Epilogue
Ten months later…
“Idon't see why we couldn't have celebrated in Norfolk,” Evander said, adjusting his cuffs.
“Two reasons, dearest. One, because Frederick lives in Kent and loves it just about as much as you love Carrstone,” Aurelia said magnanimously. “And two, it is his birthday, and as always, we must make contributions on his birthday.”
“Norfolk has birthdays too. It is a perfectly adequate place for birthdays. Did we not just host yours there?” Evander laughed through a sigh when Aurelia shot him a look.
“I'm simply noting that the journey is four hours long, and we have left Poole with that new contract unsigned, and then the dogs–”
Aurelia took his hand and held it, shaking her head. “We will be back before you know it. Frederick will appreciate us going to stay. So hush, and stop being a spoilsport.”
Outside the carriage window, Norfolk gave way to Suffolk mile by mile.
They would be near London eventually. But for now, the sky was enormous and pale.
Evander would miss it for the short time they were away.
He always did. It had started to feel faintly ridiculous, how much he missed home and being alone with Aurelia.
As though reading his mind, Aurelia turned his hand over in hers and looked at it. The sun glinted off their matching wedding rings. “You’re becoming a hermit in your old age. You promised Freddy you would come quietly in your letter.”
“I know what I wrote.”
“And you always keep your promises.”
“Only to you, primarily.” He looked out the window to hide his smile. He thought Aurelia’s power over him would fade over time, but the exact opposite seemed to be happening. Her simple, chaste touch consumed him.
She kissed his hand. “The farms are going to be there when we get back,” she said. “Poole is going to be there. He tells me the husbandry experiment is going well, not that I’ve asked, particularly. But he does love to talk about it. All day long, if I let him.”
Evander arched his brow. “We shall be having words about his use of the word experiment, first and foremost. But the rotations are already showing results. And the cattle from Perth are coming down next week…” He paused to examine her, checking whether she was teasing him.
“You chose this long carriage ride to ask me about my husbandry? Is everything quite all right?”
“I like hearing you talk, especially about the things you are passionate about,” Aurelia said. “Farmer duke… I married a farmer duke and I am very happy about it. Though I won’t tell anyone tonight.”
“Good girl.”
She settled back against the seat, still holding his hand. “Not for your sake. All the attention will be on me tonight, so it won't matter that you’ve purchased enough cows to fill Carlton House.”
He laughed softly. “How do you figure that, Your Grace?”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not pleased about my prediction.
The show in Norwich was three months ago and London was six weeks ago.
And as far as Lydia tells it in her letters, a woman playing her own compositions is sufficiently novel in this year of 1817 that people keep wanting to hear more from me. ”
She said it lightly, but underneath the lightness was something real and warm. She was proud of herself – and he was interminably proud of her too.
“Patrick says the piece I played at the assembly rooms down in Richmond has been making the rounds. It’s insufferable. I know everyone is butchering it”
“You love it.”
“I hate it.”
“Well, I love it,” Evander argued. “The only thing I have ever wanted in our marriage is for you to be happy. You are happy in your music. If other people should rejoice in it too, let them and do not stop. I mind nothing about any of it.”
She looked at him for a moment, and he worried she was about to argue with him.
Instead, she leaned across the carriage and threw her arms around him.
She kissed him passionately and deeply, curling herself into him.
All these long months with her, and still he couldn’t quite believe that she was his.
He was in the middle of debating telling her that when the carriage slowed and then stopped. Aurelia extracted herself from his arms slightly, looking at him with a flushed face and eyes full of desire.
“Bloody coaching inns,” she cursed under her breath.
“That’s no language for a duchess,” Evander joked.
“When have we ever done things by the book?”
When they finally made their way downstairs, the drawing room was too warm and too loud for Evander’s taste. He found the source of the nearby trouble immediately, and Patrick gestured him over energetically in return.
“There they are,” Patrick said tenderly from where he was standing with a goblet of something hopefully strong and hot. “The Duke and Duchess of Staying-in-Norfolk.”
“A pleasure to see you always, Lord Rosdale,” Evander said, smiling as Patrick bowed unceremoniously for Aurelia.
