Epilogue

"Fwog!"

With a delighted squeal, two-year-old Magdalena made a lunge for an amphibian friend she'd spotted lounging in their many-tiered

fountain in their garden. She'd managed to get a foot all the way in before Magnus swooped in and snatched his daughter up.

Paradoxically, Magdalena was enchanted by every living creature, from cats and dogs to (alas) flies and spiders, and pursued

their friendship with gleeful abandon, but she was outraged when she got her clothes dirty or wet, which nevertheless never

stopped her from crawling into shrubbery, or rolling in the hay with the stable cats, for instance. This mystifying toddler

logic was just one of the millions of things Magnus found enchanting about being a father.

He passed Magdalena to Alexandra so he could settle the picnic hamper he was carrying down on the grass.

"Magdalena, sweetie, frogs live in fountains. Little girls live in houses. It's not polite to go into the frog's house uninvited," Alexandra told her, and gave her a kiss on her round pink cheek, be cause her cheeks were irresistible and impossible not to kiss.

Magnus and Alexandra exchanged laughing glances over this unique etiquette lesson. They seized opportunities to teach whenever

they could.

"Foot wet!" Magdalena extended her leg with playful imperiousness to her father, who dutifully removed her slipper.

"Wet feet are the natural consequences of invading a frog home," he said in the growly voice she loved when he read to her

the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears at bedtime. Then he tickled her foot.

She squealed, and laughed, and her laugh was like that fountain: joy burbled out of that child.

Magnus felt downright concussed by love every time he heard her laugh.

Fatherhood had in fact brutally tenderized his heart.

The world sorted itself into what was important and what was not the night his daughter was born. Alexandra's terrifyingly

arduous labor brought a grim-faced doctor to their door and Magnus to his knees, bargaining with God. He had never, ever felt

so infuriatingly helpless as he had bearing witness to his wife's pain, the stunning danger involved in bringing a child into

the world. It had nearly cut him in two.

But when he at last held his daughter, and kissed his exhausted wife, who was blessedly fine and blissfully relieved and happy, the whole of his life narrowed to a single peaceful certainty:

Nothing else mattered but them. It was as though his time on the battlefield, nearly the whole of his life, was a mere faint

echo in comparison.

He would die for his two beautiful copper-headed loves.

They were the reason his heart beat. This was what he was made for: loving and protecting them until the end of his days.

He felt as though he was born when his daughter was born.

In public, he remained a dignified, stern-visaged edifice the country admired and revered.

In private, both he and his wife had become saps. They both teared up easily and shamelessly over Magdalena's first, second,

and third words ("cat," "Mama," "Papa"), first smile, first steps, first time she gently picked up a surprised spider by one

leg to hand to her mother. Magnus understood fully what an absolute bloody luxury it was to feel , and learned that "love" was in fact the over-simple name applied to a universe of emotions. Gratitude swept through him with hurricane force at frequent intervals: gratitude that he was strong enough and smart enough and absolutely ruthless enough to protect his wife and child from any vicissitudes of life. Gratitude for being humble enough to understand there were things over which he had no control at all, and the humility of this knowledge was what delineated every mo ment they lived together as sharply and brilliantly as a gem.

In bed at night, while his wife slept, sometimes he relived that magical moment Alexandra had told him she loved him, the

moment she had chosen him, and then the moments thereafter, that had led up to her breathing softly next to him in a huge,

comfortable bed. He did it the way a miser would with gold.

From the coaching inn that day, he had taken Alexandra back to The Grand Palace on the Thames. Straightaway they had sent

a trusted messenger on horseback to meet Alexandra's chaperones in Liverpool—a man on horseback would be able to travel much

faster than the stagecoach would—with the news that she would not be accompanying them to New York after all, along with short

letters from both Magnus and Alexandra for the Harpers to deliver to her father and her brother telling them the same thing:

they were well and happy but regretted not being able to visit them, as a result of an exciting complication in their lives—they

were now an earl and a countess, in the midst of selling one house and buying another and taking on new roles and properties.

They sent their love and promised they would indeed see them soon—together—whether it was on American or English soil.

And then they had settled into living happily for another month at the boardinghouse while they waited for Magnus's town house to be sold, enjoying the spirited discourse and the excellent meals and the truly delightful company. They both wanted a house that would be theirs , from the very beginning. Fortunately, Alexandra loved the house Magnus had been in the process of purchasing on Grosvenor

Square, and when the sale was completed, they—with more than a little wistfulness—finally bid their friends at The Grand Palace

on the Thames adieu and moved into it.

But as it turned out, his new estate in Surrey, amidst greenery and woods, was where they were destined to spend most of their

time. They fell in love with it straightaway.

The Earl and Countess of Montcroix set about discovering which pleasures and pastimes they might enjoy. As it turned out,

they both enjoyed the works of Miss Jane Austen and horrid novels like the stirring The Ghost in the Attic . Magnus found the works of Mr. Miles Redmond enthralling; Alexandra found them ponderous. They loved animals, and so they kept a lot of them: two cats, one fluffy, one smooth, who slept on the bed, and one hound, who slept in the house, and a few others, who slept in the stables along with their cat families as well as their horses. And eventually they adopted a donkey they named Shillelagh, a smaller, gentler version of her namesake, who became their daughter's best friend, and pulled her little cart around the circular drive in Surrey and along the meandering garden paths. (Magdalena called her "Shilly.") Because they both liked gardens that were both a little bit wild and a little bit tame, their grounds were both woolly and cultivated. And in a particularly secluded, enchanting spot in the woolly area, they'd tucked a little fountain featuring a stone boy merrily urinating, because it reminded them of their friend Mr. Delacorte and Magnus thought it was funny.

