Extended Epilogue

Twelve Years Later

Evangeline trailed her hand through the silky water of the sea. The scent of brine was heavy in her nostrils, and the sun beat down, hot on her back.

In the sea, eleven-year-old Dominic played in the surf with Hugh, spray glinting in the sunlight as they splashed one another.

Hugh, despite his attempt to maintain his reputation as the cold-but-fair duke, had given in to Evangeline's urging and presented an entirely different version of himself around his family.

The version of himself she reflected he could have been all this time, if it were not for the cruelty of his father, and the responsibilities he had been forced to shoulder from a very young age.

Fifteen was too young to take on a dukedom.

She tried to imagine Dominic, still so young and carefree, taking on the mantel in just four short years, and couldn't. There was still so much of the boy about him, from his upturned nose to the freckles across his cheeks. A merry, light-hearted lad who had never wanted for anything, and who could not conceive of life being anything but filled with delight.

Even his lessons, undertaken at the castle with Hugh watching over it all cautiously, were met with joy. Learning was something else Dominic adored.

"Mama." Isabel, steady and serious at nine, tugged at her arm. "I have a question."

"Yes, dearest?"

"Where does the sun go when it disappears?" She pointed with a feather she had collected to the horizon.

The late afternoon sunlight had not yet faded in intensity, but in a few hours, it would drop behind the hill and stain the sky with its passing.

"Now, that is a question you must ask your father." Evangeline withdrew her hand from the rockpool at the sound of her baby's wail. "Why do you not join them?"

Isabel met her mother's question with a blank stare. "Because then I would get my shift wet."

"You can change as soon as we're back inside."

"I would rather draw, Mama."

"Very well." Evangeline dropped a kiss on her daughter's forehead.

She was much more like Hugh, and a darling to go with it. Inquisitive about the world, practical-minded, and just a little stubborn.

Well, more than a little stubborn.

And then there was Joseph, her baby. The light of her eyes.

He had just passed his first birthday and was tottering about on the sand with the help of the family's nanny. Miss Baker was a stern-faced woman with a secretly soft heart, and all the children adored her. She had been their nanny since Dominic had been a baby—a wee bairn, as Mrs. MacDonald would say—and frankly she had been invaluable.

"How's my little man?" Evangeline asked, scooping her son into her arms.

"I think he wants to play in the surf with his papa," Miss Baker said.

"Well, and so he might. Keep an eye on Isabel—I expect she will want to join us."

"Yes, ma'am."

With Joseph still in her arms, Evangeline headed toward the surf.

Summer at Eldermoor was nothing like she had imagined it would be, all those years ago. But since rebuilding, they had settled into a comfortable routine. Summer was a time for fishing and playing on the beach, for long rides and lazy days in the garden drinking tea and soaking up the warmth of the sun from under a parasol.

Having said that, now she was older, she had stopped caring so much about her complexion. A summer spent in the sun meant more freckles than most young ladies boasted, and certainly a stronger tan, but it also gave her sun-drenched memories to treasure, and she knew which ones she prized more.

The only downside of the children was that she and Hugh could no longer steal onto the rocks and make love there, bare bodies tangled together, the way they once had.

All in all, it was an exchange she was happy to make.

"Papa," Dominic called, spying her and her wiggling charge. "Mama is coming!"

"Are you ready?" Hugh paused, his shirt dripping and his hair drooping into his face.

"Do not," Evangeline warned. "For Joseph's sake, if not for mine."

Hugh cocked a brow, and her chest swelled. Just like that, she was in love with him all over again. Desperately, fervently, as urgently as she had been when she'd seem him through the smoke of their burning home and known he had come in for them.

"Then put him down," Dominic complained.

Evangeline reached the edge of the surf and stooped to test Joseph's legs against the water. Despite the heat of the day, the North Sea was unrelentingly cold. He flailed his short, chubby legs, and Evangeline laughed at the way he recoiled.

"I'm afraid that's how it goes," she said, though of course he didn't understand her. "The things you think you want aren't always what are the most pleasant."

Yet after a moment, Joseph put his feet into the water with a look of renewed determination on his tiny face.

Evangeline laughed, resisting the urge to bury her head in his hair. She and Hugh may yet have more children, but she never stopped mourning the moment when her babies stopped being babies.

Hugh came up to them both and placed his damp hand on Evangeline's back. "Don't you want to help your brother settle into the ocean?" he asked, his voice a low rumble.

"Do I have to?" Dominic asked.

"That is your role as the future Duke of Eldermoor, to take care of the people who are relying on you. And," he added with a wink meant only for Evangeline, "it gives your mother a break."

With a groan, Dominic came to take hold of Joseph's flailing arms. Yet, for all his professed reluctance, Evangeline saw the affection in his eyes.

