Epilogue
Would any Tolliver tale be complete without a prologue to the next? Certainly not!
Several weeks after Lottie’s wedding, Miss Marianne Tolliver could be found in the London breakfast room arranging correspondence into neat piles while Lord Tolliver, now recovered enough to be troublesome but not enough to be trusted with stairs, reclined upon a sofa by the fire.
Lady Tolliver was seated nearby with her embroidery.
Mr Simms entered with the morning post. “Letters, my lady.”
Lady Tolliver reached for them eagerly, for letters were the safest sort of excitement permitted in the house at present. She sorted through them, before stopping. “Oh,” she said.
Mari looked up. “What is it, Mama?”
“It is from Hetty.”
That was enough to command the room.
Hetty, the eldest daughter, who was sensible only when compared with Lottie, had gone into the country some weeks earlier to await her confinement at the Langley estate, where there was air, quiet, competent servants, and, according to Theo, fewer Tollivers.
Mari had considered this last point unkind, though not inaccurate.
Lady Tolliver broke the seal, read the first line, and made a sound that caused Lord Tolliver to sit bolt upright.
“What?” he demanded. “Is she well? Is the child well? Is Langley dead?”
Mama pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh, my goodness.”
Mari rose at once. “Mama.”
Lady Tolliver only held out the letter, which Mari quickly snatched.
“My dearest Mama,” Mari read aloud, for her father’s sake.
“Pray do not shriek, for it shall upset Papa.
Besides, I have already done enough shrieking for the whole household.
I have done it. By which, I mean I have presented Theo with a child, though not, unfortunately, with an heir. Rather, I have produced two children.
“Yes, Mama, two. They are both girls, and I love them dreadfully already. Theo went quite white and said, ‘Good God, there are two of them,’ before fainting.”
Lord Tolliver burst into a laugh, then clutched his chest when Mari glared at him.
Lady Tolliver was looking up at the ceiling, eyes shining. “Twins.”
Mari continued reading. “I am well, though very tired.
I have cried twice today for reasons that seemed quite compelling at the time and now escape me entirely.
You may visit, of course, though not all at once, and not if Papa means to expire from excitement upon my carpet.
Mama, you may come first, provided you promise not to weep into the cradle.
Mari may come whenever she likes. Nell may come only without Clara, and Lottie may come only if Jasper can be trusted not to encourage Theo in dramatic suffering.
Please tell everyone that I am happier than I have any right to be.
“Your loving daughter,
“Hetty.”
Marianne sat again, trying very hard not to smile. Two little girls. Hetty was safe. Theo had fainted. The world, against all reasonable expectation, was continuing.
The eldest sibling, Benedict, who had entered unnoticed and was helping himself to toast from the sideboard, said, “Poor Langley. Serves him right.”
Lady Tolliver began to cry in earnest then. “Two granddaughters. Oh, I am the most fortunate woman on earth.”
For a dangerous moment, Mari felt something warm move through her chest. She suppressed it at once.
“I have been thinking,” Lord Tolliver said, at which every person in the room looked at him with alarm.
“My love,” said Lady Tolliver weakly, “Dr Bell advised against excitement.”
“This is not excitement, my love,” said Lord Tolliver. “This… is purpose.”
“Oh God,” said Benedict.
“I have been granted more time,” Papa said, with great solemnity, “and a man must consider what he means to do with it.”
Now, this author could tell you at once what Lord Tolliver meant by such a declaration, but where would be the sport in that?
Let it be enough, for now, to say that the following year, Miss Marianne Tolliver would find herself saying, with more feeling than she had ever intended to display, “Papa, one cannot simply import animals from the Indies!”
And if, at that precise moment, there happened to be a gentleman standing beside a crate of alarming size—a very handsome, intelligent gentleman who was heir to a shipping fortune, at ease amongst both merchants and ministers, and too dark by half for Society to pretend it did not notice him, however carefully it pretended not to stare...
Well. That is not the sort of gentleman any sensible young lady would invite into her life, which is precisely why Marianne Tolliver, who had always prided herself on being sensible, was in very grave danger indeed.
THE END