Epilogue

Epilogue

THE CONSERVATORY

It was necessary for me to share my story with the police, so I did.

After that, I was hustled with brusque, maternal clucking by Christine to the Conservatory, where I joined Portia and Lady Jane and was bundled in a fluffy, soft, woolen throw and given a mug of hot cocoa by Laura.

After some time, Richard came in to collect Lady Jane, but she didn’t leave without giving a cheek kiss to me and Portia.

I thought that was sweet.

Daniel came next to claim Portia. She and I hugged for a long time before I let go, and Daniel stunned me by taking me in his arms and holding me tight for a moment before he too released me, and they went to bed.

As they left, Stevenson came in to announce that Ian was finishing up with “the local constabulary” (his words) and would be joining me shortly.

I accepted this news with a nod, and he turned to leave, but I called out to him, and he stopped.

“Thank you, Stevenson,” I said quietly.

To my surprise, he executed a very formal bow, and when he straightened, looked me right in the eye and said, “It was my pleasure, my lady.”

And after delivering that, leaving me breathless and tingling, the butler of Duncroft vanished into the greenery.

It wasn’t long after when Ian joined me, the sun kissing the horizon as a herald to dawn.

I waited until he’d collapsed beside me and lit his smoke before I asked, “Is it done?”

He nodded. “They’ve arrested Clifton. Taken all the statements. Dad and Daniel and I walked them around the house and showed them the evidence. They’ve taken pictures, their own fingerprints, collected samples of the liquor and the mannequin, and Kathleen is meeting them at the station to lay out what we found.”

He took a drag, blew the smoke away from me, then turned back to me.

“The cleaning girl, her name is Trudy, was taken in for questioning. She’s talking. Admitting everything. Apparently, she was getting cold feet. As such, she returned the flute but hadn’t had time to collect the other things, some of which she didn’t know Clifton had positioned.”

Another mystery solved.

“Did something else happen to you in the Rose Room?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied.

“They told me Trudy said something about your tablet. Clifton told her to download his book or something?”

And another mystery solved.

“Yes. I thought it was me. But someone opened it to that picture.”

Ian nodded, took another drag from his cigarette, and blew it out.

“Alas, my darling, although things don’t look good for Mr. Clifton,” he carried on, “it’s unlikely he’ll be drawn and quartered for his shenanigans. He’ll probably spend some time in jail, but not much of it. And when this hits the media, it’s a sure bet he’ll get what he wanted, and his book sales will skyrocket.”

I knew that was the sad truth.

But we’d endure it, we’d already endured worse.

And now, mercifully, that last was all over.

He took another drag from his cigarette, blew out the smoke, and turned more fully to me.

“Daniel took me aside,” he announced.

“Oh boy,” I mumbled.

After seeing the protective gestures Daniel treated my sister to while Ian was laying out the case, I was expecting him to tell me Daniel had shared he was going to ask for Portia’s hand.

“He wanted to come clean.”

That was a surprise.

“About what?” I asked warily.

“With what happened tonight, he wants it all out, and he’s told me he’s right now sharing this with Portia too, but he lied about not being out that first morning you were here.”

I felt my lips purse.

“You were correct in your deductions,” he informed me. “Brittany was furious Daniel was perfectly fine allowing her to serve his family and see to his new girlfriend. She was making more threats and demands. Alas, he had nothing more to give, so she told him she was going to tell Portia about them. He went out that morning to meet her away from the house to try to reason with her. His efforts, as we know, failed. And this, my love, is the real reason why he packed Portia up to escape later that day. He wanted to get her away from Brittany.”

This was annoying.

However, now, everything was explained.

Except.

“Did you have suspicions it was Clifton?”

He took another pull from his cigarette and nodded. “Yes. He’s the only stranger in recent memory who had been shown to the areas of the house he utilized. Including the Brandy Room. Dad showed him some papers there, and shared that Clifton was with him when he opened the safe. Although I suspected, I didn’t want to entertain it. The fact someone on staff was letting an outsider into the house to wander at will unseen while we went about living our lives none the wiser was unsettling.”

He could say that again.

I shivered.

He noticed and murmured, “We should go up. You’ve had a trying night.”

“We all have. Finish your cigarette,” I replied.

Ian being Ian acquiesced by taking another pull and wrapping his arm around me.

“It all came together when you saw him,” I guessed.

