Epilogue
“She is the spitting image of Clara when she was a baby,” Thomas Bennett said. “Her mouth. The way she holds her shoulders when she walks.”
He was watching Violet navigate the drawing room as she had recently mastered forward motion and had not yet worked out that slowing down was also an option.
She reached the low table, planted both hands on it, looked back at the three of them with an expression of considerable satisfaction, earned smiles, and then changed direction.
“She does?” James was watching her with a smile.
The reverend nodded. He sat with his hands loosely folded in his lap, watching his granddaughter the way he had been watching her since he arrived—with the unhurried attention of a man who did not intend to waste a moment of it.
Isadora sat across from him with her tea. For the past hour, she had been thinking about what to say and had arrived at nothing useful. There were no correct words for this. There was only the room, the fire, and Violet making her thorough circuit of it.
“What was she like?” she asked. “Clara.”
The reverend shifted his gaze to her.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to—”
“No.” He shook his head once. “I want to.” He was quiet for a moment.
“She was curious about everything. She read every book I brought home and then argued with me about them, which I pretended to find trying and secretly found… delightful.” He smiled.
“She was the best mind I have ever argued with.” A small pause.
“I told her so once, when she was about seventeen. She said that was very gratifying and immediately proved my point about the third chapter of a volume I cannot now recall.”
Isadora felt James shift slightly beside her. She wanted to hold his hand, but she kept her attention on the reverend.
“She is in this house,” he continued, looking around the drawing room.
“Not the grandness of it. She wasn’t… She didn’t care for grandness, particularly.
But the books. The grounds.” He looked at Violet, who had found the carved horse on the side table and was holding it up with both hands. “She loved this.”
Violet brought Archibald to him. She walked the seven steps between them with the deliberateness of a very important errand and held the horse out. He took it carefully.
“Thank you,” he said.
She looked at him, then pointed at the horse. “Ta.”
“For me?” he asked.
She made a sound of confirmation. Then she turned and walked back to the table and picked up Sebastian, holding him in a way that made it clear she was not giving him up.
“A generous loan,” James commented.
The reverend turned the carved horse in his fingers. He did not speak for a moment.
“I owe you a debt,” he said to both of them. “What you have done for her. What you are doing now.” He fixed his gaze on James. “When you came to Alderton, I did not know what kind of man you were. I knew your title and your reputation, which were not encouraging.” A pause. “I know better now.”
“The reputation is somewhat overstated,” James chuckled.
“Very,” the reverend agreed with a laugh. “What matters is…” He looked at Violet, who had returned to her circuit. “She is well. She is safe. She is…” He seemed to be searching for the right word and not quite finding one large enough. “Loved,” he said finally. “I can see that she is loved.”
Isadora looked at Violet with a smile.
“She is,” James said simply. “Without reservation.”
The reverend nodded. He held Archibald a moment longer, then placed him carefully on the cushion beside him and looked around the room.
“I should like to come back. Next month, if that is agreeable.”
“It is more than agreeable,” Isadora said warmly. “It is already expected. She will want to know about her mother when she has the words for it. She will want to know who Clara was, and you are the person to tell her.” She held his gaze steadily. “We cannot give her that. Only you can.”
He was quiet for a moment. Something moved through his expression that he did not attempt to conceal.
“Yes,” he said. “All right.”
Violet crawled back to him. She had abandoned Archibald on the cushion and was now holding both arms up with straightforward authority.
He lifted her.
She settled against his shoulder with the ease of a child who had been held enough to know how it was done, and pointed at the fire.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Very bright.”
She pointed at James.
“Yes,” he said again.
She babbled something at considerable length.
“I agree entirely.” He nodded.
James looked at Isadora, the corner of his mouth twitching. She hid her smile behind her teacup.
Violet yawned with her whole face. The reverend stood with some effort and carried her to Isadora.
“I think she is ready for a nap,” he said.
“She is past ready,” Isadora chuckled. “She has been pretending she was not for the last hour.”
She settled Violet against her shoulder and felt the familiar warmth of the baby’s cheek against her neck and the small fist curling into the fabric of her gown.
Violet did not fight sleep. She had, apparently, fought quite enough for one evening.
“Same time next month?” James suggested.
The reverend was quiet for a moment. Then: “Thank you.”
The words were very simple, but they carried everything.
After that, he left, the door closing quietly behind him.
* * *
Dinner was loud in the way dinners were when Letitia and William were both at the table, which was to say that it was warm and opinionated and moved at a pace that required attention.
Isadora leaned back in her chair, taking in the chaos.
“The soup,” Letitia said, “was exceptional. Wherever Mrs. Farrow is, I want her to know that.”
“Mrs. Farrow knows.” Isadora grinned. “She is constantly being told.”
“She should be told again. Some compliments bear repeating.” Letitia reached for her wine.
“I have attended many dinners this Season, and none of them produced a sauce of that quality. Lord Penistone had the pretension to serve something he called a reduction, which was simply a smaller amount of something that had already been insufficient.”
“You went to Lord Penistone’s dinner?”
“I did.”
“You said in April that you would rather eat at the coaching inn than attend another of Lord Penistone’s dinners.”
“The coaching inn is genuinely quite good,” Letitia said. “I stand by both positions. They are not contradictory.”
James looked across the table at Isadora. She was tracing the stem of her glass with one finger, her mouth set in the curve that meant she was enjoying something and declining to show it fully.
She caught him looking.
Warmth spread through her chest at the small exchange.
“I want to propose a toast,” Letitia announced when the dessert plates had been cleared. “Which—William, please do not make that face.”
“I am not making any face.”
