Page 37

Epilogue

Happy endings…

One Year Later

M arina felt tears welling up in her eyes. Try as she might to dash them away, they fell regardless. Then a square of white linen was being tucked into her hand. Turning to glance up at her husband—a word she truly never tired of saying—she smiled at him through her very happy tears.

They’d returned to London for a joyous occasion. Her dear friend, Charlotte Hamilton, was no longer a Hamilton. Her wedding had been a beautiful ceremony. As was the current fashion, courtesy of their queen, she’d been radiant in an embroidered gown of white silk with a long veil trailing behind her. It had been magical, beautiful but it wasn’t the beauty of the service itself that had made her so teary eyed, though it certainly had rendered others so. It had been the sparkle she’d seen in Charlotte’s eyes.

She’d prayed for Charlotte to find the love she deserved and it seemed, very much, as though she had. By all rights, Mr. Atherton seemed to adore her. Perhaps he was a bit bookish with his spectacles, and perhaps he didn’t cut quite the dashing figure that some gentlemen did, but Charlotte appeared to be blissfully happy and that was all that mattered.

As the service ended and the happy couple made their exit, Caleb noted quietly, “She appears very happy indeed.”

“She does, indeed.”

“Will you tell her?” Caleb asked.

Marina shook her head. “Not today… This is her day, after all. There will be time enough when she has returned from her honeymoon to share our happy news with her.”

While she couldn’t say exactly when their child would be born, she imagined it would be sometime in the summer, possibly late June or early July. And she would be counting down every single day until she would finally get to meet the child she knew would be a son. With Caleb’s dark hair and the slight cleft in his chin.

“Girl,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “It will be a girl.”

“How can you possibly be so sure? I’m the one carrying this child,” she whispered softly. “Surely, I would have greater insight into that!”

He shrugged. “I just know. It will be a girl.”

“It will be a boy,” she insisted. “And when he is grown to manhood, he will marry the daughter that I know Charlotte will have in the next year or so. We’ve planned it that way since we were children!”

“ The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, ” Caleb quoted with a wicked grin.

Marina was stopped from replying as they had reached Charlotte and Mr. Atherton. With quick hugs and hasty congratulations, they made their way outside to gather with the other guests. A small silk bag filled with rice was pressed into her hand and Marina gleefully joined in showering the happy couple with it as they finally exited the church.

“You should have had a wedding like this,” Caleb noted.

“I did,” she said. “It simply wasn’t our wedding.”

He laughed at that. “Yes, but you didn’t get married that day.”

“And thank heaven for it. Otherwise, my dear husband, I never would have met you… and fallen hopelessly, head over heels in love with you.”

Heedless of the crowd, he pressed a kiss to her lips. “All the scheming of others was well worth it for the sake of having you by my side… Now, let’s make our appearance at the wedding breakfast and then go home.”

“I’m not tired. The journey was not that taxing,” she protested.

“Good. Because I have no inclination of letting you rest… I have other plans for you, Lady St. Aiden.”

Marina sighed. “Would it be terrible if I said we should skip the wedding breakfast entirely and just go home? Charlotte, being a newly married woman herself, will no doubt understand.”

“How very wicked you are!”

“Does that mean we must go?”

Caleb leveled a very heated stare in her direction. “I never said that. I simply said you were wicked… something I absolutely adore about you. But then I adore everything about you, don’t I?”

He did. Adored. Cherished. Treasured. Not a day went by with him that she did not feel all these things from him and more. And she hoped that he felt them in turn, because she loved him more than she ever dreamed would be possible. “I love you. And I have no regrets about our marriage… not the marriage itself or the wedding that initiated it.”

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss there, just above the wedding ring he had placed there just over a year ago. “I would say it was the best day of my life… the day I married you. But every day that I spend with you is better than the last. I love you. I could say it a thousand times a day, and it would never fully express how much.”

And at that, Marina’s eyes began to tear up again. But once more, they were the happiest of tears.

The End