Epilogue
Six Months Later
“My dearest love,” Hector murmured, his voice groggy as he awoke from a deep sleep.
The sea breeze drifted through the open windows of their Brighton lodgings, and he watched the slender shape of his wife as she moved gracefully around the room.
“Come sit beside me a moment. I want to have you near whilst the girls are yet occupied with their ribbons and laughter.”
Poppy’s soft footsteps crossed the carpet, and the familiar rustle of her skirts announced her before her hand found his.
He lifted his fingers at once to the curve of her cheek, tracing the beloved line of her jaw with a reverence that never lessened, no matter how many times he performed the sacred rite.
Ah, there you are, his heart whispered. My Poppy. My light. My very breath.
Six months had passed since the last great turning of their fortunes, and now the family had come to Brighton to celebrate Princess’s birthday and her new name.
Rose.
Hector found it fitting to name her after his sister, especially since her hair changed to the reddish hue that Aurora claimed their mother had. In his sight, her curls really did look like roses.
The seaside air was sharp with salt and promise; the cries of gulls mingled with the distant music of the Assembly Rooms and the bright, unrestrained delight of two little girls who knew themselves thoroughly adored.
Hector sat in the sunny parlor of their hired house, the scent of the ocean and of Poppy’s rosewater perfume wrapping about him like a benediction.
He had never imagined a life so full. Poppy sat next to him and touched his face gently. Hector sighed in relief.
“I find myself missing your touch every second you are away from me,” he spoke softly.
“I miss yours too,” she responded, and Hector immediately raised his fingertips to her soft skin.
Aurora, ever the observant little soul, had been watching them for days, and Hector felt her presence long before he heard the light patter of her slippers or smelled the faint sweetness of the lemon drops she favored.
She hovered just at the edge of their quiet moments.
When at last she could contain her curiosity no longer, her clear young voice broke the peaceful afternoon.
“Papa,” she said, “why do you and Mama always touch each other’s faces so gently? I see you do it every day. Princess sees it too, and although she is still a baby, we are both wondering why.”
Hector smiled, turning his face toward the sound of her. He held out a hand, and at once she came to him with a delighted squeal. He gathered her close and felt the precious weight of her small body against his chest, but his heart ached when he did not feel Poppy’s touch.
“Because, my clever Aurora,” he answered softly, “my eyes cannot tell me the shape of the people I love. But my hands can. When I touch Mama’s face, I see her as clearly as if the sun itself had painted her for me.
I know the arch of her brow when she is thinking, the little dimple that appears when she is trying not to laugh, the softness of her mouth and the roundness of her eyes when she looks at me with tenderness.
Touch is how I know you both and how I know that I am home. ”
There was a brief, awed silence. Then Aurora, generously and boldly as ever, took his hand in both of her small ones and pressed it solemnly to her own cheek.
“Then you must see me better, Papa,” she declared. “And Princess too. We want you to know us as well as you know Mama.”
Hector’s throat tightened.
How did I ever deserve such abundance?
With infinite care, he mapped Aurora’s face. He felt the smooth forehead, the delicate nose, the determined little chin that so resembled his own when she had set her mind upon something. Then Mrs. Patterson brought Princess, who was wriggling with excitement.
“There is the birthday girl,” Hector cooed softly.
He touched the child’s soft cheeks and memorized them both, storing every detail in the private gallery of his heart.
“There,” he whispered. “Now I see you both more clearly than ever. Two bright stars in my sky.”
When Mrs. Patterson coaxed the girls upstairs for their afternoon rest, and the house had fallen into that rare, golden quiet, Hector found Poppy alone on the terrace overlooking the sea.
He came up behind her, sliding his arms around her waist and drawing her back against his chest. His lips brushed the crown of her head.
“Poppy,” he said quietly, almost against her hair, “there is something I must confide. Something that has troubled me these past weeks.”
She turned within the circle of his arms so that they stood face to face. He lifted his hands at once to her beloved features, tracing them as he always did, yet this time his fingers lingered, searching her for more clues of who she is.
“I cannot explain it properly,” he continued, his voice roughened by worry.
“But you seem… altered. Your scent changes from day to day. You are sweeter some mornings, and warmer, almost like honey and milk. And your body heat… it is different. Some hours you burn like a summer hearth; others you feel cooler, as though something within you is drawing the warmth inward. I have lain awake beside you and felt the difference, and it frightens me, my love. Tell me I am imagining phantoms. Tell me you are well.”
Please, his soul begged. Do not let anything take her from me. I have only just learned how brightly life can burn.
Poppy’s hands rose to cover his where they cradled her face. He felt the curve of her smile beneath his thumbs, and then he felt the first shimmer of happy tears.
“You are not imagining phantoms, Hector,” she said, her voice trembling, and he felt his mouth dry up. “You are sensing the truth more keenly than anyone else ever could.”
