“It’s only a week,” Chris muttered. “How bad could it possibly be? Really.” Probably he sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that, but that was likely because he was.
“A week? I thought you’d said three days.”
“She manipulated me into more with sex. Quite a lot of it in quite a lot of places.” And it had been quite a lot of fun. If Christmas went well, probably he’d suggest it hadn’t, just to plant the idea of another round of such manipulation in her mind for next year.
Probably he’d do the same even if it didn’t.
Rafe coughed into his fist. “Emma’s got a theatre box, if you—” He broke off abruptly at Chris’ glare. “It was only a suggestion.”
“I’ll purchase my own damned box if I’ve a mind, thank you,” Chris said. He hadn’t much fondness for the theatre, but probably Phoebe would want to attend occasionally.Veryoccasionally. And he—well, he’d have a grand time filching trinkets from anyone who dared to cut them.
Probably so would Phoebe. She’d amassed her own tidy little collection of them.
“It’s…strange,” Rafe said. “I never thought I would see you married, much less happily.”
It was strange, even to himself. He hadn’t thought himself the sort. Probably he wasn’t, except—except that Phoebe had made him into that sort. “We suit each other,” he said. Friends first. Before they’d married, before they’d had a reason to be anything more, they had been friends. How many married couples could say that?
He’d gotten more than a wife out of that bargain. He’d gotten a whole social circle, a damnedfamily. And it was a loud, obnoxious one, but he had the oddest feeling that he could grow accustomed to it. Just so long as he had a home of his own to return to, which was quiet and comfortable and just his andPhoebe’s.
And it was damned satisfying to find her back within it once again. The past month had been calm and peaceful—excepting two breakfasts during which the Toogoods as a whole had descended upon his house with the excuse that it was plainly large enough to accommodate the lot of them. But he had gotten the sneaking suspicion that at least a few of themlikedhim. Somehow. For some nebulous reason or another, probably something that would never quite make sense to him.
Phoebe hadn’t suffered a nightmare featuring Scratch since she’d returned home. Hopefully, she never would again. She’d ceased to jump at shadows, and enjoyed security and safety once more. Scratch’s death had brought her only peace.
“I suppose you must,” Rafe said. “At least, Emma’s not mentioned any complaints from Phoebe to me. Did you know she brought Charity round to tea with her last week?”
“Did she? How did it go?”
“Just swimmingly,” Rafe said. “To all accounts, anyway. I can’t say I know of anyone else who would approve of his mistress—”
“Formermistress.”
“—striking up a friendship with his wife. But she seems a decent enough woman.”
“She is.” Charity had always been that. “She’s been a good friend to Phoebe thus far. Probably she could do with a few new friends herself.” Life had not been particularly kind to Charity in the past, but Phoebe would be. Emma, Diana, and Lydia would be. Even if she wasn’t the sort of woman whom they should much be in the company of, they’d all endured their fair share of scandal and more.
What was one more scandal? It wouldn’t signify to anyone who mattered. Probably it wouldn’t even be the last of them, since he intended to be rather scandalous himself.
Rafe extended his glass. “Pour me another,” he said. “I suppose this calls for a toast.”
Chris reached for the crystal decanter and poured another measure into Rafe’s glass and his own. “What to?” he asked.
“Happy endings,” Rafe said. “Seems fitting. Somehow, we’ve all managed to seize them.”
Chris lifted his glass—and paused as Phoebe wandered slowly past the hall outside the open doors, humming softly to herself. Hieronymus followed moments after her, plodding along in steely turtle determination so as not to be left behind.
It wasn’t the end. There were years and years left. And, God willing, they would all be happy. This was only the start of them.
“No,” he said. “To happy beginnings.”
Epilogue
Bedfordshire, England
Christmas, 1829
Too damned early in the morning
Kit stormed in through the front door, a scarf wrapped round his face to ward away the chill. Phoebe had been watching for him through the upstairs window in the library, curled up with a book in a wingback chair, with a throw blanket draped across her lap and a steaming cup of tea upon the table beside her. He’d left perhaps a half an hour before to take a walk in the downy drifts of snow that had come down during the night, blanketing the countryside in white.
