Epilogue
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
“Faster, Rosalind! Faster than that! Surely, you have done better on a lazier morning than this one!”
Louisa looked up from the blanket at the sound of Kit’s voice, clear and delighted, carrying across the lawn from where he sat astride Rosalind at the paddock’s edge.
She felt the same small, astonished catch in her chest that had not yet worn thin, eight months on, at the ordinary miracle of hearing him speak aloud.
“He has grown rather bold with her lately,” she noted as Julian settled onto the blanket beside her, Eleanor already toddling determinedly toward a patch of clover a few feet away, one hand wrapped around a fallen leaf she seemed to consider a great prize.
“He has grown bold with everyone lately. Mrs. Whitfield informs me that he corrected her yesterday on the proper method of polishing silver, at considerable length, and with what she described as ‘entirely too much confidence for a boy of nine.’”
“He learned that confidence somewhere, Julian.”
“I could not possibly imagine where.”
Eleanor, having conquered the leaf, abandoned it immediately in favor of crawling determinedly toward her father instead.
Julian scooped her up before she could reach the edge of the blanket, settling her against his chest with the same easy, practiced competence he had carried since her infancy.
Though she was rather less an infant now, walking in unsteady, delighted bursts whenever she judged the ground sufficiently interesting.
“You look tired,” he said, studying Louisa’s face with close attention that she had come to rely on more than she liked to admit. “Did you sleep poorly again?”
“A little. Eleanor woke twice, and I confess I did not manage to settle quite so easily the second time.” She reached over and smoothed a wisp of hair back from Eleanor’s forehead, watching her babble contentedly at her father, entirely unbothered by the adult conversation happening over her head.
“I have been feeling unlike myself these past weeks, if I am being honest. Tired in a way that ordinary tiredness does not quite account for. Piers noticed it himself, the last time he called, and made me promise to let him examine me properly rather than simply dismissing it.”
“And did you?”
“I did. He came again this morning while you were with the steward.”
Julian’s attention sharpened at once, something careful entering his expression. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing wrong at all.” Louisa found herself smiling despite her best efforts at composure, the same smile she had been fighting back the whole morning since Piers had delivered the news, delighted and entirely unable to properly contain it. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“Louisa.” Julian’s voice had gone careful now. “What did Piers say?”
She took his free hand in both of hers, lacing her fingers through his the way she had done that evening in his study, when he had shown her Kit’s drawing and asked whether a bigger piece of paper might one day be required.
“We’re going to need a larger piece of paper soon,” she said.
Julian went very still, Eleanor still babbling happily against his shoulder. Louisa watched understanding dawn slowly on his face, watched his expression crack open.
“Truly?”
“Truly. Piers confirmed it not three hours ago, and made me swear I would tell you properly rather than simply announcing it at supper as though it were news of the harvest.”
“Louisa.” He said her name the way he always did when something moved him too deeply for more elaborate words. Then he started laughing, the sound bright and disbelieving.
He leaned in and kissed her, Eleanor squawking in mild protest at being momentarily squeezed between them.
Kit, whom they had adopted into their family as their own, glanced over from the paddock at the sound of his father’s laughter, signed something quick and curious across the distance that Louisa did not trouble herself to answer just yet.
She was too occupied with the warmth of Julian’s mouth against hers, the particular joy of a moment eight months and a whole lifetime in the making.
“A larger piece of paper,” Julian murmured, drawing back just enough to rest his forehead against hers, one hand still cradling Eleanor, the other tightening around Louisa’s fingers. “I confess I hoped for exactly this the day I first said it aloud, though I did not dare hope for it quite so soon.”
“Neither did I, to be honest. Though I find I am rather glad of it regardless.”
Kit had abandoned Rosalind entirely now, his nine-year-old dignity forgotten in favor of jogging across the lawn toward them. His sketchbook, as always, was tucked beneath his arm, and he dropped it onto the blanket beside them, breathless.
“What is so funny?” he asked aloud, then caught himself. He signed the same question a beat after, a habit he had fallen into these past months, using his voice more freely now but still reaching for his hands whenever the words felt too large to carry alone.
Louisa glanced at Julian, who nodded in silent agreement.
“You are going to have a new brother or sister,” she said plainly while signing it, slow enough for him to follow every word.
Kit went very still, his dark eyes flitting between them.
“Truly?” The word came out rough, uncertain, as though he did not quite trust his ears.
“Truly,” Julian confirmed.
Kit’s face broke open into something too large for his small frame to properly contain.
He threw his arms first around Louisa’s neck, then around his father’s, nearly upending Eleanor in the process, who shrieked with delighted laughter at the sudden commotion as though she understood the joke perfectly well.
“Say it again,” he said, pulling back just enough to look at Louisa, his voice still carrying that careful wonder he brought to anything he had not yet grown fully accustomed to trusting. “Say it with your voice, not just your hands.”
“You are going to have a new brother or sister,” Louisa repeated, laughing now, her own eyes bright.
“Good.” Kit nodded, satisfied, as though he had needed to hear it confirmed in both languages before he would properly believe it belonged to him.
He turned to his sketchbook at once, flipping past a dozen half-finished studies of Rosalind and the stable rafters until he found a blank page, and began sketching, his charcoal moving fast and certain.
“What are you drawing?” Julian asked, steadying Eleanor with one arm while Kit’s excitement threatened to topple them all sideways across the blanket.
“Us.” Kit did not look up from the page, his tongue caught between his teeth in fierce concentration. “All of us. I have to start now, before I forget how many people there will be.”
“I believe that we have his approval,” Julian chuckled.
“I believe we do.”
Louisa looked at her family—Kit’s dark head bent close against his father’s shoulder, Eleanor’s small fist caught in Julian’s collar, the autumn sun warm across the lawn, Rosalind grazing patiently at the paddock’s edge as though she too approved of the whole arrangement—and felt her heart swell with so much love that she could barely find her words.
“You will need to get him a bigger sketchbook,” she said, once she had recovered herself. “This next drawing will require more figures than the last one managed to hold.”
“I shall see to it tomorrow.” Julian pressed a kiss to the crown of Eleanor’s head, before reaching across the small chaos of their hard-won family and pressing another to Louisa’s temple, lingering there for a moment.
“Though I confess, whatever size he requires, I do not believe there is a sheet large enough to properly capture how full my heart feels at this moment.”
“Then we shall simply have to keep adding pages,” Louisa said, smiling against his shoulder, “for as long as we are fortunate enough to need them.”
The End?