“Anyway, I propose toasts when the occasion merits them. This occasion merits one.” She lifted her glass.
“To Ashbourne, which was a cold and rather echoing place when Izzy first came to it, and is now—” She looked around the table, at James and Isadora.
“Something else entirely. Something considerably better.” She paused.
“And to my sister, who came here thinking she was solving a problem and ended up building a home. Which anyone who knows her will understand is entirely typical, because she does everything properly, even the things she did not plan to do.”
“Letitia,” Isadora laughed softly.
“I am not finished.” Letitia fixed James with a frank look. “And to you, James, whom I spent many years finding insufferable—”
“Letitia.” James clutched his chest.
“—and who turned out to deserve my sister.” She said it simply, without hedging. “Which is a higher bar than you might think and which you have cleared adequately.”
“Adequately,” James scoffed.
“I said what I said.” She raised her glass. “To Ashbourne, and to the people who made it what it is.”
They all raised their glasses.
James looked at Isadora. She was already looking at him.
Something passed between them. It was the silent conversation of two people who had discussed something and were now deciding whether it was the right moment to announce it.
He raised his eyebrows slightly, and she gave a small nod.
“Actually,” he said, setting his glass down, “since we are proposing toasts, there is something Isadora and I would like to say.”
The table went very still.
“Something,” Letitia repeated, with intense focus. “What kind of something?”
“We are expecting a child,” James announced.
He said it simply, with the warmth of someone who had been saying it privately and had been looking forward to saying it in this room, to these people, with Isadora beside him.
The silence lasted perhaps two seconds. Then Letitia made a sound that was not quite a word and was definitely not composed. She rose from her seat, rounded the table, and embraced Isadora before anyone else had entirely processed what had been said.
“A baby,” she squealed into her shoulder. “Another baby.”
“Yes,” Isadora said.
“Your baby.”
“That is generally how it works, Letitia.”
“When?”
“Spring.”
“Spring?” Letitia pulled back and looked at her with wet eyes. “Izzy.”
“I know,” Isadora murmured.
William stood up, crossed to her in giant strides, and pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Brother,” she said, her voice muffled
He said nothing; he only held her for a long moment. Then he stepped back and searched her face. She gave a small nod, and he exhaled.
He looked at James with the expression that communicated, without any words, the full complexity of what it meant to him. That his closest friend had become his brother in the truest sense, that his sister was here and happy and building something real.
James held the look and nodded in response.
Cecily came to Isadora and hugged her tightly.
“I am so happy for you both. I have been hoping for this. How do you feel?” she asked when she released her.
“Tired,” Isadora sighed. “Happy. Occasionally unreasonably hungry at three in the morning.”
“That continues,” Cecily said sympathetically.
“So I have been told,” Isadora groaned, glancing at James.
“I have been preparing toast at three in the morning for six weeks,” he said to William.
“It gets worse before it improves,” William warned playfully.
“A baby,” Letitia squealed. “Ashbourne is going to be extraordinary.”
“It already is,” James said, staring at Isadora.
She smiled at him.
The room and the family and the warmth of the evening went on around them, and underneath it, in the quiet way of things that had become simply true, she looked at him, and he looked at her, and there was nothing left to manage or protect or keep carefully at arm’s length.
This, Isadora thought, looking at the candles, the fire, the faces of the people she loved sitting around at her dining table. Exactly this.
The family left late—Letitia making three additional observations on her way out, William shaking James’s hand at the door with the same pressure as always, Cecily embracing Isadora with a warmth that carried everything she did not say aloud.
Then Isadora and James found themselves alone in the drawing room.
The fire had burned down to glowing embers. Outside, the grounds were dark and cold. Inside, everything was exactly as it should be.
James was staring at her as they both sat close to the fire.
“James.” She leaned closer to him.
“Mm?”
“Say what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking,” he said, “that I spent a long time being very careful about what I allowed myself to want. And that I am sitting here now, in this room, with you, and I find I cannot remember what any of that careful management was protecting.”
She was quiet for a moment.
He reached across and took her hand.
“I love you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “I loved you when I was telling myself it was practical. I loved you when I let you leave, and I stood at that window and felt the most clear-headed misery of my entire life.”
“That is a terrible way to discover something.” She laughed.
“It was extremely effective.” He shrugged.
Isadora looked at the warm, open face of the man she was completely and irrevocably in love with.
“I love you,” she said.
He exhaled slowly. “I find that I am still not prepared for it when you say it.”
“Good.” She moved closer. “Now you know how it feels.”
He laughed, then reached up and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Then kissed her softly. Slowly. The kiss of a man with nowhere to be and nothing left to prove, who simply wanted this—wanted her—and was no longer remotely surprised by how much.
She kissed him back with everything she had.
His forehead came to rest against hers when they drew apart. Neither of them moved.
“A baby,” he said with wonder.
She nodded. “In spring.”
He pressed his lips to her hair. “Are you frightened?”
“A little,” she admitted. “Are you?”
“Enormously,” he said. “But I also never wanted anything more.”
She looked up at him. “You have been a wonderful father,” she said. “Since the very beginning, with Violet. Before you knew you were going to be one. Before you had decided it.” She paused. “I want you to know that I see it. All of it. Every time you are with her, I see it.”
He looked down at her with eyes that were warm and so tender.
“Isadora,” he said after a while.
“Yes?”
“I would like to stay here indefinitely.”
“We have a bedroom,” she reminded him.
“I know.” He didn’t move. “In a moment.”
She smiled against his cheek.
“In a moment,” she agreed.
The fire burned.
The house was still.
They stayed exactly where they were.
The End?