Epilogue

"FATHER! FATHER!"

Zachary Benedict heard the shrill cry of Bethany, coming from somewhere deeper in the house, as he strode down the stairs, carrying his youngest, sweet little Anna, fresh from her nap.

Bethany burst into the foyer from the first-floor parlor. "Father! Oh, there you are." She met him at the bottom of the stairs and turned her dazzling blue eyes to him. He saw an argument in his very near future. "Mother says I may not go to Amelia's house for the weekend. She thinks their country house party is no more than a shallow ruse to mislead some young man into dastardly behavior which might see a poor, unsuspecting girl wed not to the man of her dreams."

"Oh, dear," he said, and bit back a laugh. He consulted Anna's expression, to find his little blue-eyed sweetheart staring groggily at her sister. To Bethany, he mused, "She said all that, did she?"

He continued on, moving away from the stairs to find his wife, the one who was sometimes entirely too explicit with their children, even as it often worked to great effect.

"She did," Bethany griped, following beside him, clearly wanting to state so much of her case before they were in the presence of her mother once more. "I'm fourteen now, father. You said yourself I possess solid judgment and a principled breadth of reason. You said you trusted me to always behave appropriately, so why should she— "

Her words stopped abruptly as she , the countess, appeared at the doors to the parlor only seconds before Zach would have pushed it open.

" She also trusts your judgment and decision making capabilities," Emma said pointedly to her daughter, with a strict frown at her, "but she does not trust that of many young men, who are led not with their minds and hearts at this age."

Bethany groaned and tipped her head back, her expression effectively displaying her disagreement with her mother's statement.

Emma turned to Zach and Anna, her face dissolving instantly into first, motherly adoration, as she claimed her smiling baby from Zach's arms. She kissed Anna's soft and downy hair and fixed her gaze onto her husband of more than a decade, her smile now intimate and happy.

Zach's heart flipped.

Oh, but he was a lucky man.

He leaned in and met her lips, lingering longer than he should have, until he felt Emma's mouth curve with a smile at the length of this kiss, until he heard Bethany's, "Ugh," just before she stomped away from them, into the parlor.

"No house parties?" He asked, his voice low, as he knew the room behind was filled with little pictures with big ears—all their children.

"No. Not at fourteen years of age, and with you and I having previously decided that Amelia's parents are about as useless as guardians as would be a dressmaker's mannequin."

"Right," he agreed, vaguely recalling that conversation .

Emma was a loving, but ever-vigilant mother. Their children may not always like her answers or rules, but they could never doubt they were cherished so greatly.

They stepped into the drawing room, where the other children, Caralyn and Michael and Will, were gathered around Mrs. Smythe, who had served brilliantly as their nurse since Mr. Smythe had passed just before Emma had brought their eldest, Michael, into the world. The former innkeep's wife, who seemed not to have aged a day since he'd first met her, and who delighted in the Benedict children, had her gray head pressed against three light brown heads as they peered earnestly at some gadget Mrs. Smythe held.

"Will's dragon lost its wing again," Emma explained.

Zach squinted, seeing now that Mrs. Smythe indeed was trying to re-attach the moveable part into the socket of the toy dragon's body.

Emma sat on the floor as she often did, neatly spreading out her skirts while she gathered nearby toys with which to amuse Anna, who had just started sitting up on her own.

The four heads pressed together lifted all at once, with Mrs. Smythe proclaiming, "Aha!" while Will screeched in delight. Young Caralyn smiled happily for this successful endeavor and Michael watched his brother skitter away, flying the toy around the room.

Zach picked up two beekeeper helmets from the chair and set them on the table. He sighed, having repeatedly asked his boys to not leave them lying around. He sat down in the chair, close to Emma, close enough that his leg touched her. She scooched over, turning just enough to rest her arm upon his thigh .

Bethany sat next to Mrs. Smythe, in the spot Will had vacated. Mrs. Smythe had pulled to her feet the basket of their never-ending needlework. The house—the world!—did not need another doily or sampler or snippet of fine embroidery, Zach often thought. Yet he understood the inevitability of the chore, which allowed the ladies to practice not only their handicrafts, but also their patience, and vocation to polite chatter, of which there was plenty.

"Father," Bethany said, her voice beseeching, "Will you please talk to mother about this weekend?"

"I would, sweet," he granted, lifting her face, until he finished, "but I happen to agree with her." Her crestfallen expression was nearly enough to break him, until he proposed, "Perhaps you should consult with your mother about having a weekend house party here and inviting Amelia to spy upon the festivities with you at your home."

Bethany's eyes widened. She hugged her clenched hands to her chest while her face lit up, smiling happily at her father. And then to her mother, "Please. Can we?"

"We can certainly consider the idea," Emma allowed. "I suppose we might be due to entertain in grand fashion again."

Zach moved his hand, settled it upon Emma's shoulder. She turned her eyes to him, beaming at his clever solution. She shifted her gaze again, back to Bethany.

"It requires a lot of work," she cautioned.

" Of which we are not afraid ," chimed three of their five children, as it was a statement Emma repeated often to them.

She grinned, her face in profile to Zach's hungry gaze.

God, how he adored her. Just absolutely loved everything about her .

"Why do you always look at mother that way?" Will asked, screwing up his face, his hand arrested mid-air, the carved wooden dragon paused mid-flight.

Zach wrenched his gaze from his wife. "Which way is that, son?"

"Like you're sore at her about something. Did Mother scold you as well today?"

"She did not," Zach answered, keeping a straight face. "Or, she hasn't as of yet. I like looking at your mother. I think she's the most beautiful woman on the face of this earth."

His wife turned to him, gave him his own smile, the one that made him want to kiss her in such a way that would require complete and prolonged privacy.

The children groaned and Mrs. Smythe chortled, and Zach calmed his expression, deciding his heated and greedy gaze ought to be tamed in front of his ever curious and incredibly observant children.

He sighed, a contented man. Content? No, he was not content. That was entirely too tame for the joy he'd known over the last decade and more, with Emma Elizabeth Ainsley as his wife.

Just this morning, he'd come across an old notecard he kept tucked away in his billfold. It was never removed more than a few inches from the leather pocket. Occasionally, he would unfold the faded and aged vellum of pale blue. He would read again her words to him on the day of their wedding, the little note having been attached to a small gift, a book on beekeeping. He'd since lost or misplaced the book, he wasn't sure; having shared it with his sons, it might be anywhere. But that little note was with him always .

Likely, after all these years, he'd read the words hundreds of times. Perhaps before he became only ashes in the ground, he'd have read them a thousand times more. He knew them by heart, heard them in his sleep, he was convinced. He strove every day to make sure he lived up to her words, her expectations, to the hard truth that he didn't deserve her, and must every day, earn her.

He closed his eyes and saw it again, the sentence set so prettily onto the paper in her delicate script.

I had a dream and it was you .

The End