“I look like a man who rode to Dover for the woman he loves. That is rather romantic.”
“It is rather unhygienic.”
“You married a rake, Lily. Romance and hygiene are not always compatible.”
She pressed her face against his chest and laughed, and the sound filled the carriage, warm, bright, and real. Hugo’s arm tightened around her.
Somewhere ahead, Thornwaite Hall was waiting with its empty rooms and its ancestral portraits and a three-legged horse who would need an apple when they arrived.
They were going home.
Together.
EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
“Uncle Hugo, I brought you something from the lake.” Oliver stood on the garden terrace with his hands cupped together and a grin that suggested the contents were either magnificent or disgusting.
He was nine now, his freckles darkened by a summer spent outdoors, and the wooden sword had been replaced by a real one, blunted and age-appropriate, which he wore strapped to his belt with the gravity of a knight errant.
Hugo crouched in front of him. “Show me.”
Oliver opened his hands. A frog sat on his palms, green and glistening and profoundly unimpressed by its captors.
“His name is Wellington,” Oliver announced.
“A strong name. After the Duke?”
“After the frog I had last summer. He escaped. This is Wellington the Second.”
“A dynasty.” Hugo examined the frog with focused attention. “He looks healthy. Good coloring and strong legs.”
“I am going to teach him to jump on command.”
“An ambitious undertaking. Does your mother know?”
“She said I could keep him if he stays outside.”
“A wise policy. I suggest a habitat near the rose garden. The insects there are excellent.”
Oliver beamed and charged off toward the garden with Wellington cupped against his chest. His younger brother Leo trailed behind him, clutching a stick he had been carrying for the past hour with no discernible purpose, his dark hair falling into his eyes. Leo was beginning to develop a vocabulary that was precise, economical, and occasionally devastating.
“Frog will escape,” Leo observed as he passed.
“Probably,” Hugo agreed.
Lily watched them from the blanket spread beneath the old oak tree, where the afternoon sun filtered through the leaves andthrew dappled shadows across the remains of a magnificent picnic.
Mrs. Aldridge had outdone herself. She had packed cold roast chicken, summer salads, strawberries with cream, three kinds of cheese, and a lemon cake that Lady Brimsey had already consumed two slices of while insisting she had only taken one.
Sophia sat beside Lily with Jane on her lap. Jane was eighteen months old now, dark-haired and round-cheeked, and she was engaged in the serious business of dismantling a bread roll into the smallest possible pieces and distributing them across Sophia’s skirt.
“She has been doing that for twenty minutes,” Sophia said. “I believe she is conducting an experiment.”
“On what?”
“My patience.” Sophia brushed the bread crumbs from her skirt and smiled. “I have some news, though. Lord Wilfrey married his Charlotte Pembroke last spring. They are in Egypt, apparently. She insisted on seeing the pyramids, and he insisted on cataloging every insect between Cairo and Luxor.”