“You are scaring me, Poppy. Tell me truly, what is going on?”
Poppy took a deep breath in. “The girls will soon have another sibling. A brother or a sister, I do not yet know…but our family is growing again.”
For a moment, the world seemed to still. The crash of the waves, the cry of the gulls, even the beating of his own heart, all of it faded beneath the roaring wonder that filled him.
Another child. Another soul to love. Another voice to join the beautiful chaos of our home.
Hector made a broken sound that was half laugh, half sob, and crushed her gently to him, burying his face in the curve of her neck where her scent was strongest. He breathed her in as though he might draw the new life into his own lungs.
“Poppy… my Poppy…” He could scarcely form the words.
“I have never been happier. Do you hear me? Never! My vibrant, noisy, impossible family is about to become even louder and even more gloriously alive. Another pair of feet to thunder down the stairs. Another laugh to fill the corridors. Another small hand to find mine in the dark.”
He dropped to one knee there on the sun-warmed stones of the terrace, uncaring of dignity, and pressed both palms reverently to the gentle curve of her still-flat belly. His thumbs stroked slow, wondering circles.
“Hello, little one,” he whispered, voice thick with emotion.
“I cannot see you yet, but I feel you already. Your mother smells of heaven and summer storms because of you. You have changed the very air around her, and I am so fiercely glad. Grow strong. We are waiting for you. Your sisters, your mother, and I. Especially I.”
Poppy’s fingers threaded through his hair, gentle and sure.
When he rose again, he gathered her fully into his arms, lifting her slightly so that her toes barely brushed the ground, and kissed her with all the accumulated tenderness of every day they had shared and every day still to come.
Her mouth tasted of salt air and happiness.
He poured into that kiss every unspoken vow.
“I will protect you both. I will love this child as wildly as I love the two already sleeping upstairs. I will never cease thanking whatever fate brought you to me.”
“I love you, Hector.” He heard her voice quivering with emotion and held her tighter.
They remained locked together long after their kisses ended.
With their foreheads touching and breathing the same air, Hector’s hands never left her.
One splayed protectively over the place where their child grew while the other cradled the back of her neck so he might keep her face close enough to see her.
“I was so afraid,” he confessed against her lips. “Every change I noticed felt like a warning. I thought perhaps illness… or sorrow you were hiding from me. I lay awake, mapping the differences and inventing catastrophes. Forgive me for doubting the goodness of it.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Poppy murmured. “You love us too well. That is all.”
“Too well?” he answered. “There is no such thing. I could empty the ocean, and it would still not equal half of what I feel for you.”
That evening the entire family walked along the promenade as the sun began its slow descent into the Channel.
Princess rode upon Hector’s shoulders, crowing with delight each time he pretended to stagger beneath her weight.
Aurora walked between them, one small hand in Poppy’s, the other tucked trustingly into Hector’s larger one.
Every few steps he lifted their joined hands and brushed a kiss across her knuckles, simply because he could.
The salt wind tugged at their clothes. The sky blazed rose and gold. Somewhere behind them, a street musician played a tender air upon a violin, and Hector felt the music settle into his bones like a blessing.
He thought of the years ahead, of teaching another child to love the sound of the sea, of midnight feedings and scraped knees and birthday cakes sticky with icing.
He thought of Poppy glowing through the months to come, of the way her body would change and how he would learn every new contour with worshipful hands.
He thought of the noise: the beautiful, unrestrained, life-affirming noise that would soon double.
“I think I would like to go back to painting,” he confessed.
He felt Poppy’s eyes on him.
“That is wonderful! What inspired you to do so?” she asked with genuine excitement.
This is why I love her.
“You inspired me. And my nieces, of course.” He grinned down at Aurora, who beamed back at him, completely unaware of what they were talking about.
When at last they returned to their lodgings and the girls had been tucked into bed with extra kisses and promises of tomorrow’s adventures, Hector drew Poppy once more into the circle of his arms in the quiet of their bedchamber.
Moonlight spilled across the floorboards.
The distant hush of the tide filled the silences between their heartbeats.
He traced her face again.
“I see you,” he whispered. “I see the mother of my children. I see the woman who made a blind man the richest soul in England. And soon I shall see, through touch and scent and the miracle of your changing form, the new life we created together.”
Poppy leaned into his palms, her own hands resting over his heart.
“And I see you, Hector,” she answered, “more clearly than anyone else ever has.”
He smiled, a rare, radiant smile that belonged only to her, and lowered his mouth to hers once more.
Outside, the waves kept their eternal rhythm against the shore. Inside, two hearts beat in time with a third, smaller rhythm just beginning. And Hector stood in the center of more light than he had ever dreamed possible.
“My love,” he said at last, forehead still pressed to hers, voice husky with wonder and the promise of all their tomorrows, “our vibrant, noisy family is about to become even louder… and I have never, in all my life, heard a sweeter sound than the one we are about to make together.”
The End?