Epilogue
“The post, Your Grace. A letter from France,” Alice reported, entering the spacious parlor with a salver in her hands. Behind her, a second parlormaid, for Alice had underlings of her own now, came bearing a tray with fresh tea and more scones.
“Bring the tea to us, Alice,” beckoned Gabe’s mother, who sat at the card table with the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Katherine, and Lady Emmeline, involved in a game of whist. “Shall I pour for you, Eloisa, dear?”
“Yes, please, Mother, though do remember the Duchess likes a squeeze of lemon,” Louisa said, taking the letter Alice pressed into her hand.
She stood in the center of the larger room, draped in lengths of velvet, while Margaret crept around her on the carpeted floor, muttering “six feet of train,” “four bars of ermine,” and “more miniver” at regular intervals.
Margaret had the duty of making up the Duke and Duchess of Barkham’s coronation robes for the crowning of King William, and she had immersed herself entirely in the task.
“Lady Thomas,” the Duchess of Rutland said, setting aside her cards, “your cook makes a delightful scone. She must give mine the receipt.”
“That would be Eleanor, one of the girls from the Benevolence Hospital,” Gabe’s mother said, arranging a scone on a plate for the Duchess.
“Though we call her Mrs. Crockett, for all her youth. I think a good two dozen of our staff came from there, as maids for the house and my girls. We’re like to take more with us when we remove to Barkham for the holiday season. ”
“Good, sound girls, they are,” the Duchess approved.
“Louisa taught them well. You might hire from the Hospital when you set up your own households, Katherine, Emmeline, my dears.” She passed the tray of scones along to her granddaughters, then narrowed her eyes as she watched Louisa place a hand to her midsection as she read the letter.
“And will you be staffing a nursery soon, Duchess?”
Flustered, Louisa folded the letter and turned her attention back to her guests. She had consulted a midwife and was taking a tea. Gabe had said he could live without children, but she wanted to try.
So many old, unanswered dreams he’d awakened.
“I have no announcement to make, not yet. But I hope in time to give Gabe an heir. It will make his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, forgive him everything.”
“And it would make me so happy.” Gabe’s mother’s eyes filled with moisture. “A piece of my Thomas, still alive in the world. Oh, Eloisa, you are so good for him. I would put my arms around you right now were you not stuck full of pins.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Louisa said. Gabe’s mother had received her with a cautious welcome that soon warmed to genuine affection.
Not for nothing had Louisa been raised among three sisters of her own, then spent fifteen years living in an institution made up predominantly of women; she knew how to make herself agreeable.
But Gabe’s mother was not a woman it was difficult to deal with.
Lady Thomas, as she was still styled to the polite world, though in private she called herself Mrs. Powlett, had not a thing to say against how Louisa conducted herself, the household, or her duchessing duties.
At their marriage Louisa had moved with Gabe into the townhouse with his mothers and sisters, who quite enjoyed having Louisa to chaperone them in all their social engagements, and Louisa had no doubt the house on Cavendish Square would be hosting a succession of marriages soon.
Alice clapped her hands. “Oh, mum!” she gushed. “I know a dozen girls as would make do as nurses. Let me pick ’em, when the time comes.”
“Well, give us a little marquess soon, and knock that rascal cousin out of the succession,” the Duchess of Rutland said, repossessing herself of her cards. “Though wouldn’t he be deemed unsuitable anyway?”
“Dear cousin Fenton is currently residing in the dower house at Barkham, under the care of his mother,” Louisa reported.
“He uses a wheeled chair, given he broke his back in the fall he took before our marriage, and I’m afraid his memory comes and goes.
He might not be found compos mentis when it came to an investiture by the House of Lords.
Though I hope my husband will possess the title for some decades yet. ”
“How glad I am to hear you say that, Duchess.”
Gabe entered the room, stripping off his glove to take her hand and kiss it.
Louisa glowed with the warmth that had filled her when she stood in the church and said her marriage vows to this man, a mere four weeks after she had first kissed him on a balcony and knew she was utterly changed.
Here he was, a man she had not known existed a year ago, and now he was the sun and center of her world.
“What news of the world?” she asked, trying to hold still for Margaret’s sake.
“Wellington’s out as prime minister,” Gabe announced. “He didn’t expect a fight over the civil list and tendered his resignation. Silly Billy can’t talk him into staying, not after that vote of no confidence. Earl Grey’s going to have his way, and Reform will be the order of the day.”
“You’ll have a go of it with Jermyn, then,” Lady Katherine remarked. “He’s against.”
“Pfft, we won’t let such divisions sunder the family,” the Duchess of Rutland said, dealing a new hand of cards. “We British won’t have barricades in the street, like the French did in July.”
“Speaking of France.” Gabe greeted his mother, then returned to stand beside Louisa. He peered into her face. “I see you’ve gotten a letter?”
She bit on a trembling lip, surprised at the rush of emotion.
“Maman finally wrote to me. Jeannette, my youngest sister, is to marry in the spring, and I am invited to the wedding.”
“So long as it doesn’t prevent you from attending my wedding,” Lady Katherine said.
“Or mine,” Lady Emmeline exclaimed. “Grandmama, have you dealt yourself an extra card?”
“It is set for March, in Arras.”
“If you wish to travel, by all means, we shall go,” Gabe said, looking at her face.
“Won’t there be endless debates in Parliament over Reform?”
“I’ll arrange to vote by proxy. It can be done.”
“Perhaps I can persuade Charles to take our wedding trip to France,” Emmeline said. “We could arrange to meet you. And interfere if French authorities try to arrest you for any crimes.”
To the residents of Rutland House, Louisa’s past was now common knowledge, at least it its broad outlines.
The Duchess of Rutland had claimed a hand in bringing the new Duke and Duchess of Barkham together, and then was obliged to explain, in the most general terms she could contrive, how she had gone about it.
Louisa still feared a member of the Grenay family would reproach her for what she’d done, but she no longer needed to hide herself or her crime.
After cautiously approaching her family, and even more cautiously asking questions, Louisa had learned that an investigation into the fire at Chateau Grenay had revealed that someone had barred the secret room in the stables from the inside, which trapped the conspirators when the fire in the outer stables began.
Louisa hadn’t been the one to seal her husband’s doom.
She had certainly collaborated, since it was she who had spilled the oil and dropped the match, but she hadn’t stopped up the exits.
Someone else had hated Général Grenay as much, or more, than she did. And perhaps others were now free from his harm, as she was.
“I imagine my recent elevation in rank is largely the reason Maman is willing to allow me to return to the family fold,” Louisa said.
Tears pricked her eyes; since her marriage, she’d quite turned into a watering pot. Falling in love with Gabe had allowed her to experience emotions again that she had thought buried and gone. “But I shall be glad for the opportunity to see my sisters. And to call myself a d’Estreaux again.”
“On the contrary, you are a Declan now,” Gabe said, wrapping his arm around her and ignoring Margaret’s squeaks of protest. “You are the Duchess of Barkham, the lady of my heart, the love of my life.”
“That is the name I value most,” Louisa assured him, and abandoned all propriety, right there in the parlor of her home, to give her Duke an ardent kiss.