"Definite second child."
"Theoretical until proven."
"You're impossible."
"I'm your impossible duchess who conquered you with stolen boots."
"Borrowed boots!"
"I'm never admitting they were stolen, am I?"
"Never."
"And you're never stopping saying they were borrowed?"
"Never."
"We're going to have this argument forever."
"Probably. Our children will inherit it. James will tell his children about their grandmother's borrowed boots."
"Theoretical children."
"Definite children… an army, all very feral.” Loads of them. All feral."
Clara looked around the garden, at their wild son training frogs, at Lady Agatha covered in mud and seeming surprisingly content about it, at their found family of friends and servants all mingled together without proper hierarchy, at Gabriel beside her, scarred and beautiful and hers.
"I love you," she said quietly.
"I love you too," he replied, then louder, "I love my wife who conquered me with stolen boots!"
"BORROWED BOOTS!" Clara shouted back.
"Mama and Papa." James announced clearly, his second complete sentence.
Everyone stared at him.
"Did he just…" Edmund started.
"He did," Gabriel said proudly. "Our son just achieved complex critical analysis."
"He called you insane," Lady Agatha pointed out.
"Accurately," Gabriel agreed. "We're raising a genius."
"You're raising a small barbarian who happens to have good vocabulary," Lady Agatha corrected, but she was smiling.
As the sun began to set, painting the wild garden in shades of gold and pink, Clara thought about how nothing had gone according to plan. She hadn't meant to fall in love with Gabriel as a child, hadn't meant to return to him in desperation, and hadn’t meant to become a duchess or a mother or the center of this beautiful, chaotic, impossible life.
But here she was, watching her naked son teach a frog to jump through hoops while her husband argued with his aunt about the proper pronunciation of "borrowing" and their friends placed bets on which child would destroy something first.
It was perfect in its imperfection, wild in its love, impossible in its existence.
Just like their rose, growing against all odds.
Just like them.
"What are you thinking?" Gabriel asked, pulling her closer.
