Page 12 of 1797 Club 2nd Epilogue Collection (The 1797 Club #11)

E wan had been watching his wife all night, as they flitted from puzzle to puzzle, finding clues left behind by a man dead for fifteen years.

And he marveled at her, as always. Not only at how clever she was, but at how she managed through what was obviously a tangle of emotions.

That had always been hard for him, at least until her.

They had found the clue in the Chaucer volume, which had led to note stuck to the back of an old family portrait that had made Charlotte’s eyes fill with tears.

That had taken them to the stable where her favorite horse as a girl had been housed, and now back to the house and the big parlor where the family always celebrated birthdays and the Christmases that they didn’t all spend with the Duke and Duchess of Northfield.

Now she peeked around the room, looking under things and in vases and finally she drew her hand along the underside of the mantel and came up with a note that had been tacked there.

“Mama would be very angry he put a hole in the wood there,” she murmured as she unfolded the note. “ Last clue my love and this one will require no chase. I’ve left your treasure in the bench of your pianoforte. How I loved hearing you play for me. ”

“Something we have in common,” Ewan signed when she glanced up at him. She didn’t smile and worried the paper in her hands.

“I almost don’t want to find it,” she murmured. “For fear of what it was. And also because then this will be over and there will truly be nothing left of him.”

Ewan moved to her side and smoothed a lock of hair back from her forehead.

“Except for you. And Baldwin. Our youngest has his eyes, you know. Baldwin’s daughter has his smile.

There will always be parts of him here. Hopefully the best parts.

The parts that you knew as a girl, before the truth of his worst impulses colored your memory of him. ”

She nodded. “Yes. You’re right, of course. Well, let us claim our prize, shall we, love?”

She said it with such brightness, but he could see her putting on a brave face. Trying to convince herself that this was meaningless when it was very clear it wasn’t.

They walked together to the music room, hands intertwined.

Since they had discussed Charlotte playing tonight, as Ewan always loved to hear her do, the fire was burning in the room and they could set aside their now half-melted candles.

She shut the door and walked to the pianoforte in front of the window.

It was dark outside, but Ewan knew that during the day, it looked out over the garden with its fountains and trails.

A beautiful setting his wife had always loved.

He hoped her father’s whim in this scavenger hunt wouldn’t ruin the memories here.

She turned to her piano bench, reaching beneath it to feel for an attached message.

“Nothing,” she murmured. Then she opened the top of the bench, revealing the little area where sheets of music were stored.

She lifted the group of them, sorting through them, her frown deepening with every moment she found nothing from her father.

“I hope it isn’t- ”

She cut herself off when she turned over a piece of sheet music.

“What is it?” Ewan signed as he touched her hand so she would look at him.

She faced the back of the sheet toward him. “A letter,” she whispered. “Written on the back of his favorite piece of music. He asked me to play up to Variation nine so many times that I could do it in my sleep.”

“What does the letter say?” Ewan signed. “If you wish to share it.”

She nodded. “I’m afraid to read it,” she admitted. “But we’ve come this far. So I suppose it is time.”

He caught her hand, holding it gently as she began to read her father’s words.

C harlotte could barely breathe as she read the words in her father’s letter.

“ My dearest daughter, if you have come this far in this search, it gives me hope that I didn’t fail you entirely. Or at least that you do not hate me for doing so. ” She shook her head and lifted her gaze to Ewan.

His calm and strength filled her as he nodded gently, encouraging her to continue even when her chest hurt.

“ My secrets were always going to come out. I knew it and I tried to stop myself, as much good as it did. I’m sick now.

I’m dying. And I know that I will leave your brother with so much trouble.

And your mother. And you. You will be crushed beneath the weight of my decisions and lies.

I hate that. I hate myself, Charlotte, so I forgive you if you feel the same. ”

She caught her breath now and lowered the letter. “I cannot believe he admitted to everything.”

Ewan nodded. “After all he did to cover up the truth, it is surprising. It is not to excuse him, but it seems the guilt of his bad behavior weighed on him.”

“I suppose it did,” she whispered. “I never granted him that.”

“What else does it say?” Ewan signed .

Charlotte forced herself to look at the words, which swam through the brimming blur of her unshed tears.

She blinked and the picture cleared so she could continue, “ I love you, my …” She caught her breath and the tears began to fall now.

“ I love you, my darling. You and your mother and brother. And I am sorry, so sorry for what I have done. I’m sorry for the pain I will cause, both with my death and with the death of who you thought I was.

Please know that despite my great failings, I’m so proud of the woman you have become.

And I will miss seeing the woman you will be. I love you with all my heart. Papa. ”

She lifted the letter to her chest and then turned into her husband’s arms. Ewan held her, stroking her hair, soothing her as she wept, though never encouraging her to stop those feelings.

And eventually the pain and love caused by the words her father had written eased a fraction and she stood.

Ewan handed her a handkerchief and she wiped her tears.

“I let my thoughts of him become twisted after what he did in the end,” she admitted. “But this means so much to me. Oh, there’s one more line here.”

“What is it?” he signed.

“I have also left letters for you mother and brother in the London estate. Beneath the top desk drawer. Please see they get them.”

She shook her head and set the letter aside, pacing past the piano and staring out into the dark.

She was silent for a long time, pondering all he had said.

Pondering the life he had said he hated to miss.

So much had changed for her since his death.

Almost all of it good. She had been brought back to Ewan. She had born three wonderful children.

Ewan touched her hand and she looked at him. “What can I do?”

The question hung between them, slashes of secret symbols in the air. She examined his handsome face, the face she had loved since she was hardly out of the nursery.

“You do it every day,” she whispered, taking his hands.

“My father did love me. This letter reminds me of that. But that he had to write an apology like this is proof of what a different man I chose as my own husband.” She cupped his cheeks.

“You are so good, my love. So strong and steady. So decent and kind. You are always thinking of your family, of me. And I know, having watched my father destroy everything so selfishly, despite his love…how much that means.”

Ewan’s expression softened. “If I give you shelter after a storm, that is the greatest accomplishment of my life,” he signed and then caught her hand and lifted it to his lips.

“There are no storms if you are with me,” she said in return and fell into his arms again. Her father had given her a gift. A return to the memories of the man who had loved her.

And a reminder that the one who loved her now was twice the man she had grown up with. Which made her very lucky, indeed.