Samantha frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You could not hear his music and he could not hear yours.”
“Mother says that it happens.”
“The only person she could never hear was father, nor ours, and that is still the case.”
Samantha snapped a look at her mother.
“I could not tell you or it may have altered how you and Cassian dealt with the other, especially if you decided to defy fate.” Her mother then looked at Cassian. “Nor can I hear your music. Your privacy extends to everyone related to Samantha who shares the same gift.”
“His confession was what was needed to free you, Samantha,” Lady St. Alban said as she took her seat. “That information was translated yesterday, but if we had told Cassian, he may have made a false declaration of love thinking that it would free you, when it would have actually caused more harm. It had to come from the heart and his own true realization.”
Samantha looked at Cassian who had joined her at the table. “Everything Iza had warned us about has come true.”
“Yes well, had she been less cryptic, we might have arrived at this point much sooner.”
She would have thought him upset if he weren’t smiling.
“Only one question remains,” he announced. “How soon can we wed?”
Epilogue
Five years later, The Sacred Grove at Nightshade Manor
“See, Giselle, just over there are two whales.”
His daughter clapped her hands in delight.
“And dolphins,” Gustave cried with excitement.
Cassian and his family had returned to Bocka Morrow last night, after four years of living in France and bringing the estate to rights. After greeting the family, the four of them settled into the cottage, where they would live while they remained for a visit.
When he’d been a boy, France had been his home, but even as he and Samantha settled into the chateau and they toured the many rooms from his childhood, he was thinking of Cornwall as home.
Still, it was good to have the chateau and vineyards back in his name. The family’s legacy was returned, and in another year, they could begin producing wine.
Cassian and Samantha had married in January, as soon as the banns had been cried then set to plan their journey to France. Her father, as well as the man who had raised Cassian offered generous financial gifts to help him achieve his goals but just as they were ready to set sail, word reached them that Napoleon had escaped Elba and would soon be on the March. His two biggest fears were that they would be forced to endure years of war yet again, and that this time his home would be fully destroy.
Thankfully, neither had occurred and as soon as they learned of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Cassian and Samantha packed once again and booked passage to France arriving just in time to celebrate Yule in his family home.
There was not much. Simply candles, blankets and a purchased mattress because the stone floors were too hard, but Samantha had not minded, nor had he.
When spring arrived, so did the woman who had raised him along with her sister, sister-in-law and their daughters. The women helped him find any rootstock from the original vineyard that had survived the razing so many years before. The plants had tried to grow and come back to life, but without proper care and support, the vines spread across the ground, dying back into it. The women, witches connected to the earth, spent their days healing his vineyard.
He had not even asked them to do so, yet they had somehow known.
He also suspected the women used magic to save the vines, but Cassian did not ask because a part of him did not want to know. But, even if they had, it was a gift to him and Samantha to help them succeed in their dreams.
The husbands and sons had also come along, and likely because they did not want the women to travel alone, which Cassian could understand. Except, if anything were to happen, it would be the wives and daughters protecting husbands, fathers and brothers, but he did not point that out to them.
It had been good to have the family that had taken him in filling his home in France.
These past years had been a struggle, especially financially, and Cassian feared every day that Samantha would wake up and inform him that she was returning to England, yet she never did.
She loved him and had given him two children—a son and a daughter—who needed to visit Cornwall and come to know their family.
“Are you certain this is the right decision?” Samantha asked him quietly.
