The Lost Duke of Wyndham

Epilogue

My dearest Amelia-

Can it only have been three weeks since I last wrote? It feels as if I have gathered at least a year of news. The children continue to thrive. Arthur is so studious! Jack declares himself boggled, but his delight is evident. We visited the Happy Hare earlier this week to discuss plans for the village fair with Harry Gladdish, and Jack complained to no end about how difficult it has been to find a new tutor now that Arthur has exhausted the last.

Harry was not fooled. Jack was proud as puff.

We were delighted to-

“Mama!”

Grace looked up from her correspondence. Her third child (and only daughter) was standing in the doorway, looking much aggrieved.

“What is it, Mary?” she asked.

“John was-”

“Just strolling by,” John said, sliding along the polished floor until he came to a stop next to Mary.

“John!” Mary howled.

John looked at Grace with utter innocence. “I barely touched her.”

Grace fought the urge to close her eyes and groan. John was only ten, but already he possessed his father’s lethal charm.

“Mama,” Mary said. “I was walking to the conservatory when-”

“What Mary means to say,” John cut in, “is that I was walking to the orangery when she bumped into me and-”

“No!” Mary protested. “That is not what I meant to say.” She turned to her mother in obvious distress. “Mama!”

“John, let your sister finish,” Grace said, almost automatically. It was a sentence she uttered several times a day.

John smiled at her. Meltingly. Good gracious, Grace thought, it would not be long before she’d be beating the girls away with a stick.

“Mother,” he said, in exactly the same tone Jack used when he was trying to charm his way out of a tight spot, “I would not dream of interrupting her.”

“You just did!” Mary retorted.

John held up his hands, as if to say-Poor dear.

Grace turned to Mary with what she hoped was visible compassion. “You were saying, Mary?”

“He smashed an orange into my sheet music!”

Grace turned to her son. “John, is this-”

“No,” he said quickly.

Grace gave him a dubious stare. It did not escape her that she had not finished her question before he answered. She supposed she ought not read too much into it. John, is this true? was another of the sentences she seemed to spend a great deal of time repeating.

“Mother,” he said, his green eyes profoundly solemn, “upon my honor I swear to you that I did not smash an orange-”

“You lie,” Mary seethed.

“She crushed the orange.”

“After you put it under my foot!”

And then came a new voice: “Grace!”

Grace smiled with delight. Jack could now sort the children out.

“Grace,” he said, turning sideways so that he might slip by them and into the room. “I need you to-”

“Jack!” she cut in.

He looked at her, and then behind him. “What did I do?”

She motioned to the children. “Did you not notice them?”

He quirked a smile-the very same one his son had tried to use on her a few moments earlier. “Of course I noticed them,” he said. “Did you not notice me stepping around them?” He turned to the children. “Haven’t we taught you that it is rude to block the doorway?”

It was a good thing she hadn’t been to the orangery herself, Grace thought, because she would have peened him with one. As it was, she was beginning to think she ought to keep a store of small, round, easily throwable objects in her desk drawer.

“Jack,” she said, with what she thought was amazing patience, “would you be so kind as to settle their dispute?”

He shrugged. “They’ll work it out.”

“Jack,” she sighed.

“It’s not your fault you had no siblings,” he told her. “You have no experience in intrafamilial squabbles. Trust me, it all works out in the end. I predict we shall manage to get all four to adulthood with at least fifteen of their major limbs intact.”

Grace leveled a stare. “You, on the other hand, are in supreme danger of-”

“Children!” Jack cut in. “Listen to your mother.”

“She didn’t say anything,” John pointed out.

“Right,” Jack said. He frowned for a moment. “John, leave your sister alone. Mary, next time don’t step on the orange.”

“But-”

“I’m done here,” he announced.

And amazingly, they went on their way.

“That wasn’t too difficult,” he said. He stepped into the room. “I have some papers for you.”

Grace immediately set aside her correspondence and took the documents he held forth.

“They arrived this afternoon from my solicitor,” Jack explained.

She read the first paragraph. “About the Ennigsly building in Lincoln?”

“That’s what I was expecting,” he confirmed.

