Epilogue #2
Her gaze flew from her brother—standing taller in himself than she’d ever known him—to Harriet, pink-cheeked and beaming up at him as though he’d plucked the very sun from the heavens. Then to Charlotte, who had developed an abrupt and consuming interest in a passing cloud.
“How long,” Emma demanded, rounding on her friends, “has this been going on under my very nose?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” Charlotte said serenely, looping her arm through Emma’s and steering her toward the house. “You’ve been rather preoccupied of late, dearest. Keeping a wounded duke off the stairs is no small occupation.”
Behind them, Harriet’s delighted shrieks chased Fitzgerald across the green, and James loped after the both of them, his laughter ringing out over the wet grass.
A viscount, a lady, and a hound, Emma thought, her heart swelling fit to burst. Papa would have wept to see it.
As he rose to find another dreadfully dull book to occupy his time up until dinner from the far shelf of his bedchamber, Vincent levelled a look at Benedict, who just so happened to arrive at his chambers, a minute too late to be useful.
“I come with good tidings from Keaton about the duchess’ brother, and I think it’s best you give it to your darling wife firsthand,” Benedict grinned, blasting inside.
Then, glancing around the prettily adorned bedchamber, he added, “Also, I never got to remark how still gob-smacked I am that you are leg-shackled.”
“Remind me to give you the same grief when you wed Lady Patience Stenton,” Vincent grumbled, hobbling back to his bed.
Benedict kept his gaze level. “Such cruelty.”
Vincent huffed out a breath and eased back so the tender wound did not flare up. His friend gave him a stern look, “So, care to explain all the ramblings I’m hearing about in the papers of late?”
For a moment, Vincent tensed; still, none of his friends knew his secret, and his skin felt raw with the possible admission. But he also knew Benedict would never let the issue die without an explanation—so he told him everything.
To Vincent’s appreciation, aside from a slight widening of his eyes, Benedict did not overreact.
“And what is worse, I almost lost Emma in it all,” he said. “After how I treated her father, I wouldn’t have had any cause to blame her either.”
He waited for Benedict to say something—anything. When his friend decided to speak, they were not the words he expected. “Keaton owes me a hundred pounds.”
Jaw dropping, Vincent asked, “You suspected? You both suspected?”
“Yes,” Benedict shrugged, “When you missed planned outings, disappeared for days, and even showed up one morning smelling like peat and ash the very night Walcot’s house went up in flames. We started to put two and two together.”
“And you never said anything?” Vincent frowned.
Benedict shook his head slowly. “We thought it best you tell us first.”
Sighing, Vincent rubbed his face. “I suppose I should thank you both for not turning me in, then.”
Weston was overseeing the laying of the long table when Emma came back in from the lawn, the hall thick with beeswax and the lilies banked along the stair.
“Weston,” Emma called out, peeling off her gloves, “Where has His Grace got to?”
Setting a crystal decanter just so, the old butler didn’t even peek up from his work. “Precisely where you abandoned him every day this fortnight, Your Grace. Titan and I confiscated his Hessians a second time for good measure, after which he was kind enough to name us Judas and Judas the second.”
“You are worth your weight in silver, Weston,” Emma laughed, and went up.
The old butler, despite once intending to hand in his resignation, had delayed it once more to help His Grace recover after Vincent had duly apologized for his accusations, and Emma was beginning to think the delaying might last a lot longer than he was letting on.
The heavy door to their bedchamber yielded under her touch without a whisper of noise.
Inside, Vincent sat propped against the pillows, a book on one knee.
True to his stubborn nature, he’d already fought his way half into his clothes out of sheer contrariness; he wore a fresh linen shirt and an obsidian waistcoat that hung entirely open, exposing the thick linen bandage wrapping his ribs like a pale ridge beneath the cloth.
At the sound of the latch, his head snapped up. Whatever black humor had ridden him all afternoon evaporated from his smoky grey eyes in a heartbeat.
“You came back to me,” he said with a lazy smirk, stretching out his hand in despondence. “I had begun drafting my will, fearing I’d never leave this chamber again.”
Crossing the room, Emma sank onto the edge of the mattress and laced her fingers securely within his. Giggling, she replied, “I’ve sent the footmen off. The whole pack of them. You could just… overpower me and make your escape.”
