Epilogue

Small, you said. Intimate, you said." Whatever accusation Rafe had intended to inject into his voice had clearly fallen far short of his goal, for Emma smothered a laugh in the palm of her hand.

"I'm sorry," she said, though her lips still twitched with mirth. "It was just four invitations, really."

Yes; four informal invitations, sent out mere hours before they had intended to be married. More announcement than invitation, really, since they had expected that prior engagements would necessarily take precedence. But Diana and Ben had come with their daughter, and Marcus and Lydia had brought their son and Lydia's family besides, and Phoebe—Phoebe had dragged along her entire clan. Her parents as well as her six sisters and brother and every one of their spouses and children had all descended upon Emma's home en masse. Even Chris had made a slow, careful trip down the stairs to bear witness to his sister's marriage.

And that was to say nothing of the children already in residence. All nineteen children presently within the school wing, and the two that had become their own.

Little Kitty had screamed through the duration of the ceremony, which had been mercifully brief, and Rafe suspected that Dannyboy and Hannah hadn't truly been paying attention whatsoever, since their heads had been bent together over the pages of a book that lay open across Hannah's lap.

They were going to be fast friends, the two of them. Little Edward was too young yet to prove an interesting companion for children of their age, but Diana's baby would make his or her appearance into the world ere long, and then there would be a whole new generation of cousins.

It would be a chaotic sort of thing, this life he had somehow found for himself. But a comfortable one nonetheless.

In the small bit of privacy that they had claimed in between the ceremony and the dinner that would follow—one which had swelled from the twenty or so they had expected to nearly a hundred—Emma slipped into his arms. "You do truly look handsome," she said. "Even with your face gone all mottled."

"I suppose I can be thankful that none of the children screamed at the sight of me. But I would suggest we put off a wedding portrait for a few more weeks." Just until the last of the bruises faded, and he might show his face in public without causing a stir.

"I'd prefer a family portrait," she said on a satisfied sigh.

"If you think you can get Kitty to sit for one," he said on a laugh. "Though I wouldn't place good money on that bet."

She gave a little huff of a laugh against his shoulder. "I think Danny might prove worse even than Kitty," she admitted. Her fingers stroked the plane of his back, slid up through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. "We have perhaps a half an hour before we are expected down again," she said, a silky note of suggestion in her voice. "Do you think—"

"God, yes."

Their lips had hardly touched more than a moment before a scratch at the door sheared through the silence. "And there it goes," Rafe said in a mournful voice against the corner of her mouth. "Our last bit of peace for perhaps the next twenty years."

"I'm certain we'll find a moment or two here and there," Emma laughed. "You have volunteered for this."

"I have, haven't I?" Lifting his voice, Rafe called, "Enter."

The door cracked, and Neil's voice sailed through. "Beg pardon, my lady. You have a visitor."

A visitor? "Were you expecting someone else?" Rafe asked.

Emma shook her head. "I can't imagine who it could be." Turning toward the door, she inquired, "Was there a calling card?"

"No card, my lady. She said her name is Ruth." Neil hesitated. "I'm given to understand that she is Daniel and Katherine's mother."

∞∞∞

"It's going to be all right," Rafe said, his hand squeezing hers as they paused for a moment outside the green salon, where Neil had placed the woman. Ruth. Her children's birth mother.

"I know it will." She appreciated the sentiment, the comfort he meant to give in service of easing the worry he thought she must have felt. But she had been through this dozens of times before. Perhaps the circumstances weren't precisely the same, but she knew—far better than could he—what she might expect.

She opened the door at last, and the woman perched there upon the couch looked haggard, strained, and so young. She couldn't have been more than perhaps five and twenty, her face already lined and creased with the stress of a hardscrabble existence eked out in a few coins at a time. Her dark eyes, so very like Danny's, shied away from Emma's gaze in shame. In embarrassment. So young, this woman, and her hair was flecked through with bits of grey already, frizzy little strands escaping the messy coil of hair she'd arranged atop her head.

"Ruth," Emma said gently, beckoning Rafe to follow her in. "May I call you Ruth?"

Ruth's hands trembled as she set her cup of tea back upon its saucer, a flush rising into her cheeks at the clatter of sound it made. "O' course," she said in a hoarse whisper.

"Thank you for coming," Emma said as she settled into a chair across from Ruth. "I had hoped you would. Some parents don't—or can't—and it always makes me feel…a little sad, I think." For the children who had been left behind.

Ruth's shoulders hunched. "Probably I shouldn't ‘ave done," she said. "I just wanted—I ‘ad to know if—"

"He came this morning," Emma said, and leaned forward to scoop a few biscuits onto a plate and pass it across the table. "A little past midnight, I think. They're both here. You have nothing to worry for."

