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"No more secrets."

"Rafe and Audrey," she said. Quiet.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest and held her, and she held him, and neither of them let go.

Chapter twenty-three

Epilogue

Audrey

The marmalade on the table made her smile.

She sliced it and ate and thought about the first morning she had sat at this table. She chuckled quietly.

The kitchen was different now. The boards were down. The windows were clean. Kit had washed them last week, standing on a rickety ladder she had forbidden him to use, ignoring her as he ignored most of her prohibitions. Light came through properly for the first time since she had arrived. She could see the garden from where she sat, the kitchen herbs she had planted along the wall, the stable roof he had repaired with timber left over from the barricading.

The house was being mended. Held together with new mortar and old stone and the refusal of two people to let it fall down. They repaired it a little at a time. A new lintel this month. Replastered walls the next.

Silverton would take years. Neither of them minded. The work gave form to the days and the days gave shape to something that felt, cautiously, like a life.

Kit worked for the duke three days a week. Rode out before dawn, returned after dark. The duke called him his man. The duke’s household understood the rest.

The money was steady. Generous. The rest came from the tunnel and the orchard. Captain Henare's men moved goods through twice a month, and the share Audrey and Kit had negotiated kept the pantry full and the repairs moving. They had also begun selling cider from the orchard, pressed and stored in the cool of the tunnel, sold to the inn and two village shops. The first batch had been thin and sharp. The second was better. By spring they meant to have a name for it and a label and a price that made the trouble worthwhile.

He came in through the side door, his boots muddy, his shirt damp with sweat. He had been in the orchard since dawn. He did that now: rose before her, worked until breakfast, came in smelling of earth and sweat and him. He sat across from her and reached for the bread, sometimes her, and she pushed the raspberry preserve toward him. He took it without comment.

They ate. Two people who had said everything that needed saying and could eat their toast in peace.

"Kit."

"Hm."

"I have been thinking."

"Dangerous."

"I have hired a man to teach me riding," she said.

One of his brows lifted. "You don't need to hire a man. I can teach you."

"So you can grunt at me and tell me I'm wrong?"

"I'd also tell you to take off your dress."

"That is precisely the reason, darling."

His expression shifted. She felt the heat climb her neck.

"Darling," he repeated.

"I was being sarcastic."

"Hm."

"Stop staring at me. Eat your breakfast."

He reached across the table and took her hand. She let him. They sat like that for a while, his thumb moving over her knuckles, the toast going cold, the morning settling around them the way mornings do when there is nowhere else to be.