Epilogue

His bearing was regal. His expression somber. His eyes were very intense, but then, they usually were.

His hand was cold in hers.

This was the only way anyone would have been able to tell that Lord Kirke was nervous. She knew the echoes of an old fear reverberated in him. She squeezed his hand.

"He will love you," she reassured quietly.

His mouth quirked at the corner. "Well, naturally. I'm easy to love."

She laughed softly. "I love you, and he's a lot like me. If all else fails, just use a lot of words with ‘r's' in them, and he'll be too enchanted to say no."

He laughed.

He pulled in a steadying breath.

And so into her father's study he went to ask for her hand in marriage.

Dominic liked doctors, on the whole, because little impressed or shocked them. Few people understood better that humans were all the same underneath the skin. And, as Catherine had noted, doctors see a lot.

And so even when confronted by a somewhat legendary orator in the flesh, Mr. Keating eyed him with bemusement, amusement, and not a little surprise glinting in his blue eyes. His white hair gave him something of a saintly nimbus.

The study in which they sat was pleasantly lit by shafts of pale sunlight through the windows, and stuffed full of books and papers. Dominic always felt instantly at home in such rooms.

"Well, Lord Kirke, sir. When my daughter informed me that we were going to have a distinguished visitor today, I confess your name did not spring at first to mind," he said dryly. "It is indeed an honor to meet you. I am an admirer."

"Thank you, sir. Likewise, in both respects. I have heard a good deal about you from Catherine."

Her first name, soft and so intimately familiar, rang between them. Her father's eyebrows went up.

They stared across at each other in mutual fascination and a bit of awkwardness. Given that the last time he'd done this someone had aimed a musket at his face, Dominic thought things were progressing well.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Mr. Keating asked finally.

Her father of course knew—Catherine had been all quivering, radiant happiness when she'd told him they were going to have a caller, even though she hadn't told him why—but he was complying with an unwritten, ancient script by asking.

"I have come to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage."

There was a pause.

"I see." He steepled his hands and tapped his fingers together. He narrowed his eyes and studied Dominic. "And Catherine has already accepted you?"

"I am indeed just that outlandishly fortunate," Kirke replied quietly. He suddenly felt raw and green again, and perilously like he might just—for the first time in two decades—blush. His heart had taken up a swift hammering.

Her father regarded him solemnly, furry white brows meeting at the bridge of his nose.

"Sir, she is..." Dominic cleared his throat. "Catherine is my heart."

He saw the words suffuse the man across from him with something like peace and light.

"Well, that much was clear, sir," Mr. Keating said. "You gave an entire speech about her, after all."

Dominic was stunned. "How did..."

"It was an easy surmise, son," he said gently. "I read the speech to her. I saw her face when I was finished." He paused at length, and then added, even more gently, "She wept."

Dominic breathed out carefully. The little hairs rose on the back of his neck, as he imagined her expression the moment she'd first heard that he loved her. Joy lit every cell of his body.

This man's gentle acceptance, his kind, matter-of-fact astuteness: how soft love could be. Like that sunbeam through the windows. He realized he'd lived his life somewhat like a feral animal, inching toward this sort of gentleness, unwilling to trust it. It was safe in this room to settle into it, he realized. This kind of love—Catherine's for him, and his for her—would be a feature of his life forever.

"You do know how lucky you are, Lord Kirke?" her father said somewhat absently, turning toward the window, as if studying the view. He gave his fingers a little drum on his desk.

"I do," he said gruffly. "I vow, sir, to keep Catherine forever safe and happy. I will endeavor the whole of my life to make her proud. She will always be comfortable. And never, ever bored."

Mr. Keating turned to him and his face split into a smile so like Catherine's.

"Of that I've no doubt. Just as I've no doubt she loves you. I am pleased and honored indeed to give the two of you my blessing." He extended his hand. "I wish you the same lifetime of joy I shared with her mother."

Lady Wisterberg had, along with Catherine's aunt, first heard the news from the two of them when Dominic escorted Catherine back to Lady Wisterberg's town house the day he'd proposed.

Quite the panoply of emotions chased each other across her visage, while bewilderment and hope flickered across her aunt's. To Aunt Keating, Lord Kirke seemed a fine, famous figure of a man, after all. If somewhat notorious. She didn't regularly fill her cup at the spigot of ton gossip, like Lady Wisterberg.

Finally Lady Wisterberg sat back and sighed in a sort of surrender. Her bemused expression slowly evolved into something like thoughtful, wicked glee. She was clearly imagining the response of the ton when they got wind of this.