A sigh tore through the air, and Ruth relaxed infinitesimally, the tight clench of her jaw softening. "I thought ‘e would. ‘E spoke o' ye so often. I thought surely ‘e would. It ain't that I don't love ‘im," she hastened to assure Emma.

"Do you know," Emma said, "I've had a number of parents deliver their children to my doors, and there have been remarkably few times I have ever thought as much."

"I do love ‘im," Ruth said. "But some women, I think, just ain't suited to motherin'. I been ‘alf o' one at best, all these years, and I just thought…I just thought they'd ‘ave a better chance—a better life—wiv a woman who was suited to it. The little ‘un—"

"Kitty," Emma said, interlacing her fingers with Rafe's. "Danny calls her Kitty. For Katherine."

"Kitty." Ruth muffled a sniffle behind the palm of her hand. "That's lovely, that is."

"Would you like to see her?"

There was a sudden startling glimmer in Ruth's eyes, and she pressed her lips together. "Best not," she said. "I thought if ye got ‘er young enough, maybe ye'd take her yerself. ‘Stead of bein' just one o' the other children."

"Rafe, would you mind?" Emma asked in a whisper. "Both of them?" And as he absented himself, she rose from her chair to breach the boundary of the table that lay between the two of them, settling on the couch beside Ruth. Gently, she collected the woman's hands in her own. "They're all my children," she said softly. "All of them. At least, I think of them as mine. But the truth is, there's never before been a child brought to me so young that they did not already have cherished memories of their own families, their own mothers and fathers. They are not looking for a mother in me, much as I would have liked to be one."

"But what ye must think o' me," Ruth said on a whimper.

"I think you are very brave," Emma said, "and so strong. I think it is dreadfully difficult to be a woman alone in the world. I think you have given me the most precious gift I have ever been so privileged as to receive. And I hope that this won't be the last I see of you. That we see of you."

"'Ow could I?" Ruth whispered. "After what I done?"

"I think you'll find children are remarkably forgiving," Emma said. "Ever so much more than adults. You are not the first woman to send your children to me, Ruth, and you will not be the last. Some of the children that come to me are orphans, it's true, but many have parents in situations like yours. Mothers and fathers who wanted a better life for their children. Those ones that are able, they visit from time to time. You would be most welcome to do the same. Ah—and here we are now."

Rafe walked once more through the door, Danny's hand held in his, little Kitty swaddled and cradled in the curve of his arm.

Ruth's hands drifted to her face on a smothered little exclamation. "Oh, Dannyboy," she said. "Jus' look at ye—ye look like a little gentleman."

"I got a bath," he groused, slanting a look up at Rafe that promised eventual retribution.

And a haircut, and a clean set of clothing. There hadn't been time to assemble a new wardrobe for him just yet, but there soon would be.

"And here's Kitty," Rafe said to Ruth. "Would you like to hold her?"

"If—if ye don't mind," Ruth said, though her arms were already reaching for the baby. Danny settled onto the couch at her other side, and together they marveled at the baby. And that was right, Emma thought. There was no such thing as too much love. It wasn't a resource to be hoarded, but a blessing to be shared.

Ruth would be one of the ones to come back. She was certain of it.

And when at last Ruth passed little Kitty back into Emma's arms, she had recovered herself from the last of her nerves. "Ye mind yer manners," she said softly, ruffling Danny's hair. "And look out for the little ‘un, hm?"

"I will," he said solemnly. "It's all right, then?" he asked. "If we stay? Me an' Kitty?"

"I think you'd better," Ruth said, clasping his hand in her own. "She'll love ye like ‘er own. She an' that ‘usband she's got, too."

Husband. She did have one of those, now. "Speaking of," Emma said, "we are terribly late for our own wedding dinner. Perhaps you'd like to stay, Ruth, and join us?"

"Oh, I couldn't." Ruth's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "What would they make o' me, yer fancy guests?"

"Family, probably," Rafe said on a chuckle, his hand falling upon Emma's shoulder with a gentle squeeze. "We've got room, haven't we? And even if we didn't, we'd make it."

It pleased her, that swift assurance. He had only ever wanted her happiness, and now—now they would share it. There would be more children through the years that stretched before her, more family, more love. And none of it would have been possible without this man who stood now at her side, offering more still.

"Yes," she said, gazing up at him, and it was more than just mere agreement. It was an acknowledgement of everything they would share between them far into the future. Every joy, every sorrow, each and every precious moment that would come—yes to all of them. Without reservation, without so much as an ounce of hesitation. "Yes," she said again. "Let's go, then, all of us. Together."

To celebrate the long-awaited happiness that had found them at last.