“You're late,” Patrick noted, eyeing Aurelia up and down. Then he cried through the crowd, “Lydia, they're here.”
Lydia was heard before she was seen, loudly telling the knots of guests to part and make room for her. She appeared in a flash of blue silk and promptly laughed, running toward Aurelia and taking her hands.
“Thank God, finally,” she said, exasperated, and took Aurelia by both arms. “You have no idea how boring it’s been without you.
Your brother, Your Grace, has the most tiresome friends.
Which is insane, because he himself is always so unpredictable.
” She shook her head, mostly ignoring her husband in favour of her best friend.
“Anyway, come with me, Aurelia – erm, Duchess. The woman I was telling you about in my letter has just arrived and wants to speak with you about playing at Montagu House.”
Aurelia mouthed something Evander couldn’t quite make out as Lydia dragged her off. They were soon submerged by the crowd. Patrick smiled, looking lovingly after his wife, the socially insatiable new Countess of Rosdale.
“You're well?” Evander said, breaking him from his daze.
“Extraordinarily well.” Patrick drank to hide a smile. “Mhm. Before I forget, she told me to tell you that she wants one of the puppies.”
Evander sighed, looking around for a footman with the drinks. “Everyone wants one of the puppies. There are only so many to go around, you know. And I’m not certain you even know what you’re asking.”
“Bla bla bla, big dogs, spare me. Violet Harrow has apparently been parading hers around Bloomsbury, and now half of London wants a Great Dane-Lurcher cross of their own. You have inadvertently started a trend from all the way in the middle of nowhere… Nike is well, I take it, after the ordeal?”
“It has been months. She is extremely well and I suspect entirely unbothered by her contribution to this new wave of canine fashion.”
“And the others? All twelve of them?”
“Placed, for the most part. Aunt Violet has hers of course…” Evander paused to readjust the lapels of his jacket, avoiding Patrick’s searching gaze. He knew that look – a husband trying to please his wife. “We kept two. Aurelia named the girl.”
Patrick looked at him. “And what's her name?”
“Bia,” Evander said.
“Ugh, another Greek goddess? Entirely fitting. I take it she’s like the mother?”
“Grey and stubborn, and loud. If you want her–”
“We want her.”
“I was going to say, you must wrestle her from Aurelia, or content yourself with the remaining male instead. But don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.”
Patrick beamed and took a sip of his drink. “Lydia is going to be…” He shook his head. “She is going to be unbearable about this. Bia or Brian.”
Across the room, Aurelia was telling Lydia something.
Her friend’s expression cycled through surprise and delight.
Whoever they were supposed to be talking to had disappeared, and Evander wondered whether the story about Montagu House hadn’t just been a ruse all along.
He would question Aurelia later in private, and looked forward to the moment when he would be alone with her again.
A few minutes later, there was movement at the tall gilded doors of the ballroom, and Frederick came in.
He had the cane, which he used with matter-of-fact ease.
He walked differently than he had before for obvious reasons, but he did seem overall more careful and considered in his manner – older, Evander realised.
He looked more like their mother now than he had at twenty-one.
Still himself, but different. Evander watched as he greeted a few guests at the door and then came over to him and Patrick.
His britches concealed his prosthetic well enough.
“There is my ever-elusive brother,” he said by way of greeting. They shook hands, and then Frederick pulled him into the warm embrace, whispering how thankful he was that he had come in his ear before pulling away.
“How are you doing?” Evander said once Frederick had said hello to Patrick.
“Decently enough. Though I shan’t be dancing tonight – yawn.
I’ve come a way at least since those early months, but still no dancing…
” He tapped the bottom of his leg for good measure, then looked across at Aurelia, who by that time had come back from her conversation with Lydia.
“You look wonderful as always,” he said, kissing her cheek.
“You look well, Lord Canterbury,” she said, and he could hear that she meant it.
“I am well, funnily enough.” He smiled, and the expression went all the way to his eyes. “Actually, speaking of being funny and well… There is someone I want you to meet.” He turned toward the door. “I could have sworn she was just–”
“My Lord,” said a voice.
