Epilogue #2
Eloise’s mother spent a good portion of the meal talking to Mrs. Maggie about the flowers and the ribbon arrangements and how remarkably sensible everything had been, which was perhaps the highest praise available in her state of gratitude.
Her father sat farther down the table, quiet, watching his daughter all morning with eyes that no longer appeared filled with shame.
For the first time in years, he did not look as though he were trying to disappear. He looked like a man who had, at last, begun to understand that his daughter’s life was not only a ruined name.
When the meal was half over and the conversation had become pleasantly uneven, Eloise slipped away from the table and walked to the edge of the garden where the grass thinned near the line of the sea.
The air was warmer than it had been in months and blew a gentle breeze. It moved across her face and stirred the ribbon at her wrist. She stood there and looked out toward the water.
She heard footsteps beside her and did not need to turn to know it was Jamie.
He came to stand next to her without speaking. The silence between them was no longer awkward. It was filled with all the love and happiness they had had to deny themselves and each other, and it spoke as loudly as any words ever could have.
She leaned into him as naturally as though she had been doing it forever. He put his arm around her and held her as though he was afraid she might vanish.
Eloise looked out over the sea and felt the whole world narrow to nothing but the simple warmth of him beside her. The sound of the garden behind them, the laughter, the distant clink of China, the low murmur of conversation, all of it became background to the certainty of his arm around her waist.
She rested her head lightly against him. Jamie looked down at her, and she could feel the change in him when he realized she was staying there willingly and without reserve. He pressed a brief kiss to her hair. That, too, felt ordinary now. In the best possible way.
Eloise looked at the sea. Perhaps this is what I wanted all along, she thought.
Although she would never have named it so clearly before now.
Not wealth, standing, or safety. A place.
A home with noise in it. A man whose arm around her felt as though it had always belonged there.
Children who were not hers by blood and yet had become hers in every other way.
Jamie spoke softly above her. “You are thinking very hard.”
She smiled a little. “It is a habit.”
“I know.”
The word held so much that she looked up at him then, and his eyes were warm enough to make her throat ache.
The garden behind them was full of people who had found one another by all manner of strange and difficult routes.
Clara and Logan, no longer pretending. Mrs. Maggie with Maisie sleeping in her lap.
Duncan already planning his next victory.
Her mother was talking enough for two people.
Her father finally seemed relaxed and less burdened by guilt.
Eloise reached for Jamie’s hand and threaded her fingers through his. He closed his hand around hers.
Neither of them spoke for a long time after that. There was no need.
Jamie’s gaze drifted over the garden for a moment before returning to her.
“It still surprises me,” he said quietly.
“What does?”
“That this is real.”
Eloise smiled. “The wedding?”
He shook his head.
“You.”
She looked at him without speaking.
“For years,” he said, “I convinced myself I would live out my life alone. It seemed simpler that way. Better for everyone else.”
She slipped her fingers through his.
“I know.”
“I thought I had accepted it.” He let out a quiet breath. “Then you arrived and started asking questions.”
“The names of your men, for example.”
“Yes. Among other things.”
“You never answered anyone else.”
“No.”
She studied him. “Why me?”
He smiled faintly.
“Because you were the first person who looked at my scars and still seemed more interested in the things I carried inside than the ones everyone could see.”
Her eyes filled before she could stop them.
“I was terrified of you that first morning,” she admitted.
“I know.”
“I thought you disliked me.”
“I was trying to.”
That earned him a soft laugh.
“You failed.”
“I did.”
He lifted her hand and brushed his thumb gently across her knuckles.
“I have failed at resisting you from almost the beginning.”
She looked down for a moment, gathering herself.
“I loved you before I admitted it to myself,” she said quietly. “I kept telling myself I only wanted the children to stay here. That I only wanted you to win.” She looked back up at him. “Then I realized I was wrong.”
“How so?”
“I could not imagine leaving the children. Or you.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
The sounds of laughter drifted from the garden behind them, the clink of China and Logan’s unmistakable voice carrying on the breeze.
Jamie stepped closer until there was barely any space between them.
“I lost the sea,” he said softly. “I thought that was the end of the life I wanted.”
He rested his forehead lightly against hers.
“It was not. But once you arrived, I realized that my life had been waiting for you to begin again.”
Eloise smiled through the tears in her eyes.
“And mine was waiting for you and the children before it could begin at all.”
He kissed her then, slowly and without hurry, while behind them the wedding breakfast carried on, full of voices, laughter, and the family they had both spent so long believing they would never have.
Jamie smiled.
A burst of footsteps came across the grass before either of them could speak again.
“Uncle Jamie.”
Maisie came first, small and warm from sleep, her hair a little mussed from Mrs. Maggie’s lap. Duncan was only a step behind her, his cheeks flushed from play.
Jamie straightened as Maisie threw herself at Eloise’s skirt.
Eloise laughed and bent at once. “Where have you been?” she asked, as if she did not know the girl had been napping.
“Sleeping,” Maisie said, as though that were a complaint. Then she looked up at Eloise with shining eyes and added, “Mrs. Maggie said I could come find you and I woke up.”
Duncan came to a halt beside them, trying very hard to look composed and failing only a little.
“We heard there was cake.”
Jamie’s mouth twitched. “That would explain the speed.”
Maisie ignored him and wrapped both arms around Eloise’s waist. “If you two got married, does that mean you are staying with us?”
Eloise glanced at Jamie, then back down at her. “It does.”
Maisie’s whole face brightened. “For always?”
“For always,” Jamie said before Eloise could answer.
Duncan looked at him, then at her, and gave them a slow, satisfied smile.
“I told you that Uncle Jamie would marry her instead of Lady Catriona,” he said smugly to his sister.
Maisie ignored him, as well, as she continued to think over the new situation.
“So you will be our mother now,” Maisie said very matter-of-factly.
Eloise looked down at her, and for one second the whole garden seemed to quiet around them.
Maisie, who had no sense whatever of the danger of speaking so plainly, smiled up at Eloise with complete trust. “Mrs. Maggie said you already were, sort of. But now it will be proper.”
Duncan shifted his weight. “Maisie.”
“What?” she said. “It is true.”
“She is our aunt.”
“But an aunt can still be like a mother,” Maisie countered, pouting.
Eloise crouched so she was level with the children. “Do you want me to be your mother?”
Maisie looked offended by the question. “Yes, of course.”
Duncan, after a brief pause, nodded once.
“It would be better than some mothers,” he said, and then immediately looked as though he wished he had not said it quite so baldly.
Eloise smiled, soft and a little tremulous. “That is a very high compliment from you.”
“It is true,” Duncan said, refusing to be embarrassed. “You listen.”
Maisie nodded vigorously. “And you do not send us away.”
Eloise looked between the children, and when she spoke her voice had gone gentler than before. “Then I will do my best.”
Maisie’s answer came at once. “I know.”
Duncan glanced at Jamie, then back at Eloise. “We are glad.”
Eloise blinked once, and then she smiled at both children with the warm, doting, open expression.
“So am I, my darlings,” she said softly.
Maisie, satisfied, turned to Jamie and held up both hands as if demanding confirmation from the last remaining adult in the circle.
“Are you glad too, Uncle Jamie?”
Jamie laughed, warmly and without guard or reluctance.
“Yes,” he said, reaching down to touch Maisie’s hair.
“I am very glad.”Eloise turned her face toward the sea again and let the wind move over her.
The room she had once borrowed was hers now.
The house was not only a place she worked.
It was the life she had made. And beside her stood the man she loved, with the sea before them and the garden behind them and the rest of the world, for that one blessed moment, exactly where it belonged.
THE END