Epilogue
After nearly five months of marriage, Georgie knew when Peter was hoping to surprise her. She knew him too well for him to be able to hide his glee. But she knew she needed to pretend.
She had known he had some sort of Christmas surprise for her, but she had allowed him his secret since she had Christmas secrets of her own for him.
As he entered the drawing room, she smiled at him from where she was adding a new bow to one of the evergreen branches hung over the fireplace.
How Buttercup had climbed the mantlepiece to reach it, and why she had wanted it, Georgie did not know, but the animal had succeeded in absconding with the bow before Georgie could stop her.
Exhausted from her adventure, the otter was now napping on top of her sisters in their basket next to the fireplace with her prize tucked beneath her.
A cat door Peter had had installed in the kitchen so the otters could access the garden would get them through until the new conservatory was constructed in the spring.
“What do you have there, Peter?”
Peter cleared his throat. His hand was behind his back, too-obviously hiding something, and a small smile kept trying to break through. He looked like a proud schoolboy. “You will be a little angry with me.”
“Will I?”
“I promised you no more secrets, but… I think you will forgive this one. I was afraid to say anything until I had it in my hands.”
To her astonishment, Peter handed her… a book.
It was bound in dark blue leather embossed with gold. Glancing up at him, she opened it to the title page.
A Treatise on the Otters of The Asian Continent
“Peter!”
Her knees weak, Georgie dropped into the nearest armchair. Peter sat on the arm, his grin now irrepressible.
“Your cousin did not have a chance to destroy the manuscript. Your father had sent it off to his solicitor to arrange publication shortly before his final illness. The man had been trying to reach you for months to finalize everything, but your cousin intercepted his letters to you. The solicitor told me about it whilst we were retrieving your dowry from your cousin.”
Hands shaking, Georgie began to page through the book.
It was her father’s words and her own illustrations, hand-colored and sharp on the page.
It was just as she had imagined it—just as she and Papa had imagined it.
The pages blurred as she turned them one-by-one, marveling that their shared dream had come to fruition.
“Georgie?”
She looked up through her tears to see him smiling at her. She had not thought she could ever love him more, but she had been wrong.
“It’s perfect. I love you.”
“You are perfect, Lady Peter.” He bent to kiss her. “And I love you, too.”
From the basket, Bonny half-opened an eye, snorted, and rolled over to return to her nap. Whatever mischief humans decided to get up to in the drawing room was no business of otters.