Epilogue
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Charlotte still had not turned the page.
Henry stopped just inside the bedchamber door, coat half-buttoned, and watched his wife sit very still with a letter held close to the flame’s light. Her lips moved slightly. Rereading, not reading.
“Bad news?” he asked.
She startled, then held up the paper like evidence. “From my father.”
He crossed the room and finished the last button as he came. “That explains the expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one you wear when you are deciding whether to be angry or something else entirely.” He sat on the arm of her chair. “Well? Which is it?”
Charlotte handed him the letter without comment. He read it once, quickly, the way he read contracts. Then he read it again, slower.
My dear daughter. I confess I did not expect to feel such joy at the news of your condition.
A grandchild. I find myself already impatient for the spring.
I hope, in time, you will allow me the chance to know this child, and perhaps, in some measure, to get to know you better as well.
Your mother would have been beside herself.
I think of her often these days, more than I have permitted myself in years.
Henry lowered the paper. “This is not the same man who negotiated your marriage settlement like a shipping contract."
“No,” Charlotte said. “It is not.”
“He used the word joy.”
“I noticed.”
“Lord Ashford. Experiencing joy.” Henry turned the page over as if a second, more sensible letter might be hiding on the back. “I keep expecting to find a codicil about property values.”
Charlotte laughed, short, and startled, then pressed her fingers to her mouth as though she had not meant to.
“It is not amusing,” she said. “It is confusing. I do not know what to do with a father who writes like that.”
“You do not have to do anything with it tonight.” Henry set the letter on her lap and covered her hand with his. “You may simply let it sit there being strange.”
“He says he thinks of my mother,” Charlotte said. “Often. He has never said that to me before.”
“Grandchildren have a way of loosening tongues that daughters could not manage alone.” Henry considered this. “Also mortality. Men of your father’s generation tend to discover sentiment around the same time they discover their knees.”
“That is a terrible thing to say.”
“It is also accurate.” He tucked a curl behind her ear, unhurried about it. “For what it is worth, I do not think it is only the child. I think he has had a great deal of time to sit in that house alone and consider what he lost when he lost you.”
Charlotte looked at the letter again. “I am not ready to forgive him. Not entirely.”
“No one is asking you to. Not tonight, and not because he wrote one warm paragraph after so many cold years.” Henry’s hand found hers properly now, fingers threading through. “You may take as long as you like deciding what he has earned.”
“You are remarkably reasonable about my father, for a man who once threw him out of a sitting room.”
“I did not throw him. I asked him to leave a study.” Henry’s mouth curved. “There is a difference.”
“A very small one.”
“An important one.” He glanced at the letter once more, then at her.
“For what it is worth, Charlotte, I understand him rather better than I once did. Regret arrives late for men like your father. Men like me too if we are being honest about it.” He paused.
“I sat in a house for six days once, convincing myself I preferred an empty one to admitting what I actually wanted.”
“I remember,” Charlotte said, quietly.
“I am simply saying belated wisdom is still wisdom.” He tapped the letter. “Even from an Earl who thought marriage settlements were poetry.”
She smiled at that, properly this time, and folded the letter along its worn crease. “We have come rather a long way from a coaching yard in the rain.”
“We have.” Henry looked at her, at the firelight moving over her face, at the small, undeniable curve beneath her hand where it rested on her middle. “I did not expect any of this, you know. When I opened that carriage door.”
“I recall you being furious.”
“I was furious for approximately four minutes. After that I believe I felt a sensation that was considerably more complicated, and it took me the better part of a year to admit what it was.” He leaned in and kissed her temple.
“Come to breakfast. Ian has been awake since five, apparently, interrogating Mrs. Wick about whether Father Christmas prefers the east or west chimney.”
“There is only one chimney in this house large enough for a grown man.”
“Ian is aware of that. He simply does not accept it as an obstacle.” Henry stood and offered his hand. “He learned that from you, incidentally.”
“I have never once climbed down a chimney.”
“No,” Henry agreed, drawing her up. “But you have climbed a great many other things you were told not to.”
* * *
“He’s comin’ down the east chimney,” Ian announced, before anyone had finished sitting down. “I’ve decided.”
“Have ye,” Nathan said, reaching for the teapot. “And what convinced ye of that, exactly?”
“It’s closer to the stables. He’ll want to check on the reindeer first.”
“A sound strategy,” Henry said, taking his seat. “Logistically.”
Ian beamed at him, delighted to be taken seriously.
The dining room had been dressed for the season with more holly than strictly necessary, most of it, Henry suspected, arranged by Ian personally and adjusted only slightly by Mrs. Wick before it became a genuine hazard.
A fire roared in the grate. Frost patterned the windows in sharp white lines, and beyond them the moor sat white and silent under the sky the color of old pewter.
“Mrs. Wick,” Ian said, “did ye tell him about the biscuits? He willnae come if there’s nae biscuits.”
“I left him shortbread and a wee dram for the cold,” Mrs. Wick said, setting down a platter. “As I do every year.”
“Good,” Ian said, satisfied, and returned to his eggs.
Eleanor caught Charlotte’s eye across the table and smiled. “He has been unbearable since Tuesday.”
“He has been thrilled since Tuesday,” Nathan corrected. “Unbearable implies we mind.”
