She looked back up, to the shape of him, his features inscrutable in the recently acquired darkness around them. She couldn’t see him, and yet somehow, she could feel the tears in his eyes all the same.
She wrapped her arms around his middle and held him close, nestling her face into the hollow at the center of his chest. She listened to the beats of his heart.
“It bodes well,” he said, once he trusted himself to speak. “A boy born to bridge the gaps between us all.”
“If he likes,” she said, her voice muffled into his shirt. She tilted her head up, smiling. “He’s already got a talent for it.”
“We have a lifetime ahead of us now to do with as we please,” he told her, keeping his hold on her as he moved to her side and gently pulled her toward their shared bed, toward rest. “And as you said, my son is very gifted.”
“My son,” she corrected, stifling a little, grinning yawn. “Ours.”
“Ours,” he agreed softly.
Claire climbed into bed, burying herself in softness, and watched her husband climb in after her. She watched him pull the blanket up over them both and leaned into his warmth once he had. “Do you think you’ll write another letter like that?” she asked before she slept. “Next time?”
“Next time I go to jail and lose track of you?” he answered, glancing over at her with a twinkle in his eye.
“No, silly,” she said with a titter and a light jab into his side. “No. For the next child.”
“The next …?”
She smiled. “For all of them.”
“All of them,” he repeated a little dreamily, pulling her into his arms as he mirrored her yawn. “Yes, Claire. I think I will.”
EPILOGUE
10 Months Later
London
Freddy was running late.
He had planned it out perfectly well, of course, but sometimes the whims of the universe just refused to cooperate.
And so instead of arriving with a triumphant stack of freshly printed, beautifully bound storybooks at the Fletcher-Cain doorstep just now, he was still trudging across Bloomsbury, on foot, with two very harried shop boys trailing behind him, each of them carrying three boxes in precarious, teetering stacks.
The sun was setting quickly, making the entire business even more treacherous as they dodged a bunch of slick little puddles that had gathered on the cobbles after the afternoon’s rain.
“Sir!” one of the lads called. “My lord? How much farther?”
“A block and a half!” Freddy called back. “Chin up! We’re almost there!”
“My chin’s as far up as it’ll go,” the other one muttered, clearly thinking that Freddy couldn’t hear him.
He laughed anyway.
“Here we go, just ’round the side!” he called, knowing that if his own arms were aching, even with all his investment in seeing this thing done, the shop boys must be in absolute agony. “I’m buying you both dinner!”
Dot Cain prised the door open personally, her face a thundercloud of impatience.
“Dot!” Freddy grinned, peeking around his stack of boxes.
“You’re late, Freddy!” she grumbled in response, stepping aside and motioning into the house’s kitchen. “Past there, please. Yes, you’ll see the table set up in the foyer.”
“Then why didn’t we go in through the foyer?” the chin-focused lad moaned.
Dot followed behind, shaking her head and glowering. “Do you know how hard it is to keep your wife in one room?” she continued. “It is very hard!”
