She pressed her hand against his chest and felt his heartbeat, steady and warm and entirely real, and looked at him with everything she had stopped trying to contain.
“I love you,” she breathed.
“I love you too.” He placed one hand over hers. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you never have reason to doubt it.”
“That is a very big promise.”
“I am aware.” He held her gaze. “I intend to keep it.”
She looked at him, at the face she was falling in love with all over again, and kissed him.
He kissed her back, with one hand on her face and the other on her waist, drawing her closer.
She pressed closer, letting him cherish her in the morning light of the room he had built thinking about her, and she felt, for the first time since this had all begun, at home.
EPILOGUE
“She is the spitting image of Clara when she was a baby,” Thomas Bennett said. “Her mouth. The way she holds her shoulders when she walks.”
He was watching Violet navigate the drawing room as she had recently mastered forward motion and had not yet worked out that slowing down was also an option. She reached the low table, planted both hands on it, looked back at the three of them with an expression of considerable satisfaction, earned smiles, and then changed direction.
“She does?” James was watching her with a smile.
The reverend nodded. He sat with his hands loosely folded in his lap, watching his granddaughter the way he had been watching her since he arrived—with the unhurried attention of a man who did not intend to waste a moment of it.
Isadora sat across from him with her tea. For the past hour, she had been thinking about what to say and had arrived at nothing useful. There were no correct words for this. There was only the room, the fire, and Violet making her thorough circuit of it.
“What was she like?” she asked. “Clara.”
The reverend shifted his gaze to her.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to?—”
“No.” He shook his head once. “I want to.” He was quiet for a moment. “She was curious about everything. She read every book I brought home and then argued with me about them, which I pretended to find trying and secretly found… delightful.” He smiled. “She was the best mind I have ever argued with.” A small pause. “I told her so once, when she was about seventeen. She said that was very gratifying and immediately proved my point about the third chapter of a volume I cannot now recall.”
Isadora felt James shift slightly beside her. She wanted to hold his hand, but she kept her attention on the reverend.
“She is in this house,” he continued, looking around the drawing room. “Not the grandness of it. She wasn’t… She didn’t care for grandness, particularly. But the books. The grounds.” He looked at Violet, who had found the carved horse on the side table and was holding it up with both hands. “She loved this.”
Violet brought Archibald to him. She walked the seven steps between them with the deliberateness of a very important errand and held the horse out. He took it carefully.
“Thank you,” he said.
She looked at him, then pointed at the horse. “Ta.”
“For me?” he asked.
She made a sound of confirmation. Then she turned and walked back to the table and picked up Sebastian, holding him in a way that made it clear she was not giving him up.
“A generous loan,” James commented.
The reverend turned the carved horse in his fingers. He did not speak for a moment.
“I owe you a debt,” he said to both of them. “What you have done for her. What you are doing now.” He fixed his gaze on James. “When you came to Alderton, I did not know what kind of man you were. I knew your title and your reputation, which were not encouraging.” A pause. “I know better now.”
“The reputation is somewhat overstated,” James chuckled.
“Very,” the reverend agreed with a laugh. “What matters is…” He looked at Violet, who had returned to her circuit. “She is well.She is safe. She is…” He seemed to be searching for the right word and not quite finding one large enough. “Loved,” he said finally. “I can see that she is loved.”
