Epilogue
The Culmination of Love
Ardenmere, Hampshire, one year later.
Lady Violet Greystoke was three weeks old, had an imperious temper, and a pair of lungs that, according to her father, already announced a firm disposition to govern the county. And she was the most wonderful, most perfect child in the world.
Eveline, who held her in her arms beside the window of Ardenmere’s principal drawing room, was not disposed to contradict him. Her daughter had managed to make Nathaniel Greystoke, Earl of Arden, one of the most feared men in London, walk on tiptoe through his own house.
That, in Eveline’s opinion, must be counted among the great feminine triumphs of the family.
‘Do not look at her that way,’ she told her husband, without taking her eyes off the child.
Arden stood at her side, a hand resting on his wife’s back. The earl was a doubly enamored man.
‘Are you jealous?’
‘Of course not!’ she sprang up, offended.
‘And in what way am I looking at her?’
‘As though you were considering challenging to a duel the first man who dares ask her for a dance in seventeen years.’
‘Thirty.’
‘Nathaniel.’
‘She will marry at thirty, and only if the man is acceptable, which is improbable.’
Eveline smiled, inclined her face, and grazed her daughter’s brow with her lips.
‘She is three weeks old. It will be a long while before you have that headache, husband.’
‘That is why I am still reasonable. I could have said she would marry at forty.’
‘Your restraint moves me, Lord Arden,’ she mocked him.
He whispered beside her ear:
‘You know that when you use my title it makes me want to take you to bed so that you remember what I am called.’
‘I am not yet in a condition to fulfill my conjugal obligations. ’
‘I know, my dear, and I will be patient, but obligations? Eveline, kissing me, caressing me, and driving me mad should not be—’ He stopped to consider what he was about to say. ‘It is true, yes. They are conjugal obligations, though I trust you will carry them out gladly and not with reluctance.’
‘Most gladly,’ she assured him without the least doubt.
He nodded with satisfaction.
The drawing-room door opened and Alice came in on Oliver’s arm.
The duchess was pregnant in so evident a way that even Henry, Marquess of Haverleigh, had declared two days earlier that his mother was carrying ‘a new cousin’ under her dress, convinced that his brother or sister would be something like Violet, his cousin.
Alice moved with absolute normalcy despite her happy condition; nevertheless, Statony, in his eagerness to protect her, insisted that she take his arm whenever he was near.
Oliver seemed ready to keep watch over the floor, the carpets, the air, and the breathing of any guest who might represent a threat to his wife.
‘If you keep looking at me like that,’ Alice told the duke, ‘I shall begin to think I am a cracked piece of porcelain.’
‘You are tired.’
‘I am pregnant, my love. Not an invalid.’
‘That does not improve my state of mind.’
‘Your state of mind has not been the same since you learned I was with child again.’
‘It is my duty to care for you; you will not make me change my mind.’
Eveline let out a laugh.
‘Arden proved as exasperating as my brother throughout the whole pregnancy. He has not improved much since Violet came into the world. I feel more watched than when I was unmarried. ’
‘And you will have to get used to it. I will never stop keeping an eye on you, my dear,’ the earl assured her.
The couple approached the newborn. Oliver stopped beside Eveline, looked at Violet with a tenderness that surprised the Countess of Arden, and extended a finger. The little creature grasped it with surprising strength.
The Duke of Statony was conquered in less than a second.
‘She has her mother’s strength, my friend. This little sweetness will have you going green-grey before long,’ he decreed. Then he turned to his wife to tell her: ‘Do not forget what I told you, my love. ’
‘I have not. ’
‘What does my brother mean?’ Eveline asked Alice.
‘He wants me to give him another boy. He threatens a court-martial if I do not obey his dictates. ’
‘Oliver!’ the countess chided him.
‘I am rid of you, Eveline. At last I am at peace. I do not want to have to worry about another reckless female. Nevertheless, I suspect my niece will make my life a constant worry. I can already see it. Yes, I think I can bear there being only one girl in the family. The rest will be boys. ’
‘Are you decreeing that I bear only boys from now on, Oliver?’ Lady Arden asked him with her mouth open.
