Epilogue
Pembroke Estate, Berkshire
Rowe entered the room to find Camilla standing by the window, where she rocked their ten-month-old to sleep in her arms. The boy’s face was flushed from the heat and from having voiced unceasing protests for the last hour over the wearisome labor of having to produce teeth.
Rowe folded his arms and watched her, a smile on his lips. Their eyes met across the room.
“At last he sleeps,” he said softly. “He needed only his mother.”
She bent down to kiss Garret’s downy head.
The crying fit was ill timed, for they were expecting Camilla’s family to arrive within the hour.
Miles and Dorothea were coming for two weeks with Augusta and Ernest, their youngest who was a month older than Garret.
Felix and Sophia would come with two-year-old Lionel, traveling in two carriages together with Lady Poole, Joanna—who, at twenty, was yet unmarried—and Tilly, who was to have her first season the next year.
Evo had recently earned his diploma at Oxford and hinted that he would likely be too occupied to retire to the countryside where he would be required to mind a bunch of squalling infants, a threat Rowe assured Camilla was empty.
He moved over to peer down at the baby’s face. “Garret will only wake again when his cousins arrive.”
She shushed him and whispered, “I will have Nurse come and take him up to sleep in the nursery.” She turned to leave, but he held his hand out.
“In a minute. You look so fetching holding my son in your arms. I cannot bear to have the tableau disturbed just yet.”
“Our son,” she reminded him, as she did each time.
He tucked his finger in their son’s little fist. “Our son, if you will. But then, you must allow me to have a few claims to my name,” he protested mildly, as he did each time. “My wife, my son.”
Their son gave a shuddering breath and nestled more deeply against her chest. She looked down at her child fondly, her heart filled with joy.
Holding Garret with one arm, she caressed the light hair on his head and smoothed it down to the side, then brought her eyes back to her husband, now teasing.
“You have an estate, Rowe. Plus three titles, a coronet, and an honorific. What more do you want?”
“Title, coronet—rubbish,” he said with a dismissive flick of his hand. With the same hand, he pointed first to her, then to Garret. “All rubbish when compared to this.”
“Is it?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips.
“Most assuredly.” He slipped an arm around her waist and leaned down to brush a kiss on her lips. “Especially compared to this.”
And he kissed her again.
The End
She dreams of the edge of the map. He knows what waits beyond it. Follow Joanna’s story next in A Headstrong Lady.