"I think he's growing up to be a wonderful child," she murmured to Hugh.

"They all are. Where's Isabel?"

"Drawing us. No doubt a future masterpiece."

"She has a talent for it." He drew her closer to him, even though servants milled about the beach preparing them a dinner, and their children were close by.

It was no bad thing for her son and daughter to learn that a good marriage—a strong marriage that could endure all things—required affection.

And Hugh, for all his faults, was affectionate.

She reached up to pat the dark hair, now streaked with gray. "You're getting old," she teased.

"Only a little." His thumb traced over her lips. "And you are ever more beautiful."

"Only a little," she teased back, and he laughed as he tilted her head so he could take her mouth with his.

The kiss was brief, but it was enough to tell her that when they found their way to their bedchamber later, he would be interested in doing a lot more.

His eyes sparkled as he looked down at her. "About that baby number four…"

"I never knew you were so enthusiastic."

"I'm enthusiastic about certain things."

And where he was enthusiastic about certain things, a new baby was sure to follow. There was no doubt about that. Whether or not she carried full term, there was no denying that she would bear the fruits of their labor.

She didn't mind.

"Well, the fuller our family, the better," she said, looking up into the face of the man she loved so much. "The more children we have, the happier I'll be."

"I always knew you would be a good mother."

"A wonderful mother," she corrected.

"The best of mothers. And the best of wives."

She couldn't stop herself from smiling, biting it back with her teeth in her lip. "I shouldn't think you would know one way or the other, seeing as I'm the only wife and mother you've had."

"Lily is both a wife and a mother," he corrected. "And while I am sure she is excellent at both, I am also certain that you suit my lifestyle far better."

"So I should hope." She rested against his damp body, soft with the scent of salt and the deeper, more masculine scent that was all Hugh. "But I'm glad to hear it nevertheless."

"Look, Mama!" Dominic called, grinning back at them with that lighthearted smile she adored seeing so much. "He's walking!"

Sure enough, with the assistance of Dominic's steadying hands, Joseph was making his own way down the beach.

They were going to have a tyrant on their hands and no mistake. Evangeline hoped Miss Baker was adequately prepared.

"Our son," Hugh said, tucking her into his body, under his arm. "I have a sneaking suspicion he is going to be all too much like me, and all too much like you."

Evangeline looked up at him fondly. "Or perhaps just the right amount of each."

***

The day had been a long one, filled with too much food and salt and sun. By the time they finally retired, Hugh felt his age. Not old, precisely, for all Evangeline's teasing, but he certainly wasn't as young as he used to be. Once, he could have pushed through the haze of contented exhaustion, but now he was happy to allow it to consume him.

Evangeline stepped into the bedroom they shared, already dressed in her nightgown. Age had done much to mature her, but in Hugh's opinion it only added to her beauty. Her hair was still the same shade of chestnut, flecks of gray now visible around her temples, and her figure was fuller than it had been when they had first married.

Twelve years ago.

He would have changed nothing about them.

As though she could sense his thoughts, she smiled. "Tired?"

"Not too tired for you." He opened his arms, and she stepped between his legs, straddling him, her arms around his neck. "Never too tired for you."

She chuckled. "Give it another twenty years."

"By then, I hope you know I will be just as wildly in love with you as I am now. More so, most likely."

"I can't imagine our life in twenty years. Imagine, the children grown up and married. At least, so I hope. I worry about Isabel, sometimes."

"Don't." He kissed the tip of her nose. "She will grow to be just as captivating as her mother. And just as stubborn."

"She's so serious."

"So am I."

"You," she said severely, "are a duke."

"And she will be a duke's daughter. In ten years, the world will probably have changed a little—perhaps even for the better. She will find a husband who will love her for her quirks and idiosyncrasies, and she will have her own children who are just as delightfully odd and serious and stubborn and clever as she is."

"I just want them all to be loved the way you love me," she whispered.

The pressing on his heart grew, a pang inspired by her words that ran deeper than he ever could have imagined.

Loving Evangeline was imprinted onto the very soul of his being.

"And so they will be." He brushed the hair back from her face. "My darling, there is no way a child born from you will be anything less than loved. It's impossible."

The smile that broke out across her face was lovely and mischievous in equal measure. "Should we perhaps apply ourselves to the task of making another?"

"You took the words out of my mouth." He kissed her again, reveling in the taste of her, the steady burn of her desire igniting within.

She shifted impatiently on him. In these later years, he had not lost the side of him that enjoyed power and pain, but he also learned to appreciate the softer way he could make love to his wife.

There was never any lack of love in the more forceful displays of intimacy, but he enjoyed being able to show her his adoration in more tender ways.

"Another," he said, hissing as her hips rolled against his erection. "And another, and another, and another—"

She silenced him with another kiss.

And make another they most certainly did.

The End.