“Yes, and no. When Kathleen called to warn me he was approaching the property before it culminated, she’d already told me they’d tracked him to a grubby flat in town. So he was staying close, which made him the prime suspect, and therefore she was keeping an eye on him. Sadly, they discovered this after his earlier visit and mad dash from you. But yes, after she shared that, I realized his intent was to terrify anyone who might happen upon some scene he created, and from what was already reported to me, his motive was clear. I know these types of maneuvers well. He was hedging his bets.”

“Mm,” I hummed.

His attention on me changed, and I knew why when he asked, “Did you have a nice chat with Mum?”

Nice wasn’t how I’d describe it…exactly.

“Yes,” I said.

“Care to tell me what you two discussed at three in the morning?” he requested.

I put my head on his shoulder and replied, “Perhaps someday I will.”

“All right,” he gave in gallantly. But then, his tone changed, it was very quiet, when he queried, “She knows, doesn’t she? And now you do too.”

“About?” I inquired cagily.

“Everything.”

I sighed.

Then I turned and kissed his neck.

I settled in again and answered, “Yes, honey. She knows everything. Though, I suspect, the lady of the house always does.”

Ian didn’t reply.

He smoked his cigarette, and I sat cuddled into him while he did.

And when he was done, arm still around me taking me with him, he leaned forward and crushed it out.

“I’ll ask Stevenson to dispose of the rest of these in the morning,” he murmured, indicating his cigarette box.

It wasn’t right, and I didn’t have the energy in that moment to protest, but I was going to request he didn’t. It wasn’t healthy, but he could at least finish them. They had to be expensive, and it would be a waste.

Mostly, though, it was about memories of me and Ian in the Conservatory, and I didn’t want to lose any part of our time there.

However, I supposed I’d get used to it.

He pulled the throw off me and helped me to my feet.

He went to the tablet and extinguished the lights.

Then, holding each other, Ian’s arm around my shoulders, mine around his waist, we walked through the shadowed paths lit faintly with the coming day, into the deserted foyer, turning lights off along the way.

And we returned to the Hawthorn Suite.

* * *

To tie it all up…

Daniel and Portia didn’t make it.

They gave it a go, but in retrospect, I believed everyone knew they were doomed to fail.

Daniel’s expanded app launch was a resounding success, however. He and his mates dreamed up another one, and it, too, performed swimmingly (Ian invested in that one as well).

Nonetheless, all of this meant he was very busy and didn’t have time to give my sister the attention she thought she deserved.

A mutual decision, they broke it off.

Though mutual, Portia was Portia, so it was also dramatic.

Daniel then turned his attention to launching a new social media platform, which was highly successful (Ian invested in that too).

Not long after the breakup with Portia, Daniel found a no-nonsense woman named Jenny, who took absolute zero shit. They married in a tiny chapel on the coast with only very close relatives and friends in attendance (Jenny’s idea).

Daniel went on to make his own millions, and as such, Jenny could turn her attention from being a nurse to managing him, their home and their brood of four children (the number of children also Jenny’s idea).

They bought a farm that had a big, rambling, stately house close to the coast and not near, but not far from Duncroft.

They were happy.

Portia found a position at Liberty.

She then invested her time, and her money, in opening her own boutique.

It was very stylish, and with her taste, offered beautiful things, but she wasn’t a natural businesswoman. Even if she often asked Ian his opinion on how to run things, it stayed afloat on a wing and a prayer.

She eventually met a professor at Cambridge named Colin. He was tall, handsome, quiet, studious, whip smart, had piles of patience and worshipped the ground Portia walked on.

They married in a registry office with Portia wearing an antique forties, ivory satin, to-the-knee dress and a pretty fascinator. Lou wept. I signed their marriage certificate as a witness.

I often marveled at Colin’s profound fortitude in the face of Portia’s persistent antics (no, she never really grew up). And I credited him and him alone with keeping their two children’s feet on the ground when she put great effort into spoiling them rotten.

But it worked with them.

Beautifully.

Lou’s surgery was a success. Her migraines went away, and she found cute hairstyles to wear while she was growing back what they had to shave. She eventually fell in love with an old-money MP who was fifteen years her senior, married him, and along with their townhouse in London, she had her own manor to oversee in Kent.

But I had her beat; hers only had eighty rooms.

Eventually, I told Ian about Lou and his father. I didn’t think it was fair, when things remained awkward between Lou, Richard and Jane, that he didn’t understand why.

I also didn’t like keeping things from him.

