EPILOGUE
“Do you not feel amazement on contemplating the works of nature?”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Abreeze laden with salt and autumn caressed Hugh’s skin, healing him and cleansing his soul. Gulls squawked overhead, the sea rhythmically swashing the secluded cove’s beach with its eddies of white while the sun bestowed a weak September warmth.
Flowers of blue sea holly, purple aster and golden samphire still stippled the Welsh cliff tops behind him, but an ancient hawthorn warned that the colder months would soon be upon them, laden as it was with ripening berries.
While he lay on the sand, Hugh’s Welsh cousins – Rhys and his twin brother, Tristan, once mourned as lost to the sea but now blessedly returned to their fold – wandered the cove gathering driftwood for a fire. In his mind’s eye, Hugh could stillsee them all as young lads, playing on this very beach, yet Tristan was a father himself and Rhys a duke of the realm.
They’d both not an hour past thrashed Hugh at cricket before the three of them had then thrown themselves into the sea, and gads, it had been cold but also invigorating and life-affirming.
With a smile curving his lips, he stared up at the sky, felt the sand moulding to his back and shoulders.
A profound peace overcame him and he closed his eyes.
In the drifting shadow behind his lids, he saw Amelia in her wedding gown of sage green and their honeymoon in the south of Wales, just them and a cottage with red roses around the door. Endless days of carefree laughter and nights of passionate love.
Opening his eyes, he watched a butterfly flit hither and thither. Soon it would disappear for the winter but while the autumn sun still shone it would live life to the fullest, feasting on nectar from the sweet sea-spurrey that still flowered amongst the cove’s shingle.
“Hugh! Cease daydreaming and get this damn fire lit,” shouted Rhys. “We don’t have much time.”
Jumping to his feet, he grabbed a tinderbox from his pocket and made his way to their pile of sticks upon the sea-smoothed pebbles at the back of the cove.
Within a trice, it was lit and the three of them sat to warm their hands, well satisfied with their manly deed of the day.
“Do you remember,” began Tristan in his rasping voice, “when we sat in this very spot as boys, ten years old or so, and debated girls?”
“I deemed them unnecessary,” said Rhys with a wry smile.
Tristan smirked. “I thought them incompatible with being a pirate.”
“What was my opinion?” Hugh’s brow creased. “Can’t damn well recall.”
“Well, you were younger.” Rhys’ lips quirked. “So you thought a girl might be useful. A damsel you could pretend to rescue from the Welsh lake monster Afanc.”
“Gads, how chivalrous.” He rubbed his hands and held them to the flames. “Although as it’s turned out, my damsel could rescue hersel…” Hugh glanced up. Stilled.
Rhys turned his head.
Tristan’s eyes pivoted, a tender smile upon his lips.
Three ladies weaved their way down the stone steps cut into the cliff, picnic baskets clasped in their hands.
Two were the beautiful wives of his cousins but the other…
Laughing with such freedom, flaxen hair blown loose by the fingers of the mischievous wind, verdant skirts swaying.
She looked up.
Their eyes met.
And she… She was his.
Amelia felther husband’s gaze like a fervid caress and she blushed, smiling as her new cousins-in-law nudged her with a laugh.
