Sydenham’s hand trembled as he reached for his quill.
A few hours later, Marchand witnessed the crushing weight of the debt lift from Ginny when she read Sydenham’s letter. The very shape of her face and the way she held her body transformed, softened.
He’d given it to her in the little park in front of the Grand Palace on the Thames, because that’s where she was when he’d returned from the earl’s house. And for a shining, futile instant, he imagined coming home to her every day, to a garden just like that one. Longing sliced right down through him.
Finally, she closed her eyes and exhaled at length.
She sat silently, clearly refamiliarizing herself with how the world felt now that a sword suspended by a single hair, à la Damocles, wasn’t dangling over her.
They sat quietly together.
It made his throat tight with emotion. Gratitude, and guilt, and grief.
Did he deserve the guilt? Did he blame himself at all? Should he?
Should he extend to himself grace?
He didn’t know the answers.
He had created the only kind of life he’d known how to create. Her brother had walked in and gambled their life away.
If that debt had never existed, he never would have met Guinevere Woodville.He’d known a weak moment or two when he’d wondered whether that would have been more merciful for both of them.
But at last he’d fixed it.
Now she was free to go home, negotiate marriage settlements for her sisters, and marry the third son of a duke, should Francis get around to proposing. If that’s what she wanted to do. She would fulfill her mother’s final wish for her. She would have the life she’d long anticipated, as secure a life as fate would allow anyone.
He’d done what he could to take care of her, and that was really all that mattered.
“I’ve had another surprise, too,” he said. He produced Hogarth’s letter, which had at last arrived.
“I agreed his plan to pay off his debt by teaching was a sound and fine plan, and I’ve written to tell him so. I will have contracts drawn up for him to sign soon.”
He was hard-pressed to imagine a greater pleasure than the expression on Ginny’s face in that moment. Amazement and pride and relief. “Do you see, Gabriel? He’s a good person, isn’t he? I’m so proud of him.”
“He is,” Marchand confirmed. “You did a good job raising him, Ginny.”
“So... it’s over? All of it? Just like that?”
“Just like that. I’ve stricken all of your brother’s debts from the books at Lucifer’s Fall. You are all free.”
He lost himself in the luxury of her gaze for a moment.
“Gabriel...”
“Yes?”
“Did you have anything to do with... any of this? With Sydenham’s decision or Hogarth’s proposal to be a teacher?”
“Sydenham had a change of heart, Ginny.” He said this gently but firmly. “And Hogarth is a fine young man who made a mistake, and I approve of the way he intends to see it right. And didn’t you findthreeheart-shaped stones? Surely it was all bound to turn out fine in the end.”
She didn’t reply. But the slight, tender curve of her smile told him she didn’t believe him.
God, she looked lovely today. Irresistibly pristine and proper, in a high-necked yellow walking dress and a straw bonnet tied with a matching ribbon. But anyone who had the wherewithal to look closely could see how thoroughly loved and ravished she’d been last night. The faint lavender shadows beneath her eyes. Her lips just a little pinker and fuller, swollen from endless kissing. The drowsy, sultry heat in her eyes when she looked at him.
He risked tracing her lips with a finger. She kissed the tip of it.
He could hear voices nearby—it sounded like Dot, and perhaps Helga—or he would have stolen a kiss.
