Epilogue
A fter three months abroad, Lady Langley – formerly Miss Henrietta Tolliver – returned to Town upon the arm of her new husband, the Earl of Langley, and directly into the centre of a most delectable scandal.
It was not a true scandal, mind you. No one had been called out at dawn, nor had any countess misplaced her diamonds at Almack’s, and not a single duke was discovered in a compromising arrangement with his valet – but it was, nevertheless, the sort of mild impropriety that fuelled every drawing room conversation from Grosvenor Square to Bond Street for a fortnight or more.
For Society, with its usual measure of hypocrisy, claimed to frown upon such prolonged absence from proper circles, even as it lapped up each morsel of hearsay with the fervour of children left alone with pudding.
That the newlyweds had vanished almost directly after their wedding raised eyebrows; that they returned three months hence looking scandalously well, with sun-kissed skin, an air of conspicuous satisfaction, and not the slightest trace of contrition, was altogether irresistible .
The first stir was occasioned by the arrival of an enormous trunk at Langley House with its leather casing boldly emblazoned with the word ROME.
This was followed by the discreet emergence of certain continental purchases: a Venetian mask in crimson satin, several petite pairs of silk stockings from Paris (too dainty by half for any but a lady’s feet), and a cache of foreign sweets that had the scullery maid licking her fingers in envy.
Then, of course, there was the business with the sketchbook.
One chambermaid, pale with the thrill of indiscretion, swore she had glimpsed a folio in His Lordship’s study containing images both artistic and profoundly improper – specifically, a lady of unmistakable resemblance to the countess herself, rendered in charcoal and in a state of dishabille that no modest woman could countenance.
The household spoke of little else for days.
As for the truth – well, it was not so very different from the speculation, and in some respects, rather worse.
The newlyweds had gone first to Paris, where Lady Langley consumed more chocolate than was strictly respectable, and allowed the earl to coax her into a private art gallery where they were very nearly discovered defiling a settee in the salon of a baron.
From there, they journeyed through Florence and onwards to Rome, where they committed the unpardonable error of bathing in an antique piscina said to have belonged to a Roman emperor.
The story’s veracity remains unclear, though Lady Langley remarked that His Lordship had looked very much the part: imperial, golden, and – by her account – entirely nude.
They danced until morning in Vienna, sipped hot spiced wine on a rooftop in Prague, and somewhere amid the snow-dusted alleyways, Lady Langley found herself pressed against a stone wall with her skirts about her waist and Lord Langley murmuring obscenities in her ear.
In Trieste, they consumed honeyed figs in bed and were too thoroughly occupied thereafter to recall much of the afternoon.
It was a very fine inn, but the staff were of the opinion that the English were quite mad.
And in that little mountain lodge above Lake Como – where the fire never went out and the windows remained forever misted with frost – they spent five uninterrupted days doing very little beyond reading, laughing, and making love on every available surface.
On the second night, as snow fell soft and silent beyond the windowpanes, Theo had taken her with such aching sweetness in the bath that she had wept, though she could not have said precisely why.
It was there, too – upon the third morning, with Hetty stretched languidly beneath the quilts and Theo’s arm draped carelessly about her waist – that he spoke the words she had longed to hear without ever admitting, even to herself.
“I love you,” he had said, his voice low and rough with sleep. “I believe I have done so for an age, long before I had the wit to recognise it… I cannot say precisely when it began. Only that it was, and is, and I am wholly undone by it.”
She had stared at him for a moment, blinking like a fool, her chest brimming with something golden and breathless, before replying, “Thank heavens. For I do love you, Theodore, and I should have been most dreadfully vexed if I had gone and married you, allowed you to cart me about half the Continent, and permitted you to do those utterly indecent things to me in Venice – on a balcony, no less – without knowing that you loved me in return. ”
At which point he had kissed her with all the aching tenderness of a man utterly in love, and she had welcomed him back to her body with the kind of abandon that left no doubt as to her feelings.
What followed was, in its sweetness and slow-burning heat, so wholly perfect that had she read it in the pages of a novel, she might have rolled her eyes and declared it sentimental nonsense; and yet living it, feeling it, she could not help but think it far more wonderful than anything even the most indulgent of lady novelists might have dared to invent.
They were still laughing as they stepped into the drawing room of Tolliver House, hand-in-hand, sun-kissed and wind-blown, and looking very much like a pair of scandalous allegories come to life.
Lady Tolliver, who had reportedly been pacing since breakfast and very nearly driven the butler to tears, threw up her hands the instant they appeared.
“There you are at last! Looking for all the world like you have escaped from a Titian painting! Heaven help me, what am I supposed to tell the neighbours?”