“I’ve no reason to escape now that you’re here.” His thumb dragged slow over her knuckles. “And who is to carry me down, now, you wicked thing?”
“I am.”
Vincent’s brows drew together, that old stubborn set returning to his jaw. “Emma—”
“Let me,” she whispered, the words coming out smaller than she’d meant.
She kept her eyes on their joined hands, staring at the long, broad shape of the man laid out in the bed—a bed she had so nearly kept a deathwatch over instead of starting a marriage.
“A fortnight gone, I knelt in that mire with my hands pressing against your wound, and I bargained away half my life for the chance to fuss over you again. Don’t make me give it to a footman. ”
For a long stretch, his stormy eyes only searched hers.
Then, lifting their hands, he twisted her palm upward and pressed his lips tenderly to the soft skin of her inner wrist, right where her pulse beat hardest.
“Stubborn creature,” he murmured darkly against her there. “Have it your way, then. But mind the left side.”
She drew him up by inches.
It was an ungainly business.
Vincent braced a heavy fist on her shoulder, hissing a sharp oath through his teeth as the movement stewed against his wounded ribs. When he finally rose to his full, swaying height, he towered more than a head above her slight frame.
Emma wound her arm tightly around his middle, taking immense care not to disturb the bindings. “There,” she breathed. “I have you.”
“You have had me,” he said into her hair, “since you stitched my side with a curtain needle.”
Laughing, she got them moving.
Out into the dimly lit corridor they went, slow and shuffling, his weight slung warm across her shoulders, hers matching every dragging step.
She’d got as far as telling him how Hattie had loosed Fitzgerald upon the south lawn when a figure stepped from the turning of the landing, and the pair of them pulled up short.
It was Grandmama Agnes, dressed in her finest grey silk, her papery hands folded tightly over the silver head of her cane.
She did not smile. “So the broadsheets had the right of it.”
Every ounce of warmth bled from Vincent’s face. Still, he met the old woman square. “They… did, my lady. I shall not insult you with a denial.”
“No. You haven’t the temperament for deception.” Agnes lifted her chin, and for a breath the whole of her late husband’s cold iron looked out of her eyes. “I have hated you on more nights than I’d own to a priest, Your Grace. For what you did to my son, and to his children thereafter.”
Chest tightening, Emma tried interceding, “Grandmama—”
“Hush, child. He can stand to hear it.” But already the iron was going out of her, and what lay beneath was only old and patient and terribly fierce. Stepping closer, she looked up the long height of him.
“And then you threw your body before a pistol to save my James and Emma.” Her gentle voice started fraying. “Lord Blackhill came to see me yesterday. Cillian is to answer for his villainy properly before a magistrate—and that is your doing too. You chose to see justice done.”
“I chose my wife,” Vincent said low.
“I understand.” Agnes reached up, laying one wrinkly hand against his stubbled jaw to stroke him.
“I cannot find it in my heart to hate the man who gave my grandchildren back to me whole. You shall have my forgiveness, Your Grace. For all my past wounds. And an old woman’s blessing besides, for whatever small worth it holds for a duke. ”
Vincent swallowed hard, his throat working. “From someone who Emma loves, it means a very great deal, my lady.”
“Yes. Well.” Drawing her hand back, the matriarch dabbed once, briskly, at the corner of her eye with a handkerchief. “I shall go and tell them you are coming. Do mind my Emma doesn’t pitch you down the stairs, she is a fright with the frail.”
Her cane tapped away into the dark of the landing, and then it was only the two of them.
Emma turned within the circle of his arm. Vincent was already looking down at her, the grey of his eyes gone soft as woodsmoke, and she found there was not one word left in her worth the saying.
So, tipping up onto her toes, she slid her fingers into his thick, raven locks and just kissed him.
Against his lips, the last phantom chill of that rain-slicked road evaporated into the sweet scent of lilies. This impossible man, for years, had only ever ruined her peace. Now, he’d mended her heart, protected her family, and made himself necessary as breath.
And God help her, she loved him for all of it.
“I love you, Emma,” he breathed against her lips.
“I love you, too.”
“Shall we say I fell and retire early for the rest of the evening? I’ve still a few more lessons to teach you—”
“Behave,” Emma chided with a giggle.
The End?