The voice’s owner slipped in from beside them, slightly breathless.
She was waifish and fair, dressed simply in comparison to some of the other guests.
She looked around the group a little nervously.
Her eyes were a clear grey-green, bright but shy.
Evander did not recognise her, but he recognised the spark in his brother’s eyes as he looked at her.
It struck him that she looked at Frederick the way Evander looked at Aurelia.
“This is Miss Claire Hewitt,” Frederick said with pride. “Claire, this is my brother and his wife, Duke and Duchess of Sandacre. This meeting has been long in the making. We are both very nervous,” he said, smiling around at the group.
Miss Hewitt smiled, her brow creasing slightly in humour. “I have heard a great deal about you both,” she said. “Mostly about Norfolk, actually…”
“He does talk about Norfolk?” Aurelia asked.
“Oh, constantly,” Miss Hewitt said. “I expect I shall have to visit once, well…”
“Once we are married,” Frederick finished, nodding at her encouragingly.
Evander looked at Aurelia. He saw the same unspoken thought in her face.
Frederick had had an eventful year to say the least: the jilting, the return with Seraphina…
and the subsequent annulment of their marriage, which had been granted to them when it was unclear whether Frederick would ever walk again.
As far as they knew, Seraphina was apparently somewhere in Paris writing novels about women who went abroad and refused to come back.
The annulment had been quiet and quick, mostly mutual in the end.
The former Lady Canterbury swore she had loved Frederick – but who knew the truth?
Frederick recovered in time, stayed at Carrstone with them until he could use the cane.
Two months ago he had written about spending Christmastide with John French’s family – where he had finally met his cousin, Miss Claire Hewitt.
She had been, Frederick wrote, under his nose the whole time, two connections away.
He had learned what it meant, with her, to love for the right reason.
He would not be running away this time, especially not with one leg, he wrote, so long as he could help it.
Later, when dinner was over and they had returned to the ballroom, Evander found himself standing at the edge of the room watching Aurelia talk to Miss Hewitt and Lydia.
He crossed the room, hating to interrupt them but hating to be apart from Aurelia more.
“Dance with me,” he whispered into her ear, a hand wrapped around her waist.
“You’re joking.” Aurelia looked up at him. “You despise dancing.”
“Like many things, I am prepared to despise it so long as I am with you.”
She gave him a side-smile and handed her unfinished glass of champagne to Lydia, excusing herself. “Do I want to know what this list of things you tolerate for me consists of?”
“It is a short list.”
“It will be a long dance.”
“Then I’ll save it for another time.”
They took their positions in the line, smiling at the dancers beside them. Evander smiled down at her, thinking not for the first time how lucky he was.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, keeping her voice low and sending a shiver down his back.
“The usual,” he teased. “Those Scottish cows…”
“Ah,” she laughed. “Mother and father would be so proud.”
“We’ll go to Scotland soon to see that house of yours.”
“Will we?”
“We must.”
“And why must we?” Aurelia asked, tilting her head to the side.
“Because it is a part of you I have yet explored,” he said, stepping closer as the music swelled. “And I must know every inch, Duchess. Every inch, which is mine and always will be.”
“You must know every inch, must you?” Aurelia teased. Something about her tone caught him off-guard. “Every one of my thoughts? My secrets?”
The dance was coming for them fast, but Evander couldn’t move his feet if he tried. He leaned forward, compelled by her dazzling, playful smile. “Do you have secrets from me, Aurelia?”
She pursed her lips, then glanced down. “Maybe… Maybe I have just the one.”
Evander’s mouth fell open, and he quickly shut it. His heart thumped. Surely, she could not mean…? Surely, she would not tell him here?
No, he thought. Not here.
Suddenly, he grabbed her hand and removed her from the line, with a determination to find some quiet place for just the two of them. Aurelia burst out laughing, saying, “You’ve gone completely mad! What will everyone say?”
She was right, as always. It was completely improper and would likely cause a small scandal that evening. But Evander didn’t care in the slightest about any scandal. They could watch and judge, point and question his improper behaviour.
What was a little scandal compared to the rest of their happy lives?
The End?