She nodded and then gave the document a thorough perusal. After a dozen years of marriage, they had fallen into an easy routine. Jack conducted all of his business affairs face-to-face, and when correspondence arrived, Grace was his reader.

It was almost amusing. It had taken Jack a year or so to find his footing, but he’d turned into a marvelous steward of the dukedom. His mind was razor sharp, and his judgment was such that Grace could not believe he’d not been trained in land management. The tenants adored him, the servants worshipped him (especially once the dowager was banished to the far side of the estate), and London society had positively fallen at his feet. It had helped, of course, that Thomas made it clear that he believed Jack was the rightful Duke of Wyndham, but still, Grace did not think herself biased to believe that Jack’s charm and wit had something to do with it as well.

The only thing it seemed he could not do was read.

When he first told her, she had not believed him. Oh, she believed that he believed it. But surely he’d had poor teachers. Surely there had been some gross negligence on someone’s part. A man of Jack’s intelligence and education did not reach adulthood illiterate.

And so she’d sat with him. Tried her best. And he put up with it. In retrospect, she couldn’t believe that he had not exploded with frustration. It was, perhaps, the oddest imaginable show of love-he’d let her try, again and again, to teach him to read. With a smile on his face, even.

But in the end she’d given up. She still did not understand what he meant when he told her the letters “danced,” but she believed him when he insisted that all he ever got from a printed page was a headache.

“Everything is in order,” she said now, handing the documents back to Jack. He had discussed the matter with her the week prior, after all of the decisions had been made. He always did that. So that she would know precisely what she was looking for.

“Are you writing to Amelia?” he asked.

She nodded. “I can’t decide if I should tell her about John’s escapade in the church belfry.”

“Oh, do. They shall get a good laugh.”

“But it makes him seem such a ruffian.”

“He is a ruffian.”

She felt herself deflate. “I know. But he’s sweet.”

Jack chuckled and kissed her, once, on the forehead. “He’s just like me.”

“I know.”

“You needn’t sound so despairing.” He smiled then, that unbelievably devilish thing of his. It still got her, every time, just the way he wanted it to.

“Look how nicely I turned out,” he added.

“Just so you understand,” she told him, “if he takes to robbing coaches, I shall expire on the spot.”

Jack laughed at that. “Give my regards to Amelia.”

Grace was about to say I shall, but he was already gone. She picked up her pen and dipped it in ink, pausing briefly so she might recall what she’d been writing.

We were delighted to see Thomas on his visit. He made his annual pilgrimage to the dowager, who, I am sad to report, has not grown any less severe in her old age. She is as healthy as can be-it is my suspicion that she shall outlive us all.

Grace shook her head. She made the half-mile journey to the dower house but once a month. Jack had said she needn’t do even that, but she still felt an odd loyalty toward the dowager. Not to mention a fierce devotion and sympathy for the woman they’d hired to replace her as the dowager’s companion.

No servant had ever been so well-paid. Already the woman earned (at Grace’s insistence) double what she herself had been paid. Plus, they promised her a cottage when the dowager finally expired. The very same one Thomas had given to her so many years earlier.

Grace smiled to herself and continued writing, telling Amelia this and that-all those funny little anecdotes mothers loved to share. Mary looked like a squirrel with her front tooth missing. And little Oliver, only eighteen months old, had skipped crawling entirely, going straight from the oddest belly-scoot to full-fledged running. Already they’d lost him twice in the hedgerow maze.

I do miss you, dear Amelia. You must promise to visit this summer. You know how marvelous Lincolnshire is when all the flowers are in bloom. And of course-

“Grace?”

It was Jack, suddenly back in her doorway.

“I missed you,” he explained.

“In the last five minutes?”

He stepped inside, closed the door. “It doesn’t take long.”

“You are incorrigible.” But she set down her pen.

“It does seem to serve me well,” he murmured, stepping around the desk. He took her hand and tugged her gently to her feet. “And you, too.”

Grace fought the urge to groan. Only Jack would say such a thing. Only Jack would-

She let out a yelp as his lips-

Well, suffice to say, only Jack would do that.

Oh. And that.

She melted into him. And absolutely that…