Epilogue

November 1, 1812

The pen scratched painfully across the paper, leaving an ink splat halfway across that obliterated most of the equation.

"Bother," Dodo muttered.

She scrunched the piece of paper into a ball, threw it indiscriminately behind her without looking to see where it fell, and picked up a pencil.

It was always better, she knew, to start working with a pencil before you were happy with the formula. She should have done that from the start, but it had been her own arrogance that had failed her. The whole thing had looked so easy, so beautiful, so elegant in her mind.

The drawing room of Lindow House filled with the scratching of the pencil as Dodo slowly moved it across the page. From the lead poured numbers. Numbers and letters, a few dates, calculations that grew in complexity the farther down the page the pencil moved.

She'd been offered the use of the study, now it was clear she rather than George could actually make use of it, but she had declined. There was something far more comforting about sitting curled up in an armchair with a large book in her lap, leaning upon it instead of a desk. Something… primal. If mathematics could be primal.

Dodo's eyes focused on the calculation, unable to take anything in. The numbers opened up for her, revealing the truth that she had suspected before she had put pen to paper. It was not nearly as large a number as she had expected, either. In fact, it would be rather soon—

A subtle movement from the corner of her eye. A pressing warmth on her neck.

"Dodo," whispered her husband.

Dodo dropped the pencil and swiftly moved a sheaf of paper over the calculations she had been working on. "George."

She hadn't noticed him come in, which was unusual. Typically, the man couldn't breathe without her noticing—but then, her mind had been distracted by something of great import.

George pressed another kiss on her neck before stepping around her and dropping onto the sofa to her left. "Working on something interesting?"

Dodo pressed her fingers on the paper that was covering up what she had been working on. "Maybe."

"Plotting against me, then?"

"Oh, most definitely."

Heat spread across her, though it was accompanied by a little queasiness. He hadn't asked directly, so it wasn't precisely a lie. And if he really wished to know, he would ask again.

That was the wonderful thing about what had grown between them, though it may have started off slowly and strangely. There were no secrets between them. Dodo knew if George wanted to know something, all he had to do was ask.

But he didn't. Instead, her husband of just three days stretched out and yawned. "Goodness, I'm tired. I've spent all day thinking about it, and I really think Scandal of Lancelot could be far better if we changed the exercise routine."

"You spent all day yesterday thinking about it," said Dodo vaguely, shifting the papers so she could glance at her calculations. She had been right. "And you decided then that the best thing to do was stay the course and stick to the exercise program we already had."

George shot her that delectable, spine-melting smile he always had when he was being annoying. "I did, didn't I?"

"You did."

"Well, I must have been talking nonsense, then," he said happily, crossing one leg over the other. "We've tried changing the food, and some of the training—it's the exercise itself we haven't adjusted."

"Statistically irrelevant."

"Statistically—what do you mean by that?"

Dodo smiled elusively, not looking up from the paper. There it was, in pencil. Gray on white, the answer to the question that had been consuming her.

"Dodo—"

"I mean that statistically, Scandal of Lancelot is only half a head behind his main competitors, and after the changes you have already made with food and training, he hasn't gained in the slightest," Dodo said airily, looking up and laughing at the mock outrage on her husband's face. "Suggesting that he has reached his peak performance, and any other tinkering is merely going to throw him off his stride. You know I'm right."

George snorted. "Doesn't mean you have to always be right, though."

There was such tenderness in his words, she was momentarily overcome.

What had she done to deserve this man? Oh, he was a scoundrel. He was far more accustomed to making trouble than making plans, and some of his mathematical understanding was truly atrocious.

But he was hers. There was no way around it. Dodo knew that she belonged to him in a way that she could not explain. Not even with numbers.

George Chance was the only person she wanted in the entire world. Now her parents were next week to return to Croscombe, to be safe and sound in their own home, something they could never have expected, and with a talented doctor paid in advance to treat them as need be…

Well, that left her with only one thing to worry about.

"—unfair that the jockey should say such a thing. I read it in the newspaper, the outrage!" George was saying. When precisely he had started to speak, Dodo was not sure. "I should have the blaggard raked over the coals for merely speaking to the press, but… you're not listening, are you?"

Dodo cleared her throat and tried desperately to concentrate. "I'm listening now."

That made him laugh. "And when, exactly, did I manage to gain your attention?"

"Just after you lost it," she said sweetly.

Their laughter mingled through the drawing room, and Dodo knew she would never be as happy as this. Never. It felt a mathematical impossibility that she could hold any more happiness.

Yet she would. She knew she would. Her life with George, their life together—it was only just beginning.

And it was all about to change.

"That's when I decided to paint all the horses bright green," George said nonchalantly. "I think it will make it harder for the other competitors to see them, you understand, and so will naturally have an advantage."

Dodo nodded. Well. It made sense .

Then her mind caught up with her. "You're going to what?"

"I knew you weren't truly paying attention," said George with a sigh, shaking his head with mock severity. "I don't know. I come in here, distracting you from what you were doing, and you don't have the good graces to dedicate every iota of your attention to me!"

His eyes twinkled.

Dodo had to keep herself from laughing. There was a certain amount of nonsense in her husband's approach to life, and she wasn't sure whether she would ever get used to it. In a way, she rather hoped she wouldn't.

"I was paying you some attention," she said. "I noticed the green paint."

"Eventually," George shot back.

"My point is, I was listening."

Her husband grinned. "Want to bet?"

Dodo laughed, the joy flowing through her body like fine wine: rich, and pleasant, and warming. It gave a tingle to her mind that made it difficult to concentrate, and a fluidity in her body that nothing but George's presence could create.

He was charming—and he was honest. Mostly. He was good to her, and good to those he loved. Even, it appeared, to those he did not love. Dodo could never have predicted, given what he'd said about the illegitimate Chance brother, that Viscount Pernrith would have actually turned up at their wedding.

