He peered at her. “That young man of yours is gone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Humph.” He frowned thoughtfully. “A pity. Sensible fellow. Hard worker.”
She laughed softly. “You are very discerning.”
“I am,” he agreed, “and I observe that you are not nearly so unmoved as you pretend.”
Elise inclined her head. “’Tis nothing a little rest will not mend.”
That evening, when the house had settled and the girls were abed, Elise returned once more to her chamber. The quiet no longer felt ominous, only spacious. She lit a single candle and sat at her desk, unfolding the scrap of paper on which she had earlier written and rewritten the same few lines—nothing she meant to send, simply the habit of setting thoughts down so they could be contained. She folded it again without sealing it.
Edmund would return—or he would not. She could not tether her heart to that uncertainty, however strong the pull. He was now bound to a name and a duty that preceded her, and she would not make herself small enough to wait upon the outcome.
She undressed and brushed her hair before she extinguished the candle and lay down, finally allowing herself to rest. If hope must be entertained at all, she would do so with caution, as she had learned to do with everything that mattered.
EPILOGUE
Edmund had been away far longer than he had intended. What had begun as a necessary return to London had become a procession of obligations that would not be hurried and could not be refused. First there was his father’s death—quietly arranged, as Renforth had promised, the scandal contained, and the newspapers fed a version of events that satisfied curiosity without awakening it. The funeral followed, sombre and restrained, attended by gentlemen who had known too much and others who suspected nothing at all. Edmund stood through it with a stillness that surprised even him, mourning not the man himself but the years spent in his shadow and the knowledge that no reckoning, however final, could truly balance what had been done.
Then came his assumption of the title Ormond.
He had never thought the name would belong to him. It felt cumbersome on his shoulders, like a coat cut for another man. Nevertheless it was now his, pressed upon him with a formality that admitted no refusal. The King himself—infuriatingly genial, maddeningly shrewd—had insisted Edmund keep it. The lands, he said, still required stewardship. The tenants required reassurance. The Crown required appearances. One could notsimply discard a peerage like an old campaign coat, no matter how tainted its history.
“You will do,” the King had said lightly, his eyes keen. “Better than your father did, at any rate. That will suffice.”
So Edmund had done what was expected. He rode out to inspect estates he scarcely remembered, listened to stewards with earnest faces, signed papers until his hand cramped, and set right what could be set right. Unentailed properties were sold. Others needed restoration. He learned, slowly and unwillingly, the shape of responsibility that could not be escaped by skill or courage. This was a different kind of command—less immediate, less clean, and far more enduring.
Through it all, Elise’s image remained with him like a calming presence just beyond reach.
He wrote, not often—he would not burden her with his confusion or his doubts—but carefully and precisely, whenever he had something that might reassure rather than trouble her. Her replies were fewer still, and equally measured. She furnished him with news of the school; of the girls; of Blake’s improving health and his remaining at the school; and Cook’s firm insistence that she was not enamoured of him. Jane, it seemed, had taken naturally to greater authority, and Elise wrote of her with quiet pride.
Nothing was promised. Everything was held in restraint. It was only when the spring gave way to summer, and the duties that could be discharged at last were discharged, that Edmund understood how much he had been enduring rather than living. The estates could wait. London could wait. Even Ormond could wait. Elise could not.
The journey back to Plymouth felt longer than it had any right to be. When at last the familiar road curved toward the cliffs, and the sea opened before him in that broad, unashamed way of hers, something in his chest loosened that had beenclenched for months. He did not announce himself. He did not send word ahead. He wanted—needed—to see her as she was, not as a woman prepared for his return. He found her in the garden.
He could hear the girls inside, the windows open to the warm air. The roses were in their first generous bloom, and Elise stood among them with her sleeves rolled to her elbows, her hands stained with earth and her hair caught back with nothing more elaborate than a ribbon. She laughed at something Cook said from the kitchen doorway, the sound unguarded and wholly unselfconscious.
She looked more beautiful than he remembered—not because she had changed, but because he had.
The months away had stripped him of illusion. He saw now what he had sensed before: her strength, her constancy, the quiet authority she carried without display. He loved her—not as a consequence of danger shared or fear survived, but as a deliberate, sober truth.
He did not call her name at first. He watched her for a moment longer, committing the sight to memory, refreshing himself in it. Then she turned, as if she had felt him there all along. Their eyes met.
The surprise on her face was swiftly overtaken by something softer and more complex. She did not rush toward him. Neither did she retreat. She simply stood very still, as if making certain he was real. “Edmund,” she said at last.
He crossed the distance between them in a handful of strides and stopped, uncertain for the first time in months. “I beg your forgiveness,” he said quietly. “I was away longer than I expected to be.”
She studied him before answering. “I expected as much.”
“I did not forget you,” he said, because it mattered that she know it.
“I did not think you would,” she replied, “but memory and intention are not the same as returning.”
He nodded. “I know.”
They stood there, the garden breathing around them, the ordinary world untroubled by the weight of what passed between two people who had learned, painfully, not to assume.
