Epilogue

EPILOGUE

FRANCE, A WEEK LATER

F rom her perch beneath the expansive bower of a weeping beech tree, Beatrix sat with a pencil lolling in her hand and a journal in her lap and took in the view before her—Dev beyond earshot, explaining the workings of a steam engine to his client…the bright countryside outside the shade of the canopy…the lazy drift of clouds across a blue Norman sky…

She resisted the impulse to pinch herself.

For the hundredth time this week.

She would’ve been black and blue by now, for— impossibly —this was her life.

Though she’d long wanted to visit France, she hadn’t been prepared for its beauty. Normandy held the specific coolness of the countryside in summer—a soft, slow quality that invited one to relax and enjoy. Further, it was less tamed than England, but then France was still picking itself up after events a little too recently experienced to have faded into the annals of history just yet.

She and Dev had gone to Paris first. But the warnings had proven correct. It was miserably hot in the city. So, they’d followed the shipment of engines to their next destination in Normandy.

Actually, their journey hadn’t been quite that linear.

There had been a stop between Dover and Paris—St. Peter’s Port on the Isle of Guernsey. Their time on the island had been all of three hours, but when they’d set sail again, they’d done so as husband and wife.

She held the ruby and gold ring up to the sun, the light imbuing the gem with a warm crimson glow. Dev had kept it on his person at all times during those two weeks they’d been apart.

“For when you came to your senses,” he’d said.

Oh, arrogant man.

She twirled the ring. Though she’d been married for all of a week, it was already a habit of hers.

What a whirlwind… But that was life with Dev. He knew his own mind, and one couldn’t help getting caught up in its controlled, fearless whir, secure in the knowledge that one would land safely on two feet.

She contemplated the blank page below her pencil. She’d been writing this last week, too—jotting little notes and observations. Dev was encouraging it. “You see the main thrust of a point and have a way of conveying it with words. And when you’re good at something and enjoy doing it, that’s the thing you should be doing.”

The subject matter for her writing had shifted, however. Now that she didn’t have to write to put bread on the table, she could write about anything and everything that interested her—the trilling music of birdsong high in the trees…the sweet deliciousness of a rather transcendent apple and caramel crêpe…the verdant hills that rolled and rolled out from where she presently sat.

In a way, it felt too free, this mode of writing. Lacking in structure… aimless . The fact was while she hadn’t enjoyed writing gossip, she did enjoy writing about people. Though they didn’t necessarily know it minute to minute, people always had an aim. She might try her hand at writing about people of the fictional variety.

But in this moment, her pencil remained silent, as it was wont to be when her gaze found itself lingering on her husband—as it was wont to do.

His forearms.

Lightly dusted with black hair and tan from hours beneath the sun, Dev’s forearms held the power to transfix her when his sleeves were rolled up just so.

At this moment, his focus was on his work, which was assisting a client with setting up his steam engine correctly to get the most efficient functionality from it. Her husband was exceedingly focused on functionality and efficiency and the increasing importance of miniaturization and portability in regard to engines of all sorts, both present and future. He could really go on at length about it.

She found it both interesting and utterly, incredibly attractive.

This man she loved…

This man who loved her…

He was complex.

Over this last week, she’d come to see that his nickname— Lord Devil —wasn’t entirely unearned.

He was ruthless in matters that affected him—in perfecting and refining his mechanical creations…in his business dealings…in his bed dealings…

He was deliciously ruthless there, too.

Here it was again—the compulsion to pinch herself.

Dev was her husband, and she was his wife. She hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant to be a wife—but neither did he have experience with being a husband. Yet what she and he didn’t know didn’t matter. They would spend a lifetime together as friends…as lovers…as partners discovering what lay around the next bend in their joined path.

They wouldn’t be tarrying long in France, for they had business to attend to in London. First, she needed to sort out Cumberbatch. She could use his assistance and opinions on the purchase of a townhouse in Mayfair. He would grouse and grumble, but he wouldn’t have it any other way, for she now understood something about him that she’d been too blind to see.

He’d been protecting her for years.

Further, as it happened, Dev was in need of a valet. And since Cumberbatch wouldn’t be retiring until he was six feet beneath the ground, well, the solution to both problems worked itself out from there. Though she’d informed neither man of this plan as yet, in the end they would see its neat reasonability.

The other reason for their imminent return was the Race of the Century. It was fast approaching. Next month, in fact. Dev said it no longer held any interest for him, but it did for her. In a way, horse racing had brought them together. If he hadn’t won Little Wicked in a card game, their lives at this very moment would’ve been completely different.

Besides, the love of a good, competitive horse race yet ran hot in her blood, and the Race of the Century promised to be the best she would witness in her lifetime.

Dev had agreed, but with a single condition—that she assent to sail across the Atlantic to visit the Territory of Orleans with him. He’d heard tell of the innovations being made to the steamboats that cruised the Mississippi River and wanted to see them for himself. He very much wanted to meet the inventor Henry Miller Shreve, who he called a “visionary.”

Across the distance, Dev shook the client’s hand, signaling the conclusion of their business. Then as she’d known it would, her husband’s gaze cut to the side and met hers.

Her breath caught in her chest, as ever.

These last couple of months—this last week, in particular—she’d learned something important about life.

Life was a mundane affair.

The daily mechanics of it, at least—wake in the morning, eat, get on with the business of the day, eat, sleep, then do it all again the next day…and the next. When done with stability and resources, that was a good, solid life.

Which was why one needed magic.

It was the magic that gave it meaning and joy.

A smile tipped at the side of Dev’s mouth, and he began moving toward her.

Her heart picked up its pace—as ever, too.

This new life of hers… She could have never imagined it. It was good and solid and wild and adventurous. Itcontained the mundanities—and the magic.

He extended his hand and she took it, their fingers twining together as he pulled her to her feet, his warmth and strength making its way through her. Words from not so long ago came to her as she reached up and caressed his cheek, his beautiful mouth angling toward hers.

Would you like to be my something more?

She was his something more.

And he was her forever.

The End