Epilogue
The morning of the wedding began with peace that felt earned. Eloise stood at the window of her room in the estate house and looked out over the grounds while Clara worked behind her with concentrated irritation. The room no longer felt borrowed or temporary.
It felt like part of her home. Her family’s home. The thought still startled her at times, not because she doubted it, but because she had not thought herself a woman who would ever have a room that felt calm around her instead of merely occupied by her.
Clara made a low sound from behind her. “Hold still.”
Eloise obeyed. “I am holding still.”
“No, you are thinking.”
“I am allowed to think.”
“Not while I am buttoning lace.”
Eloise lowered her eyes to the garden below, where the morning light lay softly over the grass and flower beds.
Somewhere out of sight Maisie was already awake.
She had the sense of that without hearing it.
The house had a way of making the children present even when they were not in the room.
Perhaps because she had learned to listen for them.
Clara stepped back, squinted at the line of the bodice, and made a small disapproving sound. “The lace is not sitting right.”
Eloise looked at her through the mirror. “It is sitting exactly as the lace wishes to sit.”
Clara gave her a flat look. “That is the sort of nonsense people say when they have not spent their lives mending other people’s hems.”
Eloise laughed softly. Clara adjusted the fabric. “If the thing moves one more time, I shall pin it to your ribs,” she muttered.
“Please do not.”
“I might.”
A knock came at the door before either of them could continue the argument.
Mrs. Maggie entered carrying a small bouquet wrapped in pale ribbon and damp cloth. She did not announce what it was. She did not need to. The moment Eloise saw the wildflowers, she knew.
Mrs. Maggie’s expression remained carefully neutral, but her eyes were softer than usual. “These are from the child.”
Eloise’s breath caught. “Maisie?”
“She was at dawn with the gardener’s boy, or so she claims. She arranged them herself and insisted they were for you.”
Clara turned and gave the bouquet a sharp look of approval that meant more coming from her than praise would have from anyone else.
Eloise took the flowers carefully. They were wild and imperfect and beautiful in the way the best things often were.
Little clusters of white and yellow, a few stems of blue, one narrow pink blossom she did not know the name of.
Maisie had tied them together with a ribbon that was just a little crooked.
Eloise stared at them for a long moment.
Months ago, a small girl had placed a daisy chain around her wrist and told her she was brave. She could still feel that moment any time she let herself. The little chain had long since faded and been lost to time, but not from memory and the place it had made inside her heart.
She had not understood then how much the child had been giving her or what that chain would come to represent for Eloise. Thinking back, she wondered if that daisy chain was a good luck charm that led to where she was that day, or if it had simply been foreshadowing what was already meant to be.
The bouquet in her hands felt like the same thing.
She looked down at it and felt her throat tighten.
Mrs. Maggie, who had clearly judged that no one in the room ought to start weeping before the dressing was finished, harrumphed briskly. “Your mother is in the hall with your father.”
Eloise lifted her head. That eased her immediately.
Her mother had been tearful since dawn and had already used two handkerchiefs. Her father had been quieter than Eloise could remember him being in years. He looked older now. Diminished. But he was there.
That mattered.
The Lawing name remained, she knew. There were people who would never forget it; families who still used it in private with a shake of the head and a cautionary tone. But she had stopped feeling that the name was a chain. She had earned her place here with her own hands.
That mattered too.
Clara moved in to fuss with the lace again. “If you hold the flowers any tighter, you will crush them.”
Eloise looked down and loosened her fingers.
Mrs. Maggie’s mouth twitched. “There. She is managing the room better than the rest of us.”
Clara snorted. “That is not difficult.”
“It is for some,” Mrs. Maggie said.
Eloise looked at them both and felt, with surprise, how much she loved that room and the people in it.
Clara stepped back and inspected her work with a sigh. “Good enough.”
Mrs. Maggie gave her a look. “You mean excellent.”
“I mean good enough.”
Eloise’s smile was fond. “It is excellent.”
Clara looked at her once, then away. Mrs. Maggie set a hand briefly on Eloise’s shoulder. “Go on, then.”