In truth, she thought Pernrith was surprised to have received an invitation in the first place.

And Dodo's parents adored her husband. Well, of course they did. She should not have been surprised that George had been able to charm her mother and impress her father within five minutes of meeting them.

It certainly didn't hurt, after all, that he was an earl…

"Remind me," he said. "When is the big family dinner?"

"Tomorrow," said Dodo, wondering if she needed to share the news before then. It was too soon to reveal in front of her parents. They would wonder when it had happened, since she and George had only been wed a few days. But if she couldn't hide this nausea much longer…

George groaned. "And we really have to have all of them?"

She had to laugh at that. "The vast bulk of them are your family!" Though it was their family now.

"All four Chance brothers, under one roof," he said forebodingly. "And two wives."

"Three wives."

"Goodness, you know, I didn't count you," he said with a smirk. "And your parents, naturally. A full house. There won't be any room for anyone else!"

Dodo grinned as her husband laughed, though her stomach twisted. They had never discussed it. Oh, she had been certain they would eventually. But the time for that was coming, and swiftly. Soon she would have to tell him—

"What are you working on?" George asked, his gaze flickering to the wad of paper on her lap.

Dodo swallowed.

She had not actually intended to talk to him about it now. Now did not seem right. It was too soon, too early. She did not know enough. She hadn't had enough time to recheck the calculations.

But as her attention flickered up from the gray pencil scribblings on the paper, she saw—

George. Smiling, and happy, and curious. Not a man to push her before she was ready, not someone who would force her to reveal what she would prefer to keep private.

But a man who loved her. Who respected her. Who admired her, without the desire to censure her.

And her core melted.

"I… I have been working on something," Dodo said, finding to her surprise her voice was hoarse.

"Giving you trouble?"

"You could say that," she said. Her fingers shook as she picked up the paper. "Here."

She wasn't exactly sure what she expected to happen as she passed the seemingly innocent paper over to her husband. Fireworks? A chorus of angels? Stars from the heavens?

When George placed the paper on his crossed knee and took a look at it, nothing happened. There was silence in the drawing room, nothing but the sound of a gardener passing the window and a bird singing in a tree near the building.

Dodo swallowed. He would understand, of course. It was obvious. In all honesty, she was rather surprised she had managed to keep it to herself for this long. It was so blatant—

"I don't understand," said George, squinting slightly at the page as he tilted his head, as though that would make the numbers more legible. "What's this bit here—plus nine? Why nine?"

A thrill of excitement rushed through Dodo. This is it. The moment she could decide to retreat and not say anything. She could pass it off as a mathematical exercise, just some fun she was having with the numbers. She did that sort of thing regularly enough for it to pass without comment.

But somehow she knew, deep within herself, that this was the moment to confess. That the knowledge, once shared, would be far more wonderful than it would be kept close within her.

"I have been doing some calculations," Dodo said quietly, training her eyes on her husband to watch his reaction. "To work out… To work out when our little one will be born."

And George did not move.

For a few heartbeats, Dodo wondered whether she should repeat herself. He did not appear to have heard her. Surely, if he had, he would say something.

His finger moved over the page. "When… When our little one will…?"

His voice seemed to fail him and uncertainty poured through Dodo. Could she have misjudged this so utterly? After so many years of always getting the calculations right, of never overstretching herself, never worrying about pushing her luck…

Had she finally done so?

And then paper was cascading onto the floor. Not just the piece Dodo had given him, though that had fallen first—but George had grabbed her hands and pulled her upright, causing book, pen, pencil, and reams of paper to stream over the carpet.

"George!"

"Dodo!" he cried affectionally, pulling her into his arms. "Oh, Dodo—you're sure? A child?"

"The odds are—"

"I don't want odds. I want to know how you feel—are you well?" George said anxiously, pulling away and casting a severe look over her. "And here I was, making you walk all day!"

"We walked around the garden. I am quite well," Dodo said, laughing with elation.

"But the baby!"

"Both mother and child are doing well, so I am told by the doctor," she said, fondly stroking George's cheek as his hands clasped her waist.

His delighted expression lessened somewhat as he frowned. "You've been seeing a doctor? Without telling me? Are you ill? You're not—"

"Only to make sure," Dodo said hastily.

And that was the truth. She had been almost certain, as the numbers had seemed to suggest—and when had she ever not been able to trust the numbers?

Flickering emotions scattered across George's handsome face. Joy and fear and laughter and surprise and delight and—

"You know, there's an outside chance they'll be born on July the eleventh," Dodo said, looking hastily for the piece of paper she had been working on. "And I think, if my calculations are correct—"

"Hang the calculations!" George cried. "Sorry," he added hastily, seeing her expression. "But goodness, this is so much more than mathematics!"

Dodo raised an eyebrow. He knew her thoughts on this—there was nothing more than mathematics.

"You and me," George whispered. "You and me, creating a new person—half of me, half of you, and half themselves."

"That doesn't add up—"

"Maybe not on paper," her husband said quietly, moving a hand from her waist and placing it carefully over her stomach. "But it still does."

Dodo's breath caught in her throat as they both looked at his hand.

There, somewhere underneath his palm, was a life. A child, someone growing who would soon come into the world and meet them. George was partly right, even if his numbers were nonsense. Half of him, and half of her, and completely themselves.

"As long as they are healthy," George was saying, "I couldn't give a fig when they were born. And we'll be happy—we will be happy, won't we, Dodo?"

Dodo looked up and caught his gaze.

And there was desperation there, and love, and eagerness. A need to be loved, a vulnerability in his eyes she knew George had never allowed anyone to see before.

And she smiled. "Happy? There's not an outside chance of that, my love. That is a certainty."