Epilogue

"Are you sure?"

Unable to take her eyes off the babe suckling at her breast, Callie spoke a simple, certain, "Yes."

"Don't feel like you have to use it."

John sounded uncertain, even nervous, and utterly unlike the husband she'd come to know these last six months. At last, she pulled her eyes off the babe—really, she was the most beautiful babe in the world with her strawberry blond hair, her father's blue eyes, and cheeks, oh, those cheeks plump as apples—and craned her head around to give him her full attention. Well, almost. The babe never left the corner of her eye.

"Do you want to use it?"

"I just thought you might reconsider when the time came."

"It's a lovely name."

"But it was?—"

"Your mother's," she finished for him when he hesitated.

"I would understand if you don't want to saddle her with the name of a?—"

"Woman you loved very much," she again finished for him.

He smiled, self-conscious. "She always said Rose was too prim a name for the likes of her. She was Rosie."

Callie's smitten gaze returned to the squirming bundle in her arms. Really, how could he expect to hold her attention for any length of time? "I know something about prim names. It doesn't get much primmer than Calpurnia."

"And since Rose will be her second name, we can call her by her first name, Lenora."

"While I'm sure my mother would like that, I think she'd take one look at this girl and agree with me."

"About?"

"She is a Rose, through and through."

He drew them deeper into his embrace. "Lenora Rose Nylander," he murmured, as if testing the weight of it in his mouth. "A Lenora Rose knows what's what in this world."

"That she will." Callie smiled. "Her honorary uncle Kip will see to it."

That drew a laugh from her husband.

"Where is the lad, anyway?"

"Showing Lash the cider house."

Lash's carriage had arrived last night when Callie had been deep in the throes of a labor whose ferocity was already fading in her memory. If anyone had asked her then, if she'd ever repeat the torture of childbirth, she would've cursed their name. But now, as she gazed upon this bundle of sweetness, the intensity of those feelings faded. What was a little—or a great deal—of pain when this was the outcome?

"How is Lash adjusting to country life?"

"I think he's ready for school break to end so he can return to London and Westminster. The lad is accustomed to a faster pace of life than can be found here. It seems he and Jake's nephew by marriage have become fast friends."

"And Jack?" Callie asked, trying for offhand and failing. "Any word of him?"

"He's paid restitution, so it's a matter of him serving out his sentence in a few years."

"Then he'll be sailing the Seven Seas with his letters of marque, no doubt." Acrimony mixed into the sweet moment. She would never forgive the man for his multitude of sins. Never.

"Aye."

"You'll have to keep an eye on Lash." She liked the grave, quiet lad. He was rather like his brother. Loyal like his brother, too. Future trouble might lie within that loyalty.

John nodded. "The family Jake married into has government connections. The lad will be protected."

Callie let the subject slide away. She touched her nose to the top of Rose's head and inhaled. Oh, there wasn't a thing she didn't love about the girl. "John?"

"Aye?"

"I think my heart might burst from happiness."

He squeezed her and Rose into his broad chest, his arms strong and steady and safe. "Aye."

He was a man of few words, her John.

But within that single "Aye" existed the world.

A world that suited Callie in every way.

The End