Epilogue
Della reached for her other ivory silk glove. She’d put the right one on already, because she considered that her bad hand. The left she’d need to use to finish getting ready. It was an odd thing, leaving that one glove until the end of her routine, but it worked for her.
As she picked up the glove, something drifted to the floor.
Della smiled. She hadn’t received a note from Andrew in a few days.
They’d been so busy preparing to host their first party they’d hardly had time for writing, but he’d known she was nervous for this evening.
It was her first event as the host, and they’d all spent so much time and effort introducing themselves to the community near Kinloss that her parents had so horribly neglected.
Della bent down as best she could with her fitted gown and minimally mobile body to retrieve the note.
If you’re reading this, you are probably late for your own party. I love you.
—Andrew
It was possible he was correct. She tended to lose track of time in her own head, because things like punctuality were nothing in the face of her worries.
“Della!” she heard Clara yell. She did knock now, in most cases, since the chambers now belonged to her and Andrew both.
“Yes?” Della shouted back. She slipped on her glove and walked toward the door. It burst open, and she was glad she hadn’t been any closer or she’d have been knocked to the floor.
“You must get down there,” Clara huffed. “Guests are starting to arrive, and your husband is greeting them.”
“Andrew is greeting the guests?” Della asked, confusion evident in her tone.
“No, your other husband.” Clara rolled her eyes. “Yes, Andrew. Harry was going to welcome everyone, but Andrew said he would do it, and Harry listened because Andrew is the man of the house, whatever that means.” Her voice took on a mocking tone there toward the end.
With a sigh, Della strolled out of their rooms and into the hallway. She and Clara took the stairs arm in arm.
“Who made this?” Della asked, admiring the beading on the navy-blue sleeves attached to Clara’s fitted bodice. “Alice or Gwen?”
“Both of them, I believe,” Clara answered. “They are quite good at what they do together.”
“Are they in the ballroom already?” Della took each step slowly. She wore her riding boots again with her light-pink gown, and she didn’t particularly care if anyone saw. Her feet were killing her today, so everyone would just have to bear witness to the fashion offense.
“Everyone but you,” Clara remarked. Della pinched the inside of her elbow, and Clara swatted at her in retaliation.
“There she is!” Andrew smiled when his eyes caught hers, and he patted Harry on the shoulder as he left their combined post and marched toward Della. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you.” She tugged his cravat straight.
He must not have eaten yet—he hadn’t spilled anything on it.
His waistcoat was ivory, made to match her gloves and the shoes she would’ve worn had her feet been kinder to her.
“Oh, no,” Della mumbled. She looked over Andrew’s shoulder at Clara and Harry.
They were standing too close together, whispering intently in the shadow behind the door Harry still held open for no one.
“What are we to do about that?” she asked him.
He hummed, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I don’t know, darling.” He used her shoulders to turn her in the other direction, toward where their guests waited. “It is your house; I am just the husband.”
Della laughed, but she followed his lead.
They entered the ballroom to no grand announcement.
No heads turned in their direction, and they naturally joined conversations already in progress.
It was not customary to invite one’s household to a ball like this, nor was it traditional to invite one’s tenants.
Della had never been traditional, though, and she found her party in progress to be a roaring success.
In the corner, Alice tried to convince Gwen to speak to the other young ladies her age. Those two were a positive influence on each other with their mutual interest in sewing, and they’d made half of the garments everyone in the room wore.
Harry and Clara entered behind them, walking arm in arm. Della wondered what the frantic whispering had been about, but she knew she’d hear of it later if it were anything important.
“Wait a moment,” Andrew stopped them as they proceeded through the room. It was her intention to speak to everyone, and he was halting her progress. “Where is your walking stick?”
“I do not need it this evening.” She patted his arm where it was connected to hers. “I have you.”
“Oh, I see,” he chuckled. “So, I am supposed to stay by your side all evening for support?” he asked in jest, but they both knew he would. She wouldn’t have even had to ask.
“If you wouldn’t mind terribly,” she replied with a grin.