They discovered they liked entertaining, mostly of the casual sort, so they frequently got up picnics and parties of friends.

They invited when they could their friends from The Grand Palace on the Thames, and members of Alexandra's family, and people

they had come to enjoy among the denizens of the ton. Both her brother and father startled everyone by returning from New

York with American wives, beautiful, spirited, wryly clever women with whom Alexandra soon became fast friends.

They visited museums and parks, and took in plays and operas and musicales, went riding in the row, attended cricket matches

and a few more donkey races, traveled across the sea to spend a few months at his New York estate, and spent long quiet evenings

at home playing whist or spillikins or making love, and having long, meandering conversations in bed.

And in the process, they did indeed discover what they loved best: being married to each other. As long as they were together,

it seemed they could manage to enjoy just about anything. Or at least find a few laughs in it.

Little Griffin, who would be the second Earl of Montcroix, was born two years after Magdalena, and Penelope was born two years after that, and then Maximilian two years after that. And then what they loved best was being with their family, and watching their children run about the great lawns and gardens of their

estate with their cousins, all those coppery heads and tawny ones glinting in the sun.

And while Magnus made certain their love story was secretly immortalized in the Montcroix family crest—which featured a swan

for beauty and grace and love; and for protectiveness and military courage and leadership, a griffin, that terrifying mythical

creature cobbled together from other fearsome creatures—no one ever called the Magnificent Montcroix a beast again.

"Do you know who will probably be very loud when the, er, time comes?" Captain Hardy mused to Delilah, as they snuggled into

bed for the evening.

They were both feeling a little pensive, as everyone at The Grand Palace on the Thames had just bid genuinely wistful farewells

to Mr. and Mrs. Brightwall. The Dawsons had departed a fortnight earlier, and Mrs. Cuthbert had departed a week ago. She had

promised to return for another visit, and it was indicative of how she'd blossomed that no one interpreted this as a threat.

Delilah looked at her husband quizzically.

And then she knew.

"Dot," they both said at the same time. Him with grim conviction, her with stunned realization of the likely absolute truth

of this.

Delilah covered her head with her pillow, choking with laughter. "I will not think of that. You can't make me think of that!" She kicked him playfully.

They both laughed until they were coughing, which was lovely, and helped shake off their wistful mood.

"I hope she never leaves us, and that things stay the way they are now, forever," she said, and he gathered her up and kissed

the top of her head, because he knew what she meant, and they both knew full well this was an impossible dream.

The departure of cherished guests was always bittersweet. Much like Planet Earth itself, arrivals and departures were what

defined life at The Grand Palace on the Thames. No one left unchanged by their experience. A gratifying number of their guests

seemed to leave with a spouse.

And those left behind were often changed, too. The Hardys and Durands felt even closer now, thanks in part, ironically, to

the previous distance between the Brightwalls.

"I like to think we had something to do with the Brightwalls' glowing happiness when they left," Angelique had confided to

Delilah in their room at the top of the stairs earlier that evening.

All the maids were warned not to ever gossip idly about the guests. But in the kitchen a few weeks ago, Dot had shared with

them something she'd sensed they would like to know.

"The Brightwalls sleep in one room now," she'd whispered to them in the kitchen. "They didn't when they first arrived. We never have to make up the bed in one of the rooms now."

And all of them had smiled mistily at each other, feeling enormously relieved and so pleased for Alexandra and Magnus.

"We took good care of them here," Delilah said. "We gave them a safe place to rediscover each other. We forced them to think

about what sort of fountain they might want to be. I think we can be proud of that."

The ache of poignant farewells was fortunately already ameliorated by intriguing new guests. A young woman with a modest inheritance

had come to London to meet a man with whom she'd been corresponding. This gentleman had advertised for a wife and she was

looking forward to being one, and they had arranged to meet for the first time at The Grand Palace on the Thames. Delilah

and Angelique were very glad they'd be able to keep an eye on her. They knew too well the trouble a young woman alone in the world could find herself

in.

And young Lord St. John Vaughn, who occasionally stopped in to play chess with Mr. Delacorte, had told them of a gifted violinist

he'd recently happened to meet who was looking for a place to stay. A charming Irish fellow, apparently, by the name of Seamus.

And even as Delilah and Tristan doused their lamps for the night and snuggled in for the sleep of the contented, from various corners of England, indeed, from all corners of the world, the winds of fate were stirring in the lives of men and women, preparing to blow them right up to the front door of a little boardinghouse by the London docks.

And in her little room at the top of the house, Dot opened her journal, dipped her quill into a little pot of ink, and on

the top of a page wrote "Dot's Thoughts," followed by the date.

Today I found a tiny wooden donkey on the mantel in the pink sitting room. It was sitting on a scrap of foolscap. On it the

words "For Dot. My name is Fate" were written.

In truth, anyone could have left the donkey there. The people with whom she lived were kind and witty. Everyone knew how she

felt about fate, and donkeys, and it was possible someone was having one over on her.

But she'd seen that precise little donkey for sale in the stationer's shop for ten pence. She'd in fact nearly bought it instead

of the journal.

And she knew Mr. Pike had won exactly ten pence on Shillelagh.

Surely not? Still, the notion caused a pleasant glow smack in the center of her chest.

She briefly galloped the donkey across her little table, making idle clopping noises with her mouth.

Then she carefully settled it next to the inkwell, blew out her lamp, and climbed into bed.

No matter what, she was quite pleased to have a wooden donkey.