“Of course, you fool. I love you.”
She slid her hand behind his neck and pulled him down.
When she kissed him, not a single thing else mattered. Nothing that had gone before; not the person he’d been, the things he’d done, the things he’d misguidedly hoped for—a meek and mild wife, the hollow recognition of membership in an exclusive club. He reached down and hoisted her up against him, her sweet, clean floral scent enveloping him as easily as her arms did.
All that mattered was that he was hers. That she had chosen him.
Matthew broke away from the kiss, laughing.
“What?” Cressida breathed. “What is it?”
“Only I can’t believe my luck.” He grinned at her. “Months ago I had nothing.”
“And now?” She smiled coyly, taking his chin in her hand.
“Now I have everything,” he breathed.
He kissed her again. Hard, fierce, and long.
Epilogue
London, June 1876
“So what do youthink? I merely told her the truth.”
Cressida’s eyes danced about the assembled merrymakers who formed a half-circle about her, crowding in so they very nearly trod upon the hem of her plum evening gown. Each one of them hung upon her every word, their eyes wide and lips parted, more than ready to laugh.
And to think, she’d worried about being lonely, had been afraid to be shunned by her peers.
“Go on, then,” someone urged. “What did she have to say to that?”
“Well,” Cressida began, setting her empty champagne coupe upon a passing footman’s silver tray before continuing, “when I admitted that yes, what she’d heard was true, that I’d gone and ‘thrown my life away on some poor doctor,’ she shrieked. That, I confess, I did not expect. A terrible sound. And then, threatening tears, why, the poor woman had the gall to ask me if I might reconsider.”
A titter went through the group.
“What, reconsider?” Mrs. Rickard exclaimed, looking as glittering and resplendent in her evening wear as any duchess or countess Cressida had formerly known. “Weeks after the ceremony?”
Mrs. Rickard, or Harmonia, as Cressida had come to regard her, had heard this tale more than once. And yet she had the good grace and dramatic insight to gently encourage its retelling for the party attendees who were not as close with the former Lady Caplin, and current Mrs. Collier. They were similar in that respect, Mrs. Rickard and her—they both understood how to play to a crowd. Perhaps that was why they counted each other as close friends now.
Cressida reached out to snag another coupe of champagne—this one full—from a different footman’s tray.
She’d worried about finding staff for the new house, as it was notquitein fashionable Mayfair, but slightly north of Oxford Street—near the agreed-upon border, but still definitively within Marylebone. Matthew had laughed at her fretting and kissed her upon her head, assuring her it’d not be a problem. He’d been correct, as it turned out. For coin was king everywhere, as it turned out. And it could procure a decent residence and a decent living, even when one’s existence was on the margins of polite society.
She took a small sip, glancing over the rim, enjoying the building anticipation.
“Yes, wouldn’t that be just the thing? Imagine, discovering you’ve wedded a total boor,” she said, her voice lilting, “abysmally equipped in matters of… well. Shall we just say matters of the heart?”
Everyone chortled.
“It brings to mind my first marriage,” she said lightly, and was rewarded with even more guffawing.
“It leads one to wonder why you didn’t simply… reconsider that one,” Harmonia jested, earning her own laughter.
“So, how did you respond?” pressed a tall, red-haired artist in a loose green velvet gown, a Bohemian sort who was one of Harmonia’s set. And now, Cressida’s.
“Why, what was there to say? When one’s modiste lives and dies by her reputation, and, I suppose, that of her clientele?”
Cressida drew one hand outward and shrugged elegantly. The hired players kicked up into an energetic music hall ditty, no doubt at the direction of Arthur. His young friends and compatriots practically littered the drawing room, but Cressida would not complain. She found that she preferred their frenetic, youthful energy to that of the ton. Even Middlemiss had become dear to her, somehow.