And Eloise did.
***
The ceremony was small. Smallness felt right in a way grandeur never could have. The village church stood plain and white against the sky, its stones warmed by morning light.
The local gentry came because they had been invited, the household because no one would have thought of staying behind, and the village because the news of the wedding had traveled with the speed of any good story.
Duncan walked Eloise to the front because she had asked him to and because Jamie had suggested it with that careful seriousness he wore when he wanted to offer a kindness without making it obvious how much he knew it mattered.
The boy stood beside her in his best coat, his face solemn and proud, one arm extended in a way that suggested he would rather break than appear uncertain.
Eloise looked down at him. “Are you ready?”
Duncan nodded once. He did not look nervous. He looked determined.
“I shall not drop you,” he said.
She blinked. “That had not occurred to me.”
“It occurred to me.”
“Why?”
He gave her the briefest glance. “Because it would be inconvenient.”
That nearly made her laugh in church. She did not. Instead, she laid her hand on his arm and let him escort her the last few steps to the front.
Maisie was already waiting with the flowers. She took the role of flower girl with devastating seriousness. Every petal was placed as though the outcome of the ceremony depended upon it.
She walked ahead of Eloise with one small hand held out and a face so intent that several people in the pews had already begun trying and failing not to smile.
She dropped the first petals with perfect precision, then the second, then paused to examine one that looked as though it had landed more by accident than design, frowned, adjusted its placement, and continued.
Jamie stood at the front and did not hide his scars.
His cravat was tied lower than usual, his collar open enough that the side of his face did not vanish beneath fabric and careful arrangement. It was not defiance. It was more thoughtful than that. More honest. He had chosen not to hide.
Logan stood beside him as best man in his old naval coat, looking stern enough to frighten the rector and amused enough to know exactly why.
Eloise’s breath caught when she reached Jamie.
He looked at her, and in his expression, there was no performance, no strategy, no distance. Only him.
She took his hand. His grip was sure, as if his hand had always known it belonged with hers.
The rector began the vows. The little church seemed to hold its breath, as if it was afraid to make a single creak that might interrupt. When Jamie said he would love her, his voice did not waver.
That mattered more than Eloise had expected it to. It was not spoken loudly and not spoken dramatically. It was simply true. When she said it back, she meant every word. She did not look away from him, and he did not look away from her.
By the time the ring was on her hand, the room had become very quiet and attentive. As though everyone present understood they were watching something that had already been a beginning for a long time before anyone in the room had recognized it.
When the clergy pronounced them married, Jamie exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for months. Perhaps he had. Eloise looked up at him and found, to her own surprise, that her hands were as stable as they had ever been.
***
The wedding breakfast was in the garden.
Clara had made enough food for a party twice the size, which no one found surprising, but everyone found comforting.
The tables had been set beneath the open sky, with plates of fruit, bread, cut meats, cream cakes, and a wedding cake so elaborate that Logan circled it once with his hands behind his back and announced that it should be fed to a fleet.
Clara, who had been in a mood of practical triumph since dawn, looked at him. “You will stop talking and eat it.”
Logan nodded with exaggerated seriousness. “An order I can obey.”
“That is rare.”
“It is not.”
“It is.”
He smiled, which only made her look more suspicious.
Eloise watched from her place at the table and saw Logan catch Clara’s hand when she passed him the plates. He held it for three full seconds before she pulled away. That alone would have meant little if Clara had not been smiling when she looked at him afterward.
It was not the guarded half smile she wore in the kitchen when he was being particularly tiresome. It was a real smile, small, but unmistakable, and clearly proclaiming her adoration for him before everyone they loved.
Mrs. Maggie, seated nearby, had Maisie asleep in her lap before anyone else noticed the child’s eyes had closed. She adjusted the little girl gently and did not disturb her.
Duncan had challenged Jonathan to a chess match and was winning with grim satisfaction that made Jonathan laugh once and then attempt not to, as if losing to a twelve-year-old at his uncle’s wedding ought to be endured with more dignity than he possessed.