He, of course, knew. He’d just been doing the same thing I had, and thinking I didn’t know, he was shielding it from me.

If he ever thought less of Lou, I didn’t know.

More importantly, she didn’t either.

Steve Clifton, and Trudy, both did jailtime.

Though, as Ian suspected, not much.

I didn’t keep track of Trudy, but Ian was also correct that the hullabaloo piqued interest in his book, and it sold scads of copies.

His family, however, was terribly embarrassed about what he’d done and wrote Richard and Lady Jane a formal apology on his behalf.

When Clifton was released, emboldened by the sales of the book about his aunt, and buoyed by his infamy, he quickly researched and wrote another one about an unsolved murder mystery at an aristocratic estate.

The reviews of his writing were scathing. Historians and investigators alike were quick to point out the shoddiness of his research, and as such, his findings. His continued bent toward misogyny was called out contemptuously and broadly on all social media platforms, and the book flopped.

None of this played well with publishers, and he couldn’t find another contract.

His personal grand finale came not long after, when he drank himself to death in a drafty, dilapidated cottage on the Isle of Wight.

Just to be thorough, even though Michael and Mary were invited, Chelsea was not, this being to Ian’s birthday party.

However, this was reversed at the Christmas bash.

She never said, but I suspected Lady Jane did that specifically because, by that time, I had an enormous, heirloom diamond-surrounded-by-rubies ring on my left ring finger.

Given to me by Ian.

As planned, Ian showed at my place in London that Sunday evening with a bag in hand.

Then he took one look around my cramped Kensington flat, and, being the arrogant viscount-very-soon-to-be earl he was, he bundled me up and took me to his massive, modern, penthouse apartment with a view of the Thames.

Within a month, I put my flat on the market, because after that night, except to get my things, I never went back.

We started with a dog, a chocolate Labrador puppy I named Charlie.

Ian made threats that we’d never have children, considering how much trouble and oversight a rambunctious puppy brought to our lives. And he still grumbled, even if he took Charlie to his office with him every day, and when we were photographed walking him on the street or in the park, it was Ian who was always holding his lead.

Considering he effectively stole our dog, I came home one day to an adorable ragdoll kitten he presented me.

I named her Moxie.

She liked me.

But she adored her daddy.

I dallied in the vestibule past the allotted time on the invitations, so I walked down the aisle at precisely three minutes after three when Ian and I were wed in a sanctuary stuffed full of friends, family and villagers.

The pews packed, it was standing room only in the pretty church on the knoll in Dunmorton.

I’ll never forget the look on Ian’s handsome face when he first saw me, nor his bark of laughter that shocked everybody as it rang through the space.

But I was about to be a countess.

The bodice of my gown was lace and pearls with a low vee and pretty, all lace cap sleeves.

But the skirt was an enormous poof of countless layers of tulle that trailed behind me a good four feet. It was so huge, Mom and I barely fit as we walked down the aisle.

What could I say?

I wasn’t about to let Alice and Adelaide and Anne down.

But most especially, Ian.

As for his part, he surprised me, and as we dashed out under floating, baby-pink rose petals on a warm summer day, a shining, open-topped carriage awaited us at the end of the path.

It was a long journey, and slow going, but I didn’t notice it or anything else because Ian and I made out the entire way. And the driver was occupied, Ian was stealthy, and his mouth kept me quiet as my new husband’s hand found its way under my skirts.

Our reception was a garden party outside the back doors of the Conservatory at Duncroft.

It, too, was packed and alive with laughter.

Happy.

The title was transferred, and the tours began, but to our surprise, Richard loved them.

Perhaps it was the awe he saw in the tour-goers’ faces when they took in his family’s legacy. Perhaps it was because he was indeed social, as Lady Jane said he was. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

But it wasn’t unheard of for the deposed earl, to the irritation of the guides, to suddenly appear in order to confiscate a group and take them on his own private tour of his home so he could brag unashamedly and show them all his favorite places.

And then it was Richard’s idea to open the house for free to student tours a couple of weekdays a month. Kids from all over the United Kingdom took field trips to see Duncroft House and learn about it and its part in England’s history.

For those, only Richard played guide.

Long before this, though, Ian, Richard, Daniel and Stevenson put their heads together, and although Duncroft had a security system (first floor windows and all the doors), a new, far more extensive system was installed.

Cameras and a room that was dedicated to video monitors and sensors.

Sam was promoted to head of security.

