Epilogue

EPILOGUE

December 24, 1819

London

A lyssa stared down at the latest shipment of books from Athens in the crate at her feet. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry or haul them out to the alley and burn them. "How many people in London want to read Plato in the original , Lucy?"

Her assistant winced, crossing her arms and shaking her head at the wooden box that consumed so many square feet of space in the shop's tiny storage room. "Last year, we had four."

"So we definitely cannot find twenty-six more," Al said and winced at the efforts of her husband to keep her shop filled with the odd, the unique and the definitely unloved tomes of authors of centuries past.

"My lady, I like your husband, I do. The earl is a good-hearted man. But we still have not sold last year's nine copies of Cicero's Orations, w hich the earl recommended to his friends."

"They'd rather read their own illustrious words rather than a dead Roman's."

The living man of whom they both spoke pushed aside the purple velvet curtain that separated The Twig Bookshop from its storage room and feigned disaster at overhearing their words. "I know my friends consider themselves so clever that all their geese are swans. Good afternoon, my darling," the tenth Earl of Darby kissed his wife on the cheek. "Hello, Lucy."

"Swans!?" Miss Lucy Malvern , who was the Baron Greyhurst's third daughter and a bluestocking who read Greek better than many a Cambridge don, pushed her spectacles up her nose. "My lord, I read your friends' speeches in the Times daily and I submit they cannot even speak the King's good English!"

Al hugged her husband as he swept an arm around her waist. "We are taking your lovely offerings and casting aspersions on them."

"Meaning you cannot sell them." Gabe sighed and shook his head, unfazed by their dismay. "Ah, well! We can hope for a new generation to study hard and do them proud."

Al eyed him. "While we wait years for that to happen, my dear, they clutter up this room. I shall have to offer them up at a reduced price."

"Why not teach a class, offer them up for free?"

Al caught Lucy's eye and they turned to stare at him.

" What ?" he said and threw up his hands. "If you can't sell them, give them away!"

Al lifted her chin and nodded. "Why not?"

"Why?" Lucy persisted and shook her head at Gabe. "Your friends won't come."

"They can't be saved, Lucy. Why try? Make the offer to young boys…" Gabe caught Lucy's evil eye on that statement, "and young girls, who want to put a feather in their caps."

"And offer the class for a fee," said Al. "A fine idea."

"And just who teaches this class?" Lucy asked with her hands on her hips.

Al and her husband stared back at her.

"I think you are both mad."

The shop bell over the front door ting-a-linged and Lucy huffed and left to serve their customer.

Gabe pressed a lingering kiss to Alyssa's lips. "That's better. I've gone too long without the taste of you."

She pressed the flat of her hand to his greatcoat and chuckled. "The last was only hours ago."

"A man needs his sustenance." He winked at her.

"So does a woman." She confessed to the man whose very breath charmed her. "Did you collect your gift?"

He'd been secretive about a few Christmas presents he'd been collecting while they were in town this month. "I did."

She patted his shoulders and ribs, his arms and drew him near her again. "You have nothing on you, sir. Where is it? What is it?"

He tortured her like this each Christmas. The first holiday they were married to celebrate nearly one complete year of wedded bliss, he'd had the old family parure of diamonds and sapphires reset for her. Six months before she had miscarried their first babe and he wanted to proclaim that she was and would remain the only woman he would ever love. The second Christmas, for the birth of their first child, their daughter Rose, one month before, he'd imported from southern France cuttings of a new breed of white roses. Last year, to commemorate the birth of their second girl Lily, he'd brought from Spain young plants of climbing purple lilies. This year, she'd not become pregnant…and the lack left her fearful she might no longer be capable. She was not yet too old. And her failure to conceive was not because they were less in love. No indeed, they were as joyfully—as scandalously—intimate as they'd been from the day they'd married.

He wiggled his brows. "I have it in the carriage."

"You wouldn't bring it in here to show me?" She arched a wicked brow. They both joked that their two daughters had been conceived in this tiny storage room amid the copious words—usually unsalable—of Caesar, Aristotle and the like.

"I want you to see it. Only you."

His sweet regard brought tears to her eyes. "Oh, my darling husband," she whispered and cupped his jaw. "Before we leave for home, I must give you your Christmas gift."

She'd suspected for weeks now that she might be able to say this to him. To give him the present he always valued above all else she ever purchased for him.

He crushed her close. "I do love you in tiny rooms, my sweetheart. They bring out the minx in you."

"And the mother."

"Yes," he said and kissed her with the fervor that she knew would lead them both straight to a fabulous night in their bed. "Again."

"You knew!" She laughed and threw her head back in glee.

He swept one hand against the side of one breast, then slid it down to her thickening waist and on to squeeze her derriere. "How could I not? I know your body as well as mine."

"What do you have in the carriage? Herbs? Cacti? A jungle?"

"Oh, ye of harsh attitude. Let's get your coat, madam, say adieu to your truculent assistant and get in our carriage. Our children await!"

"And does your surprise gift," she said as she did as he requested, closed the front door and stepped through the snow up into their town coach.

"Ohhh," she breathed as she saw in the seat opposite the marvelous creation that he'd had carved by the master carpenter in the shop two doors down. "He's so lovely. Bright. And his red saddle is so grand. Fit for two girls to ride together. Or perhaps three."

"Three. I told Mister Winslow I wanted the seat big enough that children might share it or grow into it as they did."

She sat, her husband's arm around her shoulders, admiring the handiwork of the carpenter and the thoughtfulness of the darling man she'd married. "You know, I think we should name him."

"Caesar?"

She snickered and tickled her husband's side.

"I thought we'd name him something more in keeping with our love affair."

"Such as?"

"Charm."

She wrinkled her brow at his smiling face. "Because?"

"Third time is a."

The following Christmas, when he came to the Twig to fetch her home two days before Christmas, he had in the carriage another rocking horse, a twin to Charm. Well-loved as that horse was, the wooden creature was often argued over and cried upon as well as vigorously—frantically!— rocked.

"What would you name this one?" she teased him as she put her hand over her rounded form, soon to be their fourth child. Perhaps a fourth daughter or a first son, they would learn in April.

"Fourth."

"Ah. As in Sally?"

"Exactly."

April tenth, Sally was baptised as Sebastian.

THE END