"Congratulations, Lord Kirke, on your exceptional good taste," she said with great dignity, finally. "And well done, Miss Keating. Congratulations on conquering your season of scandal."

Less than a fortnight later, Catherine and Dominic stood up before Reverend Bellingham at the church in Little Bramble and, in a quietly moving, private little ceremony attended by only her father, her aunt, and Mrs. Cartwright as witnesses, became husband and wife.

And while Lord and Lady Kirke longed to linger in Little Bramble with Catherine's father, duty required they return to London for the final few weeks of Parliament.

Catherine was perfectly game to sleep on a mattress in his London town house and make love like a pagan on the floor until they were able to fill the place with proper furniture, but Dominic wouldn't hear of his wife enduring such a thing when she could be cozily pampered at The Grand Palace on the Thames instead. Luckily, a suite had become available in the annex, despite the fact that the boardinghouse was now nearly full for the season. And as he'd never shied away from awkwardness, politely getting out the words "It's a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand. We regret our previous dramatic exits. And by the way, Miss Keating is my wife now" posed no real challenge.

And he knew the proprietresses were rather unflappable.

"Oh, I confess we thought something like this might be afoot," Delilah said sagely. "We've some experience with the unpredictable progress of love. Congratulations. We are so happy for the two of you!"

Everyonethere was delighted to have them back.

Catherine consulted with Angelique and Delilah about how to find gently used furniture and bargains on curtains, because she wanted their town house sitting room to be soothing and welcoming when Dominic returned home from a satisfying day of political skirmishes and speeches and irritating stodgy people.

They could easily make love like pagans while they were at the boardinghouse, after all.

And oh, did they.

Little Dominic Oliver Kirke (named for his father and grandfather) was born a year and a half after they were married, followed two years later by Serena Eleanor (named for Catherine's mother and grandmother), and then, at last, the handful that was baby Augustus Evander (named for the uncle who had sent Dominic to college). Each one was a uniquely delightful, clever, hilarious, heart-squeezing little terror, the light and bane of their parents' lives, the cause of gray hairs, tears, and hearts swollen with joy and gratitude. Catherine now had her merry racket at the dinner table—they took dinner all together whenever they could—and her chorus around the pianoforte.

When Parliament wasn't in session, the Kirke family often gamboled happily about Little Bramble, the little ones sometimes trailing their much older, very grown-up half brother, Leo, who visited occasionally and whom they worshipped. He, like his father, had entered Lincoln's Inn for law.

And her family had grown exponentially in all directions—she met some of Dominic's rather... er, singular brothers and sisters, which meant their children had a lot of cousins.

And eventually, she met Anna, too. Which hadn't been easy; Anna had been, of course, of nearly mythological import in her husband's life. But she was Leo's mother, and Catherine had come to love Leo. She came to appreciate Anna for loving Dominic at all, for giving him happiness when he was young, and for bravely raising that fine young man who was their son. What they had in common was love for their families, and in time they considered each other family, too.

And because they requested it, Dominic took Leo and Catherine to see his clover-covered refuge in Wales.

The three of them lay on their backs on clover and talked meanderingly of everything and nothing. Catherine was almost unbearably moved by so many things: By how the cadences of Leo's voice were so like Dominic's, even though he'd been raised in Yorkshire. By how patient Dominic was, and how he listened so intently to both of them—drinking in their words, asking questions, because they were precious to him. By how this modest little patch of grass and clover might as well be hallowed ground. For his penchant for seeking out quiet green places had indirectly brought Dominic to her.

After a time, she fell silent, and just held her husband's hand and listened to the two of them talking. And when Leo finally laughed with abandon at something witty Dominic said, she squeezed his hand with delight and he squeezed hers back.

And even when Lord Kirke was appointed lord chancellor and elevated by the king to Viscount Carlisle, a title which came with land and a house, it was to the house in Little Bramble they always returned.

In large part because it was where Catherine's parents were spending eternity side by side in the churchyard, and they could visit them. And sometimes when they visited the churchyard they stood together to watch the sunset in softly absorbed silence, his arms wrapped around her from behind.

Catherine's father lived long enough to see baby Dominic's first birthday. And both Catherine and Dominic were fiercely glad that his final years were ones of peace and joy.

As for nearly unflappable Lord St. John Vaughn, he was startled into several days of silent contemplation of the vicissitudes of life by the series of shocking developments—first the gossip about Miss Keating and Lord Kirke, which he'd fully believed to be nonsense, but which his parents had refused to allow him to chance, given the startling circumstances of his sister's marriage (to Hugh Cassidy! An American!).