In addition to their other changes, they were also pivoting away from the traditional schedule a ball kept to.
There would be a bit of dancing and then dinner, and everyone would be home in time to retire as they normally would.
They were a group comprised of mostly sick people and farmers, not those who needed to be out at all hours of the night at a party.
Music began to play from the corner of the room, and Clara brushed by them pulling Harry into the open space they’d designated as a dance floor. It wasn’t even the music for any particular dance, but no one could tell Clara that.
Della began gesturing to everyone around her, couples and friends and children filling up the space in the middle of the room.
Alice even pulled Gwen off of the wall. It was less dancing and more conversing to music in close proximity to one another.
She looked around, and she spotted nearly everyone.
Silas still preferred to be out of doors, but he would come in for dinner.
Mrs. Goldsmith was finishing up the cooking, which she’d insisted she do all herself, despite Della’s offer to hire several more kitchen maids to help her.
Andrew pulled her to the outside of the circle the party had formed.
They stood under the portrait of Della’s mother that was painted when she’d been about Della’s age.
At that point, her mother had been married for a couple of years and had given birth to Della, and she hadn’t lived much longer past that point.
Since she’d been at Kinloss, Della had felt the inkling of a connection to her mother, something that hadn’t existed before.
As she looked at that painting, Della tried to find some visible representation of it there.
The jut of their chin was the same, maybe.
Or the sharp bridge of their diminutive noses.
Perhaps it was the straightening of their shoulders, or the way their brows seemed to smile more than their mouths.
“I did not know her, but I think she would be proud of you.” Andrew turned her by the shoulders again, clearing a spot for them in the crush of revelry.
Della hoped so. She hoped that somewhere out there, even in the beyond, there was some piece of her born family that was proud of her.
“This is the legacy I want to leave for our children,” Della said, gesturing behind her to the lively crowd with her chin. “This happiness. This sense of home.”
Andrew swept her into his arms, guiding them in a dance of their own creation. Della barely moved. She didn’t need to.
“We do not have children, as far as I am aware,” Andrew smirked.
“Stop teasing.” She smacked at his chest, but it was really more of a pat. “You know what I mean. Our future children, should we have them. I never thought I’d have the opportunity. But I quite like the thought.”
“So do I,” he smiled. He spun her, just like he’d done the last time they danced, but her leg caught. Pain flared through her locked-up joints, all the way from her knee to her spine. That damned hip.
“That damned hip, I know,” Andrew said. He rested his hand there, massaging until the rigid muscles gave way. “It’s quite irritating for you, I’m sure, but I do love this hip. It’s where I rest my hand while my mouth is—”
“Andrew!” Della gasped. She looked around her, trying to determine if anyone had heard. Everyone else seemed so caught up in their own merriment, she doubted it. That was a relief.
“Sorry, love.” Andrew grinned unrepentantly.
“You do not have to apologize, and you know it.” Della moved her feet slowly, resuming their dance. “And that is the kind of inappropriate remark you would usually make in a letter.”
Their letters were increasingly erotic, and those notes would not be a part of the legacy they left for their children.
She’d keep all of their chaste, longing letters from before they were lovers forever, but she’d made him promise that those more explicit letters from the early days of their marriage would stay between them.
“You are exactly right.” He spun her again, and her hip decided to cooperate this time. “Let me go get a pen.” Andrew moved to step away from her, and she hooked her arms around him even tighter.
“No,” she whined. It was a tad embarrassing, the petulant tone she used. She was an adult and a baroness and a wife, and that tone was not becoming of any of those roles.
“Don’t worry.” He turned back to her with an easy smile and those dimples. “You know I will always be right here.”
Della smiled back. She pressed her hand to his cheek and he kissed the inside of her wrist, just above her gloves.
He bit at the edge of that glove, like he wanted to peel it off with his teeth.
She wondered when she’d become so permitting of such impropriety in public.
Probably several hundred letters ago, she supposed.
She arched a brow, either in challenge or in reprimand. She’d decide which based on his response.
“I am at your service,” Andrew promised.