Epilogue #2
“He should be,” Charity said. “He has managed to secure your mother’s approval, which I understand is not easily done.”
“That is not approval,” Temperance said. “Rather, the beginning of it.”
As though aware of being discussed, Albina glanced in their direction, her gaze settling briefly on Temperance before shifting, with deliberate casualness, to Elias, who leaned slightly closer to say something that caused her expression to change in a way that was both restrained and unmistakable.
“They are not subtle,” Charity said.
“They do not need to be,” Temperance replied.
Alethea’s attention returned to her, her smile softening slightly.
“And you?” she asked. “Are you certain?”
Temperance did not answer immediately. Instead, she let her gaze move once more through the room and then, finally, she looked back at her friends.
“Yes,” she said.
Charity studied her for a moment longer, as though testing the truth of it, and then nodded once, decisively.
“Good,” she said.
“Then we shall proceed.”
Temperance let out a quiet breath, something light and steady settling into place beneath everything else, and as the noise of the room continued to build around them, she realized, not for the first time but with a clarity that felt newly complete, that nothing about this felt uncertain anymore.
It did not feel like something she was stepping into blindly, rather something she had already chosen and was now, simply, walking toward.
“You might at least pretend to look less composed,” Edmund said, coming to stand beside Harper.
Harper did not immediately respond, though there was the slightest shift in his posture. “I see no advantage in pretending otherwise,” he said at last.
“No,” Edmund replied, a quiet note of amusement threading through the word, “you rarely do anything without seeing an advantage in it, which is precisely why it is so noticeable that you are doing nothing at all.”
Harper turned his head then, not fully, but enough to bring Edmund into view, his expression steady, though not entirely unreadable to someone who had known him as long as Edmund had.
“There is nothing that requires doing.”
“That has never stopped you before,” Edmund said, and this time there was no amusement in it, only a kind of quiet recognition.
Harper considered that for a moment, his gaze drifting briefly away before returning, not to Edmund, but to the doors again, where the light shifted faintly with movement beyond them.
“I have found,” he said slowly, “that interference would be unwelcome.”
Edmund let out a soft breath that might almost have been a laugh, though it held something warmer beneath it.
“Yes,” he said. “That does tend to be the case when the matter no longer belongs entirely to you.”
Harper did not object.
“I did not expect this of you,” Edmund said after a while, not abruptly, but as though the thought had been forming for some time and had finally reached the point at which it could no longer be left unspoken.
Harper glanced at him.
“No?”
“No,” Edmund said, meeting his gaze fully now, “you have spent a considerable portion of your life ensuring that you would not have to.”
“That was not without reason,” he said.
“I know,” Edmund replied at once, and there was something steady in the way he said it, something that made it clear that he was not dismissing what had come before.
“And I am not suggesting that it was. Only that you have chosen differently now, which is… significant. If anything, I would have expected you to consider it so thoroughly that you might talk yourself out of it entirely.”
“That possibility was addressed,” Harper said.
Edmund huffed a quiet laugh at that, shaking his head slightly.
“I am sure it was.”
Another pause followed, though this one carried something quieter, something more settled, as though the conversation had shifted without either of them needing to mark it explicitly.
“I am glad,” Edmund said then, more simply than anything he had said thus far.
Harper’s gaze flickered, just slightly.
“For what?”
“That you did not talk yourself out of it.”.
“As am I,” he said.
It was not something he would have said, once. Edmund seemed to recognize that, because his expression shifted enough to mark the moment. “Well, it would have been an intolerable waste otherwise, and I am not prepared to endure that on your behalf.”
Around them, the room quieted further, the last threads of conversation falling away as attention drew, collectively and without instruction, toward the doors.
It was time for him to marry the woman he loves.
“You may walk at a reasonable pace,” Albina said quietly, as they paused just before the doors, her hand resting lightly at Temperance’s arm, not guiding, not restraining, but present in a way that suggested she would intervene if necessary. “There is no need to make an occasion of haste.”
