“Oh, what a lovely way to look at it,” she murmured. “But, Kendrick. Will you do me a favor?” she asked, fighting the pull of sleep.
“Anything for you, Jenny.”
“The next time someone tries to kill you, will youget out of the way?”
Kendrick laughed and kissed her.
Epilogue
December 1901, Cornwall
As the sun set, Genevieve woke with a sense of anticipation. She rolled over and nudged Kendrick awake.
“Hmm?” her husband rumbled, his arms reflexively coming around her.
“Fletcher is coming home this evening. He might already be here!” She beamed. She hadn’t seen him and his wife, Liza, and the girls in six months and had been counting down the days.
“August will meet them at the train station,” Kendrick murmured.
“But we have to get up!” Genevieve insisted.
“Do we?” Kendrick whispered into her neck.
“Yes.” Genevieve laughed. “I’m sure the rest of our guests will be rising as well; it wouldn’t do to lie abed with the rest of the house waking.”
“I don’t know that Salem and Etienne are especially early risers,” Kendrick rumbled, but Genevieve was slipping from the covers and donning her dress.
“Come on!” she urged.
“Anyone would think Christmas was today, and not four days hence.” Kendrick chuckled, but he got up.
Genevieve, clad in a fashionable gown with a high neckline and a sloped waist, hurried down the hallway. If she went left, she would enter the large system of caves below the cliffs, expanded by enterprising smugglers in days of yore. She would eventually reach the sea far below, smell the salt and hear the low roar of the waves. Some days, she would go and sit and listen and watch the sunlight reflected on the water.
But not this evening. This evening, she hurried up the stairs and into the large Cornwall manor that Kendrick had bought two years into their marriage as a retreat from the hustle and bustle and general unhealthiness of London. It was one of her favorite places. The children had loved growing up here.
Kendrick caught up with her in the front hall just as the sound of a conveyance approaching reached their ears. Robbie threw open the door ahead of her, a big grin on his face.
Genevieve stepped out into the evening air as a bright-yellow automobile pulled up in front of the house as neat as one could like. “Oh!” she exclaimed.
But the girls were boiling out of the car as Fletcher and Liza laughed. “Nan! Nan!” the girls exclaimed, their curls bobbing from under their straw hats. “Do you see the car?”
“I do!” Genevieve said, wrapping Samantha and Evelyn in a big hug. They had both grown so much. But then she was abandoned with shouts of “Granda! Did you see the car?”
“Can’t hardly miss it, can I?” Kendrick mock-growled, lifting the girls in his arms as they shrieked with laughter.
Liza reached Genevieve and bussed her cheek. “Fletch knew he’d have something to say about the color. It’s lovely to see you, Jenny.”
Genevieve hugged her and then turned to wrap her arms around Fletcher. “I missed you all,” she murmured. The boy—man now—had grown taller than her a few years after he’d become their son, a mighty feat.
“Missed you too, Mother,” Fletcher said, smiling underneath his moustache. “Anyone would think Christmas had come early, the way you ran out of the house.”
Kendrick piled the girls into one arm as they giggled and wrapped his free arm around Genevieve. “In her mind, it did.”
“When we’re all together, it’s always Christmas to me,” Genevieve said, squeezing Fletcher’s hand and leaning against Kendrick. “Come inside, all of you! Everyone is here except Dominic’s family; they’ll be here tomorrow. I’m sure Addie and Sally have dinner preparations well in hand.”
“Nan, will you read us a story?” the girls clamored. “About Wynnflaed? Or Amice, or Hild?”
Genevieve laughed. “I think we can manage a tale or two.”
As they stepped into the house, Kendrick pressed a kiss on Genevieve’s head. All her people, under one roof, was what she had asked for this Christmas. And he had delivered.
As he always did.
“I love you, you know,” she told him, as she often did.
“That I do, Jenny. And I love you too.”