Hetty, her cheeks still flushed from laughter – and perhaps from a rather heated kiss shared not ten minutes earlier in the carriage – smiled serenely. “Tell them, if you please, that we are quite blissfully happy. And perhaps warn them that we have no intention whatsoever of reforming.”
Lady Tolliver exhaled sharply through her nose – a sound which, in long familiarity, conveyed both disapproval and considerable pride.
“Well,” she sniffed, “at the very least, you had the good sense to marry the man before gallivanting across the Continent like a pair of wayward aristocrats. And an earl, no less! You have restored the family reputation entirely.”
“Mama,” Hetty said, amused. “When did we ever possess a reputation in need of restoring?”
This was waved off with a flick of her hand. “It is precisely because of your unexpected triumph, Henrietta, that I now feel emboldened to declare something most wonderful.” She lifted her chin with great ceremony. “Next Season, I intend to launch both Georgiana and Charlotte. Together.”
A silence followed, broken only by the ticking of the mantel clock and the sound of Lottie dropping her biscuit.
Georgie, seated by the fire with a notebook in her lap and an expression of dawning delight, looked up at once.
“Truly, Mama? Both of us? Oh, how glorious! Twice the invitations, twice the attention, twice the opportunity for advantageous matches. Of course, I shall keep my own card, but I daresay I could manage Lottie’s affairs as well.
It shall require the most precise strategising, but if we commence immediately, we may be prepared by the first assembly. ”
At the far end of the room, Lottie stared at them all in horror. “I beg your pardon?”
Lady Tolliver turned to her with a smile so beatific it might have melted wax. “Yes, dearest, you heard correctly. You shall make your debut alongside your sister. Two Tolliver girls in one Season – imagine the symmetry! ”
“You said I had another year,” Lottie said darkly. “You promised I needn’t wear stays that pinch or smile at tedious gentlemen until 1814.”
“Yes, well,” Lady Tolliver replied breezily, “circumstances have evolved. The family name is fashionable, Charlotte. We must strike whilst the iron is hot.”
“I have no wish to be struck by anything, least of all a hot iron.”
“Oh, Lottie,” Georgie cried, snapping her notebook shut and crossing the room to seize her younger sister’s hands. “You mustn’t sulk – it shall be divine!”
Before Lottie could escape, Georgie spun her in a circle about the carpet with all the grace of a young lady who believed a waltz might begin at any moment.
“Imagine how much more efficient the whole affair will be with the two of us – why, we may even compare notes on suitors and eliminate the dull ones by committee! It shall be a triumph of sisterly strategy.”
“Stop twirling me!” Lottie yelped.
“I daresay you’ll look quite ravishing in periwinkle!” Georgie laughed, unfettered as she spun Lottie around. “You always do. Mama, do write that down! We shall require no fewer than three gowns in purple for Lottie!”
Hetty merely laughed and sank into a chair with the air of a woman perfectly at ease in her own self; for though she had roamed the world and made love in half the cities of Europe, she had returned to London with her heart not merely unscathed, but in positively irrepressible condition.
Theo, meanwhile, bore the look of a gentleman who had come – rather belatedly – to the discovery that in marrying a Tolliver he had surrendered all claim to serenity for the remainder of his days.
It is, perhaps, the destiny of certain gentlemen to imagine themselves in quest of entertainment, only to discover, when it is too late, that peace was all they truly desired.
As for Hetty, she anticipated nothing so tedious as calm.
There would, of course, be chaos – an abundance of it; and scandal likewise, though whether delicate or disastrous, time alone would tell.
She smiled, for she could already envision the mistaken identities, collapsing champagne towers, waltzes that ended in quarrels, and should Lottie’s inclinations prevail, another duel or two.
But that, after all, was the trouble with the Tollivers – they were loud, incorrigible, loyal to a fault, scandalously improper and affectionate beyond all sense – and Lady Langley, for all her new dignity, was one of them still.
She might now sign her name with a title, possess gowns stitched in Paris and jewels selected beneath Florentine chandeliers, but such trappings could never alter the heart of her.
She remained, in all essential particulars, the same incorrigible creature who had once sworn off matrimony altogether, evaded dull suitors with the dexterity of a fox pursued by hounds, argued politics over lemon cake, and who declared most passionately that she would never trade freedom for a wedding ring.
She had not, as it transpired, needed to trade anything at all.
She had acquired instead a husband who delighted in her unruly opinions, encouraged her laughter, and kissed her – in gardens, no less, where half of Mayfair might observe – with an enthusiasm that rendered censure somewhat beside the point .
And if Society – whether duchess, dowager, debutante, or dreadful uncle – found the new Lady Langley too bold by half, too prone to affection, or far too little subdued by the solemnities of matrimony – why, Society must reconcile itself as best it could.
For Hetty was, at last, perfectly content, thank you very much; and what is more, she was entirely herself and quite thoroughly adored.
∞∞∞
THE END