Along with that, all the panels were nailed shut, except those that opened to the Turquoise and Viognier Rooms. Those solely because the passageways made it easier to serve.

This was done to prevent any further high jinks, and possibly mishaps, from happening in the walls of Duncroft.

But also, and mostly, it was because the staff was part of our family, and we wanted them to feel that way as they went about their duties of looking after us and our home.

Ian and I remained in London after the birth of our first child, Alice, and our second, Gus (Augustus, obviously) as well as our last, Walter (though, he eventually earned the nickname Wolf).

But then city life became too much for us. Ian and his holdings, me and the patisserie, three kids, a cat and a dog, it was too busy and there wasn’t enough time for the important things.

So I trained up my assistant chef, transferred my responsibilities to her, Ian cut back on work, and we moved to Duncroft.

Ian still worked, and I opened a patisserie school I mostly oversaw, but sometimes taught at, in some converted stables in the village.

Ian got Alice another cat. I got Gus another dog. We both presented Walt with his own pup.

Lady Jane and I, together, planned all the birthday parties, the Christmas party, the Bonfire Night, and we added funding a big fireworks display in the village for New Year’s and an annual open house for the villagers on May Day.

Duncroft was no longer a great hall shrouded in mystery.

The tours were sold out months in advance, the ambulance service in the village was fully funded, and a small charity was created to look after the local elderly so they could remain in their own homes.

And again, due to Duncroft, money poured into the village, as two weekends a month, the tourists arrived.

The Bernini was ooed over, the Ansdell was ahed, and thousands of feet shuffled over the spot where Dorothy Clifton lost her life.

Under which the bones of Alice and Wolf were entwined for eternity, the foundation of a sweeping legacy.

Yes, I read the words of the countesses who came before me.

Every last one.

More than once.

And some of it wasn’t easy, for more than obvious reasons. Alice’s entries were reminiscent of Beowulf, others were akin to trying to decipher Shakespeare.

But I got the gist.

Joan might have given the line her coloring, but it was Wolf who gave Ian (and others) his hotness.

Shoowie.

I scribbled my own lines at the end of the last journal.

And there were a lot of them.

I couldn’t help it and didn’t try. I didn’t want future countesses to miss anything.

And I wanted our love story to be known.

So it would be.

Tour visitors, students, dogs and cats, kids, staff, and Daniel and Jenny and their brood, Lou and her man, Portia and hers, also their children, my mom, visits from friends and further family, brought the house back to life.

And there was no denying, the house loved it.

It was what it was built for, naturally.

Say what you will, but I believe the house spoke, at least to me, and I believe it took care of us all, and not just providing a roof over our heads.

Then again, that might just be fanciful.

But eventually, those sad days would come, and they did.

We lost Richard, then Lady Jane.

However, it wasn’t simply our mourning that made it so Ian and I didn’t move.

We never left the Hawthorn Suite.

Tradition be damned.

And last, on the second floor, in the gallery, a new portrait was hung.

Very tall and proudly large, it showed me seated, wearing an edgy red gown that Portia selected for me. Ian was standing next to me, wearing a handsome, perfectly-fitting charcoal suit.

The collar of his shirt was open.

I had a two-year-old Walt in my lap. Ian had our four-year-old Gus on his hip, seated at his side was a chocolate lab, and standing next to him with her hand on Charlie’s head, was Alice. Curled at my feet, was a ragdoll cat, at Ian’s, a Himalayan, and seated panting at one outer edge was our English bulldog (Walt’s) and lounging at the other one was Gus’s springer spaniel.

We were placed directly across from the portrait of Adelaide and Augustus.

The perfect spot.

Ian, Alice, Gus and I were smiling.

Walt was giggling.

It was painted in the Conservatory.

The End

PS:

Oh!

It’s important to note, I had my mind on other things, so I was in no state to check. But while her Grandpapa and Grandmama were in the city for one of their many visits (yes, it would take grandchildren to wrest Lady Jane from Duncroft, and they did, often), out and about entertaining baby Alice, her mummy and daddy were utilizing this much needed alone time in bed, making her brother.

And when that conception occurred, I couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure it was three oh three.

Walt, as Walt became wont to do, made his own times.

However, I knew, because they kept track of these things, that on a very early stormy morning just two days before her father’s birthday, after too damned much labor, Alice was born.

And I would never know what it meant, truly, but it gave credence to the legend.

Because that joyous event definitely occurred at three oh three.

The End