?”
Saskia placed her hand on her handsome son’s arm and allowed him to escort her into the sanctuary and up the aisle to the front pew. So many familiar and loved faces pointed their way. All their friends and family. All smiling with love and affection.
Her life after I love you… She hadn’t been able to predict it thirty-five years ago.
After all, she’d never written that part of a love story.
But then, how could she have? She’d only known romantic love as a concept, not as a reality. So, how could she have conceived of the life that followed that first I love you.
The years that deepened that love.
Some of the years delivering sorrows unforeseen.
Other years delivering joys unsurpassed.
But all those years delivering on her and Liam’s promise to each other—always.
The End