‘Yes. And you will be a good sister and do as I ask, just as Alice is going to do. ’
‘If you want him to say no more about the matter,’ the Duchess of Statony took the word, ‘you need only remind him how children are made. ’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Alice! Do not put images of that kind in my mind. My little sister and my best friend doing that? Let us talk of other things. ’
‘I knew it would not fail,’ the duchess murmured, while Eveline burst out laughing.
Alice laughed and agreed to sit in the armchair Oliver drew up for her.
Behind them came Henry, very serious about carrying a silver rattle in his hands for his cousin.
He was followed by Eleanor Hargreaves, Alice’s mother and former Dowager Countess of Fairfax, on the arm of her husband, the late earl’s former lawyer, a gentleman of sober manners and an intelligent gaze who still seemed surprised to have ended up part of so motley a family.
‘We are sorry for the delay,’ Mr. Hargreaves noted.
‘Little Henry insisted on seeing whether there were fish in the Ardenmere lake,’ the duchess’s mother explained. ‘Let me see her, my dear,’ she asked when she reached Eveline.
The Countess of Arden handed her the child carefully. Eleanor held Violet with a sweetness that made Alice smile from the sofa. Her mother had always adored children. God granted her only one daughter. It did not matter; they had both been happy because they had each other in the hardest moments.
‘She is beautiful,’ said Eleanor.
‘And very loud,’ added Arden, without hiding his pride.
‘That is also a virtue in a lady,’ a voice intervened from the doorway, ‘provided she knows how to choose the moment to make use of such a quality, of course.’
Margot Marwood, Dowager Countess of Ashbury, was coming into the room with a sure step, dressed in a shade of plum. She looked more… young? Something had changed in her, in Alice and Eveline’s opinion.
‘Lady Ashbury,’ they all greeted practically in unison.
The great lady approached Arden and said to him:
‘You are welcome. ’
‘I beg your pardon?’ the one so addressed inquired.
‘You did not come to ask for my help, but I helped you all the same,’ the Dowager Countess of Ashbury spoke to him without formality.
He had not understood what was said, but Eveline had.
‘Margot opened my eyes about you at the right moment, my dear.’
Nathaniel understood it at last.
‘And I recall she also took you to an improper place.’ Then he turned his face to look at the widow: ‘In any case, I thank you, Lady Ashbury. ’
‘Good, good. So this will be the next little one who will need my guidance. A duke. We shall find her a more flexible duke than Statony.’ Then she looked at little Henry, who had settled into Mr. Hargreaves’s arms and watched the scene with interest: ‘Hmm… first we shall have to see to the little marquess. A Prussian princess will suit him well. I already have work. Marvelous. ’
Eveline smiled; Arden was horrified; Statony drew himself up with pride; and Alice smiled.
Then the Duchess of Statony remembered something important and asked from her place:
‘Margot, why does Gabriel Hope, who has decided to visit me a great deal lately, ask me so much about you?’
The question made everyone attend to the widow’s answer. And although Alice never referred to him as her brother, everyone knew very well who he really was.
‘Who?’ the widow asked with a frown. ‘Gabriel Hope? Is that the gentleman you have referred to, my dear Alice? I know no Hope. Is he your husband’s secretary?’
‘You are not as good an actress as you think,’ Alice reproached her.
‘What is going on between the two of you? It is not that I do not appreciate his visits, but, owing to his less-than-subtle questions, I am beginning to think he has other interests besides taking tea with me and getting to know Henry better. ’
The dowager countess sighed most theatrically.
‘What always happens, happens. Gentlemen always desire that which they cannot have. ’
‘But sometimes they do obtain what they desire,’ Eveline sprang up, while looking at her husband.
‘Indeed they do,’ agreed Alice, who was also gazing, enraptured, at her husband.
‘And sometimes love arrives when one least expected it,’ reasoned Alice’s mother, whose eyes were also fixed on the charming lawyer.
‘Very well,’ said Lady Ashbury. ‘I will grant you that there are a fortunate few who do obtain it, but I guarantee you that Gabriel Hope will not. ’
And after that most definitive pronouncement, the adults in the room burst into peals of laughter. The laughter filled the drawing room, warm and familial. The happiness was complete.
The End.