As Shadows Fade

Epilogue Wherein We Are Assured That Though Nothing Will Change, All Will Be Well

Lady Winnie and Lady Nilly gushed over Victoria, smoothing her hair-which had grown nearly to her shoulders-and fussing with her skirts.

“You couldn’t look lovelier, my dear,” Lady Winnie said, backing away to look fondly at Victoria. There might have been the gleam of a tear in her eye, or it may simply have been the fact that she spied the new tray of biscuits that Verbena had carried in. Chocolate iced pumpkin. One of her favorites.

“Indeed,” sniffled Nilly, under no pretense whatsoever. Her handkerchief was damp, and her narrow shoulders shuddered a bit as she tried to hold back the tears from pink-rimmed eyes. “I just adore weddings.” She burst into renewed tears as Winnie patted her back while continuing to eye the biscuits. “And babies.”

Victoria, for her part, felt like an ungainly sort of cow. The size of her belly, fortunately hidden beneath the yards and yards of sea green fabric, couldn’t possibly grow any larger… but she had been assured that she had several more months to expand. The very thought was inconceivable.

It was a very good thing that the vampires seemed to have remained out of London since Lilith’s death. Victoria couldn’t imagine trying to wield a stake, or kick, or even run in this sort of condition. In fact, the last time she’d tried to train with Kritanu in the kalari, Max had walked in, taken one look at her front-heavy figure and uncomfortable pose with a kadhara blade, and immediately backed out.

She thought she might have heard the rare sound of his laughter, but decided it was in both of their best interests to decline to investigate. After all, she still did wear two vis bullae, and she might hurt him.

“And here is the bride!” squealed Nilly, her tears momentarily forgotten.

Victoria looked up as the door to her mother’s dressing room opened and Lady Melly stepped into the small adjoining parlor.

She beamed and glowed like any bride would-particularly one who’d managed to snare one of the most eligible bachelors in all of London. For a moment, Victoria felt a bit envious of her mother’s slender figure… but not the least bit put out by the fact that Lady Melly would be taking over the title of Marchioness of Rockley, and her daughter would merely remain the dowager.

This was an odd happenstance that had been remarked on over and over in the on dit section of the papers, but other than feeling a bit sorry for the poor rejected Lord Jellington, Victoria felt nothing but happiness about her mother’s new match.

She might have felt a pang of remorse for the delight in knowing that Lady Melly’s maternal attentions would now be divided among three daughters-two of whom had come with the widowed Rockley when he returned to claim his title-but that was to be forgiven.

“Why, Mama,” Victoria said, eyeing her parent’s intricate hairstyle as she bent to hug Winnie. “Your coiffure… it is most unusual.”

“Do you not like it?” Melly said, her face shining with joy. “I particularly asked your maid-Violet, is it? No, Verbena-if she would do it. I have always loved the way she arranged those little sticks in your hair.”

That was another thing about Melly’s newfound love match. Her memory of certain instances seemed to have softened or even completely altered. And Victoria was so delighted for her mother that she wasn’t about to remind her of her previous criticisms of the feathered or decorated stakes that Verbena had secreted in her own curls on more than one occasion.

Instead, she merely admired the pearly white ones that gleamed amid Melly’s similar dark curls, complete with flimsy feathers and diamonds.

“It looks lovely,” she said, catching Verbena’s eye as the maid came in to admire her handiwork.

Verbena, who’d always been a lusciously stout woman, had become a bit more stout in the last few months herself. Since she and Oliver, the groom-cum-footman, had gone to Vauxhall Gardens on the evening Victoria had come to think of as the Night of the Frothy Pink Night Rail, they had been inseparable. By the time Victoria and Max had returned from Romania, Verbena and Oliver had needed a wedding themselves.

Speaking of Max… Victoria turned to the twittering ladies and excused herself under the pretense of not wanting to ruin the bride’s entrance by slogging awkwardly down the stairs in front of her.

Nilly and Winnie patted her stomach several more times, and allowed Victoria to escape as they fussed and pecked and picked at their friend’s hair and skirts and jewels.

“I hate weddings,” Max murmured when Victoria found him skulking at the back of the chapel at St. Heath’s Row, the Rockley estate. A garden wedding had been out of the question in January, and despite the fact that it was out of Season, Melly and her fiancй had been so besotted, they didn’t care about the timing of the nuptials. “They could simply have eloped and put an end to this.”

“My mother was traumatized enough by our elopement,” Victoria reminded him. “It was only the fact that she had her own wedding to plan, and the promise of two more in her new stepdaughters’, that we remained unscathed.”

“I would have remained unscathed regardless,” Max reminded her. “I do believe your mother is still a bit intimidated by me.”

Victoria smiled. “A bit? The way you looked at her when she suggested naming the baby Ermintrude? I was surprised she didn’t faint dead away right then.”

“A ridiculous name. And I’m-we’re-perfectly capable of naming our own child.” He shifted, leaning back against the stone wall of the chapel and eased her so that she rested her weight against his hip. “When is this bloody thing going to start?”

“Soon, I expect.”

“Not soon enough,” he grumbled. “The last time I was at a wedding was yours, and it started late as well, as I recall.”

She looked up at him. “I’d forgotten about that. You were just as annoyed as you are now.”

“You’d invited me to stand guard for vampires,” he reminded her. “I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and then you had the effrontery to ask me to watch for undead while you married yourself off to-someone else.”

Her eyes narrowed in delight. “So you were jealous.”

“No. Of course not.” He looked at her as if she’d grown two heads. Perhaps three.

“Of course. Just as you didn’t peek while I was changing in the carriage. Come now, Max, admit it. You watched me change. You couldn’t resist.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, but he was smiling now, little crinkles showing at the corners of his eyes. “I would never have done something so crude.”

The music began, wheezing from a small organ at the front of the chapel, and Victoria saw that the groom had taken his place at the altar. “I do believe I shall find a seat. It wouldn’t do for the daughter of the bride to be hovering in the back. Are you coming with me?”

“Anywhere, and everywhere,” he said, holding her gaze. And then he ruined it by adding, “Someone has to keep a bloody eye on you.”