“I had not intended to,” Temperance replied, though there was a trace of amusement in her voice, the kind that came not from nervousness but from a familiarity with being managed at precisely the wrong moment.
“One never knows,” Albina said. “You have been known to make unexpected decisions.”
Temperance let that pass, her attention already settling on the doors before them, closed still, though no longer distant, no longer something she could observe from afar and consider at leisure, but immediate in a way that required no further thought.
“Are you steady?” Albina asked after a moment, the question quieter now, stripped of its earlier sharpness.
“Yes,” she said as the doors opened. Temperance stepped forward and for a moment, she did not look at him.
Instead, she allowed herself a single, measured glance through the room. Her friends were in audience.
And then, finally, she looked at him.
Harper had not moved.
He stood as he always did, but there was something different now, something she would not have recognized if she had not learned, over time, where to look for it. He was simply waiting.
For her.
Temperance held his gaze as she approached, and whatever distance remained between them seemed to narrow without effort, without awareness, until she was standing before him and the room, though still present, no longer required her attention in the same way.
“You are on time.”
“Only just,” she replied.
“I was not concerned.”
Their hands met and the ceremony began.
Temperance heard the words, though not in sequence, not with the kind of attention that required her to follow each one precisely, because the meaning of what was being said did not depend entirely on the order in which it was spoken.
Her name was spoken, and then his, and though she heard both, it was not the sound that held her attention, but the way the room seemed to settle around them as it happened. He was already watching her.
“You look very composed,” she said quietly.
“I am,” he replied.
“This is not as complicated as it should be,” she said. “How unusual.”
She was beginning to realize that this is what the rest of her life was going to look like from here on out.
He inclined his head, accepting that without argument, and the rest of it passed as it was meant to, the formal words spoken and answered, the necessary acknowledgments made without hesitation.
“I pronounce you Man and Wife. You may kiss your wife.”
There was the faintest shift of attention, and Harper stepped forward without hesitation, closing the small distance between them. The kiss was brief, but it meant everything to her.
Whatever order had carried the ceremony dissolved almost at once, voices returning in overlapping strands, movement breaking through the careful arrangement as people stood. Temperance barely had time to register it before Albina was in front of her.
“Well,” Albina said, looking at her first, and then at Harper, “I do hope you are both content, because I have been waiting an unreasonable amount of time to be proven correct.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said nothing,” Albina continued, as though that clarified everything, “which you may now appreciate was a considerable act of restraint on my part.”
“That does not explain what you believe you have been correct about,” Temperance said.
Albina gave a small, almost impatient exhale, as though she had expected this to be understood without requiring articulation.
“You,” she said, with a brief, precise gesture between Temperance and Harper, “and this. It was obvious. You were both behaving in a manner that made any alternative outcome highly unlikely, and I chose, quite deliberately, not to involve myself in it.”
Temperance tilted her head slightly.
“That must have been difficult for you.”
“It was intolerable,” Albina said. “At several points, I considered intervening.”
Harper, who had been silent until now, said mildly, “You trusted the outcome.”
Albina looked at him then, properly, as though reassessing him in light of the fact that he had now said something she found worth answering.
“I trusted that interference would have made it worse,” she said.
“Well,” Charity’s voice cut in, appearing at Temperance’s side with the precise timing of someone who had been waiting for an opening and had decided she had waited long enough, “if this is to be a discussion about who knew what and when, I feel it only fair to say that the rest of us were considerably less patient about it.”
“You were not patient at all,” Alethea added, joining them, her gaze moving over Temperance in quick assessment before returning to her face. “You made a spectacle of it on several occasions.”
“I did no such thing,” Charity said.
“You absolutely did.”
Temperance looked between them.
“I was not aware that I was being observed to this degree.”
“You were not meant to be aware,” Charity said. “That is rather the point of observation.”
A child pushed past them then, nearly colliding with Alethea before being caught and redirected without breaking the flow of conversation, the room already shifting into something louder.