She raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I start work on Monday,” he said.
“So soon? Doing what? Where? And how did this come about?” she asked.
“Yes, teaching English, the Vatican, and I found out the day of the hearing after I left you,” he answered, reaching for her.
She pushed him away several long kisses later. “How did you get hired at the Vatican?” she asked.
“Mother Margarita’s cousin,” he said, taking her mouth again.
She slid sideways. “Padre Barnabas?” she asked, puzzled.
He rose up on one elbow.
“Yes,” he said, “the very one. Did you know the man wears red shoes in his spare time?” His lips twitched suspiciously.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Mother Margarita’s cousin’s other name is Pius VII,” he said, holding back a laugh. “When he isn’t looking in on his cousins, he rules the Papal States. Padre Barnabas is the pope.”
She gasped, trying to take it in. “When did you find that out?”
“After the hearing when I kept an appointment set up for me by Mother Margarita and discovered who had summoned me.” A laugh escaped him; he pressed his lips together.
“No wonder our marriage could be easily arranged,” she mused.
“That’s the least of it. He most certainly made sure that you got a fair hearing. We always had a powerful protector, little wife. We just didn’t know it.”
He began to laugh in earnest. He laughed until the bed shook, and she couldn’t help but join in.
They hugged each other until laughter subsided and passion took over.
Laughter and passion, she thought much later, would see them through whatever life gave them. She smiled at her husband, curled around her, peaceful in his sleep, and knew it was so.
Epilogue
Chadbourn Hall, Summer 1832
Nora stood out in the field during a lively—and slightly hilarious—game of cricket. She liked to play, but her mind tended to wander.
Jamie and Nora had come to England with Isabella and their sons, Robert and Barnabas, to formally end the arrangement that had put Jamie’s estate in the hands of his friends.
This was only her second visit to England since her marriage. The first had been five years before during Jamie’s mother’s final illness. It still took her time to adjust to company that included a duke, a duchess, an earl, a countess, and a duke’s daughter married to a noted scholar. How surprising life with Jamie had turned out to be. Sometimes she even remembered to think of herself as a baroness, when with Jamie's friends and their families.
Marriages and children had expanded the world of the four friends, and Nora almost had to recite the names to keep track. She glanced around and did it again.
There was Will and his Catherine with their children Artie, Emma, Ambrose, Tobias and Mary as well as his nephew Charles—yet another duke!—with his son Jonny. She’d been told Catherine also raised her two brothers, now grown. They were the earl’s wards, but Nora hadn’t met them.
Andrew and Georgie Mallet had a tendency to give their children classical names or nicknames. Their oldest was Aeneas. Theirother son was Archimedes or Archie, and their Katy, a quiet little mite, preferred to be called Athena of all things.
As to the duke, Richard and his Lily had an abundance of offspring: Zambak, John whom they called Thorn, Henry, Rose and Geordie. There were two more in the nursary.
Shouting from the field brought her out of her revery. Jamie cheered madly while Robby barreled down the pitch. Henry, Richard’s boy, having struck the last ball, bolted in the other direction. Unfortunately the ball flew right past Nora with Artie Landrum chasing it. The teams and spectators erupted in shouts when both boys scored.
Most of Chadbourn’s guests had joined in the cricket game, aside from a some of the ladies and the older girls. At seventeen Isabella considered herself too dignified for “a boy’s game.” Will’s Emma and Richard’s Zambek, a few years younger and quite enamored with what they saw as Isabella’s European sophistication, imitated her.
Nora, on the other hand, had joined in the playing gleefully. She found activity with this group easier than conversation sometimes.
