Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Three Years Later

The fireflies flickered over the lush garden blooms. The sky was a brilliant August sunset, all flushed with orange and purple as the nightingales trilled along the hedges at Stonehurst.

Charlotte smiled, ducking her head to press a kiss against the puffs of dark hair on top of Adam’s head as he drowsily lay in her arms.

The poor babe was cutting more teeth and had been fussy. So for the past week, after dinner, Charlotte had plucked him from the nursery and rocked and fed him outside as the sun sank into the horizon and the cool grass licked the bottoms of her feet.

And it was pure heaven.

To feel his weight rest against her body. To inhale that amazing smell babies possessed, so sweet. The way his pudgy hand clutched onto the end of her plait, so strong.

His eyelashes fluttered against her neck until they closed one last time as she swayed among the daisies.

It was a far cry from the freezing February day he was born on in London six months prior .

“I think it’s time for bed, my prince.”

And yet, Charlotte couldn’t shake the feeling that this moment was everything she had wished for once. And somehow, more at the same time. She remained outside for a few minutes before looking up at the windows, finding only a dim light in the nursery.

Quietly, she slipped inside with Adam in her arms and walked up to the nursery, pausing in the doorway at what she discovered.

Everything and more.

Ian was asleep on his back, his reading glasses slipping down his nose with a book beside him on the bed, and their two-year-old daughter Rose soundly asleep on his chest. Her wavy honey-blonde hair draped across them both, her little mouth parted, and her full, round cheeks flushed from the warm summer heat. In the morning, when the little girl raced after their dog or plucked daisies up from the field, she would have the most perfect dark-brown eyes of her father.

Charlotte smiled to herself and blinked hard, trying her best to commit the moment to memory. Every day, she wished to remember some small detail, and too fast, they were fading, slipping into one big realization that her children were growing far too quick for her liking.

She softly padded across the nursery and laid Adam down in his crib, then turned for the bed to do the same with Rose when Ian opened his eyes, and a small sleepy smile spread across his mouth.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “We were pretending.”

“Hmm.” Charlotte crossed her arms. “If it’s one thing our daughter loves, it’s pretending to sleep.”

“Sleep is her worst enemy.”

“My point exactly.”

He reached over with his free hand and tugged at Charlotte’s skirt, drawing her closer. “I’d kiss that smug look off your face if only I could reach.”

His hand wrapped around the back of her thigh and inched his fingers upward .

She grinned at her husband, knowing full well what his intentions were. “I take it that she put up a fight.”

“Well, I won.”

“Obviously,” she whispered.

He softly chuckled and let go of her leg, righting his reading glasses.

The sky outside the nursery window had faded to night, and Charlotte wished for nothing more than to kiss her husband without her children underfoot.

“Perhaps I should leave you here trapped,” she teased, suddenly straightening.

“You wouldn’t dare, Duchess.”

“No?”

He scrunched his nose. The silver hair by his temple seemed to flicker in the room’s candlelight.

She reached for Rose, scooping up her daughter into her arms. Once, not too long ago, she was so much smaller and fit snuggling against her chest. And now Rose was all legs and arms and full of unbounded energy. Charlotte loved watching Rose run about and explore, but she equally loved the moments when her daughter lit up and ran into her arms. She missed the baby snuggles, the moments rocking her to sleep, and the small little quiver her pouty baby lips made when she was dreaming.

Motherhood was equal parts loving and grief. It was exhausting and the most rewarding thing Charlotte had done with her life. It was everything she could never have dreamed of or prepared for, and she was thankful each day she could experience it alongside Ian.

She met Ian’s eyes, losing herself for a moment in his heated stare before turning to pad across the room and depositing Rose into her bed.

Ian came up behind her, circling her waist with his arms as they both gazed down at the girl who nestled into her bed, sticking her cute bottom in the air and wiggling beneath the covers.

“She sleeps like you, Lottie. ”

“I know. But today she said the funniest thing… Oh, what was it? It sounded exactly like something you would say. I wish I remembered.”

“This is all I wished for,” he said after a moment.

“Falling asleep, reading? I believe you did that last evening and the evening before that…”

He spun her and cupped her face in his warm hands, shaking his head at her and looking absolutely and deeply in love. She would never tire of that look.

“I dreamt of putting our children to bed. Of talking about the small things that happened over the course of the day. Of sharing a life together.”

He kissed her forehead, and she felt the warmth of reassurance flutter through her body.

For years, she had believed she would be alone, moving through the world with a smile on her face and feeling an aching emptiness inside. But she discovered that wasn’t her fate. Loving Ian gave her a second chance at happiness. He urged her on, pushing her to live.

And now she had Rose and Adam, and the seminary was doing well, and in between Ian becoming an active member of the House of Lords, he had spent his time advocating for the modernization of London’s buildings.

She reached up to her toes and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, then pulled away, holding her hand out to him.

“Is it your turn now?” he asked.

“For you to tuck me in? Yes.”

“My favorite part of the day.”

Once they reached their room, Ian closed the door softly behind them and drew her close. They swayed back and forth, dancing to some phantom orchestra, listening to the nightingales outside their window.

They undressed one another, then crawled into bed, finding comfort in each other. Tonight.

And each night forward.

Ian and Charlotte .

The Duke and Duchess of Dandridge, apart no more.

Ever the phoenixes.

THE END

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