“I mind a little,” Eleanor said. “He woke me at five askin' if reindeer preferred carrots or apples.”
“Carrots,” Ian said, without looking up. “Everyone kens that.”
“I did not know that,” Henry said.
“Ye’re a duke,” Ian said. “Ye’re nae meant to ken things like that. Ye ken about ships an’ money.”
“An unimpeachable summary of my character,” Henry said.
Nathan laughed into his tea. “He’s rather correct.”
“He is entirely wrong. I know a great many things beyond ships and money.”
“Name one,” Ian said, chin propped on his fist.
Henry considered this with the seriousness the question deserved. “I know that you prefer jam to butter on your toast by a considerable margin.”
Ian looked briefly impressed. “That’s true.”
“I also know,” Henry went on, “that you broke the head off at least one wooden soldier attempting to make it survive a fall from the stable roof, which you were absolutely forbidden from climbing.”
Silence.
“That was a long time ago,” Ian said, with dignity.
“It was March,” Charlotte said.
“A long time ago,” Ian repeated, and returned to his eggs with great focus.
Eleanor was still laughing when she turned to Charlotte. “How are ye feelin'? Truly.”
“Tired in the mornings. Ravenous by noon.” Charlotte glanced at the platter of shortbread and reached for a piece without any apparent shame. “Otherwise, remarkably well.”
“The tiredness passes,” Eleanor said. “Around the fifth month, if I recall. Then ye simply feel enormous instead, which some days is an improvement.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasnae meant to be comfortin'. It was meant to be honest.” Eleanor’s eyes were warm. “Ye will do wonderfully. I have watched ye with Ian. Ye already ken the important parts.”
Charlotte’s throat did something unexpected. She covered it by reaching for her tea.
Nathan, meanwhile, had turned his attention fully on Henry, one eyebrow raised. “D’ye recall,” he said, “the last letter I sent ye, asking ye to visit? Before all this?”
“I recall several letters.”
“The one where I told ye to come north an’ find yerself a wife, because London wasnae producing’ any results.” Nathan’s grin widened. “I was joking.”
“I am aware.”
“I didnae actually expect ye to arrive with one.”
“Neither did I,” Henry said.
“Best joke I ever accidentally told,” Nathan said, and raised his cup in a small, private toast that Henry answered with his own.
After the plates had been cleared and Ian had been sent, with visible reluctance, to help Mrs. Wick with something involving ribbon, Henry found his coat and his wife’s cloak and steered her toward the garden door before anyone could assign either of them a task.
The air outside was sharp and clean, and their breath rose in pale clouds. The gardens sat under a light frost, every hedge and stone edged in white, and somewhere beyond the wall a church bell had begun to ring, slow and deliberate, calling the parish to service.
“You are abducting me,” Charlotte said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm.
“I am taking a walk with my wife. If Mrs. Wick assigns you to ribbon duty, I cannot be held responsible for what happens to the ribbon.”
“That is an unfair assessment of my ribbon skills.”
“I have seen your ribbon skills.” He led her along the path toward the old rose bed, bare now, its arched trellis dusted white. “They are enthusiastic. That is not the same as skilled.”
“You wound me.”
“I would never.” He drew her beneath the trellis, into the small stone alcove where, in summer, the roses grew thick enough to hide two people entirely. In winter it offered no such cover, only bare branches, and frost and the quiet that came from being slightly apart from the house.
Charlotte looked up at him, cheeks pink from the cold. “What are we doing out here, Henry?”
“Standing,” he said. “Being married. The usual.”
She laughed, and the sound of it did something to his chest that he had stopped trying to name months ago.
A year ago I did not know this woman existed. I sat in a study drawing up lists of tutors and thought myself managing a crisis. I had no notion I was about to be handed the whole of my life.
“Thank you,” Henry said.
Charlotte blinked. “For what?”
“For the carriage. For Scotland. For every argument you have ever won against me, which is most of them.” He took her hands, cold despite her gloves, and held them against his chest. “For staying, eventually, even after I gave you every reason not to.”
“You came after me,” she said. “That counts for a great deal.”
“I nearly didn’t. That is the part I think of most, some days.
How close I came to letting silence decide things for both of us.
” He looked at her, at the frost catching in her lashes, at the small curve beneath her cloak that would, by spring, be someone entirely new.
“I do not intend to let that happen again. Not with you. Not with anything that matters.”
“Henry.”
“I love you,” he said. “I have loved you since a coaching yard I still cannot pass without thinking of you, and I intend to keep saying it until you are thoroughly tired of hearing it.”
“I do not think that will happen.”
“No,” he agreed. “I do not think it will.”
He kissed her then, slow, and certain. Her hands caught against his chest, and somewhere past the garden wall the church bells kept ringing, calling the whole parish toward whatever came next.
The first snow of the morning began to fall, catching in her hair and collar before settling soft and silent over the frozen plants.
Charlotte pulled back only far enough to look at him. The sapphire at her throat caught the pale morning light, no longer merely a Kingswell jewel, but hers.
“Happy Christmas, Henry.”
“Happy Christmas, my darling Duchess.” He kissed her again, unhurriedly, entirely certain of exactly where he wanted to be.
The End?