And then by the news that Miss Keating and Lord Kirke had gone and gotten married.

He was shaken to have been wrong about the gossip. He was not heartbroken—he was, in truth, a bit disappointed yet relieved that the only woman he'd found interesting this season had been snapped up—but he felt mollified and somewhat vindicated that such a singular personage as Lord Kirke had done the snapping. It suggested that he had not been wrong when he'd seen something special in her.

That he'd never once had a clue about the direction of her affections suggested to him that perhaps he knew nothing about women at all, apart from how to get them to flutter their eyelashes (by merely looking at them, that was how). Like the violincello, this seemed something that might be worth learning.

And while over the years Lord Kirke's speeches continued to appear in the newspapers and to be quoted everywhere—and his work continued to stir up debate and controversy and progress, ire and fascination—the gossip columns lost interest in him, eventually, as the Kirkes were clearly blissfully happy, and this was less interesting. They were frequently seen out together, shopping at the Burlington Arcade, for instance, or at balls, always laughing and talking, as if they found each other the best imaginable company. Little by little they gathered around them friends who were good and interesting people, if not always easy people, from all walks of life. This suited them well.

Two of them were Mrs. Lucy Hargrove, and her husband, Mr. Hargrove, who had learned to stop talking about himself constantly because he found his wife fascinating.

Over the years, every now and then when someone tried to stir trouble by bringing up old gossip about her husband, Catherine would field it with dry wit and feel compassion for how unhappy a person must be to feel such pain at the sight of someone else's happiness. We all become more than one person throughout our lives, if we live long enough, her husband had once said to her. Together, the two of them were inviolable. Together, they became who they were ultimately meant to be.

And soon everyone knew Lord Dominic Kirke as a man who always danced at balls.

But only with his wife.

"The two of you make sense," Delacorte told Kirke in the smoking room. "I knew she was a good one when she liked the song where you clap instead of saying ‘arse.' She ought to be able to put up with you."

They had all, in fact, sung that wicked little song in the sitting room that evening to celebrate the wedding, and they'd all been given a little sherry.

"I'm touched, Delacorte." And Kirke meant it.

"I have begun to wonder if we ought to advertise as matchmakers," Angelique mused to Delilah at the top of the stairs a fortnight later. "Perhaps we should hold a lonely hearts ball in the ballroom and sell tickets."

Delilah laughed, then stopped and tipped her head, thoughtfully. "Hmmm. You know... it's not the worst idea."

"I was jesting, Delilah!" Angelique said hurriedly. "But perhaps it's time to have another concert or event. Think of how much fun we'll have planning the decorations!"

"Let's think about it when we have a little more time. But our secret seems to be serendipity, doesn't it? Can you imagine someone like Lord Kirke ever outright admitting his heart was lonely? I suspect he never thought he'd end this season with a wife."

The end of the season had been so satisfyingly busy at The Grand Palace on the Thames that Angelique and Delilah had scarcely had time for a frivolous conversation, or the sort of daydreaming out loud they liked to do in their room at the top of the stairs. The busy times made up for the inevitable lulls. The goodbyes were always poignant, and were seldom easy, but each one was a lesson in appreciating people while they were able.

But fueled in part by The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, everyone's dreams had lately been particularly colorful and lively—even, once or twice, lurid. Mrs. Pariseau had awakened with a start from a dream of strolling through an orangery, only to stumble across a naked Mr. Delacorte emerging from an enormous flower. She'd needed a shot of brandy to get back to sleep.

And scattered at very different points across England, a young woman was dreaming about the delightful way her life had been suddenly, improbably, upended. A formidable (some said terrifying) man with a title was mercifully dreaming of not much of anything, happily oblivious that he would soon be furious about the way his own would be upended. Another woman dreamed of escaping a way of life that confined her. And another man dreamed of his wicked past, which had been in many ways, great fun, but now he wished to outrun it.

None of them yet dreamed their paths would lead them to the door of a boardinghouse by the docks.

A door which remained under territorial dispute.

In his room, Ben Pike dreamed that a genie burst from a lamp had tried to kidnap Dot, and Ben had knocked him out with one blow. Whereupon Dot had gazed at him worshipfully.

Dot dreamed of a house made entirely of doors. When she finally chose one to open, she discovered Ben Pike standing there.

She'd been so startled